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A Murder in Medieval Yazd

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2016

ISABEL A. M. MILLER
ISABEL A. M. MILLER*
Affiliation:
LondonIsamel2655@aol.com
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Abstract

Perhaps, appropriately, crime and criminality only enter the local histories of Yazd, the ‘Tārīkh-i Yazd and the Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd, by stealth.1 The interests and concerns of the authors of the local histories lay elsewhere, in describing the topography of the city, its religious edifices and shrines, noting its pious, learned and great inhabitants and recording its history from earliest times; and indeed if the authors were writing about a city endowed with the title Dār al-ʿIbādaʾ, the Abode of Piety, it is unsurprising that crimes or criminal acts are largely absent from the text and so, only one or two accounts of crime feature in the local histories. However, the ordering of society and the maintenance of this order constitute a central topic in medieval Persian writings, including the histories.

Type
Part II: The Mongol World
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 26 , Issue 1-2 , January 2016 , pp. 147 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2016 

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References

2 Iraj Afshar, Yādgar-hā-ye Yazd, 2 vols (Tehran, 1354 Sh./1977), vol. 2, p. 407.

3 Lambton, A. K. S., Continuity and change in Medieval Persia (New York, 1988), p. 73 Google Scholar.

4 S. C. Fairbanks, ‘Atābakān-e Yazd’, EIr; Jaʿfari, Tārīkh-i Yazd, p. 23.

5 Morgan, David O., The Mongols (Oxford, 1986), pp. 163–167 Google Scholar, and his Medieval Persia 1040–1797 (London and New York, 1988), pp. 67, 74–75. See also his encyclopaedia article, ‘Mongols’, EI2, vol. 7, pp. 230–235.

6 See Lambton, A. K. S., ‘Changing Concepts of Justice and Injustice from the 5th/11th Century to the 8th/14th Century in Persia: The Saljuq Empire and the Ilkhanate’, Studia Islamica, 68 (1988), p. 31 Google Scholar.

7 Christelle Jullien, ‘Martyrs, Christian’, EIr, Peter Jackson, ‘Abū Saʿīd Bahādor Khān’, EIr and Charles Melville, ‘Čobān’, EIr.

8 S. C. Fairbanks, ‘Atābakān-e Yazd’, EIr; Jaʿfarī, Tārīkh-i Yazd, pp. 23–26; Aḥmad b. Ḥusayn, Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd, pp. 66–74.

9 S. C. Fairbanks, ‘Atābakān-e Yazd’, EIr; Jaʿfarī, Tārīkh-i Yazd, pp. 26–27; Aḥmad b. Ḥusayn, Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd, pp. 74–76.

10 See David O. Morgan, The Mongols, pp. 167–170; idem, Medieval Persia 1040–1797, pp. 74–76; and B. Manz, ‘The rule of the infidels: the Mongols and the Islamic world’, in ed. Morgan, D. O. and Reid, A., ‘The Eastern Islamic World Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries’, The New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 3 (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 151–152 Google Scholar.

11 S. C. Fairbanks, ‘Atābakān-e Yazd’, EIr; Jaʿfarī, Tārīkh-i Yazd, pp. 27–28; Aḥmad b. Ḥusayn, Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd, pp. 74–76.

12 S. C. Fairbanks, Ibid.

13 See Aubin, Jean, ‘Patronage culturel sous les Ilkhans: Une Grande Famille de Yazd’, Le monde iranien et l'islam, 3 (1975), pp. 107–118 Google Scholar.

14 Thamar E. Gindin, ‘Yazd iv. The Jewish Dialect of Yazd’, EIr; Walter J. Fischel [Amnon Netzer], ‘Yezd’, Encyclopaedia Judaica, second edition.

15 Jaʿfarī, Tārīkh-i Yazd, p. 88; Aḥmad b. Ḥusayn, Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd, p. 134.

16 Jean Aubin, ‘Patronage culturel sous les Ilkhans’, p. 112.

17 Jaʿfarī, Tārīkh-i Yazd, pp. 83–84, and Iraj Afshar, Yādgar-hā-yi Yazd, 2 vols (Tehran 1354 Sh./1977), vol. 2 for the text of the waqfnāma for Rukn al-Dīn's endowment followed by that of his son in the Jāmiʿ al-Khairat.

18 Jaʿfarī, Tārīkh-i Yazd, pp. 81–82; see Aḥmad b. Ḥusayn, Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd, pp. 125–126 which says that the Madrasa Maḥmūd Shāhī was restored, ‘naw kard’.

19 Jaʿfarī, Tārīkh-i Yazd, p. 84; Jean Aubin, ‘Patronage culturel sous les Ilkhans’, pp. 112–113.

20 Jaʿfarī, Tārīkh-i Yazd, p. 84; Aḥmad b. Ḥusayn, Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd, p. 125; Derek J. Mancini-Lander, ‘Memory on the Boundaries of Empire: Narrating Place in the Early Modern Local Historiography of Yazd’ (PhD, University of Michigan, Michigan, MI, 2012), p. 346.

21 Ibid .; Jaʿfarī, Tārīkh-i Yazd, p. 84.

22 Ibid .; Aḥmad b. Ḥusayn, Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd, p. 126.

23 Jaʿfarī, Tārīkh-i Yazd, p. 84.

24 Lange, Christian, Justice, Punishment and the Medieval Muslim Imagination (Cambridge, 2008), p. 77 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Jaʿfarī, Tārīkh-i Yazd, p. 84.

26 Christian Lange, Justice, Punishment and the Medieval Muslim Imagination, pp. 79-80, 237–239.

27 Ibid ., pp. 172–174, 233–234.

28 Ibid ., pp. 235–237, though Lange points out that in the course of time the writings on tashhīr came to reflect the reality of what occurred.

29 Ibid ., pp. 90–91; Jaʿfarī, Tārīkh-i Yazd, p. 84.

30 Ibid ., pp. 84–85.

31 Ibid ., p. 85.

32 Jaʿfarī, Tārīkh-i Yazd, pp. 88–89; Aḥmad b. Ḥusayn, Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd, pp. 134–135.

33 Ilker Evrim Binbas, ‘Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī (ca. 770s-859/ca. 1370s-1454): Prophecy, Politics and Historiography in Late Medieval Islamic History’ (PhD, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 2009), pp. 22–23.

34 Jaʿfarī, Tārīkh-i Yazd, p. 85.

35 Ibid ., p. 86.

36 Ibid .; Aḥmad b. Ḥusayn, Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd, p. 128.

37 Ibid .; Jaʿfarī, Tārīkh-i Yazd, p. 87.

38 Jaʿfarī, Tārīkh-i Yazd, pp. 88–89; Aḥmad b. Ḥusayn, Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd, pp. 129–131.

39 Ibid ., pp. 127–128, 131.

40 However for an alternative understanding which questions the validity of narrative in the local histories see Derek J. Mancini-Lander, ‘Memory on the Boundaries of Empire’, Chapter 3. His approach is one of literary analysis and is largely concerned with the Jāmiʿ-i Mufīdī.

41 Charles Melville, ‘Čobān’, EIr and Peter Jackson, ‘Abū Saʿīd Bahādor Khān’, EIr.

42 S. C. Fairbanks, ‘Atābakān-e Yazd’, EIr.

43 Budge, E. A. Wallis, The Monks of Kubilai Khan, or the history and life of Rabban Ṣawma etc., translated from the Syriac by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, with a new introduction by David Morgan (London, 2014), pp. 249–253; see also Fiey, J. M., ‘Les communautés syriaques en Iran des premiers siècles à 1552’, no. I in Communautés syriaques en Iran et Irak des origins à 1552 (London, 1979), where a series of metropolitans are listed for Iran, including Kashān, for the year 715–716/1316.

44 Budge, E. A. Wallis, The Monks of Kubilai Khan, pp. 231–233.

45 Ibid ., pp. 226–230.

46 Ibid ., pp. 257–258, 259–260, also pp. 263–266 which describes the prelude to the massacre of Christians at Irbīl. Yabh Allaha himself died in 1317. But according to Fiey ‘Les communautés syriaques en Iran’, within less than twenty years his grave at Marāgha was dug up and his remains disinterred. These dates do roughly fit with the events surrounding the murder of the Christian khwāja, if it is placed around the time of the downfall of Amīr Chupān.

47 Ibid ., pp. 287–288, 303–304.

48 Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd, p. 136.