Persian Documents

After the Mongol period, Persian was the official written language in Iran, Central Asia and India. A vast amount of documents relating to administration and social life were produced and yet, unlike Ottoman and Arabic documents, Persian historical resources have received very little critical attention. The contributors examine four distinct elements of the documents: the formal aspects of the sources are initially inspected; the second part focuses on newly discovered sources; and the most abundant documents of the period - waqf deeds - are individually studied. In this way the reader is led to realize the importance of Persian documents in gaining an understanding of past urban and rural societies in the Middle East. Up until now our understandings of historical Islamic and Middle Eastern societies have been based mainly on Arab and Ottoman documents. In contrast, this book foregrounds other historical "Islamic" societies in the past that employed different systems and practices. By using a wide-range of sources, including sale deeds, waqf endowment deeds, tax registers and sufi documents, the contributors highlight the rewards of researching hitherto neglected material.critical

Kondo Nobuaki is Associate Professor at the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.