Maria Subtelny – författare

How did the the descendants of Tamerlane, collectively known as the Timurids, make the transition from a nomadic empire to a sedentary polity based on the Perso-Islamic model , and what effect did the process of transition have on their Turko-Mongolian customs and identity? This volume seeks to answer these questions by utilizing the Weberian concepts of the “routinization” of charismatic authority and the patrimonial household state.Focusing on the period of the last Timurid ruler, Sulṭān-Ḥusain Bayqara (1469–1506), the author examines the impact of the introduction of Persian modes of bureaucratic administration on the evolution of Timurid government and describes the development of the agrarian economy of the eastern Iranian province of Khorasan through the Islamic institution of the pious endowment. Based on an exceptionally broad range of sources in Persian, Arabic, and Turkic languages, the book provides a new paradigm for understanding the Timurids within the framework of post-Mongol history and offers fresh insights into Turko-Persian relations and the problem of acculturation in medieval Iran.

The nineteen papers collected in this volume were delivered at a symposium held in Toronto, November 1989 in order to discuss the art and culture of Timurid times. The papers cover the last decades of the fourteenth century and the whole of the fifteenth, in an area of western Asia extending roughly from the Euphrates to the Hindu Kush and to the Altai.Among the subjects covered were: 'Discourses of an Imaginary Arts Council in Fifteenth-Century Iran'; 'The Persian Court between Palace and Tent: From Timur to ‘Abbas I'; 'Turkmen Princes and Religious Dignitaries: A Sketch in Group Profiles'; 'Craftsmen and Guild Life in Samarkand'; 'The Baburnama and the Tarikh-i Rashidi: Their Mutual Relationship'; 'Geometric Design in Timurid/Turkmen Architectural Practice: Thoughts on a Recently Discovered Scroll and Its Late Gothic Parallels' and 'Repetition of Compositions in Manuscripts: The Khamsa of Nizami in Leningrad.