A 400-year-old copy of Jāmi al-Tawārīkh, the compendium of chronicles written by historian, physician ad statesman of Ilkhanate-ruled Iran Rashid al-Din Fazlullah Hamedani (1247-1318), is on public display for the first time.
The literary and historic work kept in Golestan Palace in south Tehran is open to the public from Wednesday for 10 days, ISNA reported.
Considered the most important single source of Ilkhanate history and the Mongol Empire, the book found its way to the UNESCO Memory of the World International Register after a meeting at the UN cultural agency in Paris in October 2017.
“The copy was produced 435 years ago,” said Masoud Nosrati, head of Golestan Palace Complex, a world heritage site. In 305 folios, the book is one of the two precious manuscripts of Jāmi al-Tawārīkh presented for nomination of the book in UNESCO. Both manuscripts enjoy unrivaled artistic features.
Book Significance
“The book is written in a plain and lucid manner.” It covers a vast field even outside the Muslim world, which, in this regard, differs from the works by Muslim historians and geographers of the period.
Rashid al-Din’s sources of information were, for Mongolia and China, high officials of the Mongol empire and Mongol records; for India, a Buddhist from Kashmir; and, for the popes and emperors, a Catholic monk. There are important chapters describing the social and economic conditions of the Islamic countries under Ghāzān Khan (1271–1304), the 7th ruler of the Mongol Empire’s Ilkhanate division, and the reforms introduced by this ruler on the advice of the author.
“One significant characteristic of the book is its multiple references to oral sources. There are many Mongol and Turkic legends and passages in the book which would have been lost forever if not recorded by Rashid al-Din Fazlullah,” Nosrati said.
While he mentions Ilkhans and Mongols with respect, he does not fail to give a true account of the harm they inflicted on the land, Nosrati added.
“It is due to Rashid al-Din’s charming pen and boldness that he’s considered among the great historians,” he said. The compendium includes history of prophets (from Adam to the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), history of Islam up to Abbasids, history of ancient Persia up to the time of the author as well as the history of several countries like China, India (Indus and Kashmir), European lands, Christian popes and Israelites which have been written based on sources available to the author.
Rashid al-Din was the founder of new Persian historiography in the Middle Ages. His method of historiography can be compared with the historiography of the European Renaissance historians. The most important section of the book is its historiography related to the Mongols and Ilkhanid rule over Iran, according to Unesco.org.
Also on display at the palace is a manuscript of Baysonghor Shahnama (Ferdowsi’s Book of Kings), one of the illustrated works on the epic poem ordered by Baysonghor (1397-1433), a prince from the Timurid Empire (1370-1507) who was known as a patron of arts and architecture and a prominent supporter of Persian miniature.
A copy of Khamsa of Nizami is put on display alongside the two other books. It is an illuminated manuscript of Khamsa or ‘five poems’ written by Nizami Ganjavi, a 12th-century Persian poet.
