Introduction
Rashīd al-Dīn's Jāmi‘al-tawārīkh has received considerable attention as a source of primary importance for the history of the Mongol period in Iran and of the peoples with whom the Mongols came into contact in the course of their career of world conquest. Despite this, there is rather little notice of his history of the Islamic world and more specifically of Iran itself. One can readily suppose this neglect is because Rashīd al-Dīn is not himself an important primary source for the earlier history of Iran. Although sections on the Buyids, Samanids and Ghaznavids,Footnote 1 on the SaljuqsFootnote 2 and Isma‘ilis also,Footnote 3 have been available in print for some time, they are seldom cited for new information on these dynasties. The historiographical interest of Rashīd al-Dīn's compilation has of course been acknowledged, and his use of sources and the role his work has played in the transmission of texts has received some piecemeal attention, particularly for the Saljuq period that is itself rather deficient in historical literature.Footnote 4
Nevertheless, it would not be wrong to say that the earlier periods of Islamic and Iranian history, including the pre-Islamic period, as recorded in Rashīd al-Dīn's work, have been neglected completely; until very recently, indeed, this was the one remaining part of the Jāmi‘al-tawārīkh that had not been edited or published. This omission has now been made good,Footnote 5 but the recent edition of the text itself raises various questions, as we shall see shortly. The aim of this brief tribute to David Morgan and his long and fruitful career presiding over the Mongols is to discuss just one part of these early sections of the Jāmi‘al-tawārīkh, specifically the passages concerned with the earliest rulers of Iran's mythical past, the so-called Pīshdādiyān.Footnote 6
In Persian literary tradition, this period is particularly associated with Firdausī’s Shāhnāmeh, the epic of the Persian kings completed in 1010 ad, that is, exactly 300 years before Rashīd al-Dīn was completing his universal history in 1310. One question that arises, therefore, is whether, and to what extent, Rashīd al-Dīn may have used the Shāhnāmeh directly as one of his sources. There is also an underlying question of broader interest, given the renewed enthusiasm for Firdausī’s epic that was kindled in the Mongol period and the role played by this text in what might be called the Persianisation of the new dynasty. This is associated particularly with the Juvainī brothers in the period before Ghazan Khan's conversion to Islam in 1295. It is expressed through their patronage of scholars and historians and involvement with such projects as the development of Takht-i Sulaimān (probably started late in the reign of Hülegü Khan); not to forget ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Juvainī’s extensive engagement with the Shāhnāmeh in his own history of the Mongols (1260).Footnote 7 It is unlikely to be a coincidence that the tilework on the palace at Takht-i Sulaimān (dated 1271–1273, 1276), the composition of Qāḍī Baiḍāwī’s Niẓām al-tawārīkh (1275; dedicated to Shams al-Dīn Juvainī) and the date of the earliest known complete manuscript copy of the Shāhnāmeh (British Library Add. 21,103; dated 1276) all cluster around the same time.
It is therefore pertinent to examine how the revival of interest in the Shāhnāmeh and its appropriation by the Il-khans’ courtiers and advisers as a vehicle for acculturating the Mongols to Iranian traditions and concepts of rulership, survived the Islamisation of the dynasty. In at least one respect, we can see that if anything, Firdausī’s work enjoyed an ever-increasing popularity. Around the turn of the fourteenth century, illustrated copies of the Shāhnāmeh started to appear and mark the beginning of an enduring tradition in the arts of the book.Footnote 8 This reached its first climax, in the late Il-khanid period, with the so-called “Great Mongol” Shāhnāmeh, generally taken to have been produced under the patronage of Ghiyāth al-Dīn Muḥammad, the son of Rashīd al-Dīn, in the dying years of the sultanate of Abū Sa‘īd (1317-1335).Footnote 9 Not long beforehand, Rashīd al-Dīn himself supervised the production of illustrated copies of his own work, the Jāmi‘al-tawārīkh, or ‘Compendium of histories’, including those early sections dealing with the pre-Islamic history of Iran. There is clearly some scope, therefore, for exploring the connections between both the texts and the illustrations of these two works in the ideological context in which they were produced.
This is a large topic and here I wish simply to consider some of the historiographical aspects of Rashīd al-Dīn's text: that is, his use of sources and the question of whether, and how, the Shāhnāmeh is present in this part of the Jāmi‘al-tawārīkh. This might take different forms, ranging from the appropriation of Firdausī’s narrative of the history of pre-Islamic Iran, to alluding to the kings and heroes of the Shāhnāmeh as a rhetorical tool, to the direct quotation of verses or the emulation of Firdausī’s poetic diction and imagery. Here, I wish to continue a line of investigation regarding Rashīd al-Dīn's use of two earlier Persian ‘universal histories’ of very different scale and scope, namely Bal‘amī’s Tārīkhnāmeh-yi Ṭabarī (c. 963) and Qāḍī Baiḍāwī’s Niẓām al-tawārīkh.Footnote 10 Before turning to this, it is necessary to review the details of Rashīd al-Dīn's own coverage of the period in question and the text on which this initial study is based.
Rashīd al-Dīn's history of pre-Islamic Iran
With the conversion of Ghazan Khan in 1295 and the patronage of the new chief vizier, Rashīd al-Dīn Ṭabīb Hamadānī, the work of recording the history of the Mongols and their empire received a great impetus.Footnote 11 As is well known, the first part of the Jāmi‘al-tawārīkh covers the history of the Mongols up to the reign of Ghazan Khan (1295-1304), for whom it was written. Ghazan's successor, Sultan Öljeitü (1304-1316), instructed the vizier to supplement the chronicle with the history of the peoples encountered by the Mongols. This second division of the Jāmi‘al-tawārīkh opens with a chapter on the ante-diluvian Prophets and the first kings of the Persians (‘ajam), the latter being our focus here.Footnote 12
Unlike the Mongol history (Tārīkh-i mubārak-i Ghāzānī), which survives in a single contemporary manuscript, the ‘universal’ division of the Jāmi‘al-tawārīkh exists in several copies from the author's lifetime, including the earliest surviving witness to the text, dating from 1307–1314, which is divided between Edinburgh University Library (Ms. Arab 20) and the Nasser D. Khalili Collection (MSS727). It is the Edinburgh half that is of interest here and although it has not been given the same detailed attention as the other half,Footnote 13 its paintings at least have been well documented and often published.Footnote 14 Being the Arabic version of the text, it is not immediately comparable with the wording of the Persian sources on which the author may have relied, although confronting the Arabic and Persian versions shows that they are rather close, as we shall note below.
The Persian version of the text of this part of Rashīd al-Dīn only exists in a few early mss, of which I have only been able to see briefly a microfilm of the Topkapi Ms. H. 1653 (dated 1314), the so-called ‘replacement’ copy completed by Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū in the early fifteenth century; in this manuscript, the section on the pre-Islamic rulers of Iran is the composition of Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū, rather than Rashīd al-Dīn's original text.Footnote 15
So far I have been unable to see the other early copy, also in the Topkapi, Ms. H. 1654 (dated 1317), which can be assumed to preserve the original Persian version of Rashīd al-Dīn's text.Footnote 16 Although there has been plenty of discussion of the illustrations of these three productions contemporary with Rashīd al-Dīn (d. 1318), and indeed of the fifteenth-century copies of the Mongol history,Footnote 17 little close attention has been paid to their texts (particularly therefore, the relationship between Rashīd al-Dīn's ‘original’ and Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū’s version).Footnote 18 This calls for more detailed investigation. Although parts of the texts of H. 1653 and H. 1654 have been reproduced in facsimile in several volumes prepared by Karl Jahn,Footnote 19 these did not include the section on the pre-Islamic kings of Iran.
A copy nearer home is housed at the British Library, Ms. Add. 7628, undated but once belonging to the library of Shāh Rukh (r. 1405–1447) and probably involving his refined son Bāysunghur Mīrzā (d. 1433). It has recently been made accessible online as part of the BL's digitisation project.Footnote 20 This volume was noted by E. G. Browne as a superior copy and described in detail by Rieu.Footnote 21 Another manuscript is recorded at the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester, Ms. 406: a later, but undated, copy. Although catalogued as the Jāmi‘al-tawārīkh, and of some interest in its own right (as indeed, is almost any medieval manuscript), this must be discarded as a useful witness to the text; already on folio 2v there is a reference to the Rauḍat al-ṣafā, making it a late fifteenth-century compilation at the very earliest; the Ms. is certainly much later. Otherwise, however, it does share many features with the printed edition of the text.Footnote 22
My preliminary investigations into this section of the Jāmi‘al-tawārīkh thus rested on rather inadequate foundations, making the recent publication by Muhammad Raushan particularly welcome if my research was to progress.
This edition, despite its usefulness, nevertheless raises various difficulties. In the first place, the basis for the text is not entirely clear. In his brief introduction, the editor states that work initially completed in collaboration with Mustafa Musavi, who was producing the typescript, was interrupted by the latter's heart attack and the text became scattered and divided. Resuming his task, Raushan consulted a microfilm of the Damad Ibrahim Pasha Ms. 919 of 885/1480 in the Süleimaniye Library in Istanbul and compared it with the matn-i chāpī (‘printed text’). This is one of the few manuscripts of the complete work, although based on the earlier fifteenth-century compilation by Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū contained in the Istanbul Ms. Bagdat 282.Footnote 23 However, it is not the base text, which elsewhere, in the substantial volume of textual variants, is again said to be the matn-i chāpī.Footnote 24 This possibly refers to the typed version previously prepared. Another text, in the Gulistan Palace (Tehran) is mentioned in the section of textual variants, similarly not otherwise identified.Footnote 25 The editor also mentions the Topkapi Mss. Ahmed III 2935, H. 1653 and H. 1654, without further discussion, for which one must revert to his introductions to earlier volumes of his complete edition of the work.Footnote 26 Neither H. 1653 nor H. 1654 (which are not given a siglum in this edition) is used in the critical apparatus in volume 3, at least not for the section of interest here; the implication may be that one of them (presumably H. 1653 – the Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū text) forms the underlying basis for the edition.
In short, the Tehran edition appears to rest on a ‘printed text’ that I am currently unable to identify, supplemented by the substantial variants noted in the Süleimaniye Ms. Damad Ibrahim Pasha 919.Footnote 27
The present discussion of Rashīd al-Dīn's treatment of the Pīshdādiyān engages with Dr Raushan's printed edition (hereafter RJT), compared, as appropriate, with the Edinburgh Arabic version (Ms. Arab 20) and the British Library Persian version (Ms. Add. 7628), to explore his interactions with the Shāhnāmeh. I shall also refer to Bal‘amī’s Tārīkhnāma-yi Ṭabarī (hereafter BTT) and Baiḍāwī’s Niẓām al-tawārīkh (hereafter BNT) for the discussion of Rashīd al-Dīn's sources.
Rashīd al-Dīn and the Shāhnāmeh
Starting with the latter point, it is generally received wisdom that Rashīd al-Dīn's main source for early Islamic history was Bal‘amī’s ‘translation’ of Ṭabarī.Footnote 28 In reality, the situation is more complicated. In the printed edition (RJT, p. 69), Rashīd al-Dīn introduces the ten members of the dynasty of the Pīshdādiyān before opening the reign of the first king, Gayumars, with five lines of verse that are not found in the Shāhnāmeh. The verses are not included in the accounts of Bal‘amī or Baiḍāwī (neither of which in fact are prosimetric texts).Footnote 29 All three works include a differently worded discussion of Gayumars’ name, its meaning and the disputes surrounding his lineage. It is here that we immediately notice a reflection of Baiḍāwī’s work, for both authors refer to the authority of Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Ghazālī’s Naṣīḥat al-mulūk for the opinion that Gayumars was the brother of Sheth, while others say he was one of the sons of Noah.Footnote 30
This is soon followed, however, by the long story of Hushang and his death at the hands of demons (dīvs) and Gayumars’ revenge — which closely follows the narrative in Bal‘amī. Maria Subtelny has recently examined this episode in the course of an investigation of the undervalued pre-Islamic sections of Bal‘amī’s History, which could be seen as a parallel concern to my own.Footnote 31 There are other elements in the long account by Bal‘amī that make clear Rashīd al-Dīn's substantial dependency on this text, despite the fact that the ordering of material and much of the language differ somewhat. There is no need to pursue a full comparison of the stories, which are clearly related: but we may note, first, that these accounts are far more detailed and complex than Firdausī’s brief narrative of the reign of Gayumars. This largely concerns the efforts of his son, Siyamak, to fight the demons – by whom he is killed. Gayumars’ grief for Siyamak echoes the grief of Gayumars for Hushang, whose mourning was also brought to an end by a message from the angel Sorush as narrated by Bal‘amī. In Firdausī’s much simpler version (written about half a century after Bal‘amī), Hushang is identified as Siyamak's son, who defeats the demons.Footnote 32 Baiḍāwī’s account is even briefer, and transposes onto Tahmuras avenging of the death of Hushang son of Gayumars, killed at the hands of the dīvs while prostrated in prayer.Footnote 33
Secondly, Rashīd al-Dīn intersperses his account with a considerable amount of poetry, especially towards the closing passages of Gayumars’ reign. None of this is from the Shāhnāmeh, though much of it is in the same metre and idiom as Firdausī’s epic. The verses are unlikely to be Rashīd al-Dīn's own composition.Footnote 34 The same is true of the immediately following account of the reign of Hushang, which opens with four verses in imitation of the Shāhnāmeh, though as in the earlier examples, the ready use of Arabic words betrays their origin.Footnote 35
Thirdly, the text of the printed edition differs dramatically from the version preserved in the British Library Ms;Footnote 36 we may question, indeed, whether Raushan's text can really be Rashīd al-Dīn's Jāmi‘ al-tawārīkh at all. This sets a pattern for the accounts of these first kings.
The reign of Hushang
The long account of Hushang's reign that follows in the printed edition (RJT, pp. 85–95) owes little to Bal‘amī, who restricts his information to a couple of paragraphs, which Rashīd al-Dīn incorporates at the end of his own account – concerning the origin of mining for ores and precious metals in his time, the use of skins of foxes and sables and the founding of towns such as Susa, Shushtar and Kufa.Footnote 37 Much of this material in Bal‘amī is echoed in the Shāhnāmeh, which records Hushang's efforts at irrigation, cultivation and the spread of justice.Footnote 38 Baiḍāwī, too, makes a brief reference to Hushang's extraction of ore and the founding of cities (notably Istakhr and Babul), but it is rather another aspect of the Niẓām al-tawārīkh that Rashīd al-Dīn adopts: he opens his account with an expanded version of Baiḍāwī’s information that Hushang had a book of wisdom (the Jāvīdān-khirad, ‘Eternal wisdom’), which was translated into Arabic by Ḥasan b. Sahl, the vizier of the caliph al-Ma'mūn, and in turn was incorporated into Miskawaihī’s Kitāb ādāb al-‘arab wa'l-furs.Footnote 39 According to the historians,Footnote 40 therefore, Hushang is the first to give advice (pandiyāt), and a substantial section of text that follows, separating Baiḍāwī’s account at the outset from Bal‘amī’s at the end, is taken up with relaying this wisdom and various political precepts (vaṣāyā), concluding with a lengthy passage of verse.Footnote 41
The didactic and ethical lessons to be drawn from the Shāhnāmeh, concerning the foundations of just rule and the harnessing of the earth's animal and mineral resources, are thus present in Rashīd al-Dīn's history, at second hand, but the emphasis is on ‘advice to kings’, as also presented earlier in the so-called khuṭba of Gayumars (who is also a giver of pand, advice).Footnote 42 It is interesting, nevertheless, that neither Rashīd al-Dīn nor these two earlier sources mention the thing for which Hushang is most particularly celebrated in the Persian tradition, namely the discovery of fire and establishing the feast of Sadeh.Footnote 43
Once more, the printed edition is a faint echo of the British Library Ms, which covers the reign of Hushang in five lines of text that are close to the passage at the end of Raushan's edition, mentioning among other things: “[. . .] the book Jāvidān khirad of practical wisdom is attributed to him. He was called Pīshdād – that is, the first to provide justice. [. . .] The Persians say he was a prophet (paighambar)”.Footnote 44
We may note the close verbal parallels with the brief text in Baiḍāwī, and once more the absence of any of the poetry found in the printed text. The contemporary Arabic version in the Edinburgh Ms. Arab 20 (fol. 4r-v) is to all intents and purposes identical.
The reign of Tahmuras
A similar pattern emerges in the discussion of the next reign, of Tahmuras nicknamed ‘dīv-band’; the Persians (fārsiyān) also call him ‘zīnāvand’ (perfectly armed).Footnote 45 In the printed edition (RJT, pp. 96–103), Rashīd al-Dīn starts his account, once more, with seven verses in imitation of the Shāhnāmeh and a brief reference to justice in the phrase ‘adl va inṣāf, which is a leitmotif running through Baiḍāwī’s History. There follows, however, another long passage concerning Tahmuras and the discussions with his wise vizier, Ādharbān, on dealing with lies and calumnies and the conduct of warfare against rebels and dissidents to maintain the security of the kingdom.Footnote 46
In the British Library Ms., on the other hand, the brief treatment of the reign of Tahmuras is rather different.Footnote 47 We read that he ruled 30 years. He built Kuhandiz [Ar. Kahardar] in Marv and two towns in Isfahan, Mihrin and Saduyeh [Ar. recte, Saruyah]; Mihrin is now a village known by another name and Hay (= Jay) is now on the site of Saduyeh; some say he built Nishapur and Fars.Footnote 48 Idol worship appeared in his time; many people were killed in a great epidemic (vabā’) that occurred and anyone who had lost a dear one made an effigy of him and soothed themselves by visiting it. In time this became a custom and led to the worship of idols (ṣanam parastī). Fasting came into existence also in his time: the reason being that many of the poor dervishes were unable to find nourishment and did not eat anything in the day and only broke their fast (ifṭār) at night, and they became content with that. After a while they also made that a custom. Those people (qaum) were called Kaldāniyān (Chaldaeans), and when Islam appeared, they called themselves ṣāyim (fasters) [Ar: Ṣābba, Sabians]. Some say that in the days of TahmurasFootnote 49 there was drought and he ordered the well-off to be satisfied with one meal in the evening and to give their morning meals to the poor; gradually the custom of fasting appeared. He was called Tahmuras Zīnāvand, meaning ‘perfect in weaponry’.Footnote 50 It was also he who used to say that every group rejoices in its own beliefs and faiths and there is no need to oppose anyone standing by his own form of belief and worship. This custom still prevails in India.
The first point to note is of course that none of the lengthy passages on Tahmuras’ exchanges with his vizier (or the poetry) reproduced in the printed edition is found in the Persian ‘original’ version of the text. The emphasis on the continuation of fasting into the Islamic period is worth noting as is the interesting aside on the acceptable plurality of religious worship in India. There are various clear verbal and topical parallels with the very brief account by Baiḍāwī (BNT, p. 17), but it is also apparent that Rashīd al-Dīn's original version owes nothing to the Shāhnāmeh, which memorialises Tahmuras as the dīv-band (demon-tamer).
Returning to the printed Persian text (RJT, p. 101), Rashīd al-Dīn continues with a somewhat expanded version of the passage translated above, beginning with the account of the famine, as a result of which, fasting became the custom (sunnat) of Tahmuras and became an obligation (farḍ) in the time of the Prophet.
Rashīd al-Dīn then briefly mentions his epithet of dīv-band, due to his conquering the demons (jinn) in his kingdom. This is followed by his last testimony (vaṣiyyat-hā-yi pādshāhāneh) to his brother and heir apparent Jamshid, to the effect that if he wanted to be an effective and admired ruler, he should follow the legacy of Hushang, summed up in the saying “The justice of a just king is better than worship [of God]”.Footnote 51
The Persian text continues (RJT, p. 103) with a long final passage enumerating his virtues and achievements: Tahmuras brought the animals in from the plains and separated (i.e. categorised) them;Footnote 52 he was the first person to write Persian and he is supposed to have founded several towns [. . .]. In Isfahan, he established a house of worship on the mountain by the Zarrineh-rud and later placed idols there that remained until the time of Gushtasp, who ordered his son Isfandiyar to clear them away and establish a fire temple.
Rashīd al-Dīn then discusses the question of idol worship in similar terms to those given above. The passage concludes with a statement that the Sabians are thought to have appeared in his time, that his kingship lasted 30 years, and with a mixed message in verse:
If you hear advice (pand) from a wise man, consider the case of Tahmuras dīv-band
Who made the branches of the tree of faithfulness (vafā) green, dug up the root of tyranny (jafā) from the horizons
He went unfulfilled (nā-kām) and all his trouble (ranj) brought no benefit at the time of his going.
On this basis, therefore, the printed version of Rashīd al-Dīn's account of the reign of Tahmuras is a much longer and more complex composition than is found in the exactly contemporary Arabic translation of the work and the Persian text that echoes it. Even in the passages where the subject matter is the same, the level of detail and the order in which the topics are treated differs.
Bal‘ami's account is much shorter and very different: Tahmuras was said to have been an idol-worshipper, “but this is a lie” — he worshipped God Almighty, following the religion of Idris! God gave him such strength that he was able to force the demons and Iblis (the Devil) to obey him and go out from among the people, sending them [the demons] away from the cultivated regions, to the deserts and the seas. He initiated the use of kingly adornments and riding on a horse with a saddle. The mating of the donkey and the horse to produce a mule occurred in his time. He taught the camel to bear loads and the cheetah to hunt. He was the first to sit on a throne and first to write in Persian.Footnote 53
There is almost no correspondence here with the text of Rashīd al-Dīn, except for the statement that Tahmuras was the first to write Persian and the general information about his domestication of animals. By contrast, the equivalence between Baiḍāwī’s text (see above) and Rashīd al-Dīn's is sufficiently close to make it clear that the Niẓām al-tawārīkh was used as a source for the Jāmi‘al-tawārīkh.
Turning to the Shāhnāmeh,Footnote 54 Firdausī’s account is relatively detailed and after settling Tahmuras on the throne, describes how the shah used the wool of sheep and goats for weaving, domesticated animals and chose wild cats for hunting, and trained birds also for various roles. Firdausī makes only a brief allusion to fasting, introduced by the wise vizier, here called Shahrasb, who fasted by day and prayed by night. Whereas Bal‘amī mentions only that Tahmuras was the first to ride a horse, Firdausī described how the shah subdued and rode around on the devil Ahriman. Seeing this, the demons rebelled but were crushed by Tahmuras, who spared their lives in exchange for their secret knowledge of writing: and they taught the shah to write not only Rumi (Byzantine), Arabic and Persian script, but also Soghdian, Chinese and Pahlavi. After 30 years he died, and
He went and his time came to an end; all his trouble (ranj) remained as his memorial
Do not nourish the world when you will bid it farewell; what use is your nourishing when you are leaving?Footnote 55
Although Rashīd al-Dīn's closing verses (quoted above) are clearly a reflection of these lines, their sense is different. Similarly, although Firdausī’s verses on the continuing differentiation and domestication of animals could be seen as an elaboration of Bal‘amī’s brief text, and his account of learning the (devilish) skill of writing likewise, neither Baiḍāwī nor Rashīd al-Dīn pick up on these details. For his part, Firdausī has nothing to say about the epidemics and the consequent rise of idol worship, and essentially nothing about fasting, or its link with the scarcity that caused it.
So far as this goes, therefore, it is very difficult to conclude that Rashīd al-Dīn was making any serious use of the Shāhnāmeh for his own history. We could leave the discussion at this point, except that with the reign of Jamshid there is a further development.
The reign of Jamshid
Rashīd al-Dīn's account of Jamshid, in the printed edition (RJT, pp. 103–115), once more starts with five verses that are not found elsewhere.Footnote 56 He continues with a debate on the meaning of Jamshid's name and pedigree, which he resolves by explicit reference to the Shāhnāmeh, and then quotes the first two verses of Firdausī’s account of Jamshid:Footnote 57
The noble Jamshid, his son, bound his waist and of one mind, full of his advice (pand)
Came to the throne of his auspicious father, the golden crown on his head according to Kayanian custom
Rashīd al-Dīn continues to follow the Shāhnāmeh closely, both in its account of the general welfare enjoyed by the people under Jamshid's guidance, and by a prolific quotation of Firdausī’s verse. Thus, as in the Shāhnāmeh, Jamshid is said to have spent the first 50 years of his reign making weapons;Footnote 58 another 50 producing garments, with the introduction of silk (qaz).Footnote 59 Rashīd al-Dīn interrupts this exposition with a reference back to the wise vizier Shahrasb, who encouraged justice and spent the nights in prayer – noting that some say he was vizier of Jamshid's father Tahmuras (see above), again quoting explicitly from Firdausī in the Shāhnāmeh.Footnote 60 Shahrasb was responsible for Jamshid's success in war through wearing armour; and the capital was moved from Sistan to Fars, where Jamshid constructed the great city of Istakhr, extending from Khafrak to Ramjird,Footnote 61 and erected magnificent buildings that dwarfed those of his ancestors. Today, continues Rashīd al-Dīn, the visible traces of these ruins and columns of houses are called Chehel Minar (‘40 columns’) — a clear reference to Persepolis or Takht-i Jamshid.
This latter passage is taken almost verbatim from Baiḍāwī’s Niẓām al-tawārīkh and is found in both the contemporary Arabic and Persian manuscript versions of the Jāmi‘al-tawārīkh — which follow Baiḍāwī very closely in both their contents and their brevity, compared with this lengthy treatment of Jamshid's reign in the printed text.Footnote 62
This continues with the defeat of the demons,Footnote 63 and after completing the development of Istakhr in 316 years, Jamshid started on the division of society into four groups — the ‘ulama; the amirs, vizier and scribes; the military and the cultivators and other subjects.Footnote 64 We may note that the order here differs from that in Firdausī, and is also considerably fuller than the text in Bal‘amī, though the material is substantially the same.Footnote 65 Rashīd al-Dīn's narrative introduces a novel element with the account of Jamshid's four seal rings, each inscribed with a different motto: one concerning warfare, one concerning cultivation and taxation; one for messengers and postal officials (barīdān), and one for the exercise of justice and hearing petitions.Footnote 66
The printed text of Rashīd al-Dīn continues in this manner for the rest of the account of Jamshid, treating at some length his establishment of Nauruz and the continuing 300 years of prosperity, until after 616 years of his reign had passed and his gratitude to God became corrupted: some say that his magic cup (the Jam-i Jamshid) and its powers were what turned his head. At all events, he summoned the people and told them to worship him; he made idols in his image and sent them out to the lands,Footnote 67 from which point his farr and his glory (shukūh) disappeared. Rashīd al-Dīn once more quotes Firdausī,Footnote 68 and again for the Iranians seeking out Zahhak, who had killed his father and seized the kingdom.Footnote 69 After 100 years of warfare, first against his own brother, Asfarivard, Jamshid fled and was eventually killed. Recounting various versions of his death, Rashīd al-Dīn mentions that he was sawn in two by Zahhak (as in the Shāhnāmeh). Interestingly, he also recounts another tale, that Jamshid wandered the world incognito for some time, and ended up marrying a girl from Sistan, from which union Garshasp was descended, and also Rustam. This information is taken from the Garshāspnāmeh, several verses of which are quoted.Footnote 70
Rashīd al-Dīn's account then reverts to detailing some of Jamshid's other attributes and events with which his formative reign is associated, namely the development of medicine, and a long story about the introduction of wine drinking, its being banned under Kay Qubad and its later reinstatement — the latter episodes clearly reflecting the story of Kairuy and of the tipsy shoemaker taming an escaped lion associated with the reign of Bahram Gur in the Shāhnāmeh.Footnote 71 In the final paragraphs, the Jāmi‘al-tawārīkh ends with a brief and largely repetitive statement about Jamshid's construction works, notably Ctesiphon in Mada'in and the stone bridge over the Tigris that was destroyed by Iskandar and which Ardashir was unable to repair; the latter detail is also in the early manuscript witnesses of the text.Footnote 72
As noted by Maria Subtelny in her discussion of Bal‘amī’s account of Gayumars, this narrative of the reign of Jamshid is clearly a patchwork drawn from several different sources, with no real effort to integrate them into a single coherent text.Footnote 73 Bal‘amī’s account provides comparable material only for part of the Jāmi‘al-tawārīkh, on Jamshid's development of the army, introducing weaving, harnessing the dīvs to building works, discovering musk and camphor and other scents, and dividing society into four classes. Apart from detailing Jamshid's fall (in very different terms, invoking the intervention of the devil Iblis), Bal‘amī also, under the subsequent ‘reign’ of Bivarasp, mentions the alternative stories of Jamshid's death and the full lineage of his descendants from the ruler of Sistan, through Garshasp to Rustam and Faramarz – as narrated, at great length, according to Bal‘amī, in the Shāhnāmeh of Abu'l-Mu'ayyad Balkhī.Footnote 74
On the other hand, for the first time, we find a considerable reliance on the Shāhnāmeh of Firdausī, not for all the material mentioned, but for a large part of it, and not only in terms of the subject matter, but with direct quotations from the epic. This continues in the rest of this section of the Jāmi‘al-tawārīkh, though peaking in the reign of Zahhak before reducing again in the subsequent reigns of Faridun and Manuchihr.Footnote 75 Space does not permit the pursuit of this investigation into these reigns, which would for the most part merely reinforce the observations already made.
Conclusions
In short, our discussion has suggested (1) that the recent printed edition of Rashīd al-Dīn's Jāmi‘al-tawārīkh does not represent the earliest known witnesses to the text, but later reworkings and enlargements associated with the work of Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū. (2) For the reign of Jamshid onwards, at least, this expanded text refers frequently to the Shāhnāmeh, including the citation of Firdausī’s verses. (3) The earliest versions of this section of the Jāmi‘ al-tawārīkh show signs of a heavy dependency on Baiḍāwī’s Niẓām al-tawārīkh, both verbally and in terms of content.
This latter point further helps to distinguish the original text of Rashīd al-Dīn from the later reworkings. In M. Raushan's printed edition, the structural arrangement of the text also follows the lead of Baiḍāwī’s work, in that the history of the Pishdādiyān kings is treated in a single chapter, distinct from the history of the ante-diluvian prophets that precedes it. The contents of printed text echo precisely the contents of the first part of Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū’s Majma‘ al-tawārīkh.Footnote 76 In the earlier witnesses of the Jāmi‘ al-tawārīkh, however, the history of the kings and prophets are amalgamated into what aimed to be a single chronological sequence; this structure is closer to Bal‘amī’s work, in which the reigns of Jamshid and Bivarasp are followed by an account of Noah. The reigns of Zahhak and Faridun are then followed by an account of Nimrud, Hud and ‘Ad, and so on. In the Edinburgh Ms. Arab 20, the reigns of Jamshid and Zahhak are followed by the account of Ibrahim (Abraham), Faridun is followed by Yusuf (Joseph), etcetera.Footnote 77 The Ṭabarī/Bal‘amī arrangement certainly has the effect of reducing the focus on the Persian imperial traditions, often referring to the monarchs as ruling at the time of the different prophets. By contrast, the organisation of material by Baiḍāwī and Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū emphasises the secular rather than the religious framework for history.
In his Mongol history, Rashīd al-Dīn's engagement with the Shāhnāmeh — citation of verses and the use of epithets (“Jamshid-like”, etc.) — is generally taken straight from his source, Juvainī’s Tārīkh-i Jahāngushā, a highly literary work written in the period before the Il-Khans embraced Islam. Juvainī had used the Shāhnāmeh as an affirmation of Iranian identity in the face of the Mongol threat. By contrast, in his history of the pre-Islamic history of Iran Rashīd al-Dīn makes no direct reference to the Shāhnāmeh, while nevertheless emphasising the continuity of Iranian kingship and especially the ethics of good government and urban construction; hence also a series of enthroned monarchs to illustrate the work. It was the message, rather than the text, of the Shāhnāmeh that he absorbed, largely from Baiḍāwī’s Niẓām al-tawārīkh, while drawing attention to continuities with Islamic practices such as fasting.
On the other hand, Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū, the continuator of Rashīd al-Dīn, who incorporated the Jāmi‘al-tawārīkh into his own universal chronicles, inserted much more of the Shāhnāmeh in to his work, not least in the tangible form of poetic quotations. As he also mentions incorporating Bal‘amī’s Tarjumeh-yi Tārīkh-i Ṭabarī into his narrative, this further confirms that Bal‘amī was not much used by Rashīd al-Dīn himself: and this accounts for some of the additional material found in Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū’s text. This turns the focus of attention to the question of Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū’s relationship to the Shāhnāmeh as well as to the text of the Jāmi‘al-tawārīkh, which needs further investigation. With the increasing Islamisation of the Mongol court in Timurid Herat under his patron, Shāhrukh, a century later, the Shāhnāmeh could perhaps appreciated once more for its literary and cultural value rather than as a blueprint for imperial rule.
