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The Gibb Centenary Scholarship meant a significant help for me to complete my thesis. In particular, it provided a substantial support during the uncertainty and turmoil generated by the pandemic Covid-19, which imposed a number of changes to my initial research plans and fieldwork. The title of my thesis for the degree of PhD, which was awarded on the 15th of September 2022, is “Ilme Kṣnum: an Esoteric Interpretation of Zoroastrianism. History and Beliefs.” My thesis examines Ilme Kṣnum, which I propose to translated as ‘Science of Bliss’, an esoteric interpretation of Zoroastrianism that emerged among the Zoroastrians of India, also known as Parsis, at the beginning of the 20th century. Ilme Kṣnum was made public by Behramshah Naoroji Shroff (1858-1927), a Parsi from Surat (Gujarat), who claimed to have spent three years in Iran where secluded sages initiated him into this esoteric interpretation of Zoroastrianism. Over the last 100 years, Parsis adhering to Ilme Kṣnum have produced a vast literature on the subject, mainly composed in Parsi Gujarati. In spite of its popularity in the community, Ilme Kṣnum has to date been little explored by scholars.

The findings of my thesis suggest that, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, a hermeneutical plurality emerged to meet the Parsis’ need for religious authenticity. It is argued that Ilme Kṣnum originated to meet this need by operating an epistemological reconciliation between Persianate and Western forms of knowledge. By adopting the interpretive model of religious economies and cross-level analysis, this research examines Ilme Kṣnum as both a system of beliefs and a religious organisation.

The thesis develops the argument that the process of meaning-making and the organisational structure of the Christian missions provided a model that Parsis emulated, producing epistemological heterogenisation and organisational homogenisation.

Transculturation and structured relationships of exchange triggered a process of religious individualisation that displaced agency from institutions to individuals.
This interdisciplinary research introduces innovative concepts that move beyond structuralist categories and sheds light on the entangled history of Parsis. Furthermore, this thesis advances a proposal for the study of Zoroastrian esotericism which is not yet established as a field of research.

I have been awarded the Gibb Centenary Scholarship to support my DPhil thesis on the shrine of the Sufi scholar and poet Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (d. 1273), known also as Mawlānā, in Konya.

The core of the shrine is the tomb of Rūmī, around which a complex of buildings has grown up over the centuries. The thesis examines the historical and architectural context in which the shrine was formed and transformed between the late thirteenth and the late sixteenth centuries.

Drawing on a variety of hitherto overlooked textual sources and archival data in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, as well as on archaeological reports and material evidence, it offers the first comprehensive study of the main shrine of the Mawlawi order in the course of three centuries and contributes to our understanding of the changing politics of patronage of shrines in Anatolia in the longue durée.

The support of the Gibb Centenary Scholarship has been crucial for my research. It helped me to organise my final research trip to Turkey in 2020, when I visited Mawlawi convents and local museums in western and southern Anatolia. In addition, it helped me to cover the costs of material I ordered from archival centres and libraries in Turkey, Europe, and the United States.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the process of transformation and change in the religious institutions in the city of Tehran from the mid-19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Furthermore, its purpose is to study how religious agents, particularly the ʿulama, and socioeconomic development facilitated the process of change in religious institutions during this period.

The main religious institutions investigated in this research are: mosque, takyih, madrasa, and īmāmzādih. Historically, they were usually established by a waqf donation and supported financially by its waqf holdings. Any change or transformation of mosques and other waqf properties was subject to considerable restrictions and limitations rooted in sharia law and social support from the popular culture. The process of change in religious institutions, therefore, could have social, economic, and fiqhi implications that in depth study.

Meanwhile, the unprecedented sudden growth and modernisation of the city of Tehran in the late 19th century provided an environment conducive to changes in religious institutions. Careful review of historical censuses produced in the latter half of the 19th century and other primary sources, such as maps, shows evidence of a sudden decrease in the numbers of mosques, madrasa, and their waqf holdings. While the city structure in the four city districts of ‘Awdlajān, Chālmaydān, Sangilaj, and Bāzār grew and the new city quarter of Dawlat was added, the decreasing number of these religious institutions ran counter to the otherwise widespread growth characterising the city during this period. Furthermore, the shari‘ī documents and waqf deeds from this period illustrate various changes in religious institutions made with the permission of the ʿulama. Meanwhile, the number of takyihs and īmāmzādihs show an increasing trend throughout the period under investigation. Therefore, the process of transformation of religious institutions and the roles of the ‘ulama in fostering these changes is the central theme in this research.

The main question of this DPhil thesis is as follows: How, and with what influences did the religious institutions change in the second half of the 19th century? Two main influential factors paved the way for the transformation of the religious institutions: firstly, the modernisation of the city and the decline of the traditional functions of the religious institutions. The missing mosques recorded in the primary sources were mostly small, simple mosques and madrasas which had little support from waqf properties and were scattered around the city. They were fluid religious places that could be eliminated entirely in the passing of time due to social and environmental advancements or could even shift into other religious institutions. Combinational religious institutions, on the other hand, were usually supported with substantial waqf holdings and linked to other religious institutions such as madrasa and/or takīyyah. They were under the supervision of the well-known ʿulama. In such religious institutions, changes were more common in their components and their waqf holdings, mostly conducted under the authority of the ʿulama. Despite their conservative nature, the ʿulama facilitated various changes in the so-called unchangeable, religious institutions.

The contribution of this study lies in its focus on religious institutions in Iranian history, its methodological approach, and its use of primary and archival sources. Despite voluminous works on the Shiite Islam and the ulama, little has been written on socioeconomic changes in religious institutions such as mosques, takīyyah, madrasas, īmāmzādihs, and waqf in Qajar Iran. Findings of this research will contribute to the existing literature on Iranian Studies, Shiite Studies, and Iranian Political Sociology. Furthermore, some of the findings are also likely to be relevant to related fields such as development studies, urban history, geography, and architecture

My project is an up to date study on the janissaries in eighteenth-century Istanbul focussing closely upon the years 1730-1790. While my project is somewhat interdisciplinary, touching upon aspects of military, economies and institutional history, I feel it comes under the umbrella of social history. The starting point of the thesis was the ‘purity/corruption’ paradigm which has been the foundational framework of janissary studies for many years, but which has now largely fallen out of favour with the scholarly community. However, while the paradigm is considered obsolete there has been to date no concrete framework to replace it. This means that the only way we have of viewing the janissaries at this time is by seeing what they were not, i.e. corrupt. Through my study I have rebuilt the image of the eighteenth-century janissary from the ground up, setting their actions within a realistic context, allowing for the construction of a more holistic identity for this group within Ottoman society. This work examines different facets of janissary identity, such as military, economic, social and religious while highlighting where these areas overlap.

The primary source material for this study is a comprehensive representation of that which is available to scholars at the present time, including sources only newly available to researchers. Documentary evidence for this thesis comes from the collections of the Ottoman State Archives, ISAM Library and several published historical treatises written by contemporary Ottomans. By analysing both large amounts of loose documents (evraks) alongside registers I have been able to ascertain what matters pertaining to janissaries were recorded where and create a more complete image of cases involving janissaries than previous studies which focussed solely upon registers (defters). While some previous studies have used evraks they are usually few in number and only where they corroborate register data. My methodology puts this huge volume of sources together allowing them to both corroborate and oppose each other. The evidence in these documents includes information on military wages, supply and deployment which assisted me in demonstrating the military role of the janissaries at this time. For example, certain records regarding janissary wages demonstrate their payment in a foreign coin which was domestically minted by the Ottomans for trade purposes. This corroborates the fact that janissary wages were problematic, as evidenced by petitions from the soldiers demanding their pay. Also present is a great deal of evidence regarding the probates and estates of deceased janissaries of all military and social ranks, allowing me to show the disparity in wealth between the ranks as well as painting a picture of janissary families. Alongside this are records pertaining to janissaries owned businesses licenses (gedik). These probate and business records have aided me in creating statistical data showing, for example, what percentage of deceased janissaries owned businesses, how many had families and what the conventions were for dividing a janissary estate between heirs. Inheritance and material wealth were of particular importance in the Ottoman eighteenth-century in the wake of the seventeenth-century economic crisis.

The abovementioned evidence is an example of my findings from the archives which support the notion of a, if not hostile, then certainly problematic environment which the janissaries were forced to navigate. Add into this the general trials and tribulations of urban life in addition to those of a soldier in a time when active warfare was intermittent at best, and the support grows for the image of a janissary adapting and changing to meet the requirements of the changing environment.

In addition to the more traditional portrayal of the janissaries as a homogenous group within Ottoman society I show intra-janissary relationships and conflicts as well as demonstrating why, instead of talking about an institutional transformation, as Baki Tezcan has claimed, it is more accurate to speak of an institutional fragmentation. My thesis moves the discussion of the janissaries away from a morally loaded terminology and binary mode of thinking for the first time. This work shall facilitate new and exciting directions for the discussion of Ottoman social history, particularly within an urban context. By demonstrating how the janissaries changed over time I hope that more studies will be forthcoming demonstrating how this phenomenon applies across all interest groups within the eighteenth-century.

Once again, I am grateful for the support of the Trust which has made this possible.

Thesis: “Vision of a World Conqueror: Nādir Shāh (r. 1736-47) and the Emerging Body in Persian Royal Portraiture”

A self-made ruler, Nādir Shāh (r. 1736-47) deposed the Safavids to become one of the fiercest conquerors of his time. His image is captured in a richly diverse group of portraits drawn from Persian, Mughal, and European traditions. They constitute the earliest extant corpus of individualised portraits of an Iranian ruler, and yet, they have never been analysed collectively as a phenomenon linked to the emergence of royal portraiture. Before the eighteenth century, single royal portraits were virtually absent in Iran and kingship was represented as an institution. This collective body has shrunk or disappeared from Nādir’s images, allowing the conqueror’s body to expand to fill the whole vision. Theories of the body politic—never-before applied in Persian painting—provide a methodological tool to contrast Nādir’s self-display and personal hold on power with the Safavids’ courtly assemblages and polity-centered kingship. I aim to trace how the royal image was reinvented from the corporate to the corporeal under Nādir while maintaining dialogic relationships with the Safavid past (1501-1722) and the Zand (1751-94) and Qajar (1785-1925) future. The eighteenth century was also a high point in royal portraiture among the most powerful empires, from Britain, France, and Russia to Ottoman Turkey and India. With his infamous sack of Delhi in 1739, Nādir burst onto the world stage and his emergent body in painting needs to be seen in that ‘global’ picture of imperial rhetoric. My ultimate goal is to put forward a new way of seeing and thinking about the shah’s body and Persian royal portraiture, and I hope my thesis will make a meaningful contribution to the neglected eighteenth century in Persian art. The generous support of the Gibb Memorial Trust has brought me one considerable step closer to that goal.

My thesis examines the intellectual legacy of the famous Fatimid jurist, Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān b. Abī ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. Manṣūr b. Aḥmad b. Ḥayyūn al-Tamīmī al-Qayrawānī (d. 363/974), better known as Qāḍī Nuʿmān, with a focus on the sources he consulted to construct his hadith works. His works represent the emergence of a new genre of literature promulgated under the rubric of ʿulūm Āl al-Bayt (sciences of the progeny of the Prophet) soon after the Fatimids established their hegemony over North Africa. Qāḍī Nuʿmān, the most prolific and versatile Fatimid scholar, was tasked with the responsibility of compiling a work of law that would serve as an authoritative point of reference for jurists, judges and bureaucrats in the burgeoning Ismaili state. It is evident that Nuʿmān had to have recourse to earlier collections of hadith as he cites them consistently in his writings and incorporates them into his works. These early hadith collections, most of which no longer exist, equipped Nuʿmān with the raw material from which he formulated and systematised various aspects of Ismaili belief and practice. This endeavour resulted in a corpus of works which received the imprimatur of the Fatimid state. It is detailing these lost sources and examining their role in the emergence of hadith literature that this thesis is primarily concerned.

The fundamental aim of the thesis is to examine the historicity of Qāḍī Nuʿmān’s sources in his voluminous legal work, Kitāb al-īḍāḥ, by cross-examining its contents with other contemporary hadith collections of Zaydi and Imami provenance. Although the extant fragment of this work offers some valuable information on its sources, studying al-Īḍāḥ is beset by serious challenges to its authenticity, given that many of the original sources on which it was based are no longer extant. Furthermore, it is claimed that the alleged sources were collected in the first half of the second/eighth century in the East (Medina and Kūfa), whereas the text in question was composed in North Africa during the early fourth/tenth century. This thesis investigates the missing links between al-Īḍāḥ’s origins and its later dissemination throughout North Africa.

This thesis also analyses Nuʿmān’s ambitiously eclectic framework for the contextualisation of hadith, borne out of his access to an unusually broad range of literature, encompassing Zaydi, Ismaili and Imami hadith corpora. Furthermore, his writing style evinces clear similarities, both stylistic and structural, to North African Sunni writings of the period. By examining the materials in al-Īḍāh in this comparative manner and placing the work in a wider context, we gain a clearer notion of Nuʿmān’s sources, and therefore the spread and dissemination of these literary forms. This thesis serves as a useful point of departure for future work on cross-regional and inter-sectarian—namely, Zaydi, Imami and Ismaili—modes of transmission in Islamic literature more broadly.

Analyses are based on the codicological examination of sixteen illuminated Persian and Arabic manuscripts, none of which have been published in depth. Based on this evidence, this dissertation demonstrates that Rūm’s towns had active cultural scenes despite the frequent outbreak of hostilities and the absence of an effective imperial government. The lavishness of some manuscripts from this period also challenges the often-assumed connection between dynastic patronage and sophisticated artistic production. Furthermore, the identities and affiliations of those involved in the production and patronage of illuminated manuscripts reinforces the impression of an ethnically and religiously diverse environment and highlights the role that local amīrs and Sufi dervishes in particular had in the creation of such material.

This interdisciplinary PhD project at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge – under Professor Charles Melville’s supervision – lies at the intersections between the arts, political power, and Sufism between Iran and India. It branches out into literary as well as religious and political studies, and examines the social role of Sufism through their architectural heritage. I focused on four Sufi shrines in southern Iran (Mahan and Taft) and the Deccan Plateau (Bidar) that come together under their
association with a specific Sufi order – namely, the Ni’matullahiyya – founded in central Iran in the fourteenth century. I examined the forms, functions and meanings of these shrines and their evolution over time in their Indo-Persian artistic, cultural, social, and political milieus.

The project focused on a span of about fifty years during which the order changed drastically from a local order to a trans-local institutionalised one. I structured the dissertation around the relationship between buildings and people – i.e. patrons and the Sufi order. This allowed me to conduct an in-depth study of the issue of patronage, and to show how Sufi shrines extend beyond objects of popular piety and veneration, and turn into potentially crucial sites, whose foundation and development process are tied to both the institutionalization of Sufi communities, and to the construction of a dynastic ideology on the part of the rulers. The movements of the order within central and southern Iran, and between Iran and the Deccan, and how these relate to their architectural program, as well as the role of their mobility in shaping the cross-cultural connections between central-south parts of Iran and India were
other important aspect of this project.

The grant helped to defray expenses incurred during the write-up of my dissertation. I examined the mystical community at Turbat-i Jam in Iran that venerated Shaykh al-Islam Ahmad-i Jam (d. 1141). The period of inquiry is from the Mongol irruptions (ca. 1220-21), to the collapse of the Timurid dynasty in Persia (ca. 1506). The saint, his many descendants, and the winsome shrine-complex at Jam, are examined. Explicated is the patronage that the shrine-complex received as mosques, portals (iwan), domes (gunbad), hospices (khanaqah), and madrasas; and pious endowments (waqf) and royal land grants (soyurghals) as described in Islamic legal instruments, and in Mongol and Timurid chancery documents.

In the 9th /15th century, certain Shaykhs of Jam affiliated with the inchoate Khwajagan-Naqshbandiyya. A select history of these Khwajagan mystical currents, from their hazy Transoxianan origins, to their spiritual endeavors in Cisoxiana; and explications of their evolving doctrines and hybrid practices, are proffered in the dissertation.

I am honored to be the recipient of an academic grant from a memorial endowment being devised in A.H. ‘Sandy’ Morton’s name. I regret that I never had the privilege of knowing Mr. Morton, who became terminally ill sometime after I matriculated at Cambridge. Scholars in Persian Studies, notably my supervisor and my external examiner, independently stated that Sandy Morton would have enjoyed reading my dissertation. Moreover, one scholar commented when I was battling a particularly stubborn medieval Persian manuscript, that ‘Sandy Morton would have been the best person’ to assist me with de-ciphering barely legible Perso-Arabic orthography, and in interpreting abstruse Persian prose. I have, however, made profitable use of Mr. Morton’s scholarship on Sarbadar numismatics. Nevertheless, I regret that Mr. Morton did not have the opportunity to critique my scholarship – for better or for worse – nor have the opportunity to read with me tracts from my eclectic collection of Persian manuscripts.

The study comprises two Parts (I-II), in two volumes respectively. Part I contains an Introduction, three Chapters (1-3) and a Conclusion. The Introduction presents the aims, scope and methodology adopted, followed by a survey of previous scholarship conducted on the subject, and a brief historical examination of the late Byzantine Peloponnese and its conquest by the Ottomans. It concludes with a brief codicological and palaeographical description of the cadastre. Chapter 1 is devoted to the historical geography of the Peloponnese. All place-names mentioned in the cadastre are listed in the sequence they appear therein, accompanied by topographic and linguistic notes. This is followed by a set of digital maps of the Early Ottoman Peloponnese using GIS (Geographical Information Systems). Chapter 2 is a demographical investigation of the cadastre, including the settlement patterns, the density of population and its categorisation into urban/rural, sedentary/nomadic, concentrating in particular on the influx and settlement of the second largest ethnic group in the peninsula after the Greeks, namely the Albanians. Chapter 3 explores the economy and administration of the province concentrating on the Ottoman t?m?r system and the economic mechanisms. A detailed presentation of the level of agricultural production, types of crops, livestock, fishing, commerce, industrial development, etc. is illustrated with tables and charts. The Conclusion summarises the findings of the research and suggests areas for further investigation. Part II comprises a diplomatic edition of the transliterated Ottoman text, preceded by a note on the principles and conventions adopted in the edition. The thesis closes with a full bibliography followed by selected samples of facsimiles of the cadastre.

Urban protest took a variety of forms including complaints and petitions, rioting, direct physical attacks on officials, and market strikes. Different motives spurred these protests, including fluctuations in the grain market or recurrent debasing of the currency or perceived injustice by government officials. However, all reported protests had a legitimizing justification. Reports of protest bring to light the different roles played by various social groups in medieval Egypt and Syria. Rather than paint a picture of pre-modern Arab- Muslim societies as neatly divided between autocratic exploitative governments and disempowered exploited subjects, an analysis of protest offers a more dynamic portrayal that brings out the roles of merchants, craftsmen, tradesmen, scholars of various standing, pious men, Bedouin, government officials and military officers. During a time of economic crises and recurring plagues, this portrayal shows that far from silently and stoically enduring the hardships of the times, the common people of Egypt and Syria were actively protesting, voicing their demands and manipulating the political, social and economic system to better their living conditions. This further complicates modern historiographical paradigms such as Oriental Despotism and the political quietism of Sunni Muslim political thought.

During the second half of the century, Ottoman historiography was marked by a debate that took shape in the hands of the literary elite who discussed the content of all types of Ottoman histories with which they were familiar. In this debate, the anonymous Ottoman histories became quintessential texts. These texts neither represented the Ottoman palace nor its elite servants. They were texts meant for the general Turkish- speaking community written by unknown and less educated scribes. They had an inclusive discourse, a populist style, a genuine concern about the well-being of the common people and advocated the disgruntled subjects of the empire who considered themselves alienated by a centralized state. Also, a number of historians who came from educated backgrounds and wrote in Turkish integrated the content of these anonymous texts into their own work, thus initiating a transition to a new period of historiography. A transformation occurred in Ottoman historiography during the late 15th century, not as a result of an ideological shift in the palace as is argued by modern scholarship, but from an internal debate which took place among the historians themselves.