the second part of Âsâr-i ‘Ajam Fursat devotes the second part of Âsâr-i ‘Ajam to the city of Shiraz, his hometown. He returns there between travels and compares the city to the small towns he stays in during his voyages. Shiraz is a center of knowledge for the entire region and beyond, inhabited by friends […]
Short introduction by Fursat Fursat traces the territory of Âsâr-i ‘Ajam through a series of conceptual and geographical delimitations that identify the object of the book, extracting it from larger regions and topics. The book opens describing Iran as “a vast country whose places had many names that changed over time and comprised Irâq, Khurn,
short introduce Mîrzâ Muhammad Nâsir al-Hussaynî – better known as Fursat Shirazi (1854–1920) – was an explorer of different forms of knowledge more than a specialist in any of them. Fursat Shirazi was a self-taught painter who made aliving by painting portraits of the local and national aristocracy, to whom he was linked by relations
The term dâr al-‘ilm, Abode of Knowledge, was used in the early centuries after the hijra to describe a library and a place of learning. The epithet was also used to refer to cities renowned as centers of learning, Shiraz among them. According to the Shirazi scholar Sadr al-dîn Mahallâtî (Kânûn-i Dânish 1954), the city
Shiraz is located in the south of Iran and counts today a population of about a million and a half. The lands surrounding the plain of Shiraz were foundational for the two major dynasties of pre-Islamic Iran, the Achaemenids (550–330BCE) and the Sassanids (206–651CE). Ever since, Shiraz and its region, known as Fars, have been
At the beginning of the second quarter of the nineteenth century most of the Bakhtiyari was under the governorship of the Georgian enunch, Manuchehr Khan Mo’atemed od Dauleh, and the provinces under his authority included Isfahan, Khuzistan, and most of Luristan. A northern corner of the Haft Leng territory was under the governor of Burujerd,
Mohammad Taqi Khan Chahar Leng in Bakhtiyari Tribe Read More »
In practice the Bakhtiyari territory would appear to be considered the property of the khans of each tayefeh; they determined its use. The ilkhan and ilbeg were assigned by the Central Government to collect the annual tax or maliyat, and within the confederation itself they had the final decision in cases involving disputes over the land. Traditionally the tayefeh had rights
Mention has been made of the intermediary role of the khans in collecting taxes and conscripting recruits for the government. It will be seen that a khan requires support from within the tribe in order to fulfill these functions. There are-frequent references in the sources to a change of allegiance within a tribe and/or a part of
Perhaps the earliest written reference to the Bakhtiyari dates from approximately 1330 A.D. in Hamdullah Mostaufi‘s Tarikh-e Gozideh, and possibly the earliest written reference to the divisions of the Haft Leng and Chahar Leng is in Muhammad Kazem’s Nameh-ye ‘Alam Ara-ye Naderi, ca. 1740 A.D. A In the Tarikh-e Gozideh the Bakhtiyari and the Osteraki, which is one of
The origins of the Bakhtiyari and their division int two major groups of Haft Leng and Chahar Leng” have long puzzled historians and observers of Iran. “Who the Lurs are,” says Curzon, writing in 1890, “and whence they came is one of the unsolved and in- soluable riddles of history.” He quotes Rich, who declared the Bakhtiaris to
