The Pre-Modern and Early-Modern Persianate World: From the Ghaznavids to the Safavids

Course Description:

This lecture will be held in English and German.

It is an introductory course, covering the history of Iran from about the 11th to the 18th century. The focus and more detailed discussions cover the Safavid period, aiming at a more in-depth look at the most central issues of the so-called ‘early modern’ period in Iran, including political, religious, cultural and social aspects.

The twenty-first century’s take on the Safavids is too often a teleological, tube-type of zoom, involving religio-ideological and nationalist perspectives that invoke the Safavids as the founders of modern Iran. In order to break up these ideological layers and to diffuse the religio-statist narrative, this course covers some of the Safavid predecessors from about 1100 to 1500. This includes the Ghaznavids in the eastern Iranian world, the Saljuqs, the Ilkhanids, the Timurids and the rule of the Qara Qoyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu states as the Safavids’ immediate Turkic predecessors.

The course looks at the relevance of the Ghaznavids, Saljuqs, the Ilkhanids and Timurds in the Iranian context (and vice versa) as well as the central religio-historical premises, involving the transformation of the Safavid Sufi order over almost two centuries to the construction of a Safavid monarchical system, the establishment of Shi’ism as state sponsored religion, the formation of a centralized bureaucratic system and its relation to the Uzbeks, Mughals, Ottomans and Europeans. The discussion pays attention also to culture, literature, architecture and economics.

The outline of the course topics follows a historiographical and chronological timeline, which provides an easily intelligible frame for more complex questions of pre-modern Iranian history. At the same time, the discussion will take a critical look at the notion of the Safavid (or as some argue, already the Ilkhanid) state as creating the foundation of a modern nation state. The lecture will thus further focus on internal and external factors of political developments, the rise and impact of Europeans in the Persian Gulf and the role of the Safavids between the Ottomans and the Mughals. Part of the thematic lines through the lectures are issues like the rise and policies of individual leaders, kingship and what in the Iranian context has been called “charismatic kingship,” administrative and institutional transformation, trade as well as architecture and material culture. A few of the suggested weekly readings include titles of primary sources in English and Persian, which aims at acquainting students with some basic primary source texts. The goal of this course is thus two-fold, to transmit information and understanding of the most important historical events during the time-period covered as well as some initial tools for a critical understanding of how the meta-narrative of this period in Iran has been constructed.