The five stories of Shah Ṭahmāsb: a textual history

Thesis

This thesis examines the textual history of a unique first-person Persian narrative attributed to Shah Ṭahmāsb I (r. 1524–1576), which recounts key episodes of Safavid-Ottoman conflict across the mid-sixteenth century. Commonly referred to in modern scholarship as the Memoirs of Shah Ṭahmāsb, this work survives in multiple manuscript recensions, each bearing distinct paratextual and ideological features. By employing stemmatological and paratextual analysis, the study reconstructs the manuscript genealogy of the text and identifies two major traditions: the M-Recension, which took shape in the early seventeenth century as part of Safavid bureaucratic historiography and circulates under titles such as maqālāt or mokālemeh; and the T-Recension, a late seventeenth-century mystical adaptation, often known as taẕkereh, closely associated with Qezelbāsh spirituality and Safavid memory culture.

The thesis traces how these recensions emerged from separate editorial lineages—the Naqqāsh and Kāteb stemmas for the M-Recension, and the GPL and BL stemmas for the TRecension—and situates their transformations within the broader contexts of Safavid court politics, Sufi devotional practice, and manuscript transmission. Rejecting earlier attempts to treat these versions as sequential drafts by the Shah himself, this study argues that each recension functioned as a distinct textual and mnemonic project, shaped by shifting audiences, ideological frameworks, and scribal institutions.

Through detailed analysis of prefaces, colophons, marginalia, and illustrations, this work demonstrates how the evolving presentation and framing of the text reflect broader changes in Safavid conceptions of history, legitimacy, and spiritual authority. Ultimately, it offers a new model for understanding Persian historiographical texts not as fixed authorial statements, but as dynamic sites of memory (lieux de mémoire) continually reshaped by their transmitters and readers.

Authors: Kurin, G

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-qy0enyqnr
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Shah Ṭahmāsb I; Persianate studies; textual history; Persian manuscripts; Islamic historiography; cultural memory; book history; paratextual analysis; manuscript studies; Safavid Iran; Safavid historiography; Safavid-Ottoman relations
• Subjects: Middle Eastern Studies, History, Islamic Studies, Manuscript Studies, Literary Studies