Two Manuscripts from South‑western Rūm

Chapter Three discusses two modest manuscripts that were produced for Hamidid beys in the mid-fourteenth century. These manuscripts, both copies of Najm al-Din Razi Daya’s Mirsad al-ʿIbad min al-Mabdaʾ ila al-Maʿad, were produced in İstanos (now known as Korkuteli) in 1349 and 1351. This chapter, which shifts focus from Konya to western, coastal Rum, explores the ‘mirrors for princes’ (nasihatnama) genre in more depth, the cultural and economic characteristics of the immediate area and the possible impact of bubonic plague on artistic production.

Islamic Manuscripts of Late Medieval Rum, 1270s-1370s

This book is the first in-depth survey of illuminated manuscripts from late medieval Anatolia (Rum) before the rise of the Ottoman Empire. Between the Mongol invasions in the mid-thirteenth century and the emergence of Ottoman domination in the late fourteenth century, the Lands of Rum were marked by instability and conflict. Despite this, a rich body of illuminated manuscripts from the period survives, explored here and fully illustrated in colour with many unpublished or hard-to-find images. Meticulously analysing fifteen beautifully decorated Arabic and Persian manuscripts, including Qur’ans, mirrors for princes, historical chronicles and Sufi works, such as the Masnavi of Jalal al-Din Rumi, the author traces the development of calligraphy and illumination in late medieval Rum. She shows that the central Anatolian city of Konya, in particular, was a dynamic centre of artistic activity and that local Turcoman princes, Seljuk bureaucrats and Mevlevi dervishes all played important roles in manuscript production and patronage. The volume also includes a detailed catalogue that is comprised of codicological data and numerous translations of new and unpublished primary sources, including manuscript colophons, dedications and endowment notes.

Ekklesiologie der sanften Macht. Der 1. Timotheusbrief und die antike Fürstenspiegel-Literatur

Did early Christian church leaders and political rulers share common characteristics? By reading the First Epistle to Timothy through the lens of Greek and Roman “mirrors for princes” (specula principum) written in the first and early second centuries AD, this article intends to make a new contribution to this issue. The study’s interpretative focus lies on the idealized depiction of Timothy as a role model for early Christian officeholders as well as on the qualifications for bishops and deacons (1 Tim 3:1–13). The comparison of the features of the ideal ruler with those of ideal church leaders shows that central elements of the ecclesiology of First Timothy tap into the Greco-Roman discourse concerning ideal rulership. Yet not only that, it also helps to understand that the power that is undeniably attributed to officeholders is ultimately meant to be a soft power that serves the cause of “preservation” and “salvation” (σωτηρία).

Originals and Fabrications in the Book Series “The Persian Mirrors for Princes Written in the Saljuq Period”

Two books have been published to date in the book series – the Persian Mirrors for Princes Written in the Saljuq Period: Originals and Fabrications. They are: Amir Mu‘izzi Nishapuri. The Siyasat-nama/Siyar al-muluk: A Fabrication Ascribed to Nizam al-Mulk (2020) and The Writings of Imam al-Ghazali (2017). Altogether, these books examine seven medieval texts: the Siyasat-nama/Siyar al-muluk, the Zad-i Akhirat, the Nasihat al-muluk, pt. 1, the Faza’il al-anam min rasa’il Hujjat al-Islam, the Ei Farzand/Ayyuha al-walad, the Pand-nama, and the Nasihat al-muluk, pt. 2. Four of the seven texts belong to the category of deliberate fabrications or the texts with false attribution, compiled with quite specific goals and for specific target audience.1. The results of the historical, codicological, and textual analysis reveal that the Siyasat-nama/Siyar al-muluk (The Book of Government/The Vitae of Rulers) was compiled by Muhammad Mu‘izzi Nishapuri, the Head of poets department under the Saljuqid ruler Malik-shah. Subsequently, he ascribed it to the murdered Nizam al-Mulk in order to be appointed to a position at the Saljuqid court.2. The last three texts published in the second book and ascribed to al-Ghazali are forgeries as well. The most famous of them is the Ayyuha al-walad (O Child). This text was initially written in Persian under the title Ei farzand, however, one or two generations after the death of Muhammad al-Ghazali. For its compilation were used: two genuine letters letters by Muhammad al-Ghazali; the ‘Ayniyya – letter by his brother Ahmad al-Ghazali to his famous disciple ‘Ayn al-Qudat al-Hamadani; and the text taken from ‘Ayn al-Qudat’s own letter. Later, the compiled text was translated into Arabic and began to circulate under the title Ayyuha al-walad.3. The third book is going to comprise two authentic texts: the Qabus-nama (The Book of Qabus) by Kay Kawus b. Iskandar b. Qabus and the Chahar maqala/Majma‘ al-nawadir (Four Discourses/Miscellany of Rarities) by Nizami ‘Aruzi Samarqandi. If possible, the Fustat al-‘Adala fi-Qawa‘id al-Saltana (A Tent of Justice In the Rules of Sultanate) compiled by Muhammad al-Khatib in 683 AH/1284-5 AD will be also included in this book. For the publication will be used the unique manuscript preserved in the National Library of France (BnF, Suppl. Turc 1120).The article offers a review of the texts included in the series and deals with the problem of literary forgeries and fakes in medieval Islamic literature, their types as well as the ways of their identification.

Greatness of Spirit

The denouement of Part 1 might seem disappointing. Greatness of soul, that larger-than-life ancient virtue, enters the Islamic world only to fade away. Yet there was another concept belonging to the same broad family that led a more flourishing life in the Islamic world. This virtue, designated as ‘greatness of spirit’ (ʿiẓam al-himma), appears in philosophical treatises but also in other genres, including mirrors for princes and works of literature (adab). Unlike the first concept, which thematized the right attitude to the self and its merits, this second concept thematizes right desire or aspiration, and some of its architects parse it as a foundational virtue of aspiration to virtue. Part 2 first documents its development in works of a philosophical character, notably Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī’s and al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī’s, before considering its presentation in mirrors for princes. There are interesting comparisons to be drawn between the way the virtue is articulated across different genres, and also suggestive comparisons with approaches familiar from broader philosophical history. These observations invite a question about the origins of the virtue. While the Greek influence cannot be excluded, a stronger argument can be made for the influence of the Persian cultural tradition and, more compellingly, pre-Islamic Arab culture. ‘Greatness of spirit’ was an epithet applied to the Arab hero of pre-Islamic times. This heroic ideal is reconfigured in the Islamic era in important ways. This genealogy allows us to place on new footing the question about the relationship of the ‘virtues of greatness’ to Islamic religious morality.

‘Le naufrage de ce mortel monde’

Over the course of the sixteenth century, the Old French word for ship—‘nef’—gradually fell out of use, being replaced by ‘navire’ and ‘vaisseau’. This chapter explores an important strand of this story; the persistence of a symbolic, literary ‘nef’, whose origins can be traced from medieval tradition through to the first decade of the sixteenth century. A mini-genre, the Nef book, capitalized on the popularity of Sebastian Brant’s Narrenschiff, and over the course of just a few years, this genre developed and changed, generating de-nauticalized compendia on a range of subjects. These compendia are significant with respect to (among other things) the beginnings of the commonplace book; two of the authors examined in this chapter (Jodocus Badius and Symphorien Champier), played important roles in the emergence of this tradition. Shipwreck often represents the fate of the sinner’s soul, but as the concerns of the Nef books become more worldly, and less spiritual, partly by contact with the Fürstenspiegel (mirrors for princes) tradition, so too the significance of shipwrecks shifts; the prospect of bodily shipwreck, in particular, comes increasingly to the fore. Besides identifying and analysing this previously neglected family of books, this chapter sheds light on several important conventions that will continue to inform the dynamics of shipwreck throughout the century. In particular, it shows that seafaring was the subject both of curiosity and of moral anxiety; it is this tension that makes the family of Nef books a particularly rich cluster of texts with which to open this study of shipwreck.

Greco-Arabic Mirrors for Barbarian Princes

This chapter focuses on Alexander the Great as an exemplary figure in English and Malay mirrors for princes, deriving from medieval Arabic sources. In particular, it considers Kitāb Sirr al-asrār, known in Latin as Secretum secretorum (Secret of Secrets), believed to be Aristotle’s advice to Alexander. It is a major influence on the early modern Malay Nasihat al-Muluk (Advice for Kings). The chapter considers how the mirrors see foreign others as a source of wisdom by reading Naṣīḥat al-mulūk (“Advice for princes”), Taj us-Salatin (Crown of Kings) and Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers. It also examines Malay adaptation of two themes from Secretum—women’s authority and the art of physiognomy—and how they engaged with shared topoi, which it argues address similar concerns about interactions with foreigners.

The Art of Chieftaincy in the Writings of Pashtun Tribal Rulers

The article surveys the views of Pashtun military-administrative elite on governance in the works of Khushḥāl Khān Khaṫak (d. 1689) and Afżal Khān Khaṫak (d. circa 1740). The texts under discussion pertain to the universal literary genre of “Mirrors for Princes”(naṣīḥat al-mulūk)and include the Khaṫak chieftains’ didactical writings in prose and verse, as well as still poorly studied documents on real politics from Afżal Khān's historiographical compilation “The Ornamented History”(Tārīkh-i muraṣṣaʿ). Rooted in the medieval Persian classics, early modern Pashto “mirrors” are distinguished by local ethnocultural peculiarities which manifest in shifting the very subject from statesmanship to chieftaincy and declaring regulations of the Pashtun unwritten Code of Honour. The study proves that the outlook and behavioural patterns of Pashtun tribal rulers stemmed from a combination, partly eclectic and contradictory, of Islamic precepts, feudal ideologies of the Mughal administrative system, and norms of the Pashtun customary law(Pashtunwali).