The Cosmic Perils of Qadi Husayn Maybudi in Fifteenth Century Iran by Alexandra Dunietz PDF

ii
Islamicate Intellectual History

Studies and Texts in the Late Medieval
and Early Modern Periods
Editorial board
Judith Pfeiffer (University of Oxford)

Shahzad Bashir (Stanford University)
Heidrun Eichner (University of Tübingen)
VOLUME 1
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/iih

iii
The Cosmic Perils of

Qadi Ḥusayn Maybudī in
Fifteenth-Century Iran
By
Alexandra W. Dunietz
LEIDEN | BOSTON
iv
Cover illustration: p.57, Isl. Ms. 260, Special Collections Library (University of Michigan Library), Ann
Arbor.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dunietz, Alexandra Whelan, 1961-

The cosmic perils of Qadi Husayn Maybudi in fifteenth-century Iran / by Alexandra W. Dunietz.
pages cm. -- (Islamicate intellectual history ; 1)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-30231-0 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-30232-7 (e-book) 1. Qadi Mir, Husayn
ibn Mu’in al-Din, -1504 or 1505. 2. Muslim scholars--Iran--Biography. 3. Judges--Iran--Biography.
4. Sunnites--Relations--Shi’ah. 5. Shi’ah--Relations--Sunnites. I. Title.
BP80.Q3184D86 2016
955’.028092--dc23
[B]
2016024967
This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering
Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities.
For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 2212-8662
isbn 978-90-04-30231-0 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-30232-7 (e-book)
Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and
Hotei Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without prior written permission from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided
that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive,
Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa.
Fees are subject to change.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.

v
To the Memory of
DeWitt Alexander (Dutch) Higgs (1907-1994)

Vincent Ambrose Whelan (1904-1979)
Vincent Edward Whelan (1934-2005)
Committed to Learning, Law, and Public Service
⸪
vi
Contents
Contents vii
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Transliteration x
List of Abbreviations xi
1 Introduction 1
Sources 6
2 Early Years and Education 14

Yazd from Pre-Islamic Times to the Mongols 14
The Timurid Period 17
The Kara Koyunlu Period 21
The Ak Koyunlu Period 23
Maybudī’s Family 26
Maybudī’s Education 33
3 The Sharḥ-i Dīvān-i -ʿAlī 51

The Favātiḥ 58
The Commentary 96
4 Qadi Maybudī 112
5 Last Years and Safavid Confrontation 154

The Jām-i gītī-numā 156
Death 158
6 Conclusion 169
Bibliography 173
Index 191
viii Contents
Contents
Contents vii
Acknowledgements ix
Transliteration x
Chapter 1 1
Introduction 1
Sources 6
Chapter 2 14
Early Years and Education 14
Yazd From Pre-Islamic Times to the Mongols 14
The Timurid Period 17
The Kara Koyunlu Period 21
The Ak Koyunlu Period 23
Maybudī’s Family 26
Maybudī’s Education 33
Chapter 3 51
The Sharḥ-i Dīvān-i ʿAlī 51
The Favātiḥ 58
The Commentary 96
Chapter 4 112
Qadi Maybudī 112
Chapter 5 154
Last Years and Safavid Confrontation 154
The Jām-i gītī-numā 155
Death 158
Chapter 6 169
Conclusion 169
Bibliography 173
Index 191
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements ix
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the many teachers and friends who have educated me in the
history of the Middle East. Paramount among them is John E. Woods. He intro-
duced me to Qadi Ḥusayn Maybudī many years ago and supported my efforts
when I recently reacquainted myself with that interesting man. In addition to
sharing his vast erudition about Islamic civilization, he pushed me to think
about history and the historian’s craft, about the records that people leave be-
hind and what they leave unsaid. Heshmat Moayyad and Carl Petry also guided
that initial research. My gratitude to Evrim Binbaş is immense, for his interest
in my work opened up the possibility of putting together this book.
The University of Chicago of my graduate school days was a delightful place
to learn. Over the years I have come to realize what a gift I was given in the
faculty’s patience and perfectionism and how lucky I was to study with such
scholars—and with the remarkable students who were my companions in the
academy. My pleasure is all the greater in thanking a current graduate student
at the university, Andrew James DeRouin, for his help in preparing this manu-
script. Many thanks go to the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Founda-
tion, which generously supported my graduate studies. At Brill, an anonymous
reader and the editorial board of the Islamicate Intellectual History series—
Shahzad Bashir, Heidrun Eichner, and Judith Pfeiffer—helped me immensely,
and Teddi Dols provided valuable administrative assistance.
I alone am responsible for the inevitable mistakes and I take comfort in the
thought that my missteps will prompt others to seek a smoother path to knowl-
edge.
x Transliteration Transliteration
Transliteration
The transliteration system is that of the International Journal of Middle East

Studies, with the following exceptions:
‘Thā’ is transliterated as ‘th’ in both Arabic and Persian, while ‘dhāl’ is ‘dh’
and ‘ḍād’ is ‘ḍ’ in both languages. The tā’ marbūṭah becomes ‘t’ in construct
forms, and otherwise appears as ‘a.’ The transliteration may seem inconsistent
because scribes sometimes used tā’ marbūṭah and sometimes ‘tā’ at the end of
Arabic words in Persian. I have transliterated them as they appear on the page.
As for vowels, final form ‘ī’ will be written as such, and not ‘iyy.’ Final form ‘ū’
will be written as such, and not ‘uww.’
Some commonly used Arabic and Persian terms are given in English forms
rather than in transliteration, unless they are part of an individual’s name. The
following are the most frequent:
amir imam *mawlana ribat tafsir

darvish khan mufti shah ulama
fiqh khwaja mulla Sufi vizier
hadith mahdi qadi sultan waqf
*Mawlana is used exclusively. Even if the source in in Ottoman Turkish, Mev-
lana is not substituted.
Names of dynasties are regularly anglicized, unless they are given as part of an
individual’s name. All place names appear without transliteration. Philosophi-
cal terminology is transliterated according to the language of the original text.
Thus, wājib al-wujūd comes from a sentence in Arabic, while vājib al-vujūd
from one in Persian. Because IJMES rules do not cover Mongol names, I have
chosen the transliteration of EI 2.
All quotations from the Qurʾān are from Mohammed Marmaduke Pick-
thall’s translation, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran.
List of Abbreviations
List of Abbreviations
BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies.

EI 2 Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2d ed. Edited by H.A.R. Gibb, J.H. Kramers,
E. Lévi-Provençal, et al.. Leiden-London, 1954–.
FIZ Farhang-i Īrān-zamīn.
IA İslam Ansiklopedesi. Istanbul, 1940–.
JESHO Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient.
JGN Maybudī, Qadi Mīr Ḥusayn. Jām-i gītī-numā. 1029/1619. Bodleian
Library. ff. 21b-30b in Ms. Arab f. 65.
JRAS Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.
MUN Munsha⁠ʾāt. Munsha⁠ʾāt-i Maybudī: Qāḍī Ḥusayn Ibn Muʿīn al-Dīn
Maybudī. Edited by Nuṣrat Allāh Furūhar. Tehran: Nuqṭa, 1376/
1997.
REI Revue des études islamiques.
SDA Sharḥ-i Dīvān-i Mansūb ba Amīr al-Muʾminīn ʿAlī Ibn Abī Ṭālib.
Edited by Ḥasan Raḥmānī and Sayyid Ibrāhīm Ashk-Shīrīn.
Tehran: Mirāth-i Maktūb, 1379/2000.
xii List Of Abbreviations
Introduction 1
Chapter 1
Introduction
Qadi Kamāl al-Dīn Ḥusayn b. Muʿīn al-Dīn ʿAlī Maybudī (d. 910/1504) has long
been my cicerone to a fascinating place and time and this book is an attempt
to share some of the knowledge and insights I have gained from him. I began
studying him not as an extraordinarily remarkable man, but as a representative
figure of an elite intellectual class in an area of the world marked by political
and religious turmoil, coping with tribal rivalries and millennial expectations.
Born in Yazd to a wealthy and locally influential family, Maybudī left his native
city in his youth to study abroad, as did many young men of his background. In
Shiraz he learned with such renowned scholars as a Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad b.
Asʿad Davānī (d. 908/1503). After a visit to the center of Ak Koyunlu power in
Tabriz during the reign of Sultan Yaʿqūb (r. 883–96/1478–90), he was appointed
qadi of Yazd, a position he held for at least six years. During that period he
corresponded with many significant intellectual and political men in the Ak
Koyunlu and Timurid courts. As an adult he produced substantial works of
scholarship about every five years, one of the most important being a com-
mentary on the dīvān of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661), the foundational figure of
Shiʿite Islam. Like many of his peers, he was a polymath, with interests in phi-
losophy, metaphysics, cosmology, poetry, medicine, mystical experience, and
the traditional Islamic sciences of Scripture and law. His available correspon-
dence ends around 897/1491, and he does not reappear in historical sources
until 910/1504, when he participated in a revolt in Yazd against Shah Ismāʿīl,
who had only recently conquered the area for the nascent Safavid enterprise.
The revolt failed and Maybudī was executed. As I discovered, behind that
thumbnail sketch hides a life of anxieties and accomplishments, mystical long
ings and religious obligations, all expressed with the sophisticated literary
techniques of the qadi’s culture.
Much attention has been paid to the scholarly elite of the Islamic world in
other areas and periods, in large part because they were the ones who pro-
duced the written materials on which researchers depend. One approach is the
prosopographical, in which the many brief sketches in biographical dictiona-
ries (tadhkiras) are analyzed in order to map the group’s genealogical ties, pro-
fessional duties, political pull, and so on. Another is to scrutinize those same
sketches, along with anecdotes in other historical writings, in order to see how
contemporary writers and their successors promoted a particular agenda
through narration. That approach examines not only what was said, but why it
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004302327_002

2 Chapter 1
was said in a specific way.1 The method chosen here is to study the elite through
the story of a single man.2 In the intriguing field of Ak Koyunlu or, rather, fif-
teenth-century Iranian life, a monograph on one man, and little known at that,
requires justification. Biography can be an approachable way to determine the
outlines of a confusing and complex subject. It provides a starting point in rec
ognizing trends and identifying values to be refined by further research. In ad-
dition, by concentrating on an individual, one can never forget the subtleties
of daily life and the role of accident in human history that must temper any
penchant for generalization.
While biography itself demands no lengthy defense, the choice of Maybudī
may. He did not rise to great heights of political power nor did he achieve wide-
spread, enduring fame as an exceptional intellectual or man of piety. None
theless, he was a qadi in an important city during the political and economic
turmoil of the late Ak Koyunlu period, wrote several works of which numerous
manuscripts have been preserved, considered himself something of a poet,
and failed to survive the transition to the Safavid regime. His life thus encapsu-
lates many of the intellectual and political developments in Iran during the
latter half of the fifteenth century. The bounty of normative texts for much of
pre-modern Islamic history whets our appetite for the facts of everyday life.
The ideal ruler, courtier, holy man, scholar and lover dominate written mate-
rial, leaving the modern reader to wonder what connection those images had
to the quotidian. Every scrap of material that sheds light on aspects of life in
the world, which existed in harmony with the life of the mind, clarifies modern
perception of times and places in which the recognizable and the surprising
mix. An examination of the specific details of Maybudī’s life can lead to greater
understanding of a social group which played such an essential role in the po-
litical history of a turbulent era. The dynasties that struggled for supremacy
and survival depended on close ties with their provincial cities for legitimacy
and loyalty, manpower and money.
1 For example, see the studies of Richard W. Bulliet, The Patricians of Nishapur: A Study in
Medieval Islamic Social History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972); Michael
Cooperson, Classical Arabic Biography: The heirs of the prophets in the age of al-Ma⁠ʾmūn
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Carl Petry, The Civilian Elite of Cairo in the
Later Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).
2 For example, see İlker Evrim Binbaş, “Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī (ca. 770s–858/ca. 1370s–1454):
Prophecy, Politics, and Historiography in Late Medieval Islamic History” (PhD diss., University
of Chicago, 2009); Melvin-Koushki, “The Quest for a Universal Science: The Occult Philosophy
of Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Turka Iṣfahānī (1369–1432) and Intellectual Millenarianism in Early Timurid
Iran” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2012).
Introduction 3
The danger is that such an examination can easily turn into a whirlwind
tour of the highlights of history, a remix of the greatest hits of Sunnis, Shiʿis,
and Sufis, Persians and Turks, bureaucrats and soldiers, played on a provincial
radio, if I may indulge in anachronism. What I have tried to do is use Maybudī’s
life to show, in a concrete way, how the most productive elements of the politi-
cal and religious history of the fifteenth century were interrelated in a complex
network of action and idea. No one element can be understood in isolation
from the others. By anchoring religious education and professional advance-
ment, philosophy and poetry, ʿAlidism and confessional ambiguity in the life of
one man, my hope is that it will be seen how naturally they all fit together in a
fifteenth-century man’s understanding of the cosmos, not just as a sequence of
discrete events possibly linked by cause and effect.
This study will begin with Maybudī’s early years and education, briefly sur-
veying the geographical and political situation into which he was born and the
scholarly environment that enabled him to gain pre-eminence. From the de-
tails of his life, we see how the education given to a member of a leading pro-
vincial family offered the possibility of political and social security to its
recipient. Maybudī’s broad yet structured education was the product of centu-
ries of scholarship and provided him entry to an inter-regional scholarly elite
that could bestow respect in times of peace and refuge in times of war.
The book will then proceed to focus in detail on Maybudī’s major opus, the
Sharḥ-i Dīvān-i ʿAlī, (Commentary on the Poetry of ʿAlī), a fascinating compen-
dium of knowledge and personal opinion that differs considerably from his
other writings in length and complexity. It is a work that he could not have
composed without his particular kind of education, wrestling as it does with
the demands of reason and spirit. Filling over two hundred pages, the intro-
duction builds a cosmological structure around the figure of ʿAlī. We will ex-
plore the myriad chambers and alcoves designed to accommodate the First
Cause, astral bodies, prophets, the Mahdi, and much more, before turning to
features of the poetic exegesis.
In the Sharḥ Maybudī presents his intellectual and religious vision of the
world and not incidentally, offers insight into the attitudes of the Sunni schol-
arly elite in Iran towards Shiʿism. Maybudī expresses sincere appreciation of
the Imams along with moderate disapproval of certain of their followers. His
discussion of Shiʿites lacks vehemence because in his book they are not per-
ceived as an active, organized body that poses any threat to the existing order.
McChesney hits the mark in saying, “Devotion to the Family of the Prophet and
belief in the efficacy of saintly intercession can coexist quite easily with adher-
4 Chapter 1
ence to a Sunni-Jamaʿi legal doctrine and with Shiʿi historicism.”3 Coexistence

should not be confused with an absence of tension. Maybudī’s commentary
articulates the contradictions of ʿAlid loyalism and thereby creates a workable
system of belief.
Our attention will then turn to Maybudī’s letters and the glimpses they offer
into the life of a qadi in western Iran during the late fifteenth century, with its
various satisfactions and concerns. As research into the post-Mongol period
continues to expand, producing detailed works on local histories and specific
historians and more clearly defining religious and scholarly networks and in-
stitutions, texts touching on Maybudī’s life help to sharpen our focus on social
and cultural developments. Maybudī’s career as a qadi reveals the network of
relations between the provinces and the center and the multiple levels on
which a civilian administrator operated. He maintained close contact with
powerful bureaucrats at court throughout his tenure as qadi, with the goal of
thriving as profitable landlord, representative of the inhabitants of his region,
both common people and scholarly elite, and friend of men on his own social
level.
Finally, the story of Maybudī’s death ushers in a new era, with its own conti-
nuities and disruptions. A number of Maybudī’s friends and fellow students
took advantage of the possibility to leave Ak Koyunlu lands during the Safavid
upheaval and found a safe haven elsewhere, but Maybudī himself was not so
fortunate. He did not survive into the Safavid period and may, in fact, have re-
sisted the dynastic change, while many of his colleagues chose a different
course of action and survived. Although the outlines of his last years and death
can be drawn, they essentially remain an enigma. We cannot tell whether cir-
cumstances utterly unknown to us—a dying wife, his own poor health, a
promising student, a construction project, love for his home, or any number of
factors—constrained the choices of this one middle-aged man. He may have
been coerced into rebellion or have taken a calculated risk to oppose Shah
Ismāʿīl. What we do know is that while membership in the scholarly elite did
not dictate his actions, it shaped his options.
None of the events in Maybudī’s life or the works he left behind can be un-
derstood without appreciating the spiritual excitement of the fifteenth centu-
ry. It appears in reflections on religious identity, manifestations of mystical
charisma, and a fascination with the esoteric qualities of letter, number, magic
and medicine, all of which appear in a variety of works in the Islamicate world
and Europe at this time. Maybudī’s commentary on the poetry of ʿAlī places
3 R.D. McChesney, Waqf in Central Asia: Four Hundred Years in the History of a Muslim Shrine,
1480–1889 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 34.
Introduction 5
him smack in the middle of research into the nature of Shiʿism, Sufism, and
ʿAlid loyalty in the period leading up to the establishment of the Safavid em-
pire. Extremist Sufi brotherhoods with their often folkloric expression of devo-
tion to the descendants of the Prophet offer drama and exoticism and, along
with those of a more moderate bent, played an unquestionably significant role
in religious and political developments of the post-Mongol period. In both the
commentary and the collection of his letters, Maybudī reveals that his thought
is imbued with mystical perception, although he teaches us next to nothing
about Sufi institutions. He speaks the language of the Naqshbandi and Nur-
bakhshi orders, yet offers no clues about how Sufi organizations operated in
his city or his life.
Tantalizing details challenge us to explore the entire range of religious ex-
pression in order to clarify our understanding of the big picture. We want to
know the particulars of why Tīmūr’s tombstone bears a consciously contrived
genealogy tracing back to ʿAlī, why a Naqshbandi poet as renowned as Nūr al-
Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492) reportedly engaged in a dispute over
the phrase “ʿAlī walī Allāh” (ʿAlī is the friend of God”), and why in 885/1480–81
a descendant of Bāyazīd Bisṭāmī (d. 261/875 or 264/877–78) revived the cult of
ʿAlī’s tomb in Balkh with the support of the reigning Timurid, Sulṭān-Ḥusayn
Bayqarā (r. 875–912/1470–1506).4 The figure of ʿAlī came to be loaded with tre-
mendous symbolic freight for individuals and groups of varying religious tem-
peraments, so focusing on the details of a specific text or event helps us take its
measure. An examination of Maybudī’s life and works invites us to look at sub-
tle shifts in the status quo, in the concerns of people who did not don red cap
and pick up sword to follow a charismatic leader, but rather inhabited a solid
tradition of careful study, personal piety, and communal obligation.
The drive to reconcile contradictions is fundamental to Maybudī’s outlook
on the cosmos, and is inextricable from his interest in philosophy. By now the
vigor of philosophical thought after Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (d.
505/1111) is accepted, as is the fact that we know too little about it because vast
amounts of material remain unedited and unstudied. Examining Maybudī’s
works contributes to a clearer articulation of the concerns of philosophers be-
tween Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) and Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1050/1640). As far as we
know, Maybudī did not present a startling new approach, and yet for a more
complete understanding of the transformation of philosophical ideas, it would
seem necessary to trace subtle changes as well as to concentrate on more daz-
zling scholarly lights. It is also beneficial to tinker with the framework within
4 Shahzad Bashir, Messianic Hopes and Mystical Visions (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 2003), 181; McChesney, Waqf, 31.
6 Chapter 1
which we negotiate our analyses of philosophical texts. Uneasy with labeling a

particular scholar as purely neo-Aristotelian, Illuminationist, theological, legal
or philosophical in his writings, I have to resist falling back on those concep-
tual categories as separate lenses through which to analyze post-classical
writings, thereby running the risk of oversimplification. Maybudī himself con-
stantly negotiated among the numerous strands of thought to which his edu-
cation exposed him and repeatedly acknowledged the inconsistent correlation
of words to ideas and the inadequacy of language to articulate and encompass
the profundity of the universe.
The fifteenth century is important because of the forces that drove the shift
from late medieval to early modern Iran. The Safavids developed as one of the
three ‘gunpowder empires,’5 spread Shiʿism throughout the area, and generally
created an Iran that is more recognizable to us than that of the Turkoman dy-
nasties. In however limited a way, Maybudī contributed to the development of
relations between Sunnis and Shiʿis, provincial elites and central authorities,
rationalist philosophers and mystics. Drawing constantly on the past to make
sense of his present, he demonstrates how every generation must define anew
its relation to the divine, to the polity, and to the neighborhood community.
The danger of hindsight must restrain our conclusions, but clearly Maybudī
played an active role in tumultuous times.
Sources
Among the reasons to study the provincial qadi is the hefty corpus of writings
that he left behind. Ranging from scattered tax exemptions to lengthy com-
mentaries, the mixed bag of sources for medieval Iranan history leads to fruit-
ful questions, even as its very fragmentation frustrates reaching definitive
answers. The ulama were prolific writers. Scholars such as Davānī and Shams
al-Dīn Muḥammad Lāhījī (d. 912/1506–07) have left many manuscripts, largely
unedited as of yet, and it behoves us to take a look at them because they indi-
cate what the society valued in realms as disparate as education, government,
and spirituality.6
5 Marshall G.S. Hodgson, “The Safavid Empire: Triumph of the Shi’ah, 1503–1722,” in The Venture
of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 3:16–58.
6 For a concise overview of Davānī’s life and works, see Reza Pourjavady, Philosophy in Early
Safavid Iran (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 4–16; Davānī’s philosophical disagreements with Ṣadr al-Dīn
al-Dashtakī in Shiraz, 74; Maybudī’s lack of involvement in them, unlike Ilāhī Ardabīlī who
criticized his master, 86.
Introduction 7
Maybudī’s principal writings will be discussed in detail within the text of

this work, but as an introduction they can be divided into textbooks on gram-
mar and philosophy, the commentary on ʿAlī’s dīvān, and correspondence.7
Maybudī’s earliest work was a commentary on Athīr al-Dīn Abharī’s (d.
663/1264) work on logic, Hidāyat al-ḥikma or Hidāyat al-Athīrīya, an outline of
philosophical principles, completed in 880/1475.8 A unique manuscript of
Maybudī’s commentary on Najm al-Dīn ʿAlī b. ʿUmar Kātibī’s (d. 675/1276) work
on logic, al-Shamsīya, which was composed in 886/1481–82, is found in the
Chester Beatty Library and was copied in 890/1485,9 while that on Ibn al-Ḥājib’s
(d. 647/1249) grammar, al-Kāfiya, seems to be no longer extant. Among other
works, Maybudī wrote commentaries or marginal notes for the Ṭawāliʿ al-
anwār of Qadi Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Bayḍāwī (d. 685/1286) on scholastic theology
(kalām), the Ḥikmat al-ʿayn, the Gulshan-i rāz of Maḥmūd Shabistarī (d. ca.
740/1340; in Persian), and Naṣīr al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Ṭūsī’s (d. 672/1274)
Taḥrīr-i Uqlīdis.10
7 Raḥmānī and Ashk-Shīrīn’s introduction to the Sharḥ-i Dīvān-i ʿAlī lists 19 works by
Maybudī and gives useful information about them and extant manuscripts and editions:
SDA, ‘si-u hasht through chihil-u haft.’
8 Abharī’s work covers logic, physics and metaphysics, the last two forming the subject of
many commentaries and glosses. Pourjavady remarks on the popularity of Maybudī’s
commentary soon after it was written. A student of Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Dashtakī, Davānī’s rival
in Shiraz, also wrote glosses on it. Pourjavady, Philosophy in Early Safavid Iran, 111–12.
Gutas points out the importance of Abharī’s books to Arabic philosophy from both the-
matic and pedagogical perspectives and the need for research on them, their transmis-
sion, and their elaboration in subsequent centuries. Dimitri Gutas, “The Study of Arabic
Philosophy in the Twentieth Century,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 29, 1
(2002): 16.
9 Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur (Original edition: 2 vols. Weimar:
E. Felber, 1898–1902. 3 supplement vols. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1937–42. Revised edition of
Vols. I-II. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1943–49), 1:466. Davānī also wrote a commentary on this: MUN,
52.
10 Īraj Afshār, “Qāḍī Mīr Ḥusayn Maybudī,” Yaghmā 1 (1327/1948–49): 221–22. Those four
works, while mentioned by Afshār, have not appeared in any of the catalogues searched
for Maybudī’s writings. Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur, 1:466.
Maybudī cites al-Ṭūsī’s dhayl on the Taḥrīr-i Uqlīdis in SDA, 28. The output of a contempo-
rary, Kamāl al-Dīn al-Ilāhī al-Ardabīlī (d. 950/1543), offers interesting points of compari-
son. IlāhI was a follower of the Safavid Shaykh Ḥaydar (d. 892/1487), who encouraged him
to continue his studies, which he did with Davānī. Like Maybudī, Ilāhī wrote a commen-
tary on the Gulshan-i rāz, based on the commentary of Shams al-Dīn al-Lāhījī (completed
by 882/1477) and on al-Ṭūsī’s Taḥrīr-i Uqlīdis. He also wrote glosses on Maybudī’s com-
mentary on the Hidāyat al-ḥikma. Ilāhī benefited from the patronage of Amir ʿAlī Shīr
Navāʾī (d. 906/1501), the vizier of the Timurid Sulṭān-Ḥusayn Mīrzā b. Manṣūr b. Bayqarā
8 Chapter 1
As mentioned above, a commentary of a different nature is that on the

Dīvān of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, completed in Ṣafar 890/February-March 1485. It is re-
ferred to occasionally as the Favātiḥ because of the seven introductory sections
(fātiḥas) which precede the commentary proper. In that part the following
subjects are presented: the true path of the elect, God’s essence, His names and
attributes, the greater man or macrocosm, the lesser man or microcosm,
prophecy and sainthood and, finally, the virtues and history of ʿAlī. The com-
mentary itself takes the poems ascribed to ʿAlī verse by verse and gives philo-
logical, historical, philosophical, and mystical explanations of them.
In addition to commentaries, Maybudī wrote a philosophical treatise enti-
tled Jām-i gītī-numā (The World-reflecting Mirror) in Shiraz in 897/1492. Dedi-
cated to an unnamed figure of authority in Fars, it is a brief introduction to
cosmology. It consists of an introduction, thirty short sections, and a conclu-
sion. The contents discuss existence, theosophy, metaphysics, physiological
and superlunary matters, the spheres, stars, and the sublunary elements.11
What gives the work a significant place in the history of philosophy is that an
Arabic version with a translation into Latin was published in 1641 in Paris and
according to Hans Daiber, it is “the first philosophical text published in Europe,
preceding the edition of Ibn Ṭufayl, Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān published by E. Pococke
(1671).”12 Over a century after Maybudī’s death, the concise elegance of his writ-
ing found an audience many miles and cultures away.
A different type of elegant writing reveals aspects of Maybudī’s life outside
his academic endeavors—namely, his Munsha⁠ʾāt, which is a collection of some
112 letters to leading political and intellectual figures of the Ak Koyunlu and
Timurid realms. Binbaş draws a useful distinction between prescriptive and
descriptive munsha⁠ʾāt collections, the former offering theoretical approaches
to the epistolary craft and the latter comprising collections of letters along
with other bits and pieces, such as introductions to literary works, notices of
the construction of public works, and so on.13 Maybudī’s oeuvre falls squarely
in Herat, and one of Maybudī’s correspondents. Unlike Maybudī, Ilāhī became a respected
figure at the Safavid court, where he wrote a treatise on Shiʿi law and other works on Shiʿi
subjects. Pourjavady, Philosophy, 41–44.
11 It has been attributed to Mīr Ghiyāth al-Dīn Manṣūr (d. 948–9/1541–42), but that attribu-
tion has been rejected. See Carl Hermann Ethé, Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in
the Library of the India Office (Oxford: H. Hart, 1903), 1:410.
12 Pourjavady, Philosophy, 35: “An Arabic version of this work, together with a translation
into Latin by Ibrāhīm al-Ḥaqilānī (Abraham Ecchellensis, 1605–64), was published in 1641
in Paris.” Hans Daiber, Bibliography of Islamic Philsophy (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 1: 628.
13 Binbaş, “Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī,” 12–15. See also Colin P. Mitchell, “To Preserve and Pro-
tect: Husayn Vaʿiz-i Kashifi and Perso-Islamic Chancellery Culture,” Iranian Studies 36/4
(2003): 485–507.
Introduction 9
in the second category. Seventy-one letters are found in the Istanbul University
manuscript,14 Īraj Afshār published sections of another,15 and Furūhar used
manuscripts in Iran for his edition of the letters. In the manuscripts, the letters
are copied without any apparent system and few bear dates, although they
seem to have been written primarily in the early 890s/late 1480s.16 Most are
written in Persian, but a number are in Arabic or have numerous quotations
from the Qurʾān, hadith, and fiqh literature.17 Many fall under the rubric
ikhvānīyāt or friendship notes, while others deal with commissions that
Maybudī fulfilled for administrators in Tabriz, requests for disaster assistance,
and intellectual issues.18 They all provide evidence of links between members
of the scholarly and ruling elites in the Ak Koyunlu and Timurid realms. Be-
cause Maybudī’s correspondents were such eminent figures, the Munsha⁠ʾāt is
important not only for what it reveals about the subject of this biography, but
also for what it indicates about the cultural and social life of western and east-
ern Iran in the fifteenth century. It attests to the vibrancy of the shared Perso-
Islamic culture that infused the elite literary and scholarly worlds.
Since the Munsha⁠ʾāt is such a vital source of information, especially during
Maybudī’s tenure as qadi, it is worthwhile to consider why the letters were col-
lected and preserved in the first place. First of all, such collections were a
14 Copy lent by John E. Woods. This copy was the only one available to me when I wrote my
dissertation and it remains useful when used in conjunction with Furūhar’s edition.
15 Afshār, “Qāḍī Mīr Ḥusayn Maybudī,” 221–22. The excerpt is taken from a manuscript in the
Kitābkhāna-yi Āstān-i Quds-i Raḍavī which contains thirty-three letters. Compared with
the number of letters from specific individuals in Navāʾī’s Album, to take one example, the
Munsha⁠ʾāt shows that Maybudī’s output was similar to that of his contemporaries in the
east. In the former work, which contains 594 letters, are found 337 letters from Jāmī, who
has many more letters in other collections, but 128 from Khwaja Aḥrār and less than fifty
from the remaining fourteen authors. Nūr al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī, Pis’ma-avtografi
Abdarrahmana Jami iz “Al’boma Navoi,” ed. A. Urunbaev (Tashkent: Fan, 1982), 15. There is
also no reason to believe that Maybudī did not write more missives, which were not pre-
served because they were lost or considered inconsequential.
16 Those few which refer to specific events, such as Sultan Yaʿqūb’s ban on wine in 893/1488
or the completion of texts, such as the commentary on the Shamsīya, which was written
in 886/1481–82, can be dated with relative precision. Others have a terminus ad quem
(Khwaja ʿUbayd Allāh Samarqandī died in 1490 and the Sāvajīs were killed in the early
1490s). The latest seems to be a single letter to Shah Ismāʿīl, who was clearly riding a wave
of military victories when Maybudī wrote him.
17 The use of Turkic and Mongol words is minimal: ṭughrā (MUN, 239, 245), suyūrghāl (174)
urdū (166, 168).
18 They correspond neatly to the divisions of Jāmī’s correspondence established by Urun-
baev: personal letters, petitions on behalf of the subject population and scholars, and
encouragement of government leaders to establish law and order. Jāmī, Pis’ma, 32–35.
10 Chapter 1
popular literary genre in Maybudī’s day. Sometimes they served as handbooks

for bureaucrats, reference tools in the writing of letters to various functionaries
and state dignitaries. Prime examples of that type are the Ṣubḥ al-a⁠ʾshā of al-
Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Qalqashandī (d. 821/1418) and Kamāl al-Dīn
Ḥusayn Vāʿiẓ Kāshifī’s (d. 910/1504–05) Makhzan al-inshāʾ. Others, while also
intended to serve as models of style, were of a more purely literary nature and
it is to that category that Maybudī’s Munsha⁠ʾāt belongs. Other examples are the
Farāʾid al-Ghiyāthī of Jalāl al-Dīn Yūsuf Ahl (d. ca. 870/1466), the Munsha⁠ʾāt of
Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī (d. 858/1454), the three collections of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
Jāmī’s letters, the Sharafnāma-yi shāhī of ʿAbd Allāh Marvārīd (d. 948/1541),
and the Nāma-yi nāmī of Khvāndamīr (d. ca. 941/1535).19
The main reasons for the collection and copying of letters by the educated
elites were three.20 First, the celebrity of the author encouraged their preserva-
tion. Not all of Jāmī’s letters were models of composition, but they were kept
for their associations with a model writer and spiritual authority. Hundreds of
letters by Jāmī have been preserved, some being little more than business
memos.21 Although he slipped into obscurity in all but academic circles,
Maybudī was also an influential thinker and political figure in his own day.
Second, the renown of his correspondents ensured the preservation of the
letters. Almost without exception, they are significant political, literary, and
spiritual figures of the late fifteenth-century Ak Koyunlu and Timurid realms.
Again, a comparison with a Timurid writer shows how selectivity operated. Of
the sixteen correspondents represented in ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī’s (d. 906/1501) Al-
bum, all but a few can be identified easily in a variety of sources as influential
men. Khwaja ʿUbayd Allāh b. Maḥmūd Aḥrār (d. 895/1490), the famous Naqsh-
bandi shaykh of Transoxiana, and his sons figure as prominently there as they
do in Maybudī’s correspondence.
Finally, the style of the letters would have been a reason to keep them. One
of Davānī’s letters was published in a twentieth-century Iranian journal as an
example of pure Persian prose, devoid of any Arabic terms or grammatical
structures.22 As for Maybudī’s letters, among them are tours de force of quota-
tions from the Qurʾān, in which one verse follows another to create a coherent,
19 Jāmī, Pis’ma, 5–6, 8.

20 These ideas developed from a discussion with Prof. Heshmat Moayyad.
21 Urunbaev notes how the letters in Navāʾī’s Album are less florid than those in the
Munsha⁠ʾāt, which are interpreted as more typical examples of Persian epistolary prose.
Jāmī, Pis’ma, 31.
22 Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Asʿad Davānī, “Maktūb-i tārīkhī,” Armaghān 13 (1311/1932): 215–
16.
Introduction 11
communicative whole.23 Others open with conceits on the word salām (‘peace’
or ‘greetings’), contain verses by Maybudī and famous poets, or convey gra-
cious sentiments. A letter to a bureaucrat in the financial administration inter-
laces monetary terminology throughout its salutation, while one to a mystic or
a scholar uses a lexicon appropriate to their concerns.24 The letters presume a
level of literary and intellectual sophistication that flatters both sender and
recipient.
Aside from the body of writings left by Maybudī, another reason his biogra-
phy is an attractive project is that a number of local histories of Yazd were
written within reasonable proximity of his life. They have all been edited and
published by Īraj Afshār. The Tārīkh-i Yazd by Sayyid Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad b.
Ḥasan Jaʿfarī (9th/15th c.) was written during the upheavals connected with the
end of Shāhrukh’s reign (850/1447). The history was continued by Aḥmad b.
Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī Kātib (after 862/1458) in his Tārīkh-i jadīd-i Yazd, which takes
events up to 862/1458 and records the establishment of Jahānshāh Kara Koyun-
lu’s (r. 843–72/1439–67) authority in Yazd at that time. It is particularly useful
concerning Muʿīn al-Dīn Maybudī, the qadi’s father. A third history, the Jāmiʿ-i
Mufīdī of Muḥammad Mufīd Mustawfī Bāfqī (wrote ca. 1090/1679), although
late, used many materials, including the two previous histories, and provides
much valuable information about distinguished scholars, saints, and govern-
ment officials of Yazd.25
Additional information on the life and times of Maybudī can be culled from
narrative sources, biographical dictionaries, and the dīvāns of and writings
about other poets. Since the major historians for the period, such as Faḍl Allāh
b. Rūzbihān Khunjī (d. 927/1521), Ghiyāth al-Dīn Khvāndamīr, and Ḥasan Beg
Rūmlū (fl. 986/1578) have been discussed in detail elsewhere,26 I shall say no
more than that they help to establish the context in which Maybudī lived, but
23 MUN, 135, 182. Maybudī uses Qurʾānic quotations throughout his letters, such that Furūhar
devotes an index to them. Using a series of Qurʾānic allusions is “a rhetorical practice
known as iqtibās, where scribes playfully insert small excerpts of revealed scripture into
literary or political textual contexts.” Colin Mitchell, “Am I my brother’s keeper?: Negotiat-
ing corporate sovereignty and divine absolutism in sixteenth-century Turco-Iranian poli-
tics,” in New Perspectives on Safavid Iran: Empire and Society, ed. Colin P. Mitchell (London:
Routledge, 2011), 44.
24 MUN, 226 for letter to financial official.
25 For a thorough analysis of this work, see Derek J. Mancini-Lander, “Memory on the
Boundaries of Empire: Narrating Place in the Early Modern Local Historiography of Yazd”
(PhD. diss., University of Michigan, 2012).
26 John E. Woods, The Aqquyunlu: Clan, Confederation, Empire (Salt Lake City: The University
of Utah Press, 1999), 219–30; Faḍl Allāh b. Rūzbihān Khunjī-Iṣfahānī, Tārīkh-i ʿĀlam-ārā-yi
12 Chapter 1
that they rarely mention him by name. His death received more attention than
any other aspect of his career, primarily in Qazvīnī and the Jahān-gushāʾī-yi
Khāqān-i Ṣāḥibqirān, a late seventeenth-century work that used to be known
as the ‘Ross Anonymous.’ Even though the chronicles largely ignore Maybudī’s
career, they do recount episodes which offer parallels to events in his life. In
the search for additional stories with narrative similarities, regional histories
for Shiraz, Isfahan, Kirman, and other nearby areas can be a gold mine.
Other works frequently based on regional criteria are the biographical dic
tionaries, another genre that must be treated with sensitivity for its biases and
selective arrangement of material. Although Maybudī had the pen name
(takhalluṣ) ‘Manṭiqī’ (the Logician), he apparently was not known as an excep-
tional poet and is not found in contemporary biographies of poets, such as that
by Dawlatshāh. He does appear in later works on poets and in dictionaries of
scholars. The story of his appointment by Sultan Yaʿqūb to the qadiship of Yazd
is found in Sayyid Nūr Allāh Najm al-Dīn Shushtarī’s (d. 1019/1610) Majālis al-
muʾminīn, a biographical dictionary of Shiʿis. Maybudī is not mentioned in
Taşköprüzade’s (d. 968/1561) Shaqāʾiq al-nuʿmānīya, although the book in-
cludes several of Davānī’s other students, lists the titles of works written by late
fifteenth-century scholars, and thus offers material for comparison. Additional
information appears in hagiographies, in particular the Rashaḥāt ʿayn al-ḥayāt,
written by Fakhr al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Ḥusayn Kāshifī Ṣafī (fl. 938/1532) about the pow-
erful eastern mystic, Khwaja Aḥrār, and in the Manāqib-i Ibrāhīm-i Gülşeni by
Muḥyī-i Gülşeni, which concerns Shaykh Ibrāhīm Gülşeni (d. 940/1534), an in-
fluential mystic in the Ak Koyunlu court who became a prominent figure in
Egypt after the Ottoman conquest in 1517.
Sources that help define the physical extent of Maybudī’s world rather than
its inhabitants are geographies. Simply to know how long the trip from Yazd to
Shiraz lasted tells us a little more about the qadi, who made that journey sev-
eral times. Concerning his correspondence, the detail of how long a letter
might have taken to reach Tabriz from Yazd adds another piece to the puzzle of
his life. If an army marched through Yazd, it is useful to determine if they fol-
lowed a well-worn military route or a path taken only under extraordinary cir-
cumstances. Among the geographies used are those of Ibn Ḥawqal and Iṣṭakhrī
of the tenth century and Yāqūt of the thirteenth. Despite their early dates, the
geographers offer background information and relatively fixed matters such as
dates.
Amīnī, Persian text edited by John E. Woods with the abridged English translation by
Vladimir Minorsky, (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1992); articles in EI 2.
Introduction 13
Finally, the accounts of foreign travelers provide some pertinent details. The
Italian envoys to Uzūn Ḥasan’s court, Joseph Barbaro and Ambrogio Contarini,
offer rich descriptions of the political situation in the Ak Koyunlu realm and
include passing references to the manufacture of precious textiles and swords
in Yazd, leaving another clue about Maybudī’s environment. Such random tid-
bits taken in combination help to refine the picture of the qadi’s life and times.
As for secondary sources, it can be seen from the bibliography how difficult
it is to offer a complete and coherent listing of relevant works because a per-
son’s life encompasses so many aspects of history that it is hard to determine
precisely which fields to cover. An understanding of Maybudī’s life must in-
clude the political history of the Ak Koyunlu, Timurids, and Safavids, at the
very least, that of Yazd in particular and more generally of Iraq and Fars, medi-
eval urban history, Islamic education, qadiship as a profession, the role of the
ulama in Iran, medieval philosophy, esotericism, medicine, poetry, Sufism, re-
lations between Shiʿis and Sunnis, and much more. The choice of books to list
must necessarily be scattershot because excellent work has been done on each
of those subjects, although often concerning other places and time periods. In
some cases the research has been quite extensive and in all cases thought-pro-
voking.
14 Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Early Years and Education
The difficulties involved in studying the childhood and adolescence of any in-
dividual in pre-modern times are acute in the case of the medieval Islamic
world. Rarely does a writer reveal anything about his youth, and those scat-
tered instances make it hazardous to risk generalizations. Qadi Ḥusayn
Maybudī is no exception. Nonetheless, information about the world in which
he grew up does exist, however aggravating in its paucity. Marshaling those
facts allows us to draw a sketch of the young man, if not a detailed portrait.
When further research permits a comparison of that sketch with those of his
contemporaries, we can better appreciate the social sphere in which the Ira-
nian provincial elite developed during the fifteenth century. The three most
fruitful subjects of study for Maybudī’s early years are the geographic and po-
litical environment in which he matured, his family, and his scholarship, which
offers evidence of his education.
Yazd From Pre-Islamic Times to the Mongols
Contemporary references to Qadi Ḥusayn’s name often include either ‘Maybudī’

or ‘Yazdī’ to indicate his place of origin, and it was with the city of Yazd that
historians generally associated him. Located in the medieval geographers’
third clime, at the heart of a nexus of roads that crossed the desert to Khurasan,
Yazd was an ancient city. According to legend, Alexander the Great founded
the city of Katha on Yazd’s present site. The name ‘Yazd’ was adopted under the
Sassanians, under whose rule the city was known for its fire temples. Early Is-
lamic geographers record the persistence of the fire temples and Zoroastrian-
ism in general well into Islamic times.
Yazd continued to grow and change in character. It acquired Islamic monu-
ments, the most important being the congregational mosque built in the latter
half of the eleventh century, as well as a wall and moat.1 Sometimes considered
part of Fars and sometimes of ʿIraq-i ʿAjam, it seems to have been subordinate
1 For a thorough analysis of Yazd’s status in the post-Mongol period, see Mancini-Lander,
“Memory on the Boundaries of Empire,” 8–9, 13–15. For the mosque, see Renata Holod-Tretiak,
“The Monuments of Yazd, 1300–1450: Architecture, Patronage, and Setting” (PhD. diss., Harvard
University, 1972), 15–16. Yazd was fortified in 432/1040–41. Holod-Tretiak., 10, n. 5.

to Istakhr at least until the Mongol invasions. Writers of the thirteenth century
and later emphasized the area’s agricultural prosperity and important silk in-
dustry. Qazwīnī (d. 682/1283), for example, describes Yazd in Mongol times as a
well-populated area producing many cereals and fruits and states that skilled
craftsmen in the silk brocade business produced enough to export their wares
to other regions.2 One reason for the health of its agriculture was an extensive
system of canals, essential in a dry climate where the average annual precipita-
tion is 67.5 mm., most of that falling in the winter.3 Another feature of the city
was the renown of its learned men. Abū al-Fidāʾ (d. 733/1333) remarks that
many scholars came from Yazd, as well as from Maybud.4
As the remarks about agriculture suggest, most often the name ‘Yazd’ refers
to a general region, rather than just the city itself. Seldom is the city discussed
in isolation from its surrounding villages. One of those subordinate towns was
Maybud, presumably Maybudī’s birthplace. Since pre-Islamic times, Maybud
was a relatively large village within the sphere of Yazd. According to legend, it
was built by a commander of Yazdigird II (r. 438/9–457 ce).5 The early geogra-
phers paid it less attention than they did Yazd, frequently just listing it among
the villages in the province of Istakhr, along with Abarquh, Na⁠ʾin, and others.
Yāqūt gives the most complete information about it, noting that it had a for
tified citadel and that the historian and hadith scholar, ʿAbd al-Rashīd b. ʿAlī
al-Maybudhī, who studied in Isfahan and Baghdad, came from there. The re-
gional histories of the fifteenth century provide more details, Kātib asserting
that most of the people of Maybud were happy, talented, literate, rich, hon-
ored, and lucky. Just as it was subordinate to Yazd, in turn twenty-four vilāyats
were dependent on it when he wrote.6
2 Zakariyā b. Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd Qazwīnī, Āthār al-bilād wa-akhbār al-ʿibād (Beirut: Dār
Ṣādir, 1969), 282; Abū al-Qāsim Ibn Ḥawqal, Kitāb Ṣūrat al-arḍ, ed. J.H. Kramers, Bibliotheca
Geographorum Arabicorum, vol. 2 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967), 299, in which textile exports re-
ceive mention. See also Abū Isḥāq al-Fārisī Iṣṭakhrī, Kitāb Masālik wa-al-mamālik, ed. M.J. de
Goeje, Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum, vol. 1 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967), 153, for exports
of cotton cloth and 214, for textile exports.
3 Holod-Tretiak, “The Monuments of Yazd,” 8.
4 Abū al-Fidāʾ, Géographie d’Aboulfeda [Taqwīm al-buldān], ed. M. Reinaud and M. de Slane
(Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1840), 331. Abū al-Ḥasan Muḥammad al-Yazdī is given as an example
by Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān, ed. F. Wüstenfeld (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus for the Deutsche
Morgenländische Gesellschaft, 1924), 4:1017–18.
5 Jaʿfarī, 29. Although Kātib gives that legend, he later says it is more likely that Shah Qubād b.
Fīrūz built Maybud after the recovery there of his son from a serious illness. Kātib, 30, 38. The
town’s name is written both Maybudh and Maybud.
6 Kātib, 38–41.
16 Chapter 2
While the region as a whole apparently prospered under the Il-Khanids

(654–754/1256–1353), the Mongol rulers of Iran, Maybud benefited specifically
from Muzaffarid (713–95/1314–93) patronage in the early fourteenth century.7
That dynasty chose it as their burial city and sponsored much construction.
Sharaf al-Dīn Muẓaffar was the first of the family to distinguish himself in the
Mongol armies. His base during an expedition against Arab raiders in the Kir-
man area was Shabankara, from whence he sent builders to Maybud to build a
hall (khāna-yi ʿālī) and a madrasa at his burial site.8 His son, Mubāriz al-Dīn
Muḥammad (r. 713–59/1314–58), successfully maintained his family’s claims in
the region, opposing an attempt by the famous vizier Rashīd al-Dīn (d. 718/1318)
to place his lands within the jurisdiction of the central administration—that
is, to make them dīvānī. The Il-Khanid ruler at the time, Öljeytü (r. 703–16/1304–
16), granted Mubāriz al-Dīn the land and he returned to Maybud. Due to his
military prowess, he was able to have the grant reconfirmed by Öljeytü’s suc-
cessor, Abū Saʿīd (r. 717–36/1317–35). Upon the latter’s death, he took outright
possession of Maybud and Yazd.9 Later descendants established villages in
the region of Maybud, as well as around other regional centers.10 By the
740/1340s, Mubāriz al-Dīn divided his time between Shiraz and Isfahan, while
Yazd fell to a junior member of the dynasty.11
Although its relative importance to the Muzaffarids declined, Yazd contin-
ued to grow through the end of the fourteenth century, expanding well beyond
the city wall. Suburban quarters mushroomed outside the ancient settlement,
each with its own centers, mosques, and educational institutions. The Tārīkh-i
jadīd-i Yazd mentions about forty madrasas built during the Muzaffarid and
Timurid (771–912/1370–1506) periods.12 Patronage in those architectural en-
deavors came from both the Muzaffarid dynasty and local families.13
7 Jean Aubin, “Deux sayyids de Bam au XVe siècle. Contribution à l’histoire de l’iran timou-
ride,” Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Geistes- u. Sozial-
wiss. Klasse, no. 7 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1956), 458. Holod-Tretiak writes that few
traces of the Il-Khanids remain in Yazd, “although it apparently profited by being within
the imperial economic and political sphere.” “The Monuments of Yazd,” 73.
8 He died in 719/1319. Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:97, 107. For the burial of Mubāriz al-Dīn Muḥammad
in 765/1363–64, see 1:116.
9 Jaʿfarī, 47–48; Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:101.
10 Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:121–22.
12 Īraj Afshār, Yādgārhā-yi Yazd, Silsila-yi Intishārāt-i Anjuman-i Āthār-i Millī, no. 68 (Teh-
ran: Anjuman-i Āthār-Millī, 1368), 1:28.
The Timurid Period
Tīmūr’s (d. 807/1405) invasions put an end to Muzaffarid power. The Muzaffa-
rids offered their submission during Tīmūr’s Three Year campaign (788–
91/1386–89), but when revolts broke out later in the area under their control,
the family was suppressed.14 One of Tīmūr’s grandsons, Pīr Muḥammad b.
Jahāngīr (d. 808/1406), was directed to help another grandson, Pīr Muḥammad
b. ʿUmar Shaykh (d. 812/1410), quell the rebellion in Yazd in 798/1396.15 The city
fell after a siege of four months. During the unrest more than forty notables
were killed, including the former vizier of the last Muzaffarid prince, Amir
Sayyid Ṣadr al-Dīn Qanbar, without any reason being given by the sources. Ap-
proximately three thousand people died from sickness and starvation as the
city was besieged, while others were executed once Pīr Muḥammad captured
the city. The Shaykh al-Islām, one Taqī al-Dīn Dādā Muḥammad, did succeed
in obtaining protection for some.16
After Tīmūr’s youngest son, Shāhrukh (r. 807–850/1405–1447), succeeded his
father on the throne and consolidated his power in the east, he put his mater-
nal uncle (khālū), Muḥammad Darvīsh, in charge of Yazd.17 The most influen-
tial amir at the time and the one who eventually obtained control of the region
was Jalāl al-Dīn Chaqmāq Shāmī, whose name crops up in the histories until
850/1447. He and his wife, Bībī Fāṭima, were active builders of mosques, ma-
drasas, and other charitable institutions, some of which still stood in the sev-
enteenth century.18 Since neither was a native of the region, they brought
influences from the broader Timurid state to the provincial city.19
Since the initial capture of the city, the Timurid government in Herat faced
the danger that the local authority in Isfahan or Shiraz, especially if he were a
14 Beatrice Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989), 71–72, 91.
15 Jaʿfarī, 56–57; Kātib, 88–91; Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:162. The last is the only author not to men-
tion Pīr Muḥammad b. Jahāngīr.
16 Holod-Tretiak, “The Monuments of Yazd,” 96; Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:163.
17 Jaʿfarī, 63; Kātib, 111; Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:168.
18 Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:169–70. Amir Chaqmāq deserves further study. In 838/1435 he and
Ghiyāth al-Dīn Ghunāshirīn of Kirman negotiated on behalf of Shāhrukh with Jahānshāh
Kara Koyunlu. Tāj al-Dīn Ḥasan Ibn Shihāb Shāʿir Munajjim, Jāmiʿ al-tavārīkh-i Ḥasanī, ed.
Ḥ.M. Ṭabāṭabāʾī and Ī. Afshār (Karachi: Institute of Central and West Asian Studies, Uni-
versity of Karachi, 1987), 45. In 839/1435–36, he was active in the struggle against Iskandar
b. Kara Yūsuf Kara Koyunlu, in battle against whom his brother Salmān was killed. Again,
Yazd appears to have been a secure military base. Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 424, n. 4.
18 Chapter 2
royal prince, would try to expand his power and territory. Around 1405, Pīr
Muḥammad b. ʿUmar Shaykh, while keeping the Friday prayer and coinage
(khuṭba and sikka) in Shāhrukh’s name, summoned the commanders of royal
garrisons (dārūghas) from Yazd and Abarquh to Shiraz and took the keys to
their treasuries.20 Yazd was also caught up in the quarrels between Pīr
Muḥammad in Fars and his brother Iskandar, whom he appointed governor of
the district of Yazd in 808/1405–06 and who demonstrated unsettling ambi-
tions for Kirman, at the very least.21 In Ṣafar 811/July 1408, another Timurid,
Abā Bakr b. Mīrānshāh b. Tīmūr (d. 811/1408), who had been driven from Az-
arbayjan by Kara Yūsuf Kara Koyunlu (d. 822/1420), camped outside Yazd, since
the governor forbade him entry, while he awaited a reply to his request for the
governorship from his cousin, Pīr Muḥammad. The latter refused his appeal,
claiming that the district of Yazd did not provide sufficient revenue to support
Abā Bakr’s troops.22 Thus, in both the cases of Iskandar and Abā Bakr, Yazd was
seen as a potential launching pad for wider territorial gains. Circumstances did
not favor the princes, but their plans give some indication of the district’s pos-
sibilities.
While Istakhr was no longer the dominant urban center, Yazd remained
subordinate to the larger cities of Fars, namely Isfahan and Shiraz. In addition
to the regular payment of taxes, its three principal functions for the Timurid
government were to raise special sums for particular occasions, to serve as a
stopping place on one of the routes from Fars to Khurasan, and to send troops
upon demand.23 When Shāhrukh ordered the decoration of Isfahan in honor
of ambassadors from the Mamluk sultan al-Ashraf Sayf al-Dīn Barsbay (r.
825–41/1422–37) on their way to Herat, 25,000 kepekī dinars were levied on that
20 Rosemarie Quiring-Zoche, Isfahan im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert: Ein Beitrag zur persischen
Stadtgeschichte, Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, Bd. 54 (Freiburg: Schwarz, 1980), 18.
V. Minorsky writes that dārūgha means ‘chief’ in Mongol and was “the lord’s official (bai-
liff) stationed in a particular village. In towns dārūgha had many other special functions.”
“A Soyurghal of Qāsim b. Jahāngīr Aq-qoyunlu (903/1498),” BSOS IX/4 (1938): 950.
21 Jaʿfarī, 59, 164; Kātib, 92; Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 398, n. 1. According to Aubin, Iskandar had
a personal interest in the region because Tīmūr had given Maybud to Bīkīsī Sulṭān, his
favorite granddaughter, who married Iskandar in 1397. For the quarrels, see Ibn Shihāb,
784–85 (1987), 14–17 (ms.); Jaʿfarī, 59, 164; Kātib, 95. Iskandar was an active builder during
his tenure in Yazd: Kātib, 92, 205, 209–10, 218, 227, 282; Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:134, 165.
22 Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 402.
23 See Ibn Shihāb for the raising of troops from Yazd, 17, 42. Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 414 (for
819/1416), 425 (for 840/1437).
city, with similar orders going to Shiraz, Yazd, and Kashan.24 On at least one
occasion its position on an east-west route enabled the city to play a role in
Timurid family affairs. When the princess Khvānzāda journeyed to the Holy
Cities of Medina and Mecca, she passed through Yazd, which induced Iskandar
b. ʿUmar Shaykh (786–818/1384–1415) to return in haste from a raid on Kirman
to his center of government.25
Beginning just prior to Shāhrukh’s death in 850/1447 and lasting until Uzūn
Ḥasan Ak Koyunlu’s accession to power in Fars in 873/1469, Yazd endured a
difficult period as more power struggles erupted. In Muḥarram 850/April 1446
Sulṭān-Muḥammad b. Bāysunghur (d. 855/1452), a grandson of Shāhrukh,
openly revolted against his grandfather, who then mounted a campaign against
him. Sulṭān-Muḥammad captured Isfahan and proceeded to send envoys to
other areas of Persian Iraq, such as Yazd, Abarquh, Kirman, Kashan, Natanz
and Ardistan in order to establish his authority. Amir Shams al-Dīn b. Jalāl al-
Dīn Chaqmāq, who was governing Yazd during his father’s absence in Herat,
was among those who accepted Sulṭān-Muḥammad’s authority.26 Shāhrukh
vanquished the main body of the rebels by Ramaḍān 850/November 1446 and
had several notables of Isfahan executed for their detrimental influence on the
prince, who meanwhile had escaped to Luristan.27 As for Yazd, Jalāl al-Dīn
Chaqmāq was sent from Herat to secure the city and bring his son into line.
From Yazd he continued on to Shāhrukh’s camp.28
While still in western Iran, Shāhrukh died.29 His death meant that Sulṭān-
Muḥammad was able to achieve through the vicissitudes of fate what he could
not through military skill. Some military commanders, such as Jalāl al-Dīn
Chaqmāq, immediately declared their allegiance to him.30 Not content with
the provinces of Fars and Iraq, Sulṭān-Muḥammad set his sights on fighting the
Turkmen in the north and on seizing the throne in Herat. Once he re-estab-
24 Quiring-Zoche, Isfahan im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, 33. See Gerhard Doerfer, Türkische und
Mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1963–75), 3:580–81 for
“kepekī” and further reading on the subject.
25 Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 400, n. 6.
26 Kātib, 236; Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:188; Abū Bakr Ṭihrānī, Kitāb-i Diyārbakrīya, ed. N. Lugal and
F. Sümer, Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, seri 3, no. 7/7a (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1962–
64), 2:286, 317.
27 Kātib, 242, 245; Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:189, 195; ʿAbd al-Razzāq b. Isḥāq Samarqandī, Maṭlaʿ-i
saʿdayn va majmaʿ-i baḥrayn, Leningradskii Vostochnyi Institut AN SSR ms. c 443, 412a-b;
Quiring-Zoche, Isfahan im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, 37.
28 Kātib, 238.
29 Kātib, 243; Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:191.
30 Kātib, 244.
20 Chapter 2
lished himself in Isfahan, young men came from the surrounding regions, in-
cluding Yazd, to join his army.31 The cities of Fars and Iraq, among them Yazd,
were also to be the source of his economic power. They were ordered to pro-
duce the money to pay his military expenses, despite the pleas of local officials
to spare a population that was unable to come up with substantial sums. Seven
hundred kepekī tomans were levied on Yazd and ruthless tax collectors sent to
raise the amount. They accomplished their task in only one month.32 Sulṭān-
Muḥammad urgently needed both men and money for his military ventures
because he had undertaken a campaign in Khurasan, ostensibly on behalf of
his brother ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla (d. 865/1460). At the same time, he received news of
the looming threat of Jahānshāh Kara Koyunlu, who was winning battles in the
north.33 It was not long, however, before yet another brother, Abū al-Qāsim
Bābur (r. 853–61/1449–57), one more participant in the struggle for power,
marched west, vanquished Sulṭān-Muḥammad at Chinaran, near Astarabad,
on 15 Dhū al-ḥijja 855/8 January 1452, and had him executed.34
Abū al-Qāsim Bābur continued to march west and established himself as
ruler of Fars for four months. When he heard of Jahānshāh’s approach, he
abandoned his plans to control the area and to conquer Iraq, setting out on his
return journey to Khurasan on 16 Rajab 856/2 August 1452.35 On his way he
passed through Yazd, where his troops pillaged for several days.36 Before leav-
ing, he appointed Khalīl Sulṭān b. Muḥammad Jahāngīr b. Muḥammad Sulṭān
b. Jahāngīr b. Tīmūr and Shāhrukh’s grandson through his daughter, as the gov-
ernor (ḥākim) of Yazd.37 Khalīl Sulṭān was apparently unjust in his tax collec-
tion and had ambitions in Fars.38 He was able to hold Shiraz for no more than
31 Ṭihrānī, 2:293–96; Quiring-Zoche, Isfahan im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, 38.

33 Kātib, 257; Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:195, 198.
34 Ibn Shihāb, 63, 139; Kātib, 263; Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:200; Samarqandī, 442b-443b.
35 Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 433; Ibn Shihāb, 88–89; Kātib, 265; Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:201. According
to Samarqandī, 444a, the fact that Abū al-Qāsim Bābur chose to march west through Yazd,
rather than choosing a more northerly route, betrayed to Jahānshāh that he considered
his forces too weak to face the Kara Koyunlu in battle.
36 Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 434; Kātib, 266; Samarqandī, 444a-b. Samarqandī, 445a, mentions
a meeting between Abū al-Qāsim Bābur and Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī, but no pillaging.
37 Ibn Shihāb, 89, indicates that Khalīl Sulṭān was appointed Abū al-Qāsim Bābur’s repre-
sentative in all of Iraq. Kātib, 266; Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:201; Samarqandī, 445b: Yazd is given
as a suyūrghāl; Ṭihrānī, 2:331, 334.; Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 434. See P. Jackson and L. Lock-
hart, eds., The Cambridge History of Iran. vol. 6: The Timurid and Safavid Periods (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 6:106.
38 Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 434; Ibn Shihāb, 89; Kātib, 266, 268; Khalīl Sulṭān was in Fars at the
end of Ramaḍān 856/September 1452.
a week and, upon hearing that Pīr Būdāq b. Jahānshāh (d. 870/1466) had begun
his march on Fars, fled to Kirman. Pīr Būdāq took Shiraz in Ramaḍān 856/Oc-
tober 1452. Meanwhile, Khalīl Sulṭān failed to subdue Kirman (Shawwāl 856/
October-November 1452).39 He returned to besiege Yazd, causing great conster-
nation among the city’s notables in early 857/1453.40 Famine had begun to
spread in the beleaguered city when Pīr Būdāq arrived to save the day, forcing
Khalīl Sulṭān to flee to Khurasan. Before he left two days later, Pīr Būdāq ap-
pointed as vālī Amir Maḥmūd Gerekyarak.
The Kara Koyunlu Period
Thus began Yazd’s period as a Kara Koyunlu city. While all the troop move-
ments and individual rivalries can obscure the view, it is important not to lose
sight of the big political picture. Pīr Būdāq’s arrival in Yazd formed part of the
Kara Koyunlu policy of expansion at the expense of Tīmūr’s descendants who
were struggling for power in the east, thereby leaving their western frontier
vulnerable. By 856/1452 Jahānshāh had conquered Persian Iraq, including Is-
fahan. He subsequently added Fars and Kirman, putting Pīr Būdāq in charge of
the former province.41
Peace did not descend on Yazd with the imposition of Kara Koyunlu rule.
Soon after Pīr Būdāq’s departure, the city was attacked by Khwājaka Mirāk, a
son of Quldarvīsh who had governed Kirman.42 Khwājaka Mirāk and his broth-
er Jāndarvīsh controlled the region between Yazd and the borders of Kirman
and launched raids from their stronghold in Anar.43 When Khwājaka Mirāk
found the city gates shut against him, he pillaged the suburbs for a week. No-
tables who had remained outside the city were dragged off by his forces with-
out provisions, baggage, or pack animals (asbāb/jiḥāt/ūlāq).44 Among them
39 Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 438; Ibn Shihāb, 90–91; Kātib, 269.

40 Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 439; Ibn Shihāb, 114; Kātib, 281; Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:202. According to
Mustawfī Bāfqī, Amīrak Aḥmad, a grandson of Jalāl al-Dīn Chaqmāq, defended the city
against Khalīl Sulṭān. Ibn Shihāb says that Yazd was defended by a Kara Koyunlu amir and
by Quṭb al-Dīn Varzana. For the latter, see Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 433.
41 Walther Hinz, Irans Aufstieg zum Nationalstaat im fünfzehnten Jahrhundert (Berlin: Wal-
ter de Gruyter, 1936), 131–32.
42 Ibn Shihāb, 87: Muẓaffar al-Dīn Khwājaka Mirāk, 856/150: Ghiyāth al-Dīn Khwājaka
Bahādur; Kātib, 270: Amīr Khwājaka; Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:203: Amīr Khwājagī.
43 Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 437; Ibn Shihāb, 87.
44 See Doerfer, 2:102–07 for the Turkish word ūlāq, which passed from meaning ‘relay horse’
to ‘ass,’ ‘donkey,’ and ‘pack animal’ in general.
22 Chapter 2
was Khwaja Quṭb al-Dīn, Qadi Ḥusayn Maybudī’s paternal uncle. The fate of
those men is not recorded, although in the summer of 857/1453 Khwājaka
Mirāk’s stronghold at Anar was delivered to his uncle and the governor of Kir-
man, Yār Aḥmad, who seized all the booty collected at Yazd.45
In 858/1454 famine and inflation swept through the region. Mustawfī Bāfqī
says the reasons for the desperate state of affairs were the passage of armies,
the occurrence of continual calamities, the undermining of agriculture, and
the dispersal of the agricultural population. No level of society remained unaf-
fected as hunger and disease continued to spread. Bread became unavailable
and the people resorted to eating dogs and cats. Many people died each day,
especially the poor, while the rich were reduced to begging as a result of the
high cost of foodstuffs. Ruffians attacked people unawares and ate them.46
In Dhū al-ḥijja 858/November-December 1454 Pīr Būdāq came from Kirman
to Yazd at the invitation of his mother, Khātūn Jān, who was there with her
other son, Muʿizz al-Dīn Yūsuf Bahādur. While in Yazd, Pīr Būdāq appointed
Amir Niẓām al-Dīn Shāh Valī Beg governor (ḥākim), while the kharāj and dīvānī
taxes were to be collected by Amir Jalāl al-Dīn Maqṣūd.47 The implication of
the accounts is that the prince’s mission was to bring relief to the afflicted re-
gion and to appoint administrators to continue his work.
Despite Kara Koyunlu efforts, Yazd’s troubles were not yet over. Tremendous
floods devastated the region in the early spring of 860/1456, after which the
city was burdened with heavy taxes, as will be described in greater detail be-
low. Most of the canals were destroyed, along with many orchards and sixteen
quarters outside the city. The sun did not shine for three days.48 Kātib wrote
that all the signs of the Last Judgment were present. Some thousand tomans of
goods were buried in the mud, not including the property damage: “For a hun-
dred years such destruction will not be rebuilt and its effects will remain
visible.”49 Kātib further remarked that, curiously enough, no one—whether
small or great, old or young—was killed in the flood, but then again no one was
left with more than the clothes on his back.50
45 Ibn Shihāb, 150; Kātib, 270–71; Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:203–04. Whereas Kātib gives the brother’s
name as Quṭb al-Dīn, Mustawfī Bāfqī leaves the brother unnamed and indicates that Quṭb
al-Dīn was a separate individual.
46 Kātib, 271–73; Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:204–05.
47 Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 451, based on Kātib, 274–75. Mustawfī Bāfqī puts his visit in the
spring of 859/1455 and has him stay in Yazd for about a month, 1:206.
48 Kātib, 276–78; Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:188–209.
49 Kātib, 278.
50 Mustawfī Bāfqī disagrees, 1:183.
Even after such a natural disaster, Yazd faced severe taxation, a possible
characteristic of Kara Koyunlu administration in the region.51 The sources
must be read with a healthy dose of skepticism because most were written by
Ak Koyunlu sympathizers who had little reason to portray their predecessors
and rivals in a favorable light. The Kitāb-i Diyārbakrīya recounts that when Abū
al-Qāsim b. Jahānshāh left Kirman to conquer Iraq, he reached Yazd, was greet-
ed by the two military commanders and, during the ten days that he camped
outside the city, collected the same amount of money that was generally
amassed in two years.52 The same source also says that after Uzūn Ḥasan cap-
tured the Timurid ruler Sulṭān-Abū Saʿīd in 873/1469, he scolded the prisoner
for his greed, drawing a parallel between him and Jahānshāh, in whose time a
donkey-load of pomegranates could not leave Yazd without the royal seal,
clearly obtained for a fee.53
One of the reasons Jahānshāh may have needed money was that he contin-
ued to undertake military campaigns, marching as far as Herat in 862/1458. He
seems to have overextended his reach and was obliged to leave the city to
Sulṭān-Abū Saʿīd in Ṣafar 863/December 1458 and return to Azarbayjan, where
he faced a revolt by his son Ḥasan ʿAlī. At Nishapur, Pīr Būdāq split off from the
main army on his way to Shiraz, for he was governor of Fars, while another son,
Abū Yūsuf, headed to Kirman. When Pīr Būdāq reached Yazd, he launched yet
another insurrection and once again a monetary contribution was imposed on
the city. From Yazd, Pīr Būdāq sent military commanders and tax collectors to
Isfahan, Ruydasht, Natanz, and Ardistan, demanding the presence of the no-
tables of those areas and requiring financial contributions from them.54
The Ak Koyunlu Period
While the Kara Koyunlu were faced with internal dissension, Uzūn Ḥasan Ak
Koyunlu’s star was in the ascendant. Successful in his long and steady efforts to
51 See Hinz, 103. When Kirman was afflicted with a terrible famine in 820/1417, the tamghā
was suppressed and Shāhrukh remitted to the subject population half of the regular taxes.
A decree abolished customary rights over the peasants which had been established in the
course of time. Thus, examples did exist of sparing the populace after a natural disaster.
Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 422–23. For tamghā, see Doerfer, 2:554–65. Originally meaning
‘brand,’ it came to designate customs duties in particular, and non-Qurʾānic taxes in gen-
eral.
52 Ṭihrānī, 2:448.
53 Ṭihrānī, 2:491.
54 Ṭihrānī, 2:356; Jackson, Cambridge History of Iran, 6:164.
24 Chapter 2
establish his predominance among the Ak Koyunlu, he went on to dispose of

Jahānshāh in 872/1467 and Sulṭān-Abū Saʿīd Tīmūrī in 873/1469.55 He then en-
gineered campaigns to bring Persian Iraq, Fars, Kirman, and even parts of
Khurasan under his sway. He entrusted the province of Persian Iraq with its
capital at Isfahan to his second son, Ughurlū Muḥammad (d. 881/1477). The
latter conquered Fars and Kirman later that same year and executed Jahānshāh’s
last heir, Abū Yūsuf.56 The status of Fars, with its capital in Shiraz, initially re-
mained ambiguous, and the province may have been temporarily annexed to
the crown domains in Azarbayjan. Fars was later given to Sulṭān-Khalīl, Uzūn
Ḥasan’s eldest son. During his short reign (r. 882–83/1478), the province be-
came the appanage of the heir-apparent, his eldest son Alvand. In turn, Yaʿqūb’s
eldest son, Bāysunghur, was designated to receive the revenues of the province
during his father’s reign.57 Based on those reports, Fars appears to have filled a
specific role in the maintenance of the Ak Koyunlu ruling house.
During the Ak Koyunlu period, Yazd enjoyed relative peace and prosperity.
According to the Italian travelers Joseph Barbaro and Ambrogio Contarini,
Yazd’s primary interest to the reigning dynasty was its textile manufactures.58
Concerning his 879/1474 visit to the court of Uzūn Ḥasan, Barbaro wrote that
the ruler:
… had several garments (panno) brought out, made of gold cloth, silk,
and Damascene camlet, lined with silk or extremely fine ermine and
sable furs, saying: “These are some garments from our region of Yazd
(Ies) …”59
Later the Italian visited the city itself, which he described as follows:
… we came to Yazd (Iex), a town of artificers, who make silks, cotton tex-
tiles, camlets, and similar things. Some may think that what I say is not
55 Sulṭān-Abū Saʿīd had come west to try to regain territory lost to the Kara Koyunlu.
56 Ṭihrānī, 2:524–29; Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 100; Jackson, Cambridge History of Iran, 6:173.
57 Woods, 257–58.
58 Woods, 134, for the importance of the silk trade under Yaʿqūb, and 272, n. 50, for a list of
gifts presented by Yaʿqūb’s envoy to Bāyazīd II, which was largely composed of “brocades,
silks, and satins of Yazdi manufacture.”
59 Josafa Barbaro and Ambrogio Contarini, I Viaggi in Persia degli Ambasciatori Veneti Bar-
baro e Contarini, ed. L. Lockhart, R. Morozzo della Rocca, M.F. Tiepolo, Istituto Poligrafico
dello Stato, Il Nuovo Ramusio, vol. 7 (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1973), 7:126; idem, A Nar-
rative of Italian Travels in Persia in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, trans. C. Grey, in
Travels to Tana and Persia (London: repr., Hakluyt Society, 1st series, no. 49, 1873), 59.
true. It is, however, the truth, as those who have seen it know. The town
has a circumference of five miles, is walled, and has extensive suburbs.
Nonetheless, almost all [the inhabitants] are weavers and fashioners of
different kinds of silks which came from Astrabad (Strava) and Azi, and
from areas towards Chagatay (Zagatai), towards the sea of Baku (Bachu);
the best silks come to Yazd (Iex), which then furnishes finished goods to
a great part of India, Persia, Chagatay (Zagatai), Chim and Machim (Icime
Macim) [China], part of Cathay (Cataio) [Manchuria and northern
China], Bursa, and of Turkey (Turchia). He who wants to buy good gar-
ments (panni) of Soria and other beautiful and well-made clothes should
take these …60
Barbaro continues with a description of the combination entrepôt and inn

(funduq) outside of town and the distinctive method of commerce engaged in
by Yazdi merchants. He claims to have heard that for its commercial needs, the
city daily required two sumpters of silk, which equalled ten thousand weight,
suggesting an extremely lively trade. He urges his reader to guess how much
camlet and fustian is produced in addition to the silk. Contarini also mentions
the many light articles of silk from Yazd that passed through Tabriz in caravans
bound for Aleppo when he visited Tabriz in 879/September, 1474.61 In June of
the next year Uzūn Ḥasan showed him the gifts that had been chosen for the
patriarch of Antioch, the Doge of Venice, and the Duke of Muscovy. Among
them were manufactures from Yazd, two swords and two turbans (tulumbanti),
described as “all rather light items.”62
Yazd’s industry placed it in a special position under Uzūn Ḥasan. Not only
did it receive royal commissions, but it also merited a special mark of favor
in 875/1470–71. By imperial decree, the pilgrimage litter (maḥmil-i ḥajj) was
60 Barbaro and Contarini, ed. Lockhart, 7:140 and notes on 287 for the identification of place
names; trans. Grey, 73. On 7:141 Shiraz is described as being twenty miles in circumfer-
ence.
61 Barbaro and Contarini, ed. Lockhart, 7:194; trans. Grey, 127.
62 Barbaro and Contarini, ed. Lockhart, 7:201; trans. Grey, 136. Based on the above and on the
number of military campaigns that affected Yazd, it is difficult to agree with Holod-Tre-
tiak’s statement about the city in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: “Standing amid
the sand dunes at the edge of the desert, Yazd remained a quiet by-water, isolated from
the main trade routes and escaping the major invasions.” “The Monuments of Yazd,” 2. It
may not have been in the heart of things, but the local histories suggest that the natives
considered their city anything but quiet. See Ṭihrānī, 2:294, 323, 325, 445 and Aubin for
Yazd as a stop on the Khurasan route as Timurids and the Kara Koyunlu vied for control
over Fars. “Deux sayyids,” 410.
26 Chapter 2
decorated in Yazd before proceeding to Tabriz. One of the prominent men of

the city, Sayyid Niʿmat Allāh al-Thānī, led it to Qum where Uzūn Ḥasan greeted
it with the prince Maqṣūd Beg, amirs, viziers, all the army, and the natives of
the city.63 Uzūn Ḥasan’s brother, Uvays Beg (d. 880/1475), was then appointed
leader of the pilgrimage (mīr-i ḥajj).64
It is difficult to find information specifically on Yazd under later Ak Koyunlu
rulers, but odd bits and pieces suggest that the city continued to enjoy some
prominence. In his correspondence, Maybudī mentions that Yazd is a “big city,”
the size of which imposed a heavy workload on him.65 A coin minted in Yazd
under Yaʿqūb in 892/1487 indicates that a royal mint operated there.66 When
dynastic rivalries and conflicts among the nomadic military elite led to the
disintegration of Ak Koyunlu authority after Yaʿqūb’s death, Yazd was under
the control of various local governors, including Murād b. Dānā Khalīl, a gover-
nor of the city who fled to the Timurid court in 908/1503.67 The story of Yazd
will resume with the events surrounding Maybudī’s death, which is discussed
in Chapter 5.
Maybudī’s Family
Growing up in this city of textile manufactures and fruit production, Maybudī

belonged to the privileged elite. The origin of his family and its wealth remains
obscure and the first member of the family to appear in the local histories was
the qadi’s father, Khwaja Muʿīn al-Dīn Maybudī.68 He is mentioned in the
63 See Chapter 4 for a discussion of the two letters sent to Sayyid Niʿmat Allāh b. Shaykh
Ẓahīr al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Shāh Ḥabīb al-Dīn Muḥibb Allāh b. Shaykh Khalīl Allāh b. Shāh Niʿmat
Allāh.
64 Ṭihrānī, 2:553–54. This episode parallels an occurrence under Shāhrukh, who visited Yazd
in 1415–16. He designated Ghiyāth al-Dīn Ḥāfiẓ Rāzī (d. 825/1422), the vizier of Iskandar b.
ʿUmar Shaykh, to carry the cloth, woven in Yazd, for the covering of the Kaʿba. Kātib,
148–49. Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 390, n. 1. For Ḥāfiẓ Rāzī, see Ibn Shihāb, 14–15, where he is
called Ḥāfiẓ Ra’ī.
65 MUN, 162–63.
66 Hinz, 105.
67 Woods, 159, 166. He was a brother of Ayba-Sulṭān, the military strongman who played a
crucial role in the ceaseless fighting that ensued after Sultan Yaʿqūb’s death.
68 Afshār claims that Muʿīn al-Dīn was a scholar of Yazd who wrote the Mavāhib-i ilāhī, a
history of the Muzaffarids: “Qāḍī Mīr Ḥusayn,” 221. The same information is found in Aqā
Buzurg Ṭihrānī, Dharīʿa ilā taṣānīf al-Shīʿa, 1st ed. (Najaf: Maṭbaʿat al-Ghurrā, 1936), 26:141.
According to Storey/Bregel, the history, also known as the Tārīkh-i Muẓaffarī, was written
by Muʿīn al-Dīn b. Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Maybudī (d. 789/1387) and covers events up to
767/1365. C.A. Storey, Persidskaya Literatura: bio-bibliograficheskii obzor, rev. and trans. Yu.
histories as becoming vizier of Yazd when Jahānshāh Kara Koyunlu rose to

power in Azarbayjan, the two Iraqs, and Fars.69 That appointment implies that
he was already a figure of some prominence at the time. Whether he enriched
himself in office or relied on a previously established fortune, Muʿīn al-Dīn
began to commission various building projects. In 859/1455 he had a reservoir
(payābī) built between the madrasa and tomb of Imāmzāda Maʿṣūm (d.
424/1033),70 along with pools, private chambers, and a porch for the complex.
Good water was made to flow in the new quarter. Muʿīn al-Dīn also commis-
sioned the building of a madrasa outside the tomb as a burial place and memo-
rial for his daughter. Only a year later the whole complex suffered much
damage during the 860/1456 floods.71
Apart from his construction and philanthropy, Muʿīn al-Dīn appears in a
curious episode after the floods. A messenger from Jahānshāh’s camp appar-
ently came to Yazd and summoned local notables, including Muʿīn al-Dīn, to
the royal court in Shiraz. The government administrators clearly knew about
the disaster and planned to be lenient about the annual taxes. On the way to
Shiraz, however, the notables quarreled among themselves and ended up pro-
ceeding to the court individually. They did not describe the region’s desolation
and actually accepted a tax increase, which produced a situation “worse than
the destruction of the flood,” according to Kātib.72 Furthermore, the tax collec-
tion was unusually severe, with vengeful collectors “opening the gates of injus-
tice and oppressing the people,” who simply did not have the wherewithal to
pay.73 While the notables were away, a conflict erupted between the Kara
Koyunlu governor and the vālī in Yazd. The upshot was that the governor of
Yazd became Amir Niẓām al-Dīn Ḥājjī Qanbar Jahānshāhī. Only after that, in
861/1457, did the local notables return.74
Back in Yazd, Muʿīn al-Dīn was one of a handful of citizens who undertook
the reconstruction of buildings they had previously commissioned. The Imam-
Bregel (Moscow: Central Department of Oriental Literature, 1972), 2:784. Raḥmānī and
Ashk-Shīrīn also identify the qadi’s father as Muʿīn al-Dīn Jamāl b. Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad,
giving his date of death as 789, and describing him as a student of ʿAḍud al-Dīn Ījī
(d. 756/1355), “bīst u naw”. Clearly the historian and our subject’s father could not have
been the same man. See also Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:185 for the earlier Muʿīn al-Dīn.
69 Mustawfī Bāfqī, 3:165.
70 He was Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-ʿArīḍī b. Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq. Kātib,
151.
71 Kātib, 157.
72 Kātib, 279. Kātib strongly disapproved of the turn of events.
73 Mustawfī Bāfqī indicates that the notables went to Jahānshāh’s court on their own initia-
tive in the hopes of receiving several years’ tax exemption, 1:209.
74 Kātib, 281–82.
28 Chapter 2
zada complex was slowly being restored to its former glory at the time of
Kātib’s writing.75 The Tārīkh-i jadīd-i Yazd also says that Muʿīn al-Dīn wanted to
repair the pulpit (kursī) of the west oratory of the congregational mosque,
which had been installed by the Timurid governor of the city, Shāh Niẓām
Kirmānī, in 819/1416. After its restoration, he and his companions used to sit in
the oratory every Friday before the noon prayer, distribute alms to the poor,
and thereby encourage more people to use the mosque and say their prayers.76
In addition, he arranged to have soup distributed each day to the poor and
unfortunate in other parts of the city. Muʿīn al-Dīn also undertook relief work
outside the city walls. He had the village of Bafruya rebuilt, on a necessarily
different site because the floods had made construction in the original area
impossible. He endowed it with wells, mosques, orchards, shops, and baths.
The scattered peasants returned and the village became known as Muʿinabad.77
Even after aid for flood victims and reconstruction was no longer a pressing
need, Muʿīn al-Dīn continued his philanthropy. In 861/1457, he commissioned
the madrasa of Imāmzāda Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad, which was called the Ma-
drasa-yi Muʿīnī. It boasted a high dome, two stories, and running water. In the
same year, he built a Sufi hostel (khānqāh) in Firuzabad-i Maybud with waqfs
of several villages and farms. The building also had running water, a caretaker,
and a soup kitchen. Kātib says that a suyūrghāl for the hostel was issued at 2000
kepekī dinars for feeding the darvishes. Mustawfī Bāfqī claims that Jahānshāh
gave a suyūrghāl to the supervisor (mutavallī) for the annual receipt of 10,000
kepekī dinars, which were to be spent in feeding the poor.78 In Ramaḍān of that
year, Muʿīn al-Dīn went to Firuzabad with the scholar Mawlana Jamāl al-Dīn
75 Kātib, 158, 283.

76 Kātib, 115. Mustawfī Bāfqī adds that Muʿīn al-Dīn was a friend of darvishes, 3:165.
77 Mustawfī Bāfqī, 3:723. By the seventeenth century, it had resumed its former name of
Bafruya.
78 Mustawfī Bāfqī, 3:166, 660. The difference in figures could be a result of scribal error: ‘du’
and ‘dah’ look reasonably similar. In Mustawfī Bāfqī’s time, the suyūrghāl was no longer in
effect and the historian mentions that the land revenue no longer went to the khānqāh.
For the term suyūrghāl, see Doerfer, 1: 351–53. He translates it as “a hereditary, tax-exempt
fief,” but his study of the word shows its meaning to be more complex. It is not clear
whether it was a bestowal of land, of the right to exploit that land without outright pos-
session, of money and other gifts, or a combination of the above. In the texts related to
Maybudī, the meaning is not defined and remains ambiguous. See I.P. Petrushevskii,
“K istorii instituta soyurgala,” Sovetskoe Vostokovedenie 6 (1949): 227–46; V. Minorsky, “A
Soyurghal,” 927–60, especially p. 944 where he states that it is a “grant, bestowal,” and that
it is dangerous to use European terms as equivalents rather than parallels and p. 960
where he points out the hereditary nature of the grant.
Abū Isḥāq, who preached in the hostel. Muʿīn al-Dīn organized tremendous
festivities that night, offering all sorts of meats, rice, and sweets to his guests.79
In the same village, he also had a public bath constructed. Other buildings
commissioned by Muʿīn al-Dīn included the Mazār-i Zangiyān and a nearby
madrasa.80 Since they are mentioned in Mustawfī Bāfqī and not in the other
local histories, the work may have been undertaken after 862/1458, the last date
for events in Kātib. The complex now lies in ruins, but photographs show that
it was once an extensive structure.81
Working on behalf of the local population, the Maybudī family engaged in
activities that J. Aubin has identified as characteristic of sayyids, those men
who claimed descent from the Prophet through his daughter Fāṭima, and
whom he considers one of the most powerful forces in post-Mongol social life,
especially in the countryside.82 The only evidence that they did belong to that
group is Maybudī’s name, generally cited as Qadi Mīr Ḥusayn. The title ‘mīr’ is
given to descendants of the Prophet in the Iranian sphere. The sources give no
indication that Maybudī operated as a wonder worker, one of the more persua-
sive reasons for the influence sayyids acquired among rich and poor, or that he
ever tried to capitalize overtly on a claim to special lineage. The question re-
mains whether the quality of sayyidship had anything to do with the rise of the
Maybudī fortunes—a factor that might not be mentioned by their contempo-
raries, but which could nevertheless have been important.
Given that the local histories provide little information for the years after
862/1458, not much else can be gleaned about the family into which Maybudī
was born. It is not yet known whether Muʿīn al-Dīn had brothers other than
Quṭb al-Dīn or more than two children, whether he spent most of his time in
Yazd or on his properties in the surrounding villages, or when and how he
died.83 From the available material, a picture does emerge of a rich, civic-
minded, and politically active family of absentee landlords. Maybudī will be
79 Kātib, 284. The description suggests that Kātib was present.

80 Mustawfī Bāfqī, 3:166, 640–41.
81 Afshār, Yādgārhā-yi Yazd, 2:317.
82 Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 379–80; Aubin, “Un Santon quhistani de l’époque timouride,” REI
35 (1967): 210–14. Mancini-Lander, “Memory,” 315: The Dār al-siyāda, a hospice for sayyids,
built in the fourteenth century as part of the Shamsīya mosque complex was apparently
the first such structure in Yazd and signals a recognition of the sayyids’ increasingly spe-
cial status. See also Bashir, Sufi Bodies, 87–89. On the institution of the Dār al-siyāda, see
Akio Iwatake, “Ghâzân Khân’s dâr al‑siyâda,” Itoyoshi kenkyû 50 (1993): 48–82.
83 He was apparently still alive when his son wrote his commentary to the Hidāyat al-ḥikma.
See Athīr al-Dīn Mufaḍḍal b. ʿAmr Abharī, Hidāyat al-mughtadhī ilā ḥall al-Maybudī, ed.
M. Qāsim Nānautvī et al. (n.p.: 1968), 1:4.
30 Chapter 2
seen to have continued the traditions of his family, while making his own par-
ticular mark on the society of his day.
Lest it be thought that the Maybudī family had Yazd under its thumb, it will
be worthwhile to glance quickly at the other important families in the city dur-
ing the mid-fifteenth century. The feature that jumps out from the historical
record is how sayyid lineage dominated the families who enjoyed prominence
as an employment pool for qadis, viziers, and other administrators and for
more informal but no less vital roles of religious leadership. Imāmzāda Abū
Jaʿfar Muḥammad, the great-great-grandson of the sixth Imam of the Twelver
Shiʿis, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, was the ancestor of all the imāmzādas of Yazd who gradu-
ally evolved as the Rukniya, Shamsiya, Husayni, Radi (ca. 700–841/1301–1437),
and Dada⁠ʾi (to at least 860/1456) families.84
One of the dominant figures who emerged from that lineage in fifteenth-
century Yazd was Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī, the native of the city in that period to
have achieved the most lasting fame. He had established an international rep-
utation by the time Maybudī was born. Now considered primarily as a histori-
an, he is described in the biographical dictionaries and chronicles of his own
time as a polymath, as were many of the educated men of the time. In Yazd he,
too, did his part in the construction of monuments. For instance, he completed
the dome and hall (ayvān) of the Rukniya mosque.85
In terms of families rather than individuals, the Niʿmatallahis stand out for
success with money and marriages, despite some disastrous political adven-
tures and the power of the Safavid Sufi movement. Sayyid Niʿmat Allāh al-
Thānī was mentioned above with regard to the pilgrimage procession ordered
by Uzūn Ḥasan. It was his ancestor, Shāh Niʿmat Allāh Valī Nūr al-Dīn Niʿmat
Allāh b. ʿAbd Allāh (ca. 731–834/1331–1431), who founded what developed into
one of the great Shiʿi Sufi orders, the Niʿmatallahis.86 He began his work in the
region of Samarqand, but was encouraged to leave in 770–72/1368–70 by Tīmūr
because of his disruptive influence on the nomads.87 The locus of his activities
84 Ibn Shihāb, 73, 93; Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 429, n. 6 for the first two; Holod-Tretiak, “The
Monuments of Yazd,” 167. Mancini-Lander, “Memory,” 104–12, discusses the Imāmzāda.
His descendants are inextricably intertwined with physical and spiritual changes in the
region. Mancini-Lander has done exhaustive research on prominent Yazdi families, trac-
ing marriage ties, teacher-student networks, financial connections, and architectural ini-
tiatives. His appendices are particularly useful.
85 Quiring-Zoche, Isfahan im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, 38. Binbaş, “Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī” is
an invaluable resource for the historian and his world.
86 Dhabīh Allāh Ṣafā, Tārīkh-i adabīyat dar Īrān (Tehran, 1983), 4:77–78.
87 J. Aubin, ed., Matériaux pour la biographie de Shāh Niʿmatullāh Walī Kirmānī, Bibliothèque
iranienne, no. 7 (Tehran: Département d’Iranologie de l’Institut Franco-Iranien, 1956), 13:
“He [Tīmūr] saw the germ of a tribal uprising leavened with religiosity.”
moved to Taft, a suburb of Yazd, where he built a Sufi hostel. He still enjoyed
support from some Timurids, for Iskandar b. ʿUmar Shaykh (d. 818/1415) al-
lowed the taxes of Taft and its dependencies to go to the upkeep of the institu-
tion from 812–16/1409–13. Shāh Niʿmat Allāh Valī split his time between Kuh
Banan and Taft, where the Niʿmatallahi shrine became a center of wealth and
spiritual prestige. He also traveled to Abarquh, where he built a charitable
complex (ʿimārat). Eventually he moved to Kirman.88 His son, Shaykh Khalīl
Allāh, was killed in Herat for his role in an assassination attempt on Shāhrukh.89
Other members of the family journeyed to India and back, so the range of the
family’s influence was extensive.90
Although discussion of Maybudī’s letters to him more sensibly belongs in
Chapter 4, it will not be out of place to mention here Shāh Niʿmat Allāh al-
Thānī b. Shaykh Ẓahīr al-Dīn ʿAlī, a great-great grandson of Shāh Niʿmat Allāh,
and the leading member of the family in Maybudī’s day. He and his descen-
dants provide an example of a sayyid family that not only survived, but pros-
pered during relatively frequent dynastic changes. He married one of the
daughters of Jahānshāh Kara Koyunlu and, after making the pilgrimage to
Mecca, returned home via the capital Tabriz, where he remained for some
time. When Uzūn Ḥasan rose to power, Shāh Niʿmat Allāh was summoned to
Shiraz in order to answer for Jahānshāh’s jewels, but apparently did not suffer
from his connections to the Kara Koyunlu. Although he traveled often, Yazd
remained his base and he eventually died in Mahan. One of his sons, Amir
Niẓām al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Bāqī, moved from Yazd to Herat in 916/1510 where he be-
came head of religious affairs (ṣadr) for the Safavids.91 He died at the battle of
Chaldiran in 920/1514. Thus, the family weathered the changes from the Kara
Koyunlu to Ak Koyunlu to Safavid dynasties, in a way that Maybudī’s did not,
88 Javād Nūrbakhsh Kirmānī, Zindagī va āthār-i Niʿmat Allāh Valī (Tehran: n.p., 1337/1959),
33.
89 Aubin cites an instance of his insolence. He quoted a hadith learned from his father to
Shāhrukh, which stated that whoever insisted on a sayyid’s remaining standing in his
presence was a bastard. Whether true or false, the story resonates with the pride of the
sayyids. Matériaux, 17.
90 Although the influence was far-reaching, it is worth noting that the same names tend to
crop up with reference to them. For example, Jalāl al-Dīn Davānī, central to Maybudī’s
story, wrote a risāla in the name of Mīr Muḥibb Allāh (d. 914/1509), a great-grandson of
Shāh Niʿmat Allāh. Nūrbakhsh Kirmānī, Zindagī, 102.
91 Nūrbakhsh Kirmānī: marriage: 110; son: 112. See Chapter 4 in Mancini-Lander, “Memory on
the Boundaries of Empire,” for the Niʿmatallahi family and their continuing influence
throughout the first century of Safavid rule. Binbaş describes Timurid connections in
“Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī,” 83–84.
32 Chapter 2
perhaps because of stronger alliances, more effective religious authority, better

luck, or a combination of circumstances.
Given the importance of Shiʿism in this century, it would be useful to know
the sectarian tendencies of the leading families of the city. ʿAlid leanings clear-
ly permeated the higher echelons of Yazdi society.92 Mustawfī Bāfqī claims
that Bībī Fāṭima, the wife of the Timurid amir Jalāl al-Dīn Chaqmāq, in one of
her many acts of patronage had clay brought from Karbala to be baked into
bricks for the construction of the minbar in the Masjid-i Jāmiʿ.93 Descendants
of Imāmzāda Muḥammad b. ʿAlī constituted a recognizable group, Kātib esti-
mating those alive in the middle of the century, including men, women, and
children, to number approximately a thousand.94 That their total could be es-
timated suggests some sense of shared identity, but reveals nothing about
where they placed themselves on a religious spectrum.
What we do know with certainty is that several of the foremost families
were weakened by the sieges, floods, famines, and diseases that plagued Yazd
from 850/1447 to at least 860/1456. Concerning the epidemic that followed the
famine of 858/1454, Kātib writes: “In this year most of the notables (akābir) of
Yazd died.”95 He mentions by name Majd al-Dīn Faḍl Allāh, Jalāl al-Dīn Mur-
shid b. Iftikhār al-Dīn Humāyūn Shāh, ʿImād al-Dīn Masʿūd b. Ḍiyā al-Dīn
Muḥammad al-Tamīmī al-ʿIlmī the vizier, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Bāfqī
al-Vāʿiẓ, Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad the muḥtasib, and the famous Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī
Yazdī.96 While Kātib claims that no one was killed in the 860/1456 flood,
Mustawfī Bāfqī lists at least one notable who died: Khwaja Pīr Ḥusayn
Dāmghānī.97 Although Muʿīn al-Dīn had a secure status in society before the
disaster, the decimation of the notables may have opened up possibilities for
him and his family. Qadi Ḥusayn certainly rose a step or two higher than his
father.
92 As a working definition, I follow Babayan’s description of the term ‘ʿAlid.’ She uses it for
“all those who regarded descent in the male line from ʿAlī, not primarily from Fatima, as
legitimate. For those who gave precedence to the whole family of ʿAli, any descendant of
Abu Talib could become a leader.” “The Safavid Synthesis: From Qizilbash Islam to Imam-
ite Shiʿism,” Iranian Studies 27 (1994): 136.
93 Mustawfī Bāfqī, 1:178.
94 Kātib, 153.
95 Kātib, 270.
96 Kātib, 271–73.
Maybudī’s Education
Maybudī’s preserved correspondence, the Munsha⁠ʾāt, which will be a major

source for the chapter on his qadiship, also provides clues to his early years. It
seems to date from the 890s/late 1480s and beyond. In one letter Maybudī
mentions that he is forty years old.98 In another he defends himself against
enemies who question his beliefs, negating the value of his thirty years of study
and writing.99 Assuming he dates the beginning of his education to when he
was somewhere between six and eight years old, the information in the letters
is consistent with a birthdate sometime between 853 and 858/1449–54, so he
would have been still a child during the flood and the rise of his father’s politi-
cal fortunes. Before he traveled for his studies, he undoubtedly acquired the
rudiments of reading, writing, arithmetic, and the religious disciplines in his
native city. In the introduction to his marginal notes on the commentary on
Masʿūd Rūmī’s Maṭāliʿ, he says that he left home at an early age to pursue his
studies with the famous scholars and pious men of his day.100 He indicates that
he traveled widely, but the one place he definitely visited was Shiraz, which
required a journey of approximately a week from Yazd. He spent much time
there as a student of Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Saʿd al-Dīn Asʿad Davānī, the
one teacher with whom his biographers invariably associate him.101
Several reasons would encourage a young man to leave his native city
in pursuit of education. One was simply the widespread practice of traveling
for one’s studies.102 Yazd was not, however, an intellectual wasteland, some
98 MUN, 131.
99 MUN, 166. He mentions that he has been qadi for six years, 170, and points out that the
turn of the century is near (1 Muḥarram 900 corresponds to 2 October 1494), 172.
100 MUN, 126–27.
101 Ghiyāth al-Dīn Khvāndamīr, Ḥabīb al-siyār fī akhbār afrād al-bashar, ed. J. Humāʾī and M.
Dabīr-Siyāqī (Tehran: Kitābkhāna-yi Khayyām, 1333/1954), 4:604–05; Ḥasan Beg Rūmlū,
Aḥsan al-tavārīkh, trans. and ed. C.N. Seddon, Gaekwad’s Oriental Series, vols. 57 and 69
(Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1931–34), 57:71–72; 69:31. About travel times, Boyce says that in
the 1920s from Yazd “to reach any of the nearest cities, Kerman, Shiraz, or Isfahan, was an
eight-day journey fraught with peril.” A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1977), 11.
102 There are too many examples of traveling young scholars who went on to significant
careers for it to be necessary to compile a list. To name but one, Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Turka Iṣfahānī
(d. 835/1432) followed a superficially similar trajectory of travels for study, lasting in his
case fifteen years, writing, a term of qadiship plagued by attacks from enemies who armed
themselves with theological accusations and turned the political center against him, and
an unpleasant last few years of life. See Melvin-Koushki, “The Quest for a Universal Sci-
ence.”
34 Chapter 2
provincial backwater from which to flee at the earliest opportunity. It was a

center of learning in its own right, home to the madrasa of Amir Chaqmāq
built in 841/1437–38 and to the Madrasa-i Ḥāfiẓīya.103 Academic centers gener-
ally flourished around the courts of princes and rulers who sought to gather a
glorious entourage in order to extend their cultural largesse.104 With the end of
Amir Chaqmāq’s governorship and the various natural and political scourges
that afflicted the city, it is likely that Yazd suffered at least a temporary setback,
thereby giving additional impetus to the young Maybudī’s decision to set off
for Shiraz.
A more specifically compelling reason for a student to travel was the attrac-
tion of famous scholars such as Davānī. Davānī was clearly the dominant per-
sonality in Maybudī’s education.105 Best known to the western world as the
author of the Akhlāq-i Jalālī, the revision of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s ethical trea-
tise commissioned by Uzūn Ḥasan, Davānī was a rationalist philosopher, hon-
ored in his own generation for his abilities in many fields, including poetry,
riddles, religious sciences and especially, philosophy. Sām Mīrzā calls him the
second Aristotle and the “philosopher of the age” (faylasūf-i zamān).106
Born the eldest son of Saʿd al-Dīn Asʿad in Davan near Shiraz, Davānī had a
model of scholarship in his father. The latter served as qadi of the district of
Kazarun in which Davan was located.107 The young scholar studied with his
father until going to Shiraz to pursue his education. He distinguished himself
at an early age and soon began to attract students from afar. Concurrent with
his scholastic life, he embarked on a career in public affairs. For a while he
103 Ṣafā, 4:82, 85. Other fifteenth-century centers were Samarqand, Herat, Shiraz, and Tabriz.
104 See Mancini-Lander, “Memory on the Boundaries of Empire,” for the numerous madrasa
complexes of Yazd commissioned by a variety of urban leaders from various walks of life.
105 No other teachers are mentioned specifically in connection to Maybudī, although the
scholars in Davānī’s circle, as indicated above, were men with whom Maybudī undoubt-
edly came in contact. In several of his writings he mentions that he studied with a large
number of eminent scholars in his avid pursuit of knowledge, but gives no more details.
106 Sām Mīrzā Ṣafavī, Tadhkira-yi Tuḥfa-yi Sāmī, ed. Rukn al-Dīn Humāyūn Farrukh (Tehran:
ʿIlmī, [1960]), 76–77. Davānī’s reputation suffered in later centuries. According to Fazlur
Rahman, The Philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā (Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī) (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1975), Mullā Ṣadrā made him a persistent target, sometimes using
“unusually harsh language,” 8.
107 M. Maʿṣūm ʿAlī Shāh, Ṭarāʾiq al-ḥaqāʾiq, ed. M. Jaʿfar Maḥjūb (Tehran: Kitābkhāna-yi
Bārānī, 1960–66), 3:122–24; Amīn Aḥmad Rāzī, Haft Iqlīm, ed. J. Fāḍil (Tehran: n.p., 1961),
178–80.
served as the chief of religious affairs (ṣadr) of Yūsuf b. Jahānshāh, and eventu-
ally became qadi of Fars.108
Davānī’s career was not adversely affected by the downfall of the Kara
Koyunlu and the rise of the Ak Koyunlu. He secured the position of qadi at
Uzūn Ḥasan’s court and retained his pre-eminent status under Sultan Yaʿqūb.109
While working as qadi, he continued to teach. Taşköprüzade heard about
Davānī’s prestige from Muḥyī al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Tabrīzī (d. 963/1556), the
son of a Hanafi judge in Tabriz under the Ak Koyunlu. When Tabrīzī was quite
young, he saw the great and majestic scholar surrounded by the ulama of Ta-
briz, who treated him with deep respect, bowing their heads before him.110 At
a gathering in Shiraz during the reign of Uzūn Ḥasan, Davānī’s circle included
Shaykh Ibrāhīm Gülşeni, who was visiting the city, Sayyid Mir Ṣadr al-Dīn,
Muḥammad Shāriḥ, ʿAlī Sh-y-f-ki [sic], Sayyid Murtaḍā-yi Sharīfī, Amīr Fakhr
al-Dīn Ḥaydar, Shams al-Dīn Bahrām Baḥḥāth, Shaykh Ḥusām al-Dīn
Nūrbakhshī, and other students of Sayyid Sharīf.111 Given his illustrious repu-
tation, Davānī attracted a dynamic circle of scholars, one in which Maybudī
flourished.
Davānī’s reputation extended beyond Ak Koyunlu frontiers. The Ottoman
sultan, Bāyazīd II (r. 886–918/1481–1512), sent him a gift of 500 florins.112 The
ulama of the Ottoman Empire also admired his work. For example, during
Bāyazīd II’s reign, Mawlana Khaṭībzāda (d. 901/1496) heard that Davānī had
sent a book to Mawlana al-Munshī, one of his friends in Anatolia, and that he
had included a greeting to himself and to Mawlana Khwājazāda. He obtained
the book from Munshī and sent it to the vizier Ibrāhīm Paşa, with whom he
was quarreling. He remarked that he was preferred to Mawlana Khwājazāda in
Persia (ʿAjam) because Davānī inscribed his name first. The vizier replied that
being mentioned first does not mean that one individual is superior to anoth-
108 Rūmlū, 69:31; 57:71–72. Minorsky, V., “A Civil and Military Review in Fars in 881/1476,”
describes the ṣadr as “the accredited representative of Islamic law, [who] stood at the top
of the provincial organization,” 170.
109 B.H. Siddiqi, “Jalāl al-Dīn Davānī,” in History of Muslim Philosophy, ed. M.M. Sharif (Wies-
baden: O. Harrassowitz, 1966), 2:883.
110 Aḥmad Taşköprüzade, Al-Shaqāʾiq al-nuʿmānīya fī ʿulamā al-dawla al-ʿUthmānīya, ed.
Ahmed Subhi Furat, Istanbul: İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Yayınları, no. 3353
(Istanbul: Edebiyat Fakültesi Basımevi, 1985), 488.
111 Muḥyī-i Gülşeni, Manāqib-i Ibrāhīm-i Gülşenī ve Şemleli-zāde Aḥmed Efendi Ṣīve-i
Ṭarīqat-i Gülsenīye, ed. Tahsin Yazici (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1982), 41. The
name “Sh-y-f-ki” should probably be read “Shīftagī.” See Khvāndamīr, 4:605.
112 Dh. Thābitiyān, Asnād wa-nāmahā-yi tārīkhī-yi dawra-yi Ṣafavīya (Tehran: Kitābkhāna-yi
Ibn Sīnā, 1343/1964), 86. A thousand florins went to Jāmī.
36 Chapter 2
er. Local squabbles aside, the anecdote shows that at least two prominent
scholars of the Ottoman Empire valued the good opinion of the distant Davānī.113
Presents from foreign rulers were only one of the sources of Davānī’s prosper-
ity. That he was at least comfortably well-off is suggested by the report that,
during the power struggles which preceded the downfall of the Ak Koyunlu, he
was pressed for a large sum of money by some of the opponents of Aḥmad Beg
b. Ughurlū Muḥammad.114
Whatever fame and fortune Davānī acquired, much of it initially stemmed
from his intellectual accomplishments. Brockelmann lists some seventy of his
extant works, most of which remain unedited.115 While the young scholar from
Yazd could have been only one of his many concerns, from Maybudī’s perspec-
tive, the teacher’s influence was paramount. Several of the books written by
Davānī find their counterparts in works by Maybudī. For example, Davānī
wrote a treatise on riddles, various volumes on philosophy, and commentaries
on the Shamsīya, the Ṭawāliʿ, and the Maṭāliʿ—all corresponding to subjects
addressed by Maybudī.116 Some of their parallel works seem to have been stan-
dard textbooks in grammar and logic, so the similarity is understandable. From
what is known of medieval Islamic education, teachers would dictate a stan-
dard work along with their own commentary or with their remarks on another
scholar’s established commentary. Their students, in turn, would eventually
teach the same books to the next generation of pupils, thus perpetuating a
particular work and those commentaries proven to be useful.117
The perpetuation of commentaries has exposed late medieval scholars to
the criticism that they were unable to transcend imitative or derivative
thought.118 According to that line of reasoning, the sciences may have been
113 Taşköprüzade, 149.

114 Rūmlū, 69:7,9; 57:16, 19; Mīr Yaḥyā b. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Sayfī Ḥusaynī Qazvīnī, Lubb al-tavārīkh,
ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Ṭihrānī (Tehran: Muʾassasa-yi Khāvar, 1314/1936), 227–29. Appar-
ently he was on good terms with Aḥmad Beg, who wrote him letters that he sealed himself
instead of sending official orders.
115 Brockelmann, SII:306–09. See also Rūmlū, 57:71–72/69:31.
116 See above, pages 9 and 38.
117 Pourjavady makes the point with reference to Najm al-Dīn Nayrīzī that scholars who were
active as teachers used their works for teaching purposes, which meant that large num-
bers of students copied them and ensured their dissemination. Pourjavady, Philosophy in
Early Safavid Iran, 70. See below Maybudī’s remarks on why he wrote a commentary on
Abharī’s Hidāyat al-ḥikma.
118 Ṣafā, 4:79–83. Browne is also harsh in his judgment, declaring that a decline in prose writ-
ing set in with the Mongol invasion. Speaking of the sixteenth century and later, he writes
that the bulk of scholarly writing “is so dull or so technical that no one but a very leisured
pursued by large numbers of scholars, but the quality was poor. Ṣafā, for in-
stance, claims that the scholars were collectors and not original thinkers. They
knew their texts well, but remained content to summarize or comment upon
them. Rescher describes the period after 1300 as “the era of ossification” for
Arabic logic.119 Various reasons are given for the so-called decline. The parlous
times supposedly discouraged ambitious intellectual pursuits. Ṣafā says that
governments pressured scholars to conform to certain standards.120 With the
exception of Ulugh Beg, rulers demonstrated more interest in Sufism than sci-
ence. At his most condemnatory, Ṣafā complains about scholars’ carelessness,
bad taste, imprecision, and failure to pursue intellectual inquiry. In education,
the teachers allegedly taught law and Arabic literature from texts of the sev-
enth and eighth centuries Hijra/thirteenth and fourteenth centuries ce by
adding their own notes without any deep investigation or new approach. They
were chained to repetitive, slavish imitation of their predecessors, with their
sole claim to originality displayed in verbal virtuosity.
Research in science, literature, philosophy, and historiography after the
eleventh century has shown such conclusions to reflect transient academic
tastes and values. Creativity and analytical thought were never in short supply
after the Mongol invasions. In part, the issue is one of categories. Rather than
regretting the absence of what we think we ought to find, we should look at
what was actually produced. If the commentaries and supercommentaries
served the educational purposes of their authors, then the works should be
judged on that basis. Much has been written about the origins of the madrasa
and very pious Shiʿa scholar would dream of reading it … Many of those writings are
utterly valueless, consisting of notes or glosses on supercommentaries or commentaries
on texts, grammatical, logical, juristic or otherwise, which texts are completely buried
and obscured by all this misdirected ingenuity and toil.” Edward G. Browne, A Literary
History of Persia. Vol. 4: Modern Times (1500–1924) (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1959), 4:376–77; see also 412–13, 415–16. See also D. Gutas, “Aspects of Literary Form
and Genre in Arabic Logical Works,” in Glosses and Commentaries on Aristotelian Logical
Texts: The Syriac, Arabic and Medieval Latin Traditions, ed. Charles Burnett (London: The
Warburg Institute, 1993): 29–76, and “The Study of Arabic Philosophy”; R. Wisnovsky,
“Some Remarks on the Nature and Scope of Arabic Philosophical Commentary in Post-
Classical (ca. 1100–1900 ce) Islamic Intellectual History: Some Preliminary Observations,”
in Philosophy, Science and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries, ed. P. Adam-
son, H. Baltussen, and M.W.F. Stone (London: Institute of Classical Studies, School of
Advanced Study, University of London, 2004): 2:149–91. Wisnovsky presents cogent argu-
ments in favor of the continuation of intellectual life in Islamic lands after Ibn Sīnā.
119 Nicholas Rescher, The Development of Arabic Logic (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1964), 73.
120 Ṣafā, 4:81: He cites Faḍl Allāh Astarābādī and Qāsim Anvār.
38 Chapter 2
system, but how that development affected the writing and reading of books is
still a gray area.121 It seems contradictory to describe at length the methods of
dictation used in the madrasas, then to turn around and lambast the written
by-products of those methods. Rescher offers a clear example of such criticism.
After listing works based on the Maṭāliʿ al-anwār [fī al-manṭiq] of Sirāj al-Dīn
Maḥmūd al-Urmawī (d. 682/1283) and the Risāla al-Shamsīya of al-Kātibī, he
writes:
These tabulations bring to light the essentially geological character of the

development of Arabic logic after 1400. Based on the compendia of the
13th century, there appeared, first, commentaries, then first-order glosses,
and finally second-order glosses. As has already been indicated, this mir-
rors the program of instruction: the student masters (possibly even mem-
orizes) a standard treatise of the subject under the direction of a teacher
who ‘explains the text’ rather than teaches the subject.122
That pedagogical distinction between explanation and instruction is puzzling

with reference to a culture where learning was so firmly based on text. The
significant point is that scholars of this time established their reputations as
philosophers with methodical explanations of a relatively defined canon of
works, such as the Shamsīya and the Hidāyat al-ḥikma. George Saliba proposes
that the genre of commentaries and glosses should be viewed as “the func-
tional equivalent of today’s periodical literature in the research, where new
findings were made public.”123 Detailed studies of commentary technique, the
educational goals of such writing, and individual successes in meeting those
goals, as demonstrated by contemporary preferences for one commentary over
another, have provided fruitful avenues of research for Saleh, Zadeh, and oth-
ers. The constant interplay of canonical and open texts sheds light on the po-
litical, intellectual, and literary dynamics of various times and places.
121 Walid A. Saleh insightfully distinguishes encyclopedic from madrasa tafsirs. While much
overlap existed in terms of audience, the purpose of composition varied significantly. The
Formation of the Classical Tafsīr Tradition: The Qur’an Commentary of al-Thaʿlabī
(d. 427/1035) (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 148–9, 198–99, 208, 214.
122 Rescher, Development, 75.
123 George Saliba, “Writing the History of Arabic Astronomy: Problems and Different Per-
spectives,” JAOS 116 (1996): 714. His work offers definitive proof of scientific excellence
throughout the Islamicate world after the Mongol invasions. See also his introduction to
A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories during the Golden Age of Islam (New
York: New York University Press, 1994).
Davānī’s works were not the only ones to guide Maybudī during his student
years. Judging from the citations that spring up on every page of Maybudī’s
writings, he was well-read. In his introduction to the Sharḥ-i Dīvān-i ʿAlī, which
runs to some hundred folios, he quotes approximately eighty authors. At this
point it remains unclear whether he studied the original works as a whole or in
part, or whether he relied on compendia and summaries that enabled him to
refer to the arguments of particular authors and even to quote them verbatim.
He could, of course, have done both. In some cases, he specifies that he “saw”
in a particular work the passage he chooses to quote.124 Some of his quotations
are lengthy, but just as a student could quote long passages from Ibn ʿArabī af-
ter reading Maybudī’s Sharḥ-i Dīvān-i ʿAlī, so Maybudī could have taken his ex-
cerpts from a similar work. References to commentaries do not necessarily
mean that Maybudī did not read the original work. Commentaries were writ-
ten in such a way that the complete original text was sometimes embedded in
the remarks of a later scholar. Maybudī’s own commentary on the Hidāyat
al-ḥikma is preserved in copies that contain the entire original work. When
Maybudī refers to Shihāb al-Dīn Yaḥyā al-Suhrawardī’s (d. 587/1191) Hayākil al-
nūr, it is tempting to speculate that his text was Davānī’s commentary on that
work. Even if he did use it, that would not mean that he relied on the fifteenth-
century equivalent of SparkNotes instead of the original, but rather that he
had his teacher’s comments handy to help him understand the book.
Many of the works quoted in the Sharḥ are what would be expected from a
traditional education. The Qurʾān provided a framework for thought from an
early age, and Maybudī liberally uses verses from it to illustrate his points,
whether grammatical, historical, or philosophical. He refers frequently to vari-
ous Qurʾān commentaries (tafsīrs), such as that of Abū Isḥāq Aḥmad b.
Muḥammad al-Thaʿlabī (d. 427/1035), his student ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Wāḥidī
(d. 468/1076), Maḥmūd b. ʿUmar al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144), Fakhr al-Dīn al-
Rāzī (d. 606/1209), and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Bayḍāwī (d. ca. 685/1286).125 Given its
focus on interpreting historical events as reported by hadith transmitters, the
section on ʿAlī constantly refers to the hadith collections of Muḥammad b.
Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī (d. 256/870), Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj (d. 261/875), Abū Dāwud
(d. 275/888), Abū ʿĪsā Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī (d. 279/892), and al-
Nasāʾī (d. 303/915). Maybudī rarely quotes historians such as Ibn Khallikān
(d. 681/1282) and ʿIzz al-Dīn ʿAlī Ibn al-Athīr (d. 630/1234), presumably because
he focuses on ʿAlī and chooses to develop his arguments through scriptural
124 He “sees” in ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla al-Simnānī’s (d. 736/1336) ʿUrwa [li-ahl al-khalwa wa-al-jawla] a
passage about an encounter between the author and a shayṭān. SDA, 101.
125 Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923) is cited only twice.
40 Chapter 2
texts. Even had he not eventually become a qadi, it is understandable that, as

a religious scholar, he would cite the opinions of the founders of the four
major legal schools, especially Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfi‘ī
(d. 204/820), to whose school he belonged.126 Maybudī’s poetic quotations
were also from a firmly ensconced tradition. He sprinkles verses throughout
his writings, from the writings of poets such as ʿUmar b. ʿAlī Sharaf al-Dīn Ibn
al-Fāriḍ (d. 632/1235), Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 672/1273), Fakhr al-Dīn Ibrāhīm
ʿIrāqī (d. 688/1289), Naṣīr al-Dīn Amīr Khusraw Dihlavī (d. 725/1325), Salmān
Sāvajī (d. 778/1376), Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad Ḥāfiẓ (d. ca. 792/1390), and Jāmī.
As a mature scholar, Maybudī complained about the decline in educational
standards. Bemoaning the fact that ignorant men depended on family back-
ground or sycophancy to be appointed to religious positions, he dismisses his
colleagues for lacking familiarity with even so basic a text as the Kāfiya. He
claims that students of his day do not study the Islamic sciences, squandering
their time with trivialities (muzakhrafāt) and corrupting the pure words of
their predecessors.127 He urges his patron to reform the educational system
126 Davānī wrote a supercommentary on the Anvār-i Shāfiʿīya: Rāzī, Haft Iqlīm, 179. For
Maybudī’s remarks on the founders of the four major Sunni legal schools, see Chapter 3
below. That Maybudī belonged to the Shafiʿi school is evident in the Sharḥ-i Dīvān-i ʿAlī
where in his presentation of the four schools he speaks of “our imam, Shāfiʿī Muḥammad
b. Idrīs b. ʿAbbās, b. ʿUthmān b. Shāfiʿ b. Sāʾib …,” SDA, 30. In that same passage, he men-
tions that Ibn ʿArabī transmits in chapter 335 of his Futūḥāt that Shāfiʿī was one of the four
poles (awtād). In light of Maybudī’s great respect for Ibn ʿArabī, it is significant that he
includes that citation in a relatively short biographical notice. It may serve as much to
situate Ibn ʿArabī within the Muslim fold as to elevate Shāfiʿī. In his correspondence he
stresses the importance of accepting Shāfiʿī’s authority: MUN, 153, 178–179. In his lengthy
defense of his qadiship, Maybudī repeatedly gives proof texts from Shāfiʿī and canonical
Shafiʿi scholars such as Abū Zakariyā Muḥyī al-Dīn Yaḥyā Ibn Sharaf al-Nawawī in order to
support his understanding of a qadi’s duties, 141. For the curriculum a specifically Shafiʿi
scholar should follow, 173. Maybudī refers occasionally to scholars of the Hanafi madh-
hab; for example, he mentions Shaykh al-Islām Shams al-Dīn Abū Bakr Muḥammad b.
Aḥmad al-Sarakhsī al-Ḥanafī (d. 483/1090), 168.
127 MUN, 171. In a letter to Shaykh ʿAlī Sāvajī, Maybudī says it his religious duty (farḍ ayn) to
improve educational standards, 192. We must be careful, however, to distinguish conven-
tion from conviction, wistful nostalgia from activist concern. Qadi Aḥmad Ghaffārī
(d. 975/1567–8) wrote during the Safavid Shah Ṭahmāsp’s (r. 930–84/1524–76) time that in
the shah’s eyes: “… they [Shiʿite religious scholars] were turning the ignorant—juhalāʾ—
into the learned—fuḍalāʾ—and were attributing the station of the ignorant to the
learned. Therefore most of his domains became devoid of men of excellence and knowl-
edge, and filled with men of ignorance; and only a few men of [true] learning are to be
found in the entire realm of Iran.” Said Amir Arjomand, The Shadow of God and the Hid-
den Imam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 133.
and to insist that a potential qadi or teacher study the following legal texts: the
Ghurar of al-Rāfiʿī, Jamāl al-Dīn al-Isnawī’s (d. 772/1370) Muhimmāt, and the
Rawḍat [al-ṭālibīn], which is a summary of the Sharḥ al-Kabīr, of Muḥyī al-Dīn
Abū Zakariyā al-Nawawī of Damascus (d. 676/1277).128 The student should
master the principles of fiqh and have complete knowledge of tafsir and ha-
dith, as well as philosophical and revealed subject matter in general. A preach-
er (vāʿiẓ) should know the Tafsīr-i Qāḍī and the Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn of Ghazālī.129
The books listed barely scratch the surface of Maybudī’s own erudition.
His knowledge was broad, and his main interests lay in philosophy, more
particularly metaphysics, and in intellectual mysticism. The focus on philoso-
phy in the Sharḥ’s introduction guarantees that the number of quotations from
treatises on that subject are many, but citations in Maybudī’s other works show
that philosophy is, indeed, fundamental in the types of book that he studied.
Few of the quotations come from translations of Greek texts, although the
names of Aristotle, Euclid, Plato, and Galen appear within specific arguments.130
Maybudī primarily works from the classics by giants such as Abū Naṣr
Muḥammad al-Fārābī (d. 339/950), Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn Ibn Sīnā (d. 427/1037),
and Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī, relying even more extensively on Ghazālī, Suhrawardī,
and Ibn ʿArabī for their metaphysical models of the cosmos.
Maybudī’s great interest in Ibn ʿArabī is worth noting for its social as well as
intellectual ramifications, because the thirteenth-century philosopher and
mystic was an extremely controversial figure from Andalusia to India long after
his death.131 In the hagiography of Shaykh Ibrāhīm Gülşeni (d. 940/1534), anec-
dotes about those who engaged in disputes about his beliefs give an indication
of how intense scholarly debates affected the careers of religious figures.
The subject of the hagiography, Shaykh Ibrāhīm, praised the Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam,
128 As Shahzad Bashir pointed out to me, Maybudī probably did not choose Nawawī at ran-
dom. The Damascene scholar stands at the beginning of a Shafiʿi tradition of transmitted
learning that eventually passed through Davānī, with whom Maybudī studied.
129 MUN, 173. Maybudī does not identify the tafsir further. Is it that of ʿAbd al-Jabbār
al-Muʿtazilī (d.415/1025), a Muʿtazilite theologian and judge of the Shafiʿi school?
130 Mention of Greek sources includes a reference to the Theologia which was erroneously
ascribed to Aristotle. See Peter Adamson, The Arabic Plotinus: A Philosophical Study of the
Theology of Aristotle (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co., 2002).
131 Alexander Knysh, Ibn ʿArabi in the Later Islamic Tradition (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1999); Th. Emil Homerin, From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint: Ibn al-Fāriḍ, His
Verse, and His Shrine (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), 77: the Otto-
man chief judge in Egypt, Muḥammad ibn Ilyās (d. 954/1547) was relieved of a post in the
1520s, “having earned Sultan Sulaymān’s (r. 927–74/1520–66) displeasure for criticizing Ibn
al-ʿArabī.”
42 Chapter 2
despite the opposition of some scholars. The author relates how the mullas of
Qarabagh reviled and burned the work, attacked Dede ʿUmar Rawshanī,
Shaykh Ibrāhīm’s spiritual guide, and called those who studied the work unbe-
lievers (kāfir).132 Rawshanī managed to clear himself of all charges of unbelief
and criticized the book burning as misguided. A related story concerns an Ana-
tolian scholar who, while on the pilgrimage, outshone all the ulama of Egypt
during a public debate. In a fit of pique, they accused him before the ruler of
Egypt of having a father who had written a commentary on the Fuṣūṣ and of
professing himself to follow Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings. The unlucky scholar’s fate
was not recorded.133 Even if both attacks were launched for personal and po-
litical reasons, Ibn ʿArabī’s views served as volatile weapons.
For our purposes, evidence that Ibn ʿArabī’s ideas circulated in the Ak
Koyunlu court helps put in perspective Maybudī’s intense interest in his writ-
ing. In the following anecdote, the works of Ibn ʿArabī are seen to undergo
intense scrutiny without personal accusations being leveled against any par-
ticular individual. One year Shaykh Ibrāhīm traveled with Sultan Yaʿqūb to
winter quarters at Qarabagh, where the ulama and religious leaders from the
region spent most of the season in theological disputation. Their goal was to
solve a different problem posed by the Fuṣūṣ during each session. At one point,
a big debate was held after Shaykh Ibrāhīm challenged the ulama of the four
corners of the earth to attack the book. He was able to explain every dubious
passage so that it offered no contradiction to the Shariʿa and jurisprudence
(fiqh).134 He had already successfully defended the work in a debate before
Uzūn Ḥasan.135 Thus, in Maybudī’s time, Ibn ʿArabī’s ideas could be the touch-
stone for a scholar’s acceptability and the purity of his beliefs. His influence
was not only pervasive, but also perpetually troublesome.
The fact that adherence to the mystic’s ideas could be used as an effective
accusation against someone, leading to charges before a Mamluk or Ak Koyun-
lu ruler, testifies to his ability to disturb after several centuries and also to the
132 Dede ʿUmar Rawshanī of Aydin (d. 892/1486), called Dede Ḥaḍratları, was a Khalvatī
shaykh who was a protege of Uzūn Ḥasan. See the articles on “Gulshanī” and “Khalwatiyya”
in EI 2.
133 Gülşeni, 91, 180.
134 Gülşeni, 181.
135 Gülşeni, 212–13. Ibn ʿArabī was but one of many mystical figures whose multifaceted writ-
ings provoked lingering controversy. See Chapter 3 of Homerin, From Arab Poet to Muslim
Saint for political and professional repercussions in Mamluk Egypt attendant upon the
poet’s reputation. Controversy over the poet reached a climax among the religious elite of
Cairo in 874–75/1469–70. It focused on the issues of monism and mystical union, but per-
sonal, political, and economic factors also came into play.
insecurity of any one person’s position in intellectual and political circles. A

mystic accesses the divine by intensely personal channels which, consciously
or not, can undermine public religious authority. Adherence to a mystic’s
teaching might render suspect a public figure’s loyalties and be used as ammu-
nition in settling old scores or jockeying for position. Beliefs were subject to
attack as the effort was constantly made to determine what was acceptable
theologically, what might upset the ship of state, and what was questionable
enough to get someone fired. That said, Ibn ʿArabī is the most frequently cited
author in Maybudī’s Sharḥ, as will be discussed in Chapter 3.
Maybudī began his own career as a prolific writer with a commentary in
Arabic on Athīr al-Dīn Abharī’s (d. 662/1264) Hidāyat al-ḥikma. He states in the
introduction that he realized early on in his education that the philosophical
disciplines led to an understanding of the truth of matters and were the source
of much good. Consequently, he studied them with many famous teachers and
read widely in the field. One of the works he found instructive was the Hidāya.
Because fellow scholars sought his help in understanding so fundamental a
text, he composed his commentary:
Those of my companions who were engaged in reading it requested that

I prepare for them some explanatory notes about it and that I clarify what
is appropriate for every subject in it … I advanced as an excuse the accu-
mulation of obstacles, multitude of concerns, the clash of obligations
and waves of worries, but they repeated their requests and intensified
their search to acquire knowledge. I wrote it in accordance with their
requests and their expectations. I hope that seekers on the path of reason
and imbibers of the nectar of good sense will examine it carefully and in
friendship … This is the first work I have written in the prime of youth.136
136 Abharī, 4–5. Saleh writes with reference to al-Thaʿlabī’s introduction to al-Kashf: “The old
trick—‘I wrote the book under the urgent pleading of my fellow friends’—had become
too tattered to suffice as a cover. Nevertheless, scholars were still using it and al-Thaʿlabī
in the introduction to his commentary does mention ‘the request of some outstanding
jurists (fuqahāʾ), erudite scholars (ulama), and honorable dignitaries’ as a reason for writ-
ing the work …” Formation, 68. Maybudī’s contemporary, Shams al-Dīn Lāhījī, gives simi-
lar reasons for composing his commentary on Shabistarī’s Gulshan-i rāz. Because Maybudī
observed a convention does not mean it was not true. For a perceptive discussion of the
relation between literary convention and biography, see Paul E. Losensky, Welcoming
Fighānī: Imitation and Poetic Individuality in the Safavid-Mughal Ghazal (Costa Mesa, CA:
Mazda Publishers, 1998).
44 Chapter 2
Abharī’s work is a skeletal introduction to the basic tenets of philosophy. The

various chapters are divided into sections (faṣl). On the subject of celestial
bodies, for example, the sections demonstrate that they exist as spheres, that
they are simple and not composite, move in perpetual orbits and do not accept
generation or corruption, with additional information about the primary ele-
ments and atmospheric phenomena. The space allotted to each of those sub-
jects is limited.
Maybudī elaborates on the text, which is so spare that it practically demands
such treatment, defining terms, bringing in the opinions of various philoso-
phers such as Ibn Sīnā and Rāzī, and presenting his own views. The importance
of the work lies in the glimpse it gives of Maybudī as an individual and in its
anticipation of his later works, writings entirely of his own composition rather
than commentaries on other texts. His interest in philosophical cosmology
clearly began early in his scholarly career. His description of how he decided to
write the commentary also reinforces the pedagogical nature of the genre.
A similar work is the commentary on the Shamsīya fī al-manṭiq of Najm al-
Dīn ʿAlī b. ʿUmar al-Qazvīnī al-Kātibī (d. 675/1276),137 written in 886/1481–82,
when Maybudī would have been in his late twenties or early thirties. Like the
Hidāya, the original is a systematic outline, in this case of basic definitions and
concepts in logic. It was the subject of commentaries and glosses by numerous
scholars, one of the more renowned being ʿAlī b. Muḥammad Sayyid al-Sharīf
al-Jurjānī (d. 816/1413).
The entries on Maybudī in numerous biographical dictionaries list many
more commentaries on similarly basic textbooks. The Ḥabīb al-siyār mentions
marginal notes or glosses (ḥāshiyas) on the Kāfiya (grammar), Hidāyat al-
ḥikma, Ṭawāliʿ al-anvār (kalām), and Shamsīya.138 Rūmlū adds a tract on the art
137 Brockelmann I, 466/612: Risāla al-Shamsīya fī al-qawāʿid al-manṭiqīya. For an essay that
focuses on Kātibī’s work, see Tony Street, “Logic,” in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic
Philosophy, eds. Peter Adamson and Richard C. Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005), 247–65. Street describes it thus: “… down to the twentieth century it was
commonly the first substantial text on logic which a Sunni Muslim would study in the
course of a madrasa education” (247), the book being “a lovely little textbook … perhaps
the most studied logic textbook of all time” (250). Street also points out that once Ghazālī
declared that “knowledge of logic was indispensable for a proper control of jurispru-
dence,” its study was widely seen as necessary to a scholar’s training, although not with-
out its critics (253). Maybudī mentions in a letter to Mawlana Muḥammad Tālishī that he
has written this commentary and will send on a copy. MUN, 52. This is probably Muḥyī
al-Dīn Tālishī (d. ca. 905/1500), who wrote many commentaries of his own.
138 Khvāndamīr, 4:607. There seems to be some confusion about a work called simply
al-Hidāya, not a commentary. See Kaḥḥāla, 4:63. I have seen no reference to it in cata-
logues.
of cryptographic poems (muʿammā).139 Maybudī wrote a commentary in Ara-

bic on the Risāla-i Ādāb-i baḥth of Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad Samarqandī (d.
600/1203–04), which discusses dialectical reasoning.140 Mudarris adds to the
list of Maybudī’s works marginal notes on Taḥrīr-i Uqlīdis, a commentary on
Ḥadith al-ʿAskarī of Ṣaʿd Nādhirī al-Ḥaqāʾiq, and notes on a commentary of
Qāḍīzāda Rūmī (fl. 815/1412), who was active in the court of Ulugh Beg, on the
Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-hayʾa, a work on astronomy by Maḥmūd b. Muḥammad b.
ʿUmar Chaghmīnī Khwārizmī (d. 745/1344).141 In his correspondence, Maybudī
refers to the commentary on Euclid, mentioning that he had taught most of
that work on geometry to one Muḥammad Nakhjavānī and written glosses on
it at his student’s urging, which makes it reasonable to date it to the early 890s/
late 1480s, when Maybudī was qadi of Yazd.142
That Maybudī did not undertake anything unusual in preparing commen-
taries on all the above works is apparent after even a cursory glance at several
biographical dictionaries that pertain to the fifteenth century, and even more
so after looking at indexes of manuscript collections. For example, from the
Majālis al-nafāʾis, it is seen that Shams al-Dīn Bardaʿī Ḥamdī (d. 927/1521) wrote
marginal notes on a commentary on the Hidāyat al-ḥikma. The Kāfiya was
taught to Shaykh Muṣliḥ al-Dīn Muṣṭafā and is also mentioned in connection
with ʿAṭāʾ Allāh Nishāpūrī, who wrote riddles as well.143 A commentary on the
Ṭawāliʿ was written by Mawlana Masʿūd of Herat in Jāmī’s time. The Ḥabīb al-
siyār records that both Mawlana Fāḍil, who was a scholar of Samarqand, and
the tutor and late ṣadr of Sulṭān-Abū Saʿīd’s son Sulṭān-Maḥmūd (d. 900/1495)
wrote notes to a commentary on the Shamsīya, the latter work becoming pop-
ular among students. Lastly, Khvāndamīr refers to notes on the Hidāyat al-
139 Rūmlū 69:35; 57:82. See Binbaş, “Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī,” 88; Maria Eva Subtelny, “A Taste
for the Intricate: The Persian Poetry of the Late Timurid Period,” ZDMG 136/1 (1986): 75–78,
for more information on poetic riddles. Losensky, Welcoming Fighānī, 154–64, suggests
convincing ways of appreciating the muʿammā, which has too frequently been dismissed
with disapproval by modern scholars. He proposes that we consider it “a form of social
and poetic play” (160) and situate it within literary developments of the Timurid-Turk-
men period. Over twenty such guides to the poetic riddle were written during the fif-
teenth century.
140 Ṣafā, 4:100–01.
141 Mudarris, Rayḥānat al-adab, 6:48–50. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Mūsā Qāḍīzāda Rūmī was teaching in
Samarqand when Jāmī was young. ʿAlī Aṣghar Ḥikmat, Jāmī (Tehran: Chāpkhāna-yi
Bānkmillī-yi Īrān, 1320/1941), 63, 206–07.
142 Letter to Sharaf al-Dīn Shaykh Abū Isḥāq Kūynāfī. MUN, 72. The verb Maybudī uses is guft,
which indicates the oral nature of teaching.
143 Navāʾī, 370. It is to be remarked that he moved from Khurasan to Rum in 917/1511. For the
Kāfiya, 266; Ṭawāliʿ, 266; Taḥrīr-i Uqlīdis, 267.
46 Chapter 2
ḥikma written by Faṣīḥ al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Niẓāmī (d. 919/1513), an expert in

mathematics and philosophy.144
How such works fit into the education of scholars in the Timurid realm can
be glimpsed in a qaṣīda by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī, who was, incidentally, one of
Maybudī’s correspondents. Entitled Rashḥ-i bāl bi-sharḥ-i ḥāl, it was written in
893/1488 and is found in the poet’s second dīvān. Jāmī described his education
as including works on grammar, logic, Peripatetic and Illuminationist philoso-
phy, natural science, mathematics, jurisprudence, uṣūl al-fiqh, hadith, Qurʾān
reading and commentary. After he had been exposed to all those subjects, he
moved on to Sufism.145 As a side note, it is interesting that Jāmī also wrote a
treatise on riddles with Navāʾī’s encouragement.146 Jāmī’s education gives some
indication of the time required to proceed through the madrasa system. In
840/1436, at the age of nineteen he left Herat to pursue his education in Samar-
qand. He did not return to Herat until 856/1452, when he was thirty-five.147
Turning from the Timurid to the Ottoman sphere, it appears that the same
works attracted scholarly attention there. Taşköprüzade mentions two com-
mentaries on the Hidāyat al-ḥikma, adding that one of them was taught to the
future Bāyazīd II. He refers to six commentaries on the Kāfiya, including a copy
that was commissioned by Mehmet II (r. 855–86/1451–81), two on the Ṭawāliʿ,
and one on the Taḥrīr-i Uqlīdis.148 In conjunction with the fact that a number
of Davānī’s students, if not Maybudī, immigrated to Ottoman lands during the
Safavid rise to power, the academic popularity of certain books both east and
west suggests that late medieval Islamic education could bear further scrutiny.
The cursus honorum is the hallmark of Ottoman education, with its specific
levels that had to be passed before moving on to a higher level of intellectual
challenge, status, and pay. No such system has been identified for Iran, but
enough similarity must have existed for Davānī’s students to fare as well as they
did in their new home.
144 Khvāndamīr, 4:104, 106–07; Riḍā Qulī Khān Hidāyat, Tadhkira-yi riyāḍ al-ʿārifīn ([Tehran]:
Kitābfurūshī-yi Maḥmūdī, 1344/1965), 353. See Wisnovsky, “Post-Classical Commentaries,”
for a useful overview of the layers of commentary built upon enduring philosophical
monographs.
145 Ḥikmat, 61. For more about his education, 62–66.
146 ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī, “Hamasetu’l-Mutehayyirin,” in Ali Şir Nevaī: Ali Şir Nevaī: Divanlar ile
hamse dışındakı eserler, ed. Agāh Sirri Levend (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi,
1965–68), 4:108–09. See Losensky, Welcoming Fighānī, 156, for ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī’s interest in
muʿammā.
147 Jāmī, Pis’ma, 3.
148 Taşköprüzade for the Hidāyat al-ḥikma, 138, 179; Kāfiya, 168, 336, 370; Ṭawāliʿ, 53, 173;
Taḥrīr, 553.
Those students of Davānī who achieved prominence in the Ottoman Em-

pire fall into two categories. The first are natives of the empire who studied
with Davānī and then returned home. For example, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAlī b.
Muʾayyad al-Amāsī (d. 922/1516), who had been with Bāyazīd when the latter
was amir in Amasya, was obliged to flee to Aleppo in 881/1476 when unfavor-
able reports about him reached Mehmet II. As he sought a teacher there, he
was encouraged by Persian merchants to continue his travels as far as Shiraz
where he should study with Davānī, whom they praised. He took their advice
and proceeded with a company of merchants to Shiraz where he stayed for
seven years. Taşköprüzade saw with his own eyes the certificates of study
(ijāzas) which Ibn Muʾayyad received for works in the rational sciences, Arabic,
Qurʾān commentary, and hadith. When Bāyazīd ascended the throne, Ibn
Muʾayyad, or Müeyyed-zāde, returned first to Amasya and then continued on
to Istanbul, where the sultan put him in charge of a madrasa. Ibn Muʾayyad
married in 891/1486, became qadi of Edirne, then chief judge (qāḍīʿaskar) of
Anatolia, and eventually of Rumelia. The final bit of information given about
him was that he was with Sultan Selīm (r. 918–26/1512–20) at Chaldiran.149
With the story of Ibn Muʾayyad and, as will emerge in Chapter 3, with that of
Davānī and Maybudī, it becomes clear that it is a mistake to lay too much stress
on the tight organization of either the Ottoman educational system or of those
found in Iran. Although certain books were traditionally studied and certain
lengths of time expected for the mastery of a particular subject, the lack of a
centralized mechanism for evaluating students’ qualifications in either region
gave added importance to the personal relations between teacher and student.
The second category of student is the native Iranian who eventually settled
in Ottoman lands. For example, Shaykh Muẓaffar al-Dīn ʿAlī Shīrāzī studied
with Mir Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī and Davānī in Shiraz, marrying a daughter of
the latter. When Davānī once suffered a lengthy illness, Muẓaffar al-Dīn served
as his substitute at the Madrasah-i Sharṭ. After his two teachers died and grow-
ing Safavid power made life uncertain, Muẓaffar al-Dīn immigrated to Anato-
lia. It just so happened that the chief judge (qāḍīʿaskar) was the same Ibn
Muʾayyad mentioned above and that Muẓaffar al-Dīn had been somewhat
ahead of him when they studied with Davānī. Consequently, Ibn Muʾayyad
welcomed him warmly and presented him to Bāyazīd, which resulted in his
being given two successive madrasas to direct. When blindness afflicted him,
he received sixty dirhems per diem retirement pay from Sultan Selīm. He died
149 Taşköprüzade, 292. Uzunçarşılı says he studied with Davānī in Tabriz. İsmail H.
Uzunçarşılı, Osmanli Devletinin İlmiye Teşkilati, Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, seri 8, no. 17
(Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1965), 232.
48 Chapter 2
in Bursa in 922/1516. Taşköprüzade finishes his biographical notice by saying

that he was a Shafiʿi and that he had mastered mathematics, geometry, engi-
neering, logic, and scholastic theology.150 Another of Davānī’s students, Ḥakīm
Shāh Muḥammad Qazvīnī, came from a family of doctors and himself excelled
in medicine. After spending some time in Mecca, he was invited to Bāyazīd’s
court in Istanbul on Ibn Muʾayyad’s recommendation. He received 120 dirhems
daily for his practice and enjoyed at least an equally high position under Selīm.
He wrote a Qurʾān commentary and a supercommentary on the Sharḥ al-
ʿAqāʾid al-ʿaḍudīya of Davānī, as well as a commentary on the Kāfiya.151
Taşköprüzade mentions several of Davānī’s students who fall into one of the
two categories.152 Whichever group they belonged to, scholars who studied
with Davānī apparently bore no stigma—quite the contrary—for the time
spent with him. Since most of them were first given madrasa positions and
then went on to become qadis, it seems that, although they may have jumped
the line upon entering the purview of the Ottoman state, they quickly joined
the mainstream in their academic careers.
One reason they were able to adapt so quickly was that they studied the
same materials during their years in the madrasa. According to Uzunçarşılı,
the various academic grades were designated not only by the salary given to
teachers at each level, but also by the materials that were read. During the long
educational process, students studied many more works than the one or two
formally associated with their current level. Uzunçarşılı mentions a number of
books which were read in the madrasa system in addition to the standards of
the graded course. In logic, they included a Sharḥ al-Shamsīya, Sharḥ Īsāghūjī
(Isagogue), and a Sharḥ al-Maṭāliʿ. The historian does not say who wrote the
commentaries and remarks that supercommentaries were used as well. The
works given for philosophy all date from the end of the fifteenth century and
are by such authors as Qāḍīzāda Rūmī and the Ibn Muʾayyad mentioned above.
Uzunçarşılı’s list is long, including books on everything from rhetoric to scho-
150 Taşköprüzade, 329–330. His studies thus parallel what we know of Maybudī’s interests. It
is specified that he studied a book of Euclid with Ṣadr al-Dīn.
151 Taşköprüzade, 330–31. Note the frequency with which these titles appear among scholars
of the period.
152 For the Ottomans, see Taşköprüzade on Sinān al-Dīn Yūsuf al-Aydīnī (d. 935–36/1529),
469; Ibn al-Katkhudā al-Kirmiyānī (d. ca. 940/1533), 472. The Iranians are Ismāʿīl
al-Shirvānī (went on to Khwaja Aḥrār in Transoxiana), 356, and Muḥyī al-Dīn Muḥammad
(d. 963/1556), who was too young to study with Davānī, but his father had known Ibn
al-Muʾayyad and the son got an academic job from Bāyazīd based on that acquaintance,
488.
lastic theology to law, hadith, and other subjects. In the study of religious pre-
cepts (ʿaqāʾid), Davānī’s Ithbāt al-wājib is mentioned.153
Students were not supposed to progress to the next higher book without a
certificate of study or a teaching license (ijāza) for the book on their level. Fur-
thermore, they were not to rush through their studies, but rather to spend a
specified length of time at each level. A 1576 decree designated the minimum
time to be spent in the three lower grades as three years each, one year in the
two next levels, and finally three years as a dānişmend or advanced student.
The total amounts to a minimum of fourteen years.154 Assuming that a boy was
thirteen or so when he began his studies, he would not finish his madrasa edu-
cation before the age of at least twenty-seven. As teachers, the scholars began
again at the lowest level and worked their way to the top.155 If the practice in
Iranian lands was at all comparable, Maybudī would have been in his late
twenties or early thirties when he started to teach and wrote the Hidāyat al-
ḥikma, which corresponds with the information available about him. When
students approached the end of their formal education, they had acquired fa-
miliarity with a common core of scholarship that transcended political bound-
aries.156
Uzunçarşılı’s documentation leaves us wondering whether the books were
used for centuries, went in and out of vogue, and whether they were wide-
spread throughout the empire or used in a limited area. Another indication
that several of the books mentioned above were on the market comes from a
request made in 843/1439–40 by Sultan Chaqmāq of Egypt to Shāhrukh. The
sultan asked for the following books: Ḥujjat ahl al-Sunnat by Shaykh Abū
Manṣūr Māturīdī, the Tafsīr al-kabīr of Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī, the Sharḥ-i Talkhīṣ
al-jāmiʿ of Masʿūd Bukhārī, Sharḥ-i Kashshāf by ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Pahlavān, and the
Rawḍat dar madhhab-i Shāfiʿī.157 All but the last of those titles appear either in
the list of Ottoman textbooks or in Maybudī’s reading list.
Just as one teaches the books with which one is familiar, we can assume that
the books scholars wrote about were those that they themselves had studied. It
is thus possible to determine in some measure the books upon which Maybudī’s
153 Uzunçarşılı, 20–23.

154 Cornell H. Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian
Mustafa Âli (1541–1600) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 27, using Uzunçarşılı,
13–15. Muṣṭafā ʿĀlī actually spent twelve to fifteen years in the bottom three levels, instead
of nine. See also information on Jāmī above.
155 Uzunçarşılı, 19–20. His source is Müverrih Alī’s Künh al-ahbār.
156 Uzunçarşılı, 19.
157 Samarqandī says five books were requested, but lists only the first four, 387b. Khvāndamīr
lists five, 3:628.
50 Chapter 2
teachers—specifically Davānī—concentrated. Since Davānī penned at least

seventy treatises, his knowledge was hardly restricted to a few basic works on
logic and grammar, but the point is that the works on which his education was
founded formed the education he transmitted to a subsequent generation of
students.
As the discussion of Maybudī’s writings indicates, he, too, passed on the
knowledge of his predecessors in subjects such as logic, grammar, and philoso-
phy. In one significant respect, however, he launched into a completely differ-
ent field. Also a commentary, the Sharḥ-i Dīvān-i ʿAlī dealt not with a familiar
educational text, but with a collection of poetry attributed to one of the figures
most revered by the Shīʿa. The implications of such a work, penned by a Sunni
judge just prior to the rise of the Shiʿi Safavid state in Iran, will be developed in
the next chapter.
the Sharḥ-i Dīvān-i ʿAlī 51
Chapter 3
The Sharḥ-i Dīvān-i ʿAlī
The Sharḥ-i Dīvān-i ʿAlī is both Maybudī’s longest work and the one most di-
rectly related to religious developments in the fifteenth and sixteenth centu-
ries. Although it was considered his most important book by the judge’s
contemporaries and by Iranian scholars of succeeding generations, as is seen
in the references to it and the number of manuscripts still extant, and despite
its relevance to Iran’s Shiʿi transformation, it remains relatively unstudied and
awaited a critical edition until 2000. Completed in Ṣafar 890/February-March
1485—that is, sometime around Maybudī’s appointment as qadi of Yazd—it
raises questions about the sectarian sympathies of the Ak Koyunlu court and
of the men it employed.1 Furthermore, given that Maybudī was later accused
of being a fanatical Sunni who apparently was killed on the orders of Shah
Ismāʿīl and assuming that his views remained relatively consistent, the book
suggests what kinds of views were unacceptable in the nascent Safavid state.
Logically, Maybudī would not have written three to four hundred folios about
the main Shiʿi personality had he not shared at least some ʿAlid loyalism. None-
theless, his writings provided no effective protection against charges of unac-
ceptable belief. In order to know why, it is first necessary to determine what his
beliefs were.
Whatever his ʿAlid loyalties, Maybudī was not a crypto-Shiʿi.2 He emphati-
cally identifies the Shīʿa as a group unrelated to himself in the Sharḥ, and we
1 Maybudī gives both Hijra and Jalālī dates: Ṣafar 890 and Isfand 406. SDA, 799. For the Jalālī or
Mālikī era, see S.H. Taqīzādeh, “Various Eras and Calendars used in the Countries of Islam,”
BSOAS 10 (1939–42): 108–17. It began with the vernal equinox in 471/1079. In the Munsha⁠ʾāt
Maybudī writes to Qadi ʿĪsā Sāvajī that he has wanted to send a copy of the Sharḥ ever since
he finished it and finally managed to do so. MUN, 186. In a verse that extols the life of a Sufi,
he says, “Since I left official responsibilities, I have had a hundred delights and untroubled joy,”
but it is difficult to extract biographical certainty from that one line. It seems to indicate that
he held some official position before a hiatus and his subsequent appointment as qadi. SDA,
14.
2 M. Bāqir b. Zayn al-ʿAbidīn Khvānsārī, Rawḍāt al-jannāt fī aḥwāl al-ʿulamāʾ wa-al-sādāt (Qum:
Khiyābān-i Aram, 1391/1971), 3:239. He states that, despite some verses that would lead one to
believe the contrary, Maybudī was not a Shiʿi. A passage in the SDA on the legal schools, which
is discussed below, is his proof. Mudarris finds those same verses convincing evidence that
Maybudī was in fact a Shiʿi. Rayḥānat, 6:50. The uncertainty is perfectly reasonable, for Devin
Stewart discusses how Twelver Shiʿi jurists participated in the Shafiʿi madhhab for centuries.

52 Chapter 3
know from his life that he served as a Shafiʿi judge who cultivated relations
with leading figures of the Sunni Sufi order of the Naqshbandis and corre-
sponded with the leader of the Niʿmatallahi order, who was based in his own
region of Yazd. Furthermore, an understanding of Maybudī does not come
from placing him among the Shīʿa or among the extremist (ghulāt) groups that
flourished in the Anatolian Peninsula and Iran during the post-Mongol period.
The latter presaged Safavid political success and may not have been as much
on the fringes of society as their enemies would lead us to believe.3 No evi-
dence has appeared, however, which would link Maybudī to them.
Maybudī did belong to a minority—that of the civilian elite—and it is more
useful to place the composition of the Sharḥ in that context. Research by J.
Aubin demonstrates that certain types of political power remained in the
hands of notable families who had held it steadily for generations as dynasties
came and went.4 Some houses rose as others fell, but the structure of civilian
notable authority remained unshaken. It can be argued that intellectual and
religious authority remained in their hands as well. As far as can be deter-
mined, many of the notables prominent under the Ak Koyunlu continued to
teach in the schools and serve in the law courts under the Safavids.
One of the more interesting problems in Ak Koyunlu and Safavid history is
the readiness of that civilian leadership to identify itself as Shiʿi at a particular
moment in history. The parameters of religious identification are not well
known. What range of belief and practice could be subsumed under Shiʿism or
Sunnism is not clear to scholars today, nor does it seem to have been sharply
defined for the men of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as evidenced by
the arguments over whether Maybudī and Davānī adhered to one religious
grouping or the other and by the ambiguity introduced into the biography of a
poet such as Fighānī (d. 925/1519) by poems in praise of the Imams.5 The
Islamic Legal Orthodoxy: Twelver Shiite Responses to the Sunni Legal System (Salt Lake City: The
University of Utah Press, 1998), especially chapter 3, “Conformance to Consensus,” 61–109.
3 See Michel Mazzaoui, The Origins of the Ṣafawids. Šīʿism, Ṣūfism, and the Ġulāt, Freiburger
Islamistudien, no. 3 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1972) and Matti Moosa, Extremist Shiites: The
Ghulat Sects (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1988), especially chap. 2 for the Bektashis,
chap. 3 for the Safavids and Kizilbash, chap. 4 for the Bektashis, Kizilbash, and Shabak.
4 Jean Aubin, “É tudes safavides I: Šāh Ismāʿīl et les notables de l’Iraq persan,” JESHO 2 (1959):
39, 51.
5 Losensky, Welcoming Fighānī, 57–60. The prolific Shafiʿi scholar in Mamluk lands, ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), compiled forty hadiths about ʿAlī in Al-Qawl al-jalī
fī faḍāʾil ʿAlī (The Clear Statements on the Merits of ʿAlī) and again, context is crucial. The col-
lection was one of four on the first caliphs of the community and Suyūṭī also put together
another collection focused on Fāṭima. Burge writes: “Without knowing the religious beliefs of
terms ‘Shiʿi-Sunnism,’ ‘imamophilism,’ ‘‘Alid loyalism,’ and ‘crypto-Shiʿism’ ad-

opted by a variety of scholars demonstrate that sectarian identities remain
hard to pin down. The primary material leads everyone to articulate a variation
on one conclusion—namely, that confessional ambiguity prevailed.6
Each form of religious experience had something to offer. Familial and local
tradition might dictate Sunni ritual and legal practice, while at the same time
intellectual currents might draw a bright young man towards the occult, and
his own temperament and personal ambitions might make a Sufi brotherhood
a comfortable place to pursue his mystical longings and poetic talents. As more
material is mined, we develop a clearer picture of how the individuals saw
themselves, what confessional boundaries they negotiated, and under which
circumstances it was important to identify oneself as belonging to one group
or another.
Sectarian uncertainty had been an issue for centuries, with men as different
as Thaʿlabī and Simnānī being pegged with a variety of identities. Expressions
of respect for ʿAlī, the family of the Prophet, and the Imams made categoriza-
tion a complicated matter even for an individual’s contemporaries. The fact
that Maybudī wrote the kind of work he did offers one means to discover what
his audience among the educated notables wanted to hear and to begin to
trace the religious and intellectual continuity of the Ak Koyunlu and Safavid
periods. The question becomes one of knowing their views in order to see what
baggage they carried into the Safavid era and what they jettisoned. Since virtu-
ally no studies treat such developments in western Iran during our period,
Maybudī’s massive Sharḥ acts as a gateway to determining how scholars inte-
grated the ʿAlid narrative into the intellectual inquiry of the day.
However many issues it raises, the Sharḥ is first and foremost a commentary
on the poetry of ʿAlī, written to appeal to those who, like Maybudī, journey on
the mystical path (darvīshān)—that is, Sufis.7 Writings attributed to ʿAlī, as
opposed to traditions about him, fall into two main categories. The first is the
prose of the Nahj al-balāgha, the collection of ʿAlī’s sayings, speeches, epi-
al-Suyuti, having read the collection, one might suppose that the work was of Shiʿi origin.
However, figures like Imam ʿAli and Fatima also have exalted status amongst most Sunni com-
munities, even if they do not extend to incorporate all Shiʿi beliefs about them.” Stephen Burge,
“Al-Suyūṭī on the merits of Imam ʿAli,” written for The Institute of Ismaili Studies’ website:
http://www.iis.ac.uk (2010), 3.
6 Melvin-Koushki sees the range of orientations along a Sunni-Shiʿi axis as the “normalization
of both the pluralism of the Ilkhanid period and the accompanying Sunni-Shiʿi intellectual
rapprochement, as well as a symptom—or cause—of politically messianic Sufism.” “Quest,”
73.
7 SDA, 799.
54 Chapter 3
grams, and similar works. The book has long been admired in the Islamic world
as a model of eloquence, one befitting the reputed founder of the science of
grammar and a master of rhetoric.8 The most popular edition of the Nahj was
compiled by Muḥammad b. al-Ṭāhir al-Raḍī (d. 406/1015), and one of the better
known among many commentaries on it was by Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd (d. 656/1258).9
Maybudī cites the Nahj only three times in the Sharḥ for minor clarifications of
meaning and does not indicate whether he used a particular commentary.10
The second group of writings is ʿAlī’s poetic opus, or dīvān. As it appears in
the Sharḥ, it comprises some 1700 lines (bayt), and numerous manuscripts ex-
ist. Maybudī does not mention which collections of ʿAlī’s poetry he used, al-
though he cites variant readings as will be discussed further on, and scholars
disagree about the compiler of the dīvān. In the Rawḍāt al-jannāt, Khvānsārī
says Maybudī would have used the collection of Abū al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Aḥmad
b. Muḥammad al-Ḍajkardī [sic] al-Nīshābūrī (d. 512 or 513/1118 or 1119), known
as the Tāj al-ashʿār wa-salwat al-Shīʿa.11 He mentions that some have attrib-
uted the collection to Quṭb al-Dīn al-Kaydarī, also known as Abū al-Ḥasan
Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn b. al-Ḥasan al-Bayhaqī, who also wrote a commen-
tary on the Nahj al-balāgha.12
The centrality of poetry in Islamicate culture must ever be kept in mind
while examining the Sharḥ. As is well known, poetry amounted to much more
than the demonstration of verbal and intellectual virtuosity or refined sen
timents. At least as far back as Thaʿlabī’s commentary on the Qurʾān, poetry “is
readmitted into the sacred discourse, not as a sanitized philological tool where
the meaning of the poetic citation as such is inconsequential, but as a con-
8 Abū Saʿīd al-Ḥasan b. ʿAbd Allāh Sīrāfī, Biographies des grammariens de l’école de Basra
(Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1936), 18; ʿAllāma Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Shiʿite
Islam, trans. Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975), 105.
Tahera Qutbuddin, “ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib,” in Arabic Literary Culture, 500–925, vol. 311 in series
Dictionary of Literary Biography, ed. Michael Cooperson and Shawkat Toorawa (Detroit:
Thomson Gale, 2005), 68–76.
9 For al-Raḍī, see Brockelmann, SI:132. There is some question whether Abū al-Qāsim ʿAlī b.
al-Ṭāhir (d. 436/1044) collected the Nahj al-balāgha, or whether it was his brother al-Raḍī.
Brockelmann, SI:704–05. For Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd, see Brockelmann, SI:497, 705 and for other
commentaries, see Jamil Sultan, É tude sur Nahj al-Balāgha (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve,
1940), 9–10; Moktar Djebli, “Encore à propos de l’authenticité du Nahj al-Balagha!,” Studia
Islamica 75 (1992): 33–56.
10 SDA, 238, 295, 795.
11 Khvānsārī, 3:238; Maʿṣūm ʿAlī Shāh, 3:125. Better is “Fanjgirdī”, for whom see Brockelmann,
SI:74.
12 Brockelmann, SI:74.
tent-poetry, a poetry that can buttress the word of God.”13 Aside from its use
within scholarly inquiry, certain works, such as the poetry of Rūmī and Ḥāfiẓ,
came to acquire authority of a sacred nature and were interpreted as intimat-
ing concealed truths.14 Maybudī’s approach to poetry correspondingly differs
from that in his earlier commentaries because his subject possesses so many
layers of meaning. An introduction of approximately two hundred pages in the
printed edition, the Favātiḥ, precedes the commentary proper and situates
ʿAlī’s biography within the context of Islamic philosophy and history. Maybudī’s
method of not only clarifying the text but also significantly expanding on its
meaning contrasts markedly to his previous writing techniques. The poetry in
the body of the work frequently triggers a digression of seemingly tenuous
connection to the actual poem and provides themes for a substantial quantity
of Maybudī’s own verse. In order to evaluate the text, the course of the argu-
ments in the introduction will be traced in some detail. Given the diversity of
subjects in the commentary, main themes will be extracted and discussed top-
ically, rather than in the order in which they appear.
One characteristic of the commentary, and certainly not unique to it, is the
extensive use of quotations, primarily from the Qurʾān and hadith, but also
from scholarly works in the philosophical sections. Maybudī had a vast litera-
ture at his command, ranging from Scripture (including quotations from the
Torah and the Gospels) to legal documents to hagiography to poetry.15 His art-
ful, purposeful use of quotation produced a documentary collage. The contem-
porary scholar’s task is to recover meaning from these fragmentary or layered
texts. It unnecessarily minimizes his pedagogical purpose to think of Maybudī’s
method solely as a virtuosic stringing together of fragments. In Maybudī’s tra-
dition, uncovering truth and perceiving unity in consciously layered material
began with opening a copy of the Qurʾān and seeking to understand its lexicon,
allusions, historical formation, and much more. Scriptural references confer
red the legitimacy of divine truth on a wide range of beliefs, so were essential
to the development of any argument. Maybudī explicitly draws that connec-
13 Saleh, Formation, 175.

14 See Annemarie Schimmel, Deciphering the Signs of God: A Phenomenological Approach to
Islam (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 168.
15 He refers to specific books and chapters of the Torah (352) and verses in the Gospels, in
one place quoting John 3:3: “He will not enter the kingdom of heaven and earth who has
not been born a second time.” SDA, 138. In another section he quotes John’s verses on the
Paraclete. SDA, 353. Those are but a few lines in a large work, but it is worth noting that in
the case of John 3:3 his use is neither polemical nor apologetic, but simply substantiation
of an argument. In all likelihood, Maybudī drew from an intermediary source rather than
having a copy of the Jewish and Christian scriptures at hand.
56 Chapter 3
tion when explicating a poem that mentions the verses of ‘Yā Sīn.’ After citing
the hadith in which Muḥammad says, “Everything has a heart and the heart of
the Qurʾān is ‘Yā Sīn’,”16 he quotes a few verses from the chapter of the Qurʾān
that goes by that name, beginning with the two mysterious, isolated letters.
The verses he cites affirm that God’s teaching to Muḥammad is not poetry, and
that it is “a Reminder (dhikr) and a ‘Qurʾān’ that makes plain.” The conversation
among Qurʾān, hadith, and ʿAlī’s poem demands the engagement of mind,
speech, and eye, while eluding finite comprehension. From the very beginning
of Islamic religious life, philological, historical, and theological excavations of
text were necessary in order to come to a greater understanding of God’s words
to mankind.
In his use of quotations, Maybudī usually does not give long chains of trans-
mission (isnāds). He more commonly introduces an anecdote with the name
of the compiler or commentator—Tirmidhī, Thaʿlabī, Wāḥidī, and so on—and
then perhaps that of the witness who actually heard the words of the Prophet
or ʿAlī or participated in an event that merited recollection.17 In some cases,
for example in recounting Imam Ḥasan’s speech after the death of his father
ʿAlī, Maybudī omits any source whatsoever.18 Maybudī prefers to focus on the
narrative content of his quotations, so in the rare instances when he does give
a more detailed chain of transmission or examine the authenticity of particu-
lar stories, the change from his usual procedure demands attention. Just one
example concerns ʿAlī’s status as the first convert to Islam after Khadīja.19 After
briefly citing ʿAlī Ibn Athīr, Maybudī quotes Thaʿlabī on Qurʾān 9:100 (“And the
first to lead the way …”). According to the earlier commentator, the verse refers
to ʿAlī as the first convert after the Prophet’s wife, “and that is the word of Ibn
ʿAbbās, Jābir b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī, Zayd b. Arqam, Muḥammad b. al-Munka-
dir, Rabīʿa, and Abū al-Jārūd.” Maybudī adds more supporting material from
Ibn ʿAbbās, Anas, and Imam Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal on the testimony of ʿAfīf Kindī.
When the subject lacks theological or historical ramifications, Maybudī
16 SDA, 765. Qurʾān, 36.

17 Zadeh describes the works of the eleventh-century Shāhfūr Isfarāʾīnī in words that apply
equally to Maybudī: “In general, Persian exegetical literature had very little patience for
the genealogical sequencing of isnād transmissions … Though [Shāhfūr] Isfarāʾīnī gener-
ally dispenses with the chains of transmission, he draws copiously on the early exegetical
authorities and usually cites them directly by name or by a generic title, such as the
mufassirān (exegetes).” The Vernacular Qur’an: Translation and the Rise of Persian Exegesis
(Oxford: Oxford University Press in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies,
2012), 389.
18 SDA, 198.
19 SDA, 446–47.
generally contents himself with the story: a verbal exchange before a battle, an
act of courage, an example of charitable giving, and so on. Where controversy
is involved, Maybudī arms himself with authority.
The Sharḥ has already shed some light on the extent of Maybudī’s educa-
tion. In it Maybudī cites hundreds of books and authors, providing us with
more insight into his mental library, which implies an extensive physical one
as well, given the number of lengthy quotations he includes. His sources range
from the giants of hadith collection to a variety of scholars such as Muḥammad
ibn ʿAlī Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī (d. 386/996), Ibn Sīnā, Ghazālī, Ibn ʿArabī, Saʿd al-
Dīn Ḥamuvayī (d. 649/1252), Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī (d. 673/1274), Fakhr al-Dīn
ʿIrāqī (d. 688/1289), ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Kāshī (al-Kāshānī) (d. 736/1335),
Muʾayyad al-Dīn al-Jandī (d. ca. 700/1300), ʿAḍud al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ījī
(d. 756/1355), Sharaf al-Dīn Dāwud al-Qayṣarī (d. 751/1350), ʿAbd Allāh b. Asʿad
al-Yāfiʿī (d. 768/1367), Sayyid ʿAlī Hamadānī (d. 786/1385), Saʿd al-Dīn Masʿūd
Taftāzānī, and Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Ibn Turka Iṣfahānī (d. 830/1437). In addition to ca-
nonical hadith collections and philosophical works, Maybudī frequently refers
to Abū Muḥammad Aḥmad b. Aʿtham, whose Kitāb al-Futūḥ (composed
204/819) is a history of the Arabs from ʿUthmān (d. 35/656) to Hārūn al-Rashīd
(d. 193/809) and offers much information about ʿAlī. While mentioning many
authors, he rarely refers to more than one or two books by each one. In many
cases of translation and grammatical explanation, Maybudī does not name his
source.20 Where a work is cited only once or twice, it is possible that Maybudī
uses an intermediary source in which that work is cited, rather than having the
work itself in hand. A final remark about sources is that few come from his
contemporaries. Davānī is cited once in the entire work and only as the begin-
ning of a chain of authorities for a story about a jinn embodied in a snake and
the impact of its slaying on a group of pilgrims.21 In this complex jigsaw puz-
zle of sources, the challenge is to assess the care with which Maybudī chose his
references, and to seek with equal care the order behind his selections.
What could have been a dry, if erudite, arrangement of ideas with ʿAlī at its
core is, on the contrary, an engaging work sparkling with variety. Of all that
Maybudī could mention about Ghazālī and Ibn ʿArabī, he includes an anecdote
related by the latter about a scholar being struck blind for reading just a few
pages of a treatise picked up in a local market. The manuscript vilified Ghazālī
20 The excellent edition of Raḥmānī and Ashk-Shīrīn identifies many of the unspecified ref-
erences, especially to Abū Naṣr Ismāʿīl b. Ḥammād al-Jawharī’s (d. 393/1002 or 397/1006)
dictionary, the Tāj al-lugha wa-ṣiḥāḥ al-ʿArabīya.
21 SDA, 100.
58 Chapter 3
and the heedless scholar did not regain his sight until he repented.22 Reflecting
on the practical uses of philosophy, Maybudī not only quotes Shams al-Dīn al-
Shahrazūrī (d. after 687/1288) about how God punished the Children of Israel
for neglecting the study of geometry, but gives a lucid, detailed solution to the
mathematical problem of duplicating the cube, which they were unable to
solve without the help of Plato!23 Variations in tone and topic keep the more
abstruse material from stalling the discussion and the more anecdotal selec-
tions from meandering into frivolity. Maybudī is a good-natured storyteller
whose tales beguile as they instruct.
The Favātiḥ
Divided into seven sections, or fātiḥas (literally ‘start’ or ‘opening’), the intro-
duction was frequently copied as a separate work known as the Favātiḥ.
Maybudī briefly says that he will explain in seven chapters some of the more
recondite concepts to be met within the commentary proper before he starts
it. He then plunges directly into the first chapter. The chapters treat the true
path of the pure, God’s essence, His names and attributes, the greater man or
macrocosm, the lesser man or microcosm, prophecy and sainthood and, final-
ly, the virtues and history of ʿAlī. Each chapter is further divided into a varying
number of self-contained essays (fatḥ), the headings of which are penned in
red ink in the more elaborate manuscripts.
Maybudī opens the first chapter with the word with which he grapples from
beginning to end: ‘knowing’ (dānistan). His goal in stepping out onto the true
path of the pure is to compare scholastic and philosophical theologians
22 SDA, 21.
23 SDA, 27. His source is the [Nuzhat al-arwāḥ wa-rawḍat al-afrāḥ:] Tārīkh al-ḥukamāʾ of
Shams al-Dīn Shahrazūrī: A plague broke out in Plato’s day and one of the prophets of the
Children of Israel was informed that an altar in the shape of a cube had to be doubled for
the plague to stop. The afflicted nation put a cubic altar of identical dimensions next to
the first, but the plague only increased in intensity. God helpfully pointed out that such a
solution did not double the cube. Plato’s advice was sought and after remarking that God
was punishing the people for neglecting the study of geometry, he guided them to a solu-
tion. Maybudī then gives a detailed proof for how to double a cube. See the reference to
Shahrazūrī’s tale in Walter William Rouse Ball, Mathematical Recreations and Essays
(London: MacMillan, 1896; reprinted, 1905), 206: “In an Arab work, the Greek legend
[known as the Delian problem, in which the irritated God is Apollo] was distorted into
the following extraordinarily impossible piece of history, which I cite as a curiosity of its
kind …”
(mutakallimūn and ḥukamāʾ) and Peripatetic thinkers (ḥukamāʾ-i mashshāʾiyīn)

to mystics (Sufis) and Illuminationists (ḥukamāʾ-i ishrāqiyīn), who call them-
selves Stoics (rivāqiyīn). Citing Qurʾān 11:24 which sets up a stark contrast of
the blind and deaf to the seer and hearer, he indicates from the outset his
source for meaningful guidance.24 The sections touch on the path of logic and
its insufficiency, the path of mysticism, the belief of the majority that knowl-
edge is limited to the official sciences (ʿulūm-i rasmī i.e., the religious disci-
plines), the special qualities of dervishes, the possibility of approaching
mystical perfection through frequenting accomplished mystics, the path of Il-
lumination, the confusion of ultimate spiritual goals with philosophy alone,
differences in interpretation of the Shariʿa and, finally, whether cogent proof
comes from designation (naṣṣ) or consensus (ijmāʿ), listing sects that opt for
one or the other.
Among the many issues raised in the first section, the persistence of the
discussion about various methods of knowing stands out. Acquiring knowl-
edge is an activity of forward motion for Maybudī, whether one employs rea-
son in the path of the Mutakallimūn and the Peripatetic philosophers or
engages in spiritual exercises in the path of the Sufis and Illuminationists.
While Maybudī does not explicitly set out to list his methodological challeng-
es, the issues he tackles lead him to share with his reader the problems an in-
quiring believer is likely to encounter. In Maybudī’s interpretation of the
cosmos, once man begins to examine why things are the way they are, he is led
to question the nature of reality and then hits an epistemological wall as he
confronts the limits of what he can know. Even if religious thinkers considered
that epistemological debate acquired some breathing room with the synthesis
of Ghazālī in his Munqidh min al-ḍalāl (Deliverer from Error), the issue never
went away. Maybudī’s sensitivity to the need to balance different disciplines of
thought and experience should be seen as evidence that each age must learn
anew how to speak about the fundamentals of existence, rooting them secure-
ly in the Qurʾān and hadith. Maybudī comes down on the side of the mystics by
criticizing the path of rational thought (fikra), as opposed to experiential
mystical discipline (riyāḍat), and by extolling mysticism as the way to attain
spiritual truth. Kalam is a method fraught with disputation and guesswork.
According to Maybudī, the Qurʾān itself hints at kalam’s deficiencies: “Most of
them follow nought but conjecture. Assuredly conjecture can by no means
take the place of truth.”25 Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī, Shāfiʿī, Mālik b. Anas (d. 179/796),
24 SDA, 9.
25 10:37, quoted in SDA, 10.
60 Chapter 3
and Ghazālī provide material for his arguments.26 Maybudī does not dismiss
all rational endeavors, for they can be used to silence those who oppose true
belief, but he does restrict necessary academic knowledge to fiqh, tafsir and
hadith. He maintains that “by the lamp of reason one cannot see the path of
truth” and that demonstrative proofs will not lead to the primary goal of reli-
gious knowledge, for which the light of prophecy is necessary.27 A system of
knowledge built entirely on reason can both seduce man away from correct
belief and practice and block him from truly experiencing faith.
Maybudī’s wariness of Greek knowledge might seem jarring, considering his
own interest in the subject as revealed in earlier writings and in the Jām-i gītī-
numā of 897/1492. Through his treatment of Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā, whom he
singles out from other thinkers who advocated the use of logic, Maybudī shows
how it is possible to reconcile different methods of thought, exhibiting a drive
to replace disapproval of or at least ambivalence about rational sciences with
a comprehensive epistemological framework that accommodates a variety of
disciplines.28 After discussing whether or not the two philosophical scholars
were unbelievers (kāfir) for their denial of God’s knowledge of particulars, the
resurrection of bodies, and the necessity of the eternity of the world, as Ghazālī
claimed in his Munqidh min al-ḍalāl, Maybudī cites a verse that supports the
orthodoxy of Ibn Sīnā’s views. He admits the possibility that the rational sci-
ences are not necessarily harmful and that they can even provide access to the
truth. Throughout the Favātiḥ, Maybudī continues to quote Ibn Sīnā, his meth-
od being to present a philosophical notion first in the words of philosophers,
then to quote a relevant verse from the Qurʾān or hadith, and to wrap up with
Sufi or Illuminationist approaches to the concept. Where possible he demon-
strates an underlying agreement among thinkers, but acknowledges that those
who encounter contradictory positions are quick to criticize their opponents
and may accuse them of unbelief. Most of the time Maybudī avoids taking a
26 SDA, 10–11.
27 SDA, 12.
28 SDA, 12. Maybudī ends his brief biography of Ibn Sīnā with the philosopher’s repentance,
on the authority of ‘Abd Allāh b. Asʿad al-Yāfiʿī (d. 768/1367), Shafiʿi doctor and Sufi hagi-
ographer. SDA, 23. He later definitively states that Ibn Sīnā believed in the resurrection of
the body. With his generous spirit, Maybudī clarifies that, if some philosophers came to
deny the resurrection of the body, it was not that they accused prophets of lying; rather,
they arrived at false beliefs through analogy, which compelled them to interpret pro-
phetic revelation as referring only to resurrection of the soul. According to their line of
reasoning, prophets spoke of bodily resurrection and divine physical attributes simply as
a way of teaching the masses. SDA, 125.
definitive position himself. He adroitly negotiates the methods of philosophy,

while pointing out the need to address the shortcomings of its metaphysics.
In the exploration of the overwhelming array of epistemological choices,
Ghazālī emerges as the thinker most compatible with Maybudī’s views, his
Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn (Revival of the Religious Sciences) and Kīmiyā-yi saʿādat being
recommended to Maybudī’s readers as life-changing. An awareness of how
misinterpretation can result in charges of unbelief colors many of Maybudī’s
editorial remarks about the great minds of Islamic learning, one that gains poi-
gnancy later on when Maybudī himself faces such charges during his career as
qadi. In his brief biographical account of Ghazālī, Maybudī quotes Saʿd al-Dīn
al-Taftāzānī’s Sharḥ al-Maqāṣid to the effect that once Ghazālī affirmed the res-
urrection of the soul, people jumped to the conclusion that he denied bodily
resurrection—and ends with an expressive “God forbid!”29 On rare occasions
something is categorically condemned as unbelief, but Maybudī’s preference is
to see linguistic fluidity as reason to give scholars the benefit of the doubt. He
claims that most people—that is, scholars—accept the practical (ethics, eco-
nomics, politics) and mathematical branches of philosophy (arithmetic,
mechanics, astronomy, music), while following mysticism in matters of meta
physics.30 It is, in fact, wrong to shun philosophy altogether, but it is equally
mistaken to think that simply because philosophers have made great discover-
ies in mathematics and astronomy, they therefore have the answers for all
other problems.31 Maybudī’s proof texts for this opinion are a remark of Abū
Hurayra: “Prayer behind ʿAlī is more perfect, while a meal with Muʿāwiya is
more substantial,” and the Qurʾānic verse, “None can inform you like Him who
is Aware.”32
Maybudī’s own tendencies in both rational and mystical directions help ex-
plain his high opinion of the Illuminationists. He sees them as falling some-
where between the two camps, sharing the merits rather than the weaknesses
of each group, and he subsumes many major thinkers under their rubric. The
ancient philosophers were all Illuminationists, as were some prophets and
saints. Their ranks include Agathodaimon,33 Hermes Trismegistus, Idrīs,
Luqmān— whom he describes as the disciple (shāgird) of David—Pythagorus
29 SDA, 21.
30 SDA, 26.
31 SDA, 28.
32 Qurʾān 35:14.
33 Probably a mythical figure, one associated with alchemy and the occult sciences and
variously identified with an ancient Egyptian sage, an associate of Socrates, a pupil of
Ptolemy and others.
62 Chapter 3
the disciple of Solomon, and Plato.34 Aristotle set off on the path of theoretical
inquiry (ṭarīq-i naẓar), one followed by Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā after the transla-
tion of Greek books into Arabic. Shihāb al-Dīn Yaḥyā Suhrawardī revived Illu-
minationist thought in the sixth century [ah].35 Maybudī does not specify
what characterizes the Illuminationsts as a group and takes for granted that his
audience accepts his categorization and portrayal of historical continuity.
Because medieval scholars themselves carefully considered how study
based on reason could coexist with that based on revelation, we must guard
against assuming that immersion in profound religious experience must nec-
essarily conflict with the sophisticated intellectual structures that derived
from classical Greek thought. Philosophy and a mysticism steeped in esoteri-
cism can be seen as ‘competing traditions’ that are fundamentally incom
patible, in which case it would be surprising that someone like Ghazālī or
Suhrawardī could be deeply grounded in both Avicennian philosophical ideas
and formal Islamic sciences and combine them with mystical experience to
shape their understanding of God and man.36 It is more useful to consider the
traditional Islamic learning of both philosophers and mystics not as tangen-
tial, but rather as absolutely fundamental to their worldview. That illusory con-
flict misses the mark, as born out simply by the biographies of the various
figures, many of whom served as qadis, teachers, and preachers.
Whether they be philosophers, mystics, or a unique combination of the two,
self-proclaimed seekers of truth are not always what they seem. Maybudī
quotes Ghazālī’s Iḥyāʾ to lament the fact that most people are unable to iden-
tify the authentic scholars of their day. The so-called scholars actually know
little and appear knowledgeable only to the ignorant.37 Although mystics can
potentially mirror the essence of the deity, those of Maybudī’s own time are
34 SDA, 23.
35 SDA, 23–24. Interspersed among Maybudī’s arguments are bits of factual information,
such as the location of Farab, thumbnail biographies of Ibn Sīnā and Ghazālī (22), includ-
ing a discussion of whether the ‘z’ in the latter’s name should be doubled, Suhrawardī’s
date of death, and his variously reported ages at that time.
36 See essays in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy: Montada, 155, for “compet-
ing traditions”; Marmura, 137, on Ghazālī; Taylor, 197, in his essay on Averroes perceives
that the various traditions did not need to be at war. Citing G. Endress and D. Gutas,
Adamson describes how the reinterpretation of apparently contradictory ideas kept phi-
losophers engaged long before the appearance of Islam and how it took on particular
urgency for Islamic philosophers at least since al-Kindī in the ninth century. Adamson,
The Arabic Plotinus, 3, 25.
37 SDA, 17. See Chapter 4 below, for further criticism of contemporary scholars.
judged to pursue worldly comfort rather than spiritual purity.38 One cannot
necessarily weigh the merits of rational inquiry and mysticism by their con-
temporary practitioners. In this matter, Maybudī did not simply parrot the
opinions of his predecessors from several centuries before. He complains in
one of his letters to Qadi Ṣafī al-Dīn ʿĪsā Sāvajī that unqualified ulama hold
positions solely because their fathers and grandfathers held those positions
before them. He embellishes his complaint with a verse by Ḥāfiẓ that takes a
swipe at false mystics.39
Not all mystics are frauds, however, and Maybudī encourages the neophyte
to seek their company. Just as someone whose nature is well-balanced and in-
clined to poetry can, in fact, become a poet by frequenting accomplished po-
ets, so can a person inclined to mysticism achieve his goals by spending time
with experienced mystics. On the other hand, someone who does not have that
innate aptitude and well-balanced nature yet aspires to become a poet through
the study of prosody (ʿarūḍ) resembles the person who attempts to become a
mystic through the study of books written by mystical masters.40 Similarly, in
the sixth chapter, Maybudī warns that one needs a shaykh and not books on
ethics and Sufism to cure spiritual ills, just as a sick man finds no cure by read-
ing books such as Ibn Sīnā’s al-Qānūn fī al-ṭibb or ʿAlī b. ʿAbbās al-Majūsī’s (d.
384/994) Kāmil al-ṣināʿa al-ṭibbīya.41 His point is that a Muslim must use the
correct tools for the job at hand. His own vast erudition is testimony to the
value he places on the intellect, but he recognizes that the impulses of the
heart may remain ineffable.
After his discussion of philosophy and mysticism, Maybudī abruptly shifts
to disagreements about inheritance laws among the early caliphs and legists,
linking them to the development of the four schools of law after the death of
the Prophet and their positions concerning the Shiʿites.42 His fundamental
point is that absent Muḥammad, the early Muslim community had to cope
with dissension without the benefit of an unquestioned authority figure, a
theme that pervades his reflections on the many conflicts that erupted in sub-
sequent years. Another connection between this apparent digression and the
text is that the issue of Fāṭima’s inheritance, especially as it relates to ʿAlī and
38 SDA, 18–19.
39 MUN, 54–55. Melvin-Koushki identifies Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Ibn Turka as one of the first writers to
quote Ḥāfiẓ frequently in his works and notes that Ḥāfiẓ was particularly useful concern-
ing false Sufis. “Quest,” 398.
40 SDA, 20.
41 SDA, 141.
42 SDA, 28–31.
64 Chapter 3
his claims to authority, comes up in the commentary; Maybudī here provides

background material for that later discussion. With its brief biographies of the
eponymous founders of the schools, concentrating primarily on Abū Ḥanīfa
and Shāfiʿī, this foray into legal details still seems out of place unless we recall
the primacy of Islam and the religious sciences from the preceding arguments.
The philosophical sciences hone the intellect for study of fiqh, tafsir, and the
like, mysticism is a method of attaining spiritual truth, and both are subordi-
nate to the all-encompassing Shariʿa. The main goal of philosophy and mysti-
cism is to achieve a more perfect understanding of God’s will, and that is most
authoritatively presented to the believer in the Shariʿa.
Furthermore, once Maybudī introduces ʿAlī as a legist who held a particular
opinion in the matter of inheritance in the early years of the Muslim commu-
nity, he is able to introduce the Shīʿa within the specific framework of the legal
schools, a subject germane to the commentary as a whole. When Maybudī
comes to the Shiʿi schools after describing the founders of the principal Sunni
ones, he says that, because of the accusations and curses of the vile among
them (arādhil-i īshān) against the Prophet’s Companions, they have been re-
jected and the influence of those schools among the majority of Muslims had
disappeared (mafqūd) by his day. Just as he mentioned Sunni legists, so
Maybudī states that those of the Shīʿa include Jamāl al-Dīn Ḥasan b. Yūsuf b.
ʿAlī b. Muṭahhar al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī (d. 726/1325) and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, who
are described as among the Imamiya.43 Maybudī does not explain what dis-
tinguished the Imamiya from other Shiʿi schools, sufficing himself with a quo-
tation from Ibn Athīr about how their renewer (mujaddid) in the second
century was ʿAlī al-Riḍā (d. 203/818).44 Maybudī also claims that the most just
among the Shīʿa are the Zaydis because they believe that, although ʿAlī was the
most virtuous (afḍal) of the Companions, in the best interests of the commu-
nity it was right that the caliphate devolve upon Abū Bakr, civil strife (fitna)
posing such a grave danger.
While the inclusion of the Shīʿa in the discussion of Islamic legal schools
lends them some legitimacy, the emphasis remains on how the majority of
Muslims view them, the assumption being that the latter have a right to sit in
judgment upon them and their Imams. A point in their favor comes in a quota-
tion from Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī (d. 402/1013): “There is no disagreement among
the Imams about declaring as heretics the exaggerators (ghulāt) among the
43 SDA, 30. While Maybudī cites al-Ṭūsī some fourteen times in the Sharḥ, exclusively for his
philosophical and scientific views, this is the only mention of al-Ḥillī.
44 Ibn Athīr maintains that the renewer is not limited to one person per century. Every
school has a renewer for every century.
Rawāfiḍ—that is, those who claimed that God becomes incarnate in the
prophets and then in the Imams.”45 How the Shafiʿi school treats the profes-
sions of faith (shahāda) of those who prefer ʿAlī’s caliphate to that of Abū Bakr
is presented as correct. Most Shafiʿis maintain that the shahāda of an innova-
tor (mubtadiʿ) who is not an unbeliever is accepted, although Imam al-
Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī (d. 478/1075) and Ghazālī do not accept the confession
of faith from someone who denies the Imamate of Abū Bakr or ʿUmar or who
reviles the Companions and slanders ʿĀʾisha. The shahāda of someone who
declares a preference (tafḍīl) for ʿAlī over Abū Bakr is incontestably heard.
Thus, the Shīʿa possess legitimacy, yet since they are subject to judgment by the
majority of Muslims, they occupy a subordinate position. Setting the section
apart as a distinct unit, Maybudī wraps it up with a return to the practical mat-
ter of inheritance, pointing out that the Shafiʿi school honors legacies made
over to the Rawāfiḍ. The emphasis of this section on Islam as a legal framework
provides a way to integrate the Shīʿa into the larger Muslim community while
setting the parameters of that integration.
Maybudī’s insistence on inclusion reappears in his remarks about ijtihād
and convincing (dalīl-i qaṭʿī) and presumptive (dalīl-i ẓannī) proofs. After look-
ing at the issues from different angles and citing a variety of sources, he states
that the Ashʿari school’s approach is correct (ḥaqq). He follows his conclusion
with characteristic caution: “It is possible that the contradictory schools are all
correct (ḥaqq).”46 Few opinions are categorically eliminated and the possibil-
ity of truth lies concealed in a variety of sources. Maybudī then continues with
an admonition against slandering scholars, clearly implying that he means
scholars of any madhhab.
It will be more appropriate to delay examination of Maybudī’s views of
Sunnism and Shiʿism until we reach references to them in the body of the
Sharḥ and tackle the story of his death in the early years of Shah Ismāʿīl’s reign.
What should be noticed at this point is how carefully Maybudī navigates the
seas of sectarian differences. He has to deal with the Shīʿa because of the very
nature of the book. That is not particularly problematic, for he obviously holds
ʿAlī in high esteem, calling him the closest valī to Muḥammad, just as the clos-
est prophet was Jesus, and exhibits no antagonism towards the Shīʿa as a group.
45 SDA, 31. Rawāfiḍ (dissenters or defectors) is a derogatory label imposed by Sunnis on

Shiʿites. In what seems to be a rare misattribution, Maybudī lists the source as al-Milal
wa-al-naḥal, which is actually by Muḥammad al-Shahrastanī (d. 548/1153). The editors
give the correct citation as Bāqillānī’s al-Tamhīd [al-awāʼil wa-talkhīṣ al-dalāʼil].
46 SDA, 32.
66 Chapter 3
Muḥammad himself drew a parallel between Jesus and ʿAlī.47 Nonetheless, in

Maybudī’s eyes, the Shīʿa did oppose the majority of the community after
Muḥammad’s death and set themselves apart. Maybudī’s final argument is that
believers should not insult or condemn other Muslims. God is the ultimate
Judge and man cannot know which faults He will choose to forgive and which
to punish.
That reference to the divine leads Maybudī into the second chapter, which
considers the essence of God.48 Its sections discuss the approach of the deity
through love (ḥubb) and absence or rapture (ghaybat), the nature of the soul,
the presence of the divine in His creation, the ramifications of the metaphor of
God as light, the dangers of anthropomorphism and incarnation (ḥulūl), and
the relation of God’s simplicity and unity to the multiplicity of His creation.
Some of the sections are introduced with the phrase: “The Sufis say …,” the
mystics’ explanations appearing as the most lucid and convincing.49 Even in
those sections, Maybudī mentions the various beliefs about God’s nature held
by philosophical theologians, philosophers, and mystics. Whereas the scholas-
tic theologians (mutakallimūn) maintain that knowledge of God’s essence is
possible, the others, including Imam al-Ḥaramayn and Ghazālī disagree.50
Maybudī lays out his position at the outset with a verse from the Qurʾān: “Allāh
biddeth you beware of Him. And Allāh is full of pity for (His) bondmen.”51 His
solicitude embracing all, God considers speculation about His essence to miss
the mark.
For the most part, Maybudī’s emphasis is on compassionate harmony rather
than controversy. As in the first section, he frequently reconciles the views of
Greek philosophers with those of the Sufis. For example, in the section on de-
grees of unity in the cosmos, he says that the ancient sages agree with the Sufis
on the subject of existence. Specifically, both consider there to be degrees of
existence, just as a solid consists in planes, which are composed of lines, which
are in turn made of points.52 Another common metaphor Maybudī employs is
the sea, for despite the multiplicity of waves, the reality of one sea is unques-
tionable.53 The attempt at reconciliation is also seen as Maybudī draws upon
the terminology of the various groups. He uses Aristotelian—more accurately,
47 SDA, 32–33.
48 SDA, 35–52.
49 See SDA, 35, 38, 41, 43, 47, 49.
50 SDA, 37.
51 SDA, 35: Qurʾān 3:30.
52 SDA, 49.
53 SDA, 51. This metaphor comes from a long passage taken from the Ḥavāshī-yi Sharḥ-i
Tajrīd of Sayyid Sharīf al-Jurjānī.
Avicennian—philosophy, with terms such as the necessary existent (vājib al-

vujūd) and the contingent existent (mumkin al-vujūd), side by side with words
and images of Sufis and Illuminationist writers. Maybudī’s efforts to synthesize
the thought of his predecessors, if not startling in themselves, contributed to
an intellectual continuity that bore fruit in the works of the philosopher-theo-
logians Mīr Dāmād (d. 1041/1631) and Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1050/1641).54
It is curious, then, that Maybudī engages so little with the thought of Ghazālī.
He writes a thumbnail biography of him, relates that some consider him the
renewer of his age, and mentions him over twenty times, which puts Ghazālī
near the top of his sources in terms of frequency, but rarely uses his ideas alone
to support or develop any complex argument. Generally Ghazālī’s views on
matters such as the afterlife or relations between body and soul are lumped
together with those of the Peripatetics, or of Abū al-Qāsim al-Ḥusayn b. Mufaḍ
ḍal b. Muḥammad al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī (d. 502/1108),55 Imam al-Ḥaramayn,
and Suhrawardī. His appearance in several places appears tangential, such as
when Ibn ʿArabī returns from a mystical experience, which is the focus of the
anecdote, to find his companions reading a work by the earlier scholar.56 Ibn
ʿArabī’s approval of Ghazālī’s ideas seems to matter more than those ideas
themselves.57 In the commentary on the poems, Maybudī points out the lexi-
cal distinction between “mithāl” and “mathal” as presented by Ghazālī, indi-
cates where in the Iḥyāʾ he offers variant attributions of a couple of verses, and
relates several anecdotes about Muḥammad and ʿAlī, none of which particu-
larly distinguishes Ghazālī from his other sources.
What is characteristic of Maybudī’s approach is his reluctance to attribute
unbelief to a particular person or group. He acknowledges that Ghazālī opened
himself to charges of unbelief with his statements about the resurrection of
the spirit, but then gives Taftāzānī’s explanation for the carelessness of that
accusation. The inadequacy of language to fully convey complex meanings
also exposed the Sufis to such charges. Maybudī cautions that idiosyncratic use
of language should not lead his readers to imagine that the Sufis espouse incar-
nation or mystical union (ḥulūl and ittiḥād), for “their intent is very subtle and
cannot be conveyed with either exoteric expressions or esoteric allusions.”58
54 See Rahman, Philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā, 1–2.

55 He may have died in the early 5th/11th century—little is known about his life. See
“Al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī” in the EI 2.
56 SDA, 156.
57 SDA, 21–22.
58 SDA, 48. Maybudī is certainly not the first writer to draw attention to the inadequacy of
language to explain mystical experience nor to discourage premature conclusions about
a fellow Muslim’s orthodoxy. See Homerin, From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint, 70 and
68 Chapter 3
Every utterance they make is both near to and far from their intended mean-
ing. Maybudī finds support in a quotation from Sayyid Sharīf al-Jurjānī for his
position that the complexity of the issues under discussion demands forbear-
ance in accusations of unbelief.59 The subject is the disagreement between
the Mutakallimūn and Sufis over whether God is present in creatures such as a
dog or cat. The former would see it as imperfection in God if He were present,
while the latter would see deficiency if He were not. The important point ac-
cording to Jurjānī is that neither wants to attribute imperfection to God, so
there is no need to brand either one as unbelievers.
It must not be thought that Maybudī finds all ideas acceptable, peacefully
coexisting in an uncritical mishmash of mindless tolerance. Unbelief (kufr)
stands as the boundary that must not be crossed. What Maybudī does insist on
is delicacy in establishing that boundary. Because he thinks that the truth be-
hind the veil is ineffable, it makes sense both that each man use the language
at his disposal to communicate what is absolutely essential to his existence
and that others experience difficulty in grasping exactly what is being said. The
underlying assumption connected to all efforts of expression is that God wills
man’s knowledge of Him.
The ambiguous, poetic lexicon of Ibn ʿArabī and the Illuminationists domi-
nates Maybudī’s discussion of God, Being, and light. Bāyazīd Bisṭāmī, Junayd
al-Baghdādī (d. 297/910), Najm al-Dīn al-Kubrā (d. 617/1221), and Sayyid Sharīf
al-Jurjānī are other sources upon whom Maybudī frequently draws. They run
the gamut from traditionalist theologians to both sober and ecstatic Sufis and
their images create a spiritual poetry interwoven with verses primarily by Ḥāfiẓ
and Maḥmūd Shabistarī. Light must see itself, since the Beautiful One has a
share in His own beauty which He sees in a mirror.60 The light shining on the
world is one, but when it shines on something colored, it seems to have color,
although it does not. If it shines on filth, it itself experiences no imperfection,
nor does it gain honor from the ruby.61 Maybudī uses light and God inter-
changeably, closing the fourth section with Ibn ʿArabī’s statement that God is
too all-encompassing to be confined in a particular creed.62
footnote 64, where he mentions similar remarks going back at least until the eleventh
century.
59 SDA, 47.
60 SDA, 43.
61 SDA, 45.
62 SDA, 46. From Faṣṣ Hūdī of Ibn ʿArabī’s The Bezels of Wisdom, trans. R.W.J. Austin (New
York: Paulist Press, 1980), 137.
A logical sequel to God’s essence, characterized by unity, is the treatment of

His names and attributes, multiple ways of grasping that oneness. They form
the subject of the third chapter, which contains eight sections.63 Topics dis-
cussed include the Sufis’ claim that a name is an essential or a determined at-
tribute (ṣifat-i muʿayyan), that in every age one name becomes dominant, and
that just as what is essential in God’s essence is unknown, so is that which is
essential to His attributes. Then Maybudī turns to the philosophers’ claim that
God knows entirely both universals (kulliyāt) and particulars (juzʾīyāt), God’s
will, the disputes of scholastic theologians about whether the speech of God is
created or eternal, fate and judgment, causation, and the philosophers’ con-
tention that every created thing is either pure good or its good is at least pre-
dominant, which leads into an analysis of what is good in the created world.
The fourth chapter addresses the greater man, or macrocosm (insān-i
kabīr).64 It consists of fourteen sections which examine the Sufis’ statement
that all celestial spheres and elements are one body, the spirit of which is the
First Intelligence and the heart of which is the universal soul (nafs-i kullīya). Its
faculties (quvā) are the spirits (rūḥānīyāt) of the seven planets (kavākib) and
the fixed stars (thavābit). The second and third sections deal specifically with
the heavenly bodies (aflāk), of which there are twenty-five. That subject con-
tinues through the next few sections, as Maybudī narrows the significant heav-
enly bodies down to nine, and explicates their composition and motion. He
continues with the four elements of medieval cosmology (fire, air, water, and
earth), the nature of a composite body (jism-i murakkab), the characteristics of
the vegetative and animal souls, the relation of souls and intelligences to the
celestial spheres according to Peripatetics and theosophists, and the nine cat-
egories of accident (ʿaraḍ). The chapter closes with a return to statements of
the Sufis on the correspondence of the human soul to the divine and on the
divine universal presences (ḥaḍarāt-i kullīya-yi ilāhīya), which number five.
Treating of the cosmos as it does, the chapter is meant to be accompanied by
several circular diagrams, which the more complete and richer manuscripts
contain.
A list of the section headings barely hints at the chapter’s scope, because
Maybudī touches on such a variety of subjects in its fourteen folios. He men-
tions the various characteristics of contingent beings, concentrating on pri-
mary matter, the mathematical divisions of all the celestial spheres, the
revolutions of those spheres, the connection between the Sufis’ circular dances
(samāʿ) and the motion of the spheres, eclipses of the sun and moon, the seven
63 SDA, 53–70.
64 SDA, 71–102.
70 Chapter 3
climes, natural phenomena such as rain, snow, rainbows, and earthquakes, the
creation of the world, the jinn, angels, and much else. Maybudī’s presentation
is fairly standard for a certain genre of cosmological work, following the order
of the Hidāyat al-ḥikma, for example, in its treatment of natural phenomena.65
His intention is not to provide exhaustive coverage for each topic. When offer-
ing different opinions about the number of spheres and souls, Maybudī sketch-
es the ideas in the Tuḥfa, then concludes: “If you have lofty aspirations
(himmat-i ʿālī), you can seek [more information] in it.”66
Certain themes do hold the chapter together. First, Maybudī weaves the
opinions of the philosophic theologians (ḥukamāʾ), Peripatetic philosophers,
Sufis, and Illuminationists into an intricate design. Even while drawing the pa-
rameters of the different schools of thought, he keeps returning to the fluidity
and overlap of the philosophical schools, expressing amazement, for example,
that on a particular point Suhrawardī agrees with the Peripatetics.67 It is in
this section that Maybudī makes sole mention of ‘Persian philosophers.’ They
share the concept of the First Intelligence with the Peripatetics, calling it Bah-
man, and the concept of a rabb (‘lord’) with the Illuminationists, Plato and
Hermes.68 In two short lines, he states that for those philosophers, the rabb of
water is Khurdad, of trees Murdad, of fire Ordibihisht, and of earth Isfandar-
mudh. He does not connect any of those names to their place among the great
beings of the Zoroastrians, the Amahraspands, or to the Zoroastrian calendar.69
65 That genre stands in contrast to what Heinen too restrictively terms “Islamic cosmology.”
In the latter, angels are responsible for thunder, the lower earths are storage places for the
torture instruments of hell, God’s throne is situated above eight mountain goats of
immense proportions, and so on. Anton M. Heinen, Islamic Cosmology: A Study of
al-Suyūṭī’s “al-Hayʾa as-sanīya fī l’hayʾa as-sunnīya” (Beirut: Orient-Intitut der Deutschen
Morgenländischen Gesellschaft; In Kommission bei Franz Steiner, 1982), 85, 87, 113–15. At
the risk of belaboring the obvious, it hardly needs pointing out that Maybudī was as much
a Muslim as Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), and his type of cosmology as widely accepted.
66 SDA, 80. The work referred to is the Tuḥfa al-shāhīya fī al-hayʾa by Quṭb al-Dīn Maḥmūd b.
Masʿūd Shīrāzī (d. 710/1311), who was a student of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī. See Storey, 2:354
and Brockelmann, 2:211.
67 SDA, 73.
68 SDA, 91–92. Given the presence of a significant Zoroastrian community in Yazd, it is
appealing to speculate that Maybudī had contact with its learned men, but it is just as
likely that he drew this information from an Islamic source.
69 See Boyce, A Persian Stronghold, 16–18. Pourjavady and Schmidtke draw attention to the
predeliction for “antiquarianism” that appears in philosophical writings beginning at
least with Suhrawardī, including in those of Davānī. Reza Pourjavady and Sabine
Schmidtke, “An Eastern Renaissance? Greek Philosophy under the Safavids (16th–18th
centuries ad),” Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 3 (2015): 254, 269.
He agrees most frequently with the Sufis and Illuminationists, not by any out-
right declaration, but by citing more authorities from those groups than any
other. Another indication is that he views Ibn ʿArabī as an ally of the Illumina-
tionists and nowhere does Maybudī question his authority.70 When the mat-
ter is more technical, Maybudī presents differences as arising not among
schools of thought per se, but rather among individuals. In one instance,
Maybudī gives the results of calculations made by Ptolemy, Ibn Aʿlam
(d. 374/985?),71 Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, and Muḥyī al-Dīn al-Maghribī (d. 681/1283)
to obtain the number of years the fixed stars require to make a complete revo-
lution.72
In contrasting various opinions, Maybudī appears less intent on proving the
superiority of one line of reasoning over another than in presenting various
ways of looking at the same phenomenon, showing that different types of
scholars mean the same thing despite their use of different terminology.73 If
the Peripatetics view the motion of the planets using the lexicon of intelli-
gences and actuality, the Illuminationists do not necessarily disagree when
they compare planetary movement to a dance. On the contrary, both groups
enhance one’s understanding of the cosmos.74 Furthermore, synthesis is
found on a level deeper than that of mortal man’s analysis of existence. It can
be seen to pervade existence itself, as is seen in Maybudī’s list of correspon-
dences among spiritual and cosmological phenomena, which he takes from
Ibn ʿArabī.75 Associated with the planet Mars is the divine name al-Qāhir (the
Subduer or Vanquisher), the letter ‘lām,’ the third clime, Aaron, Tuesday, and
the constellation Bootes (ʿAvvā), which consists of five stars. The pattern is
developed for the remaining planets as well.76
70 SDA, 72. Mullā Ṣadrā also rarely criticized Ibn ʿArabī, who was an important source of
inspiration for him. Rahman, Philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā, 8, 162.
71 ʿAlī b. al‐Ḥusayn Abū al‐Qāsim al‐ʿAlawī al‐Sharīf al‐Ḥusaynī Ibn Aʿlam, author of an
astronomical handbook with tables, now lost.
72 SDA, 79.
73 The Illuminationists’ absolute matter (jism-i muṭlaq) and the Peripatetics’ corporeal form
(ṣūrat-i jismīya) are identical. SDA, 74. For different ways of referring to the tenth Intelli-
gence, including a reference to ‘Persian’ philosophers, see SDA, 91–92.
74 SDA, 82.
75 W. Chittick, The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Cosmology (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1998), 87. Other systems appear in the writings of
Davānī and others: Melvin-Koushki, “Quest,” 252.
76 SDA, 96–98. Maybudī gives an abbreviated list of correlations between astral bodies and
days of the week within the commentary, 250.
72 Chapter 3
Shāh Niʿmat Allāh replicates this system of correspondences of Ibn ʿArabī in

his Risāla dar Asrār al-ḥurūf. Given known ties between Maybudī and the
Niʿmatallahis, this chapter and the following pique our interest. Granted that
the entire Sharḥ is addressed to those who countenance esoteric thought, we
must determine precisely what forms of esotericism Maybudī felt important to
include in this work and what to exclude, and whether what is excluded con-
tains an implicit message. At this point in our analysis, the essential point is
that precisely because a synthesis of divine names, letters, and planetary
phenomena reflects the fundamental nature of the cosmos, it in no way under-
mines the primacy of Islam. Maybudī states that the planetary correspon
dences can be found in Qurʾānic verses and the Qurʾān remains the essential
means of understanding reality, not to be replaced by subordinate texts on phi-
losophy.
The fifth chapter discusses the lesser man (insān-i ṣaghīr) or microcosm in
seven sections.77 The contents include the soul and the meaning of ‘rational’
(nāṭiqa), the anatomy of the heart, the two faculties of the soul—namely, the
one called the theoretical intellect and faculty (ʿaql-i naẓarī and quvvat-i
naẓarīya) and the other the practical intellect and faculty (ʿaql-i ʿamalī and
quvvat-i ʿamalīya)—virtues and vices, the strange effects of inebriation (pri-
marily spiritual) upon an individual, the Sufi opinion that there is no interme-
diate state (barzakh) between the world of bodies and that of spirits, the world
of archetypal images (ʿālam-i mithāl), the interpretation of dreams, the rela-
tion between the spirit and the body after death, the afterlife, the effect of
behavior in this life on the fate of an individual in the next, hell and the possi-
bility of repentance there, and the question of the physicality of punishment
and reward in the next life. Once again, in this introduction to complex sub-
jects, the intent is to summarize and synthesize. Maybudī admits that he can-
not provide exhaustive coverage of all the topics mentioned. If the reader
would like to continue his inquiry into the virtues and vices, he should turn to
the Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī.78
As for philosophical reconciliation, that goal is evident in Maybudī’s discus-
sion of the debate over the eternity of the soul. Rāzī, Illuminationists, legal
scholars, Peripatetics, Ghazālī, Suhrawardī, Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī (d. 673/1274),79
77 SDA, 103–29.
78 SDA, 109. He refers to Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s most famous work, the Nasirean Ethics, com-
posed around 630/1233. The only other reference to that book is in a brief discussion on
whether dispositions are capable of change. Ṭūsī is said to agree with Ghazālī in the Iḥyāʾ.
Note that it is not Davānī’s Akhlāq al-Jalālī, which Maybudī never cites. SDA, 230.
79 Ibn ʿArabī’s disciple and son-in-law.
and a hadith are cited for their different, often contrasting views. Maybudī
then introduces his own opinion: “If we look carefully, there is no quarrel be-
tween the Illuminationists and the Peripatetics.”80 He compares the relation
between the provenance of divine effluence (mabda⁠ʾ-i fayyāḍ) and souls
(nufūs) to that between a cloud to drops of rain.81 The soul can be both eternal
and created. The essential synonymity of terminology is revealed, for the ra
tional soul and the animal spirit of the philosophers is the same as the spirit
and the lower soul of the Sufis, while doctors identify yet other shades of mean-
ing in the lexicon of the soul. When Maybudī recognizes that Sufis say certain
things that smack of metempsychosis (tanāsukh), he hastens to add that they
are in fact far from any such belief.82 If Maybudī disagrees with anyone, it is
usually the Greek thinkers such as Galen and Porphyry, but he cites them as
authorities more than he criticizes them.83
In the fifth chapter Maybudī directly addresses concepts that we today clas-
sify as falling under the rubric of esotericism although, as has been shown, its
acceptance as a feature of existence is axiomatic to the entire work and it per-
meates his depiction of the cosmos in the previous chapter. Especially when
he discusses the world of images, Maybudī makes clear that true meaning is
hidden, quoting the followers of Abū Hāshim b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafīya:
“Every exoteric meaning (ẓāhir) has an esoteric counterpart (bāṭin), every indi-
vidual (shakhṣ: as in ‘member of a class’) a soul (rūḥ), every revelation (tanzīl)
an esoteric exegesis (ta⁠ʾwīl), every image or archetype (mithāl) in this world
has its mystical truth (ḥaqīqa) in the next. That is the knowledge that ʿAlī and
his son Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafīya alone possessed (ista⁠ʾthara bihi).”84 The dis-
cussion develops into one of dreams and their interpretation, for dreams are a
form of prophecy that gives insight into what is beyond the visible world. Sev-
eral obstacles which prevent man from understanding the deep, hidden mean-
ing of the world around him are listed. The final proof of an individual’s success
in probing the truth is his fate after death. Those who have pierced the exoteric
layers which veil the truth enjoy the pleasures of heaven, while those who have
not sought it remain distant from its joys, in a hell intended less to punish than
80 SDA, 106.
81 If the cloud is eternally pre-existent (qadīm), as is divine effluence, it is correct to say that
raindrops are too, since the cloud is the same as the drops. It is also correct to say that the
drops are created (ḥādith) at the moment of separation from the cloud.
82 SDA, 124.
83 SDA, 105: whether the animal spirit is in the brain as Galen claims; 108: on the subject of
the union (ittiḥād) of the soul and intelligible forms as described by Porphyry in the Isa-
gogue.
84 SDA, 113.
74 Chapter 3
to purify.85 Esoteric exegesis is related to the second chapter on God’s attri-

butes, which appear as exoteric descriptions of an ever elusive truth.86
Binbaş’s groundbreaking work on Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī and Melvin-
Koushki’s on Ibn Turka place esotericism firmly at the center of fifteenth-cen-
tury intellectual life. In his masterly exposition of lettrism, Melvin-Koushki
shows that Ibn Turka stood apart in attributing supreme value to letters as the
key to developing epistemological hierarchies and to understanding the cos-
mos, but that he belonged to a long tradition of honoring letters as potent phe-
nomena. That tradition included many of the people who figure prominently
in Maybudī’s intellectual world. Maybudī quotes Shāh Niʿmat Allāh, and must
have known about Davānī’s writings on the subject. He also quotes and sug-
gests to his reader further study of Ibn Turka’s Mafāḥiṣ. It is difficult to know
where to discuss Maybudī’s attitude towards esotericism because mention of it
is scattered in bits and pieces throughout the Sharḥ, but that may be precisely
the point.
What can we discern about Maybudī’s views? He unequivocally accepts the
purely pragmatic, mainstream use of esoteric knowledge. After briefly men-
tioning ʿAlī’s mastery of jafr, for which he gives a cursory explanation that
would make sense only to someone who was already familiar with the subject,
he gives two classic examples of its implementation—namely, al-Ma⁠ʾmūn’s (r.
198–218/813–33) negotiations to appoint Imam ʿAlī al-Riḍā (d. 203/818) as his
successor and the prediction of Saladin’s conquest of Jerusalem implied in
Qurʾān 30:1–5, the Sūrat al-Rūm. In the first case, ʿAlī al-Riḍā knows that numer-
ology advises against his concluding an agreement with the caliph, but he is
prevailed upon to do so anyway; in the second, Maybudī gives no information
about who actually made the prediction or whether it became clear only in
hindsight.87
The marriage of number and letter finds consummation in poetry, a concept
that delights Maybudī. In the section on the microcosm, he devotes a few lines
to al-Khalīl’s (d. ca. 175/791) circles of poetic meters, which segues into Ibn
85 Maybudī cites many authorities on the belief that no person will remain in eternal pun-
ishment. Because God is merciful, He would not allow anyone to suffer forever. Evildoers
are purified by the fires of hell until they no longer feel the heat or until they leave hell
entirely. SDA, 126–27.
86 SDA, 125. Hermeneutic exegesis reappears in the sixth chapter, where Maybudī states the
generally accepted view that everyone can understand the exoteric meaning of the
Qurʾān and the hadith, while the initiated (khavāṣṣ) also grasp their esoteric meaning, of
which there are many levels, attained in proportion to the individual’s progress along the
spiritual path and his degree of purity. SDA, 163–64.
87 SDA, 178–79. See Melvin-Koushki, “Quest,” 290–309 for a discussion of this prediction.
Sīnā’s thoughts about the musicality of the rhythm of the human pulse, and
concludes with the physical manifestations of spiritual ecstasy during mystical
musical gatherings (samāʿ).88 The very notion of the microcosm rests upon a
correspondence between the physical and the spiritual. To decipher that rela-
tionship requires mastery of letter and number, which are the basic compo-
nents of human and cosmic health.
From the occasional mention of medicine in his writings, we see Maybudī
use the metaphor of doctors and remedies for ailments of the soul, but not in
any unusually frequent or abstruse way. Where he does speak at length about a
medical issue, it is a practical one where he is called upon to apply his legal
knowledge to a common pharmaceutical problem in religions with dietary re-
strictions—namely, how to proceed when sacred texts declare the most effica-
cious ingredients to be suspect or forbidden.89 A doctor who had traveled to
Mecca and Medina and conversed with colleagues in Cairo, Damascus and
Aleppo sought a legal opinion about the use of a theriac that contained snake
meat. Maybudī describes the differing opinions of Abū Ḥanīfa and Mālik as
presented by Rāfiʿī in al-Ghurar about the medical use of wine, and by exten-
sion of other forbidden foods. His ultimate decision is to declare the theriac
permissible.
Maybudī’s practicality tempers his attitude toward cosmology, especially
concerning astrology.90 One of his longest forays into the subject arises within
the analysis of a poem about how the days of the week, inseparable from the
chronology of Creation, correlate to different human activities such as hunt-
ing, travel, phlebotomy and cupping, taking medicine, marriage and so on. Af-
ter treating the poem in his usual manner (see below), he writes a lengthy
essay on astrology. As presented in the Favātiḥ, the days of the week are associ-
ated with specific planetary bodies. Depending upon how one interprets that
proposition, the conclusion could be drawn that the motion of the heavens
controls human activity independent of divine will. The theological and logi-
cal pitfalls inherent in attributing causality to the motion of the stars can be
avoided by studying relevant sections of the Qurʾān and hadith, where it is
made clear that cosmic phenomena must not be credited with independence.
88 SDA, 110–11. Maybudī does not mention Abū ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Khalīl al-Farāhīdī by
name and assumes familiarity with his geometrical arrangement of poetic meters.
89 MUN, 187–88. This is one of the few documents with a precise date: 10 Rabīʿ al-Awwal
894/11 February 1489. For a discussion of this problem in responsa literature, see Leigh
Chipman, The World of Pharmacy and Pharmacists in Mamlūk Cairo (Leiden: Brill, 2010),
150. Nawawī responded to the same issue several centuries before.
90 SDA, 245–252.
76 Chapter 3
Here appears the most substantive quotation from Ghazālī, where he identi-
fies attributing independent action to the stars and undeserved sanction to
ignorant astrologers as the two main errors of astrology. That God creates astral
bodies as causes for certain effects is the proper perspective on the matter.
The next source quoted is Ibn Sīnā—the only reference to him in the body
of the commentary. The point of the quotation is that astrologers are more
poets than scientists and that they often mistake their discrete observations
for intelligent insights. Maybudī then relates a lengthy anecdote about how
astrologers, including the poet Awḥad al-Dīn ʿAlī Anvarī (d. between 585/1189
and 587/1191), predicted from the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter that a ter-
rible wind would destroy the inhabited world in 581/1185, so many people built
underground shelters for themselves. Nothing untoward happened on the des-
ignated day, and the Seljuk Sultan Tughrul (d. 590/1194) ordered a lantern in a
tower to be lit where it remained burning until nightfall, proving the falsity of
the prediction. Maybudī concludes, however, with the statement that on that
day Genghis Khan became leader of his tribe and burst forth thirty years later.
The literature on conjunctions and their role in legitimizing ruling houses in
Persian historiography is vast, but Maybudī leaves the issue dangling. It is
picked up again in the commentary proper (see below), where distrust of as-
trological predictions is the theme of a poem in which ʿAlī scoffs at mentally
muddled astrologers who have the temerity to make forecasts about his fu-
ture.91 Not planets but His Creator is great and victorious. Whereas medicine
has the clear goal of healing the sick, which legitimizes the summoning of both
manifest and hidden aspects of creation to effect cures, astrology’s goal smacks
of polytheism, implicitly impinging on the Creator’s omnipotence and omni-
science.
Maybudī’s references to esoteric practices and beliefs presume acceptance
on the part of his reader. He does not go into long and involved expositions of
esoteric subjects, not only because of the genre in which he works, but also
because he takes much of it for granted. The question can be asked whether
Maybudī’s casual mention of occultist thought reflects the specific goals of the
Sharḥ or, rather, acts as a sort of code for those in the know. Melvin-Koushki
91 SDA, 650–51. A. Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in
Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012) perceptively addresses the tremen-
dous sacred significance of conjunctions in Timurid imaginings of sovereignty, which
encompassed the figure of ʿAlī and profoundly influenced rulers of subsequent dynasties.
For the longstanding tension between astrology and astronomy, see Saliba, “The Develop-
ment of Astronomy in Medieval Islamic Society” and “Astrology/Astronomy, Islamic,” in A
History of Arabic Astronomy, 51–81.
discusses the technique of the dispersion of knowledge (tabdīd al-ʿilm), which

was practiced by writers of esoteric material, most notably Ibn ʿArabī. The initi-
ated picked up on clues left by the author, while those hints passed over the
head of those who had not reached a suitable level of spiritual enlightenment.
That certainly could be at play in certain passages. Maybudī assumes that he
does not need to define jafr before giving familiar examples of its use and he
tersely parses the letters of the word ‘qalam’ (pen) as they relate to man’s cre-
ation in a way that requires his reader’s pre-existing ability to parse letters and
syllables for meaning. In his summary of the transmigration of souls as under-
stood by ancient Greek philosophers and Sufis, he inserts a brief sentence to
the effect that the Ikhwān al-Ṣafā agree with those who correlate levels of hell
to different types of transmigration, depending upon whether the soul enters
animal, vegetal, or mineral bodies.92 That is the sole mention of the Ikhwān
al-Ṣafā, and it is impossible to know how it was supposed to resonate with
Maybudī’s readers, whether solely as a philosophical movement some five cen-
turies past or additionally as code for a contemporary intellectual network.
The reference is followed by the one quotation from Muḥammad Nūrbakhsh’s
Risālat al-hudā, identified by author and not title.93 Was the reader meant to
connect dots hidden from us?
It is equally plausible to attribute the dispersion to the genre in which
Maybudī works. Orbiting around ʿAlī, the Favātiḥ aims to be comprehensive
rather than detailed and the commentary proper lends itself to brief, unsys-
tematic forays into topics of interest because it follows the order of the poems.
Given the kaleidoscopic display of subjects, lettrist and astrological explana-
tions might seem to appear at random, but actually they are placed where they
best clarify the text under discussion. Maybudī acknowledges that some peo-
ple know what he is talking about and openly refers those who want more in-
formation about certain subjects to appropriate books. He also confronts the
revelation of secrets head on, acknowledging that different groups hold con-
flicting opinions about the wisdom and feasibility of making the unknown
accessible.94As will be shown later in the discussion of the Mahdi, he recog-
nizes that the esoteric is not available to everyone in the current age and
92 SDA, 123–24. For current research on the Ikhwān al-Ṣafā in the Ottoman empire and the
Isfahan Circle during the fifteenth century, see Binbaş, “Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī,” 99–106.
93 The quotation comes from the Risālat al-hudā and addresses the distinction between
tanāsukh and burūz (see below, p. 130). For the source of the quotation, see Shahzad
Bashir, “The Risālat al-hudā of Muḥammad Nūrbakš (d. 869/1464): Critical Edition with
Introduction,” Rivista degli Studi Orientali 75, nos. 1–4 (2001): 107.
94 SDA, 15.
78 Chapter 3
envisions a time when exoteric and esoteric will be made equally manifest to
all mankind. The language of esotericism suffuses many of his letters as well,
implying that regardless of social class or professional identification, the re-
cipients were comfortable with metaphysical and mystical concepts and im
agery.
Familiar with the esoteric writings of his peers, he is a man of moderation
who remains ensconced in the tradition of synthesis. Unlike Ibn Turka, he does
not consider intellectual lettrism “the only truly universal science” or privilege
it over philosophy or Sufism.95 Rather, he is comfortable with “the type of oc-
cult philosophy—referring as it does to the neoplatonic-neopythagorean quest
to comprehend the cosmos using all available means, whether rational or mys-
tical, scientific or magical, in concert—[which] precisely exemplifies the ‘will
to synthesis’ that characterizes so much of later Islamicate intellectual history.”96
Truth lies in letters, but is not limited to them. It also exists in relationships
among spiritual seekers, both in the present and throughout history, past, pres-
ent and future. The most exalted spiritual figures are a vehicle of revelation for
the transcendent divine.
Treating the virtues and vices and those who are closest to perfection by
possessing all the physical and spiritual elements of human makeup in just
balance leads Maybudī to speak of prophecy (nubuvvat) and sainthood or spir-
itual ministry (valāyat), the subjects of the sixth chapter.97 The very first line
of the entire text indicated the importance of that pair of concepts, for in his
invocation Maybudī wrote: “Thanks founded on happiness and gratitude
garbed in worship are due the Worshipped One who raised the banners of
prophecy and sainthood in the field of futuvvat and guidance.”98 The chapter
comprises ten sections which cover inspiration and miracles, Muḥammad’s
role in the guidance of the cosmos and in the reconciliation of opposites with-
in it, the Sufi notion that prophecy is exoteric and sainthood esoteric, the four
levels of sanctity and the ‘seals’ (khātims) of each (including a biographical
sketch of Ibn ʿArabī), various levels of spiritual purification and of the contem-
plative or intelligent world (malakūt), a systematization of mystical annihila-
tion (fanāʾ) and epiphany/theophany (tajallī),99 types of spiritual disclosure
95 Melvin-Koushki, “Quest,” iii.

96 Melvin-Koushki, “Quest,” i.
97 SDA, 131–67.
98 SDA, 1. Futuwwa is so culturally specific that translating it as ‘chivalry’ or ‘manliness’ is
hopelessly inadequate.
99 The translation of terminology is that found in Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the
Ṣūfism of Ibn ʿArabī, trans. R. Manheim, Bollingen Series 91 (Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1969), 162: theophanic Image; 169: epiphany.
(kashf), the ability of perfect souls to enter the contemplative world as do the
angels (the example given is that of Ibn ʿArabī), and the spiritual hierarchy of
those who experience divine love that descends from the Pole (quṭb) through
the seven substitutes (abdāl) and down to the chiefs (nuqabāʾ) of varying num-
ber, depending on the source.
The tremendous influence Ibn ʿArabī exercised over Maybudī cannot be
overemphasized. Maybudī cites Ibn ʿArabī’s works more than those of any oth-
er scholar, with more than fifty references or lengthy quotations, which is
about three times the number of references to his next most important source,
Ghazālī. It is reasonable to conclude that he knew the Fuṣūṣ well, for he cites
six chapters by name and refers to it elsewhere without citing specific chap-
ters. He names four commentaries: the widely popular Sharḥ-i Fuṣūṣ of Kamāl-
al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Kāshī (or Kāshānī),100 the commentary of his student
Sharaf al-Dīn Dawūd al-Qayṣarī, and to a lesser extent that of Muʾayyad al-Dīn
Jandī,101 and of the Kubrawi Sayyid ʿAlī Hamadānī (d. 786/1385) in Ḥall-i [nuṣūṣ
ʿalā al-] Fuṣūṣ. The commentaries are used to clarify Ibn ʿArabī’s terminology
and thought in a way that appeals to Maybudī’s interest in different intellec-
tual disciplines. For example, Kāshī equates the sphere of the Throne to the
First Intelligence and the world of archetypal images with the philosophers’
ʿālam-i nufūs al-munṭabaʿa.102 Maybudī also refers to the commentators in
contexts beyond Ibn ʿArabī’s writing. For example, he uses Kāshī’s Iṣṭilāḥāt-i
Ṣūfīya eight times and at one point quotes Qadi ʿAḍud al-Dīn al-Ījī’s statement
that he saw Kāshī reject ḥulūl and ittiḥād (‘incarnate indwelling’ and ‘union’),
although the source of Kāshī’s statement remains unspecified.103 Maybudī
cites 16 chapters of the Futūḥāt, several more than once, and specifies when his
source is the last section known as al-Waṣāyā, while the ʿUqla appears four
times. The subjects on which Maybudī defers to Ibn ʿArabī are the names of
God, valāyat and prophethood, forms of perception including dreams and
non-corporeal experiences, and cosmology with all that it encompasses of cre-
ation, non-corporeal creatures, the spheres and the afterlife.
100 There are two citations from Kāshī’s Sharḥ and 14 references to the man. Also mention-
ed as the author of the Sharḥ-i Manāzil al-sāʾirīn of ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī al-Harawī
(d. 481/1089), which is quoted in the passage on love and desire. SDA, 163. Maybudī refers
to these commentators in other contexts as well.
101 He was a student of Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī, the influential disciple of Ibn ʿArabī, as was
Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī (d. 688/1289). The latter appears in the Sharḥ only as the author of a
poem in the section on love, which relies heavily on Ibn ʿArabī and his disciples and Najm
al-Dīn Kubrā. SDA, 162.
102 SDA, 81, 112 respectively.
103 SDA, 48–49.
80 Chapter 3
As mentioned earlier, Ibn ʿArabī remained a problematic figure in the fif-

teenth century. He acquired an aura that encompassed much more than reli-
gious scholarship, and part of being one of his disciples entailed explaining the
ambiguities of his writing. Maybudī himself declares in no uncertain terms
that Ibn ʿArabī is the seal of the relative Muhammadean valāyat (khātim-i
valāyat-i muqayyada-yi Muḥammadīya), and it is only at this point in the text,
after having referred to him over twenty times earlier in the Sharḥ, that he
gives the mystic’s full name: Shaykh Muḥyī al-Dīn Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b.
Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. al-ʿArabī al-Ḥātimi al-Ṭāʾī al-
Andalusī.104 Maybudī asserts that Ibn ʿArabī’s mystical knowledge exposed
him to exaggerated accusations of unbelief and misguidance (taḍlīl), his claim
to be the seal of the fourth level of sanctity leading some people to suspect his
beliefs.105 As proof of the validity of Ibn ʿArabī’s saintly status, Maybudī de-
scribes how al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī (d. ca. 297/910) posed 155 questions that only
a seal of the saints could answer and it was Ibn ʿArabī who succeeded in re-
sponding to them in the Futūḥāt.106 Mysticism grounded in knowledge always
appeals to Maybudī. The author then dismisses those who slander Ibn ʿArabī as
an unbeliever by remarking that they do not not know what they are talking
about and concluding that it is best to let them sink into oblivion.
The question arises whether the opponents of Ibn ʿArabī to whom Maybudī
refers represented a faction in the safely distant past or whether disputes about
him were used by powerful groups active in Maybudī’s day in their conflicts
with each other. Was this an academic discussion about the past or a rallying
cry in the present? Davānī clearly agreed with at least some of Ibn ʿArabī’s
thought, wrote works on the subject, and criticized those who accused Ibn
ʿArabī of unbelief, and Jāmī spread the Master’s views in the Timurid lands of
the east.107 Maybudī describes the accusations of unbelief in the present tense,
104 SDA, 141.

105 SDA, 143.
106 Brockelmann gives different dates for his death in the Geschichte and its supplement: 1:199
and S1:355.
107 Knysh, Ibn ʿArabi, 163–64. Chittick points out that no author among those who drew from
Ibn ʿArabī’s doctrines matched Jāmī for direct, beautiful, and simple expression and calls
him a “spokesman for Ibn ʿArabī and his school.” “The Perfect Man as the Prototype of the
Self in the Sufism of Jāmī,” Studia Islamica 49 (1979): 140. Bashir looks at the controversy
over Ibn ʿArabī as it played out in the life of Khwāja Aḥrār in Herat. On understanding
how Sufis of the Persianate world negotiatied social and intellectual tensions, he writes:
“While ideas regarding etiquette, hierarchies, and lineages mattered deeply in this milieu,
their actual deployment within specific situations was a matter of perspective and finesse
of interpretation rather than an imposition of hard and fast categories. Persianate Sufis
which signals that the debate seethed around him, and the discussion of theo-
logical controversy in Chapter 2 also showed that it was eminently relevant in
the fifteenth century. What Maybudī does not indicate is what the stakes were
for him personally in the debate, to what extent political or religious motives
drove the discussion, and whether the disputes were among individual schol-
ars or identifiable factions.
Part of the attraction that Ibn ʿArabī’s writings held for Maybudī was that he
chose to read them as a reconciliation of philosophy and mysticism anchored
in Shariʿa. He relies heavily on Ibn ʿArabī and his commentators for the discus-
sion on hell and punishment, interpreting them as extolling God’s mercy.
While those focused strictly on Sharīʿa (ahl-i sharʿ) maintain that unbelievers
will remain in eternal fire, Ibn ʿArabī expands that position by explaining that
the fire becomes “cold and peace … and that is their bliss.”108 In several sections
of the Fuṣūṣ, Ibn ʿArabī emphasizes God’s promises of good over His threat of
punishment. His commentators extrapolate from his writings that, in his opin-
ion, punishment purifies evildoers to the point that eventually hell will stand
empty, for God is merciful. Characteristically, Maybudī brings the discussion
back to practicalities. He admonishes his readers to follow the straight path of
commanding the good and forbidding evil in their lives and to remain ever
hopeful of a favorable result, because no one knows when his soul will be
seized: “Be careful to strive in purifying your external self, for you might be the
deputy (khalīfa) of the Truth and you will have made yourself a slave of the
appetitive soul (nafs-i ammāra) in the furnace of nature.”109
Maybudī is acutely conscious of the veil between experience and descrip-
tion, and acknowledges that many Sufi statements can legitimately be consid-
ered heretical from the perspective of religious legalists (fuqahāʾ-i dīn). It is not
that the experience is heretical, but its verbal expression exposes the mystic to
accusations of heterodox belief, and the attempt to articulate his experiences
may lead the mystic astray. According to Maybudī, among others, ostensibly
blasphemous utterances made in mystical ecstasy must be disguised. Perhaps
conscious of his own position, Maybudī immediately follows the last state-
ment with a warning against unbelievers who mask their pernicious views
with extravagant tales of mystical experiences, such as having journeyed to
Paradise where they tasted its fruits and embraced its houris. The Shariʿa is
holding many different opinions and affiliations worked within a shared world of ideas
and practices.” Sufi Bodies, 100.
108 SDA, 126–27.
109 SDA, 128. See Qurʾān 12:53 for the scriptural phrase that is used to designate the “appetitive
soul.”
82 Chapter 3
pivotal and anyone who steps away from it does not belong in the company of
those who possess authentic mystical knowledge (ahl-i maʿrifat): “O brother, if
you have reached the level of true [spiritual] poverty, what need have you of
my counsel? And if you have not reached it, consider deeply the conditions
and words of the dervishes. In neither case should you let go of the hem of
Shariʿa, because Shariʿa is the one Axis.”110 Maybudī’s position is in the tradi-
tion of Junayd-i Baghdādī and ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla al-Simnānī (d. 736/1336), whom he
also quotes frequently.111 They all believe that man’s true fulfillment lies in de-
voting mind and heart to the service of God, and that without the guidance of
revealed religion, he can easily lose himself on his path to the divine.
A more rhetorical counterbalance to pure mysticism is philosophy, more
specifically its scientific disciplines. In his discussion of Muḥammad’s night
journey (miʿrāj), Maybudī links the event to the numbing of sensations during
sleep as lethargy (kasālat) envelops them and prevents steam (bukhār) from
rising to the brain. Whatever is seen in that state is a dream (ruʾyā).112 In mysti-
cal absence (ghayba), sensations are also numbed, but this time because of
enjoyment (iltidhādh) of the divine effluence which emanates from the supe-
rior world (ʿālam-i ʿālīya). Whatever is seen in the world of absence is a vision
(mushāhada or mukāshafa). Other types of visions are exclusive to prophet
hood and sainthood. Polymath that he is, Maybudī considers the various
branches of his study to provide insight into one ultimate truth.
It is in this chapter that the issue of the Mahdi first surfaces and Maybudī
presents a variety of reports about that elusive figure, although more lengthy
reflections appear later in the text.113 Some say the spirit of Jesus will manifest
itself in the Mahdi, and in agreement with that view is the hadith, “There is no
110 SDA, 151. The line about the Shariʿa is a Persian/Arabic pun that does not translate easily.
For a lucid articulation of the religious outlook of Sharia-minded scholars sensitive to the
knowledge attainable only through mystical disciplines, see Knysh, Ibn ʿArabi, 65. It is a
line of thought articulated by Ghazālī and pursued by men such as Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām (d.
660/1262).
111 His main source is the ʿUrwa [li-ahl al-khalwa wa-al-jalwa], with two references to al-Falāḥ
[li-Ahl al-Ṣalāḥ]. See the study of Jamal J. Elias, The Throne Carrier of God: The Life and
Thought of ʿAlāʾ ad-Dawlah as-Simnānī (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995).
112 SDA, 153.
113 SDA, 202–03: Maybudī gives a long quotation from Chapter 366 of the Futūḥāt about the
khalīfa being from the family of the Prophet with specific identifying features. In it Ibn
ʿArabī links this figure, which Maybudī clearly associates with the Mahdi, to the establish-
ment of pure religion. Maybudī adds: “Bukhārī and Muslim relate from Jābir b. Samura
that the Prophet said, ‘There will be twelve amirs after me.’ Then he said something which
I did not hear, but my father said it was that ‘all of them will be from the Quraysh.’”
Mahdi except ʿĪsā b. Maryam.”114 In his remarks about Ibn ʿArabī, Maybudī re-
lates that ʿAbd al-Ghaffār b. Kamāl Ghāzī Qūnawī declared himself the Mahdi,
a claim Ibn ʿArabī rejected. After trials and tribulations, the latter induced the
self-proclaimed Mahdi to repent.115 The discussion then returns to its primary
purpose, which is to present the seals (khātims) of the four different kinds of
sanctity. The seal of the third kind—valāyat-i muṭlaqa-yi Muḥammadīya—is
the Mahdi, who will be of Muḥammad’s lineage. Sayyid ʿAlī Hamadānī wrote
that the seal of the second kind of valāyat—muqayyada-yi har nabī—is on the
level of Muḥammad’s heart (qalb), while the Mahdi is on that of his spirit
(rūḥ).116
The issue of the ‘Pole’ (quṭb), that apex of the mystical hierarchy, and the
renewer (mujaddid) is both frustrating and tantalizing because Maybudī does
not bring the series up to the end of the fifteenth century. He quotes exclu-
sively from Simnānī’s ʿUrwa, which leaves almost two hundred years unac-
counted for: “The Pole of our time is ʿImād al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Pārsīnī,
Parsin being a village near Abhar in the Qazvin region. After the death of ʿAbd
Allāh Shāmī, he became the Pole in Rabīʿ II 716/June-July 1316. He was seventy-
six years old and the nineteenth Pole after Muḥammad.”117 The quotation goes
back in time, saying that Imam Muḥammad b. Imam Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī was one
of the substitutes (abdāl) when he went into hiding from his enemies. Upon
the death of the Pole of his time, ʿAlī b. Ḥusayn Baghdādī, Imam Muḥammad
replaced him for nineteen years. His successor was ʿUthmān b. Yaʿqūb Juvaynī
and then Aḥmad Khurdak, one of the sons of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAwf. The con-
cept of the renewer is much less developed and no one is named after Ghazālī.118
114 SDA, 145. Although Maybudī does not give a source, this comes from Sunan Ibn Māja and
is controversial since it was adopted by the Ahmadīya branch of Shiʿism (followers of ʿAlī
al-Riḍā’s brother Aḥmad after the former’s death), while most hadiths present the Mahdi
and Jesus as two separate figures. For that reason, Maybudī’s inclusion of it is noteworthy,
even though his later remarks in the Sharḥ on the Mahdi do not conflate the two and in a
letter in the Munsha⁠ʾāt he implies that they are two separate individuals. MUN, 97.
115 SDA, 144.
116 SDA, 145.
117 SDA, 165. See Shahzad Bashir, Sufi Bodies: Religion and Society in Medieval Islam (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 86 for a discussion of spiritual hierarchies among
Sufis. Maybudī’s indication that various systems exist for ranking poles, substitutes,
friends and so on supports Bashir’s impression “that an exact plan for the hierarchy was
not a matter of great concern for many” and what is more important is that “the fact of
death means that the structure is constantly in motion.”
118 SDA, 22.
84 Chapter 3
In Chapter 4 it will be seen, however, that the figure of the Mahdi is made rel-
evant to Maybudī’s time, if not in any detailed way.
One of the characteristics of the Poles as described by Simnānī, Ibn Athīr
and ʿAbd al-Razzāq Kāshī is that they spend time with the enigmatic figures of
Khiḍr and Elias. In a written document Kāshī denied the possibility of the
transmission of hadith from Khiḍr and considered “Khiḍr” and “Elias” techni-
cal terms for expansion (basṭ) and contraction (qabḍ). He also denied that
Khiḍr had been alive and able to assume corporeal form since Moses’ day.119
Maybudī cites Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī as saying that Khiḍr exists in the world of
archetypal images (ʿālam-i mithāl) and gives Ibn ʿArabī’s confirmation of his
existence in the Futūḥāt. He clearly agrees with the latter and entertains no
doubts about Khiḍr’s existence.
The subject segues into that of ʿAlī as Maybudī comes to the seventh and fi-
nal chapter.120 It contains eleven sections, which trace ʿAlī’s life in more or less
chronological order. Beginning with ʿAlī’s parentage and early years, the sec-
tions treat his virtues, such as charity and piety, allusions in the Qurʾān and
hadith to his historical and mystical activities, the extraordinary qualities of
the People of the House (Ahl al-Bayt), the consequences of hostility to ʿAlī and
his family, the first three caliphs and events immediately subsequent to
ʿUthmān’s murder, the struggles between ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya up to the former’s
assassination (40/661), the actions of his sons Ḥasan and Ḥusayn and the rest
of the imams up to Muḥammad b. Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī, considered by some as the
Mahdi, Muḥammad’s foreknowledge of the strife that would ensue after his
death and, finally, the succession of Abū Bakr and ʿUmar as preferable to that
of ʿAlī. What must constantly be kept in mind when reading this chapter is that
we are watching Maybudī shape an image of ʿAlī that responds to the needs of
his community, the scholarly elite of the late fifteenth century, at a time of
great political turmoil and theological uncertainty during which competing
military interests both fed and fed upon the religious beliefs of their sup
porters.121
Maybudī layers one hadith upon another in order to interpret ʿAlī’s role for
his contemporaries. Since he draws upon an enormous body of material, our
attention is drawn to the specific hadith collections and tafsirs upon which he
relied. Of the canonical hadith collections, he preferred Tirmidhī, Bukhārī and
Muslim, in that order, not mentioning Ibn Māja (d. 273/887) at all. His pre-
119 SDA, 167.

120 SDA., 169–211.
121 Just to be clear—it is not my purpose nor would it be remotely feasible to re-examine the
historical events related to the early Muslim community and the Umayyad caliphate or to
assess the validity of Maybudī’s material.
ferred tafsirs were Thaʿlabī, Zamakhsharī, and Bayḍāwī. Here his use of
Thaʿlabī’s al-Kashf wa-al-bayān ʿan tafsīr al-Qurʾān is noteworthy. Among the
many significant features of the eleventh-century commentary is Thaʿlabī’s in-
clusion of traditions that lent themselves to both Shiʿi and Sunni polemics,
which inflamed the ire of later scholars such as Ibn Taymīya (d. 728/1328).122
Because of his subject, Maybudī needs to address those traditions and the
often unstated controversies they implied. For example, who belonged to the
Ahl al-Bayt and what they signified constituted a politically charged topic
since the early years of Islam. Maybudī gives Muslim’s account as related by
ʿĀʾisha of the circumstances surrounding 33:33, which is the sole mention of
the Ahl al-Bayt in the Qurʾān and which was interpreted as referring either to
Muḥammad, Fāṭima, ʿAlī, Ḥasan and Ḥusayn, or to Muḥammad’s wives. After
presenting a detailed account of the circumstances of its revelation, Maybudī
includes only the part of the verse that indicates his preference for the first
interpretation. He follows the verse with Muḥammad’s response to Umm Sala-
ma’s question about why she is not included as “You too will come to a good
end; you are among the wives of the Messenger.”123 That phrasing excludes the
Prophet’s wives from the category of ‘Ahl al-Bayt’ without detracting from their
merit. Saleh describes the first interpretation as pro-Shiʿi and the second as
both anti-Shiʿi and pro-Sunni. Maybudī blurs the distinction because his aim is
to preserve Sunni political orthodoxy while incorporating pro-ʿAlid spirituality.
The issue resurfaces when the Hashimites appear in a poem, which leads
Maybudī to present conflicting opinions among the ulama about who consti-
tutes Muḥammad’s family. The school of al-Rāfiʿī [ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Muḥammad
Qazvīnī (d. 623/1226)], the author of the al-Ḥāwī al-ṣaghīr [Najm al-Dīn ʿAbd
al-Ghaffār al-Qazwīnī (d. 665/1266)], and many other fuqahāʾ hold that it
means the Banū Hāshim and the Banū ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, following a tradition
of Shāfiʿī. Nawawī disagrees, saying in the Sharḥ-i Ṣaḥīḥ-i Muslim that it refers
first to the entire community (umma), then to the Banū Hāshim and the Banū
al-Muṭṭalib, and thirdly to Muḥammad’s offspring and the people of his house
(ahl baytihi).124 It is not that the membership in the Ahl al-Bayt is in doubt, but
122 Saleh, Formation, 179–80. See the entire subsection for an analysis of political interpreta-
tions of the Qurʾān in al-Thaʿlabī’s work and their relation to what he terms “fictive narra-
tive” technique. Saleh asserts that the use of Shiʿi traditions “ultimately drove the work
out of circulation,” but Maybudī certainly quoted it extensively. Maybudī never quotes
Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī’s (d 412/1021) Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr, which gives a mystical inter-
pretation of the Qurʾān, and mentions al-Sulamī only once (179), as linked in a chain of
exegetes that originates with ʿAlī.
123 SDA, 182–3.
124 SDA, 563.
86 Chapter 3
attention shifts to the larger picture of the Arabian and Islamic meaning of
connection to the Prophet.
A second controversial verse is 42:23. Maybudī quotes only the part relevant
to his topic, namely “Say (O Muḥammad, unto mankind): I ask of you no fee
therefor, save lovingkindness among kinsfolk.” As Saleh points out, that last
phrase “has understandably become a lightning rod in a political atmosphere
where blood relationship to Muḥammad was seen by one faction as a qualifi-
cation for leadership.”125 Maybudī’s emphasis is on just one account of
Muḥammad’s response to a request for elucidation as recorded by Zamakhsharī
and Wāḥidī. According to that tradition, Muḥammad repeated three times that
it referred to ʿAlī, Fāṭima, and their two sons. Maybudī then cites al-Suddī (d.
128/745) on the rest of the verse (“And whoso scoreth a good deed we add unto
its good for him.”) to the effect that the meaning of “a good deed” is love of the
Ahl al-Bayt and “this verse was revealed concerning Abū Bakr and his love for
the Ahl al-Bayt.” In one terse line, Maybudī extols the family of ʿAlī while reaf-
firming Sunni political beliefs.
Because Maybudī is not writing a commentary on the Qurʾān but one on the
poetry of ʿAlī, he benefits from a certain freedom in his use of sources. When he
cites 55:19–22, for example, he is under no compulsion to give a range of inter-
pretations for those verses and can simply state that Anas and Ibn ʿAbbās say
that “the two seas” refer to ʿAlī and Fāṭima and “the pearl and the coral-stone”
to Ḥasan and Ḥusayn.126 Similarly, out of all that Thaʿlabī has to say about 66:4
(“then lo! Allāh, even He, is his protecting Friend, and Gabriel and the right
eous among the believers”), Maybudī zeroes in on the tradition recorded by
Thaʿlabī that “the righteous” refers to ʿAlī.127
Maybudī’s interpretive fluidity emerges in other cases where he extends an
anecdote from a tafsir to some of ʿAlī’s verses. Thaʿlabī attached to 76:8–10 the
story of ʿAlī and Fāṭima giving their humble meal to a needy person, an orphan,
and a prisoner on three successive days of fasting, thereby earning Muḥammad’s
praise.128 Maybudī betrays no interest in the plausibility of the tale, although
he relates it from Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s exegetical explanation of those same
verses in which the story is slightly more elaborate. What matters to him is that
125 SDA, 186. Saleh, Formation, 183. Maybudī gives an abbreviated version of the discussion on
649.
126 SDA, 171. The question is whether he leaves a fuller range of meanings unstated because
he assumes his reader will draw upon his own knowledge. Those verses resonate with a
mystic, appearing in Simnānī’s hierarchy of visions and colors. See Elias, Throne Carrier,
135.
127 SDA, 174.
128 Saleh, Formation, 190–1. SDA, 424–25.
ʿAlī composed poetry each of the three nights, so sacred historical meaning can
be derived from moralistic verses.
The ostensibly loose organization of the first section, which introduces sev-
eral themes with little apparent connection to ʿAlī’s youth, such as his founda-
tional role in the development of mysticism, should not obscure its purpose.
Maybudī chooses such a discursive structure in order to give an overall coher-
ence to the entire ensuing chapter and to achieve his implicit goal of situating
ʿAlī within the cosmos. First, in his discussion of ʿAlī’s parents, he inquires into
whether or not Abū Ṭālib converted to Islam, which Maybudī concludes did
not happen. Abū Ṭālib believed in Muḥammad’s message, but did not pro-
nounce the words of the shahāda.129 ʿAlī’s mother, on the other hand, Fāṭima b.
Asad b. Hāshim, did accept Islam, emigrating to Medina in 1/622. Second,
Maybudī stresses ʿAlī’s importance in the realm of mystical knowledge (ʿirfān),
citing a hadith to the effect that during his night journey, Muḥammad noticed
that his cousin’s name was written on the Throne (ʿarsh). Another hadith
shows that ʿAlī was superior to Abū Bakr and ʿUmar and that he strove as much
in the esoteric exegesis (ta⁠ʾwīl) of the Qurʾān as Muḥammad did in its revela-
tion (tanzīl).130 Finally, the section closes with praise of ʿAlī’s courage in battle.
Thus, Maybudī emphasizes the strength and legitimacy of ʿAlī’s religious con-
victions, his intimate association with Muḥammad, mystical significance, rela-
tion to the successors of Muḥammad, and personal virtues.
Those are the principal themes of the entire chapter. For instance, the sec-
ond section concentrates on ʿAlī’s primacy among Muslims and his close rela-
tionship with Muḥammad. Maybudī offers evidence for a whole range of
personal virtues from specific verses in the Qurʾān as presented in hadith col-
lections and tafsirs, such as those of Thaʿlabī, Wāḥidī, and Zamakhsharī. Know-
ing that ʿAlī began to pray six months before various other early Muslims, and
that the Qurʾān placed that fact higher in the hierarchy of religious practice
than tending the Kaʿba or providing water to pilgrims is clear evidence of ʿAlī’s
primacy among the pious.131 As was long established in biographical dic
tionaries (ṭabaqāt), anteriority contributes to the legitimization of authority.
With Maybudī drawing attention to the fact that the Qurʾān and sayings of
Muḥammad establish a relationship between the cousins like that of Moses
and Aaron, his underlying message is less on the stellar qualities of any par-
ticular virtue than on ʿAlī’s legitimacy within the framework of Muslim pro-
phetic history.
129 SDA, 169.

130 SDA, 172.
131 SDA, 174. Qurʾān 9:19.
88 Chapter 3
The relationship between Muḥammad and ʿAlī dominates the entire sev-
enth chapter as hadith after hadith is cited to demonstrate Muḥammad’s ap-
preciation of ʿAlī’s elevated status and the close ties between them. In the third
section, Maybudī cites a hadith in which Muḥammad, with his hand on ʿAlī’s
shoulder, says: “I am the warner, and you are the guide and those who will be
guided will follow your lead after me.”132 Clearly, spiritual ties bound the two
men and linked Muḥammad to the Ahl al-Bayt as a whole. ʿAlī is compared to
Jesus and to Aaron, men distinguished by their spirituality, even if it was not on
the level of the Prophet.133 Maybudī makes no effort to downplay those ties; in
fact, he takes pains to elaborate on them. He also includes ʿAlī’s statement that
“I stood on Muḥammad’s shoulders to pull down idols from the Kaʿba.”134
That physical intimacy progresses to a cosmic level in one of the more re-
markable stories about ʿAlī and Muḥammad. It is recounted that one day the
Prophet slept so long with his head in ʿAlī’s lap that the latter missed the after-
noon prayer. When Muḥammad awoke and realized what had happened, he
requested from God that the sun rise yet again, which it did. The relationship
between the two men and the divine was such that the cosmic order took sec-
ond place to the bonds among them.135 Maybudī recognizes the problematic
nature of that hadith, for he continues with objections from various sources
about its reliability and with speculation on whether affecting the course of
the sun is more appropriately linked to other stories about Muḥammad.136
This is one of the rare cases where Maybudī discusses the authenticity of a
hadith. What is important is that he does not shy away from including the sto-
ry, however doubtful it may be.
Another repeated motif in the roughly chronological account of ʿAlī’s life
which becomes more pronounced beginning with the fourth section is
Muḥammad’s forecast of what will happen to ʿAlī and other figures of the Mus-
lim community. Maybudī repeatedly points out that events as varied as ʿĀʾisha’s
actions at the Battle of the Camel, Ibn Muljam’s assassination of ʿAlī, Imam
Ḥasan’s submission to Muʿāwiya, the thousand-month reign of the Umayyads
and so on find their textual reinforcement in statements made by the Prophet
during his lifetime, some of which were tied to the revelation of Qurʾānic
132 SDA, 176.

133 SDA, 185.
134 SDA, 183.
135 SDA, 182.
136 Another feature of this retelling is that it is one of the few instances where Maybudī
mentions a fifteenth-century scholar. He says that he saw a comment about the hadith in
the hand of Ṣafī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ījī (d. 864/1450). Ījī taught hadith to Davānī. See
Pourjavadi, Philosophy, 6.
verses.137 In the case of ʿAlī’s son Ḥasan, Bukhārī relates that Muḥammad spec-
ulated that God might bring peace between the two great factions of Muslims
through him, an ambiguous statement depending on whether it was to take
effect temporarily or permanently.138 Other predictions are made after Muḥam
mad’s death in the form of dreams. Various characters see Muḥammad in the
oneiric sphere where he emerges as the point of connection between his life
and that of his cousin, explaining how predictions made during his lifetime
have come true or giving a sign of what is yet to come, including the deaths of
ʿAlī and Ḥusayn.
However close the bonds between Muḥammad and ʿAlī, Maybudī is quite
definite about ʿAlī’s claims to the caliphate and in the ninth section he directly
confronts the matter of Muḥammad’s predictions about the factionalism and
strife that would ensue upon his death.139 In the second section, he quotes Ibn
Ḥanbal as saying that for various reasons Muḥammad considered Abū Bakr,
ʿUmar, and ʿAlī worthy to lead the Muslim community, but did not think the
Muslims would accept ʿAlī as a leader.140 That quotation is followed by a report
from Bayhaqī: “If one wants to see Adam’s knowledge (ʿilm), Noah’s fear of
God/piety (taqwā), Abraham’s patience (ḥilm), Moses’ reverence (hayba), and
Jesus’s submission (ʿibādat), he should look at ʿAlī.” Such a resounding endorse-
ment of his cousin and his status within the chain of prophets justifies all sub-
sequent loyalty to ʿAlī as a guide, but not necessarily as a political leader. It is
tempered by a conversation Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafīya, one of ʿAlī’s sons, had
with his father. When asked, ʿAlī claimed that the most virtuous man was Abū
Bakr, followed by ʿUmar, in that order. Muḥammad b. Ḥanafīya hesitated to
press further lest his father say the next most virtuous man was ʿUthmān, so
instead he asked where his father placed himself within the hierarchy of the
virtuous, to which ʿAlī replied, “As for me, I am but one man among the Mus
lims.”141 Maybudī chooses hadiths to show that ʿAlī actually supported the first
three caliphs, whatever controversies arose after the Prophet’s death.142 In the
last section, Maybudī baldly states: “Do not imagine that ʿAlī wanted the ca-
liphate after Muḥammad’s death and that he was defeated by Abū Bakr.”143
137 SDA, 198–99. Maybudī offers numerous explanations of Qurʾānic verses and anecdotes
that are highly critical of the Umayyads.
138 SDA, 198.
139 SDA, 203.
140 SDA, 175.
141 SDA, 175.
142 SDA, 189–90, 210–11.
143 SDA, 209.
90 Chapter 3
Maybudī addresses the ambiguity of ʿAlī’s position head on when he re-

counts a hadith from Ibn Ḥanbal. Muḥammad says to ʿAlī: “You are like Jesus,
for the Jews hated him so much that they slandered his mother, and the Chris-
tians loved him so much that they placed him in a position which was not his.”
ʿAlī replies: “Two types of people are doomed concerning me: those who love
me excessively, extolling me for what I am not, and those who bear such hatred
against me that they slander me.”144 Maybudī speaks little here about the epi-
sode at Ghadir Khumm, and his emphasis is on the legacy of the Qurʾān and
the Ahl al-Bayt, rather than specifically on ʿAlī.145 This is the episode shortly
before Muḥammad’s death when he spoke of two weighty things that he was
leaving the Muslim community (ḥadīth al-thaqalayn), and revealed other in-
formation about his legacy that has been subject to varied interpretations.
Near the end of the commentary proper, Maybudī elaborates on the incident,
citing hadiths about ʿAlī’s relationship to Muḥammad and the community and
citing verses from the Qurʾān which were revealed there.146 ʿAlī’s primacy as
expressed in his poem is specifically over Muʿāwiya and his followers.
The manner in which Maybudī downplays ʿAlī’s claims puts his mystical sig-
nificance in a favorable light more than it criticizes his political aspirations. In
a rare foray into polemical editorializing, Maybudī issues a thousand warnings
against the false belief in the illegitimacy of the first three caliphs’ authority,
whose rightful assumption of leadership finds support in numerous hadiths.147
He repeats his warning near the end of the commentary proper with reference
to a poem in which the relationship between Muḥammad and ʿAlī could be
misinterpreted, referring back to his initial insistence on the distinction be-
tween imamate and caliphate.148 Because Muḥammad possessed both the es-
oteric and exoteric aspects of perfection, those individuals who received the
exoteric benefits of his prophethood—namely, the first three caliphs—be-
came his deputies (khalīfa). Other leaders benefited more from Muḥammad’s
esoteric side and the spiritual ministry (valāyat) it entailed. The latter assisted
travelers on the mystic path in reaching their goals.
Two chains of transmission (silsila) thus can be traced from the Prophet.
Concerning the first, Maybudī quotes a statement by Muḥammad as found in
144 SDA, 185.

145 SDA, 184.
146 A literal explanation of the place name is given and ʿAlī declares his fraternal bond with
Muḥammad. SDA, 713. ʿAlī’s poem is on 728–29.
147 SDA, 206.
148 SDA, 741.
Tirmidhī that if there were a prophet after him, it would be ʿUmar.149 ʿUmar is
also extolled as having conquered the most territory for Islam. The chain of
saints (awliyāʾ), on the other hand, passed by way of ʿAlī.150 In emphasizing
ʿAlī’s spiritual significance, Maybudī expresses ambivalence about his political
claims, quoting a statement by Abū al-Qāsim al-Junayd (Baghdādī): “Had ʿAlī
turned away from fighting, he would have transmitted more religious knowl-
edge (ʿilm) to us than hearts could contain, for it was he who gave such knowl-
edge to the world.”151 It is not entirely clear from the context whether it was
unfortunate that ʿAlī was preoccupied with battles for the caliphate, or wheth-
er that was God’s way of preventing the disclosure of too much truth, although
the general tenor of Maybudī’s discussion suggests the greater likelihood of the
former interpretation.
Because distinctly different spiritual stages correspond to the first caliphs
and to the Imams, it is futile to try to establish the absolute superiority of one
group over the other. One of Maybudī’s authorities is Suhrawardī, who declared
in the Aʿlām al-hudā that Muḥammad bequeathed religious knowledge to his
Companions and to the Ahl al-Bayt, so one must love both equally and not in-
cline to one side or the other, for that is sectarian passion (hawā), the spiritual
evils of which he then goes on to elaborate.152
Even then the matter of the caliphate is not clear-cut, because within the
context of a discussion of divination, Maybudī refers to the story of the ʿAbbasid
caliph al-Ma⁠ʾmūn’s (r. 198–218/813–33) disruptive decision to make Imam ʿAlī
al-Riḍā (d. 203/818) his successor, complete with an oath of allegiance. “Evildo-
ers” prevailed upon the caliph to repent his decision, and ʿAlī al-Riḍā was poi-
soned.153 The implication is that, even if ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib lacked any legitimate
claim to succeed Muḥammad immediately after the latter’s death, his entire
line of descendants was not thereby excluded from the possibility of exercising
rightful sovereignty. On the contrary, Maybudī criticizes those who persuaded
149 SDA, 207.

150 SDA, 177, 207.
151 SDA, 207. See Moosa, Extremist Shiites, 64–65.
152 SDA, 208.
153 SDA, 178. Maybudī’s source is the Kashf al-ghumma fī maʿrifat al-a⁠ʾimma of ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā Irbīlī
(d. 693/1294). Note that he gives no cause of death in his listing of Shiʿi Imams on p. 201.
See Michael Cooperson, Classical Arabic Biography, for in-depth analysis of the episode
as treated by early Arabic historians and biographers. Sunni and Shiʿi sources explain the
Imam’s death differently, the former attributing it to natural causes and the latter to poi-
son, perhaps on the orders of al-Ma⁠ʾmūn, so it is noteworthy that Maybudī gives an
account compatible with Shiʿi history that simultaneously avoids accusing the caliph of
murder.
92 Chapter 3
al-Ma⁠ʾmūn to order ʿAlī al-Riḍā’s assassination. When Maybudī discusses the

early Imams, he passes no judgment on their right to rule and in fact links
them to the Sassanian kings of Iran through Ḥusayn’s marriage to Shahrbānū,
also known as Kanizak Ghazāla, daughter of Yazdigird.154 He does consider it
worth mentioning that Imam ʿAlī Zayn al-ʿAbidīn was the son of Imam Ḥusayn
through that marriage and that a chain of eight imams followed him, although
he does not at this point identify any specific group as professing loyalty to the
genealogical unit of the twelve Imams.
Maybudī’s overall framework for discussing the Imams is to place them
within the Ahl al-Bayt, the repeated mention of which he enhances with
Qurʾānic verses, hadiths, and historical anecdotes. For most of Muḥammad’s
descendants after Ḥusayn, Maybudī lists date and sometimes place of birth,
mother’s name, date of death—and place, if it is as noteworthy as Hārūn’s pris-
on—and place of burial. The emphasis on the mothers includes drawing a
connection to Sassanian royalty or Muslim loyalty (Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq’s mother de-
scended from Abū Bakr) and remarking that from Mūsā Kāẓim on, all the
mothers were slave women (kanizak). In this particular discussion of the
Twelve Imams, it is interesting to note that he does not speak of the Sevener
branch of the Shīʿa at all or other divisions within Shiʿi ranks, although he had
mentioned the Zaydis before.155 In this list he also describes the Imams as sin-
less or infallible (maʿṣūmīn).
It is noteworthy that Maybudī makes no reference to current political cir-
cumstances. No Ak Koyunlu or Timurid ruler or pretender to a throne is
brought into the conversation about the transfer of power, whether material or
spiritual, or about renewers of the age. In a potentially overtly political work
Maybudī returns to a specific historical time, long past, thereby rendering im-
plicit any judgment about his own period. He steps outside of the present into
cosmic universality. Maybudī also does not insist that succession is the only
154 SDA, 200. See Babayan, Mystics, 133–34. She demonstrates how the story maintains the
honor and dignity of both Iranian nobility and the family of Muḥammad and shows the
mingling of Sassanian and ʿAlid genealogies to be divinely ordained (Shahrbānū has a
dream in which Muḥammad predicts her marriage to Ḥusayn). It is doubtful that Maybudī
intends to evoke the full symbolic resonance of the Iranian princess who is linked to the
tradition of the Zoroastrian fertility goddess Anahita, nor is it likely that he approved of
the Shiʿi use of the Shahrbānū-Ḥusayn story not just to address conversion, but to legiti-
mize Ḥusayn’s primacy. Another reason to include the Shahrbānū story is its connection
to Yazd. Zoroastrians cultivated a cult of Bībī Shahrbānū’s shrines, including one outside
Yazd which continued to be visited by Zoroastrians in the 1960s. See Mary Boyce, “Bībī
Shahrbānū and the Lady of Pārs.” BSOAS 30 (1967): 30–44.
155 SDA, 201.
relevant issue in judging ʿAlī’s importance, however much it divided the com-
munity from the early days of Islam. As mentioned above, ʿAlī is depicted as
the origin (mabda⁠ʾ) of the chain of all the saints. A different aspect of his pro-
found connection to Islamic mysticism reappears within the sequence of
Imams. Included within the skeletal, factual list of Imams with its dates and
names are bits of information, the choice of which serves Maybudī’s purpose
of limning the parameters of the Ahl al-Bayt. For example, tucked among ʿAlī
al-Riḍā’s vital statistics is the apparently random remark that Maʿrūf al-Karkhī
(d. 200/815) was his doorman, with no mention of the man’s vital role in a num-
ber of Sufi silsilas. Without belaboring the point, Maybudī succinctly implies
that what matters to him is the Sufi authority intertwined with the ʿAlīd line.
ʿAlī also stands at the head of the chain of Qurʾān reciters through the line of
ʿĀṣim (d. 127/744)156and plays a foundational role in Islamic law. Maybudī
quotes Ibn Athīr to show that the Shafiʿi, Maliki, and Hanafi schools of law
trace their lines of authority to Imam Jaʿfar, and ultimately to ʿAlī. Directly fol-
lowing that observation come brief accounts of the Minbarīya and the Dīnārīya,
episodes in which certain individuals approached ʿAlī with questions about
the division of inheritance when a man dies leaving different configurations of
surviving relatives. Also related are episodes where various women accused of
adultery are brought before ʿAlī and he passes proper judgment, depending on
whether they are pregnant or insane. The anecdotes reinforce the fact that ʿAlī
was more than just a figurehead in a traditional line of authority and that he
deserved his reputation as a legal decisor. Finally, ʿAlī is considered the founder
of the science of grammar. Maybudī shapes the vast amount of information
available to him about ʿAlī to demonstrate that what sets ʿAlī above the rest of
the early Muslims is profound knowledge of religious text. It is he who knows
how to read Scripture, in the form of the Qurʾān, and to decipher its language,
interpret its laws, and articulate its esoteric meaning.
Since the Prophet so treasured ʿAlī and his family, it was natural that sanc-
tions should exist for those who displayed enmity to them.157 Maybudī elabo-
rates on that theme in the tenth section where he uses hadiths to criticize the
Umayyads, especially Marwān b. al-Ḥakam (d. 65/685), whom ʿĀʾisha accused
of being a liar who misattributed the origin of Qurʾānic verses. In what emerg-
es as his customary fashion, Maybudī then retreats from too harsh a judgment,
concluding that the best policy with regard to such disputes is silence. He cites
advice collected by Shāfiʿī that one should not sully one’s tongue by speaking
about such cases. In a backhanded maneuver, however, he then proceeds to
156 SDA, 179, 180.

157 SDA, 184–85.
94 Chapter 3
criticize the Umayyads at length for promoting public cursing of—that is, neg-
ative speech about—ʿAlī’s family during Friday prayers, which took place at
least from the reign of Muʿāwiya (r. 40–60/661–680) to that of ʿUmar b. ʿAbd
al-ʿAzīz (r. 99–101/717–720). He says that he saw in a commentary on Bukhārī’s
Ṣaḥīḥ that the Umayyads unjustifiably ordered the vilification of a certain
group of people during the Friday prayers. Consequently, worshipers used to
quit the mosque immediately after the prayers, avoiding the sermon in order
not to weep at the injustice. Intent on forcing the congregation to remain, the
Umayyads adopted a policy of delaying the prayers.158 After a quotation from
the Sharḥ-i ʿAqāyid, which speaks harshly of Yazīd b. Muʿāwiya, Maybudī inter-
jects his own opinion: “The truth of the matter is that if someone is really ac-
cursed, what need is there for you to pollute your tongue in cursing him? If he
is not accursed, cursing will do him no harm, while you have committed a sin
and will be known as a slanderer.”159
In summary, it is most useful to see Maybudī as part of a long tradition of
harmonization which pre-dated Islam. Like Fārābī, Ibn Ṭufayl, and Averroes
before him, he intimates that there is one metaphysical truth expressed with
different rhetorical articulations, depending on the concerns and culture of
different thinkers. Each successive generation of inquiring minds faced new
sources of thought and new problems—the revelation of the Qurʾān, the en-
counter with philosophic texts, and historical events such as the conquest of
minority populations, the overthrow of political dynasties, and invasions from
unfamiliar cultural regions. By Maybudī’s time the syncretic wheel did not
need to be reinvented but, as will become clear, the place of ʿAlid loyalty within
the cosmic order needed to be stated and reaffirmed.
The Favātiḥ is not a complete, systematic, and critical analysis of the wide
variety of issues it raises. Yet it is more than a grab bag of philosophical and
mystical concerns. Maybudī’s purpose is to focus his exegesis on ʿAlī in order to
describe his place in the cosmos, with all that ʿAlī had come to represent in
terms of the divine direction of creation and God’s continuing involvement in
history. The product of a traditional education anchored in daily religious
practice, which had been honed over the centuries, Maybudī explored the
158 SDA, 204–05.

159 SDA, 206. See discussion of SDA, 515 below. Because a number of ʿAlī’s verses were inspired
by events surrounding the Battle of Siffin, Maybudī has frequent opportunities in the
commentary proper to express his disapproval of Muʿāwiya and his cohorts, often simply
by glorifying ʿAlī’s companions. In his own verse that follows verses about the noble
deaths of a number of ʿAlī’s loyal soldiers, Maybudī speaks of those who find martyrdom
for the sake of religion and can expect a great reward in the next life. SDA, 741.
multitude of paths of knowing that an educated, pious Muslim considered it

his duty to master in order to serve God fully. Maybudī first addressed mysti-
cism, where ʿAlī’s role is paramount. After establishing the supremacy of the
deity and the difficulty of understanding Him except through mystical means,
he presents God’s creation as a whole, then passes to the perfect man, who
embodies the elements of an orderly cosmos. Since the perfect man is Muḥam
mad, the discussion naturally continues with the two primary elements of his
life—namely, prophethood and spiritual ministry. In the logical progression of
his argument, Maybudī showed how those elements continued to influence
the Muslim community after Muḥammad’s death, suggesting that ʿAlī assumed
a unique position of leadership, not as one whose rights were usurped or who
tried to usurp the rights of others, but as the quintessential mystical guide.
One would like to think that Maybudī went into so much detail about ʿAlī,
his political rights and his spiritual pre-eminence because the issue was on his
contemporaries’ minds. The fundamental question is whether the commen-
tary represents anything exceptional in its integration of ʿAlī’s story into the
intellectual inquiry of his day. If the work was primarily an academic exercise,
it reveals something about commentaries as a genre of scholarly writing in the
fifteenth century. That would not be without value, for the post-Mongol period
has been dismissed as a period of intellectual stagnation, during which schol-
ars were unable to do more than rewarm once fresh ideas. If, on the other hand,
the commentary is part of an attempt to reassess ʿAlī, to re-interpret traditions
in order to promote an appreciation of his position in a Sunni-Jamaʿi present,
then Maybudī’s efforts take on a completely different meaning. Why else would
a competent scholar with a philosophical turn of mind write such a massive
work on the key figure of Shiʿi thought? Why would he serve up so much mate-
rial that was known to his contemporaries about the early years of Islam? It is
tempting to conclude that Maybudī tried to integrate ʿAlī into the religious
framework of his day as an indirect response, if not to the proliferation of ex-
tremist groups with their suspect views of ʿAlī, at least to the increasing impor-
tance of Sufi organizations and political tendencies centered on ʿAlī. Without
claiming that Maybudī intentionally set out to provide an alternative to ex-
treme views, it is clear that he offered a textual basis for the integration of ʿAlī’s
increasing importance in political and social developments from the perspec-
tive of an educated, cultured, and pious man.
96 Chapter 3
The Commentary
The bulk of the Sharḥ is the commentary on ʿAlī’s verse, which covers some two
to three hundred folios, depending on the manuscript. At the end of the Favātiḥ
Maybudī sets out the consistent pattern he plans to follow.160 First, he copies
lines from the dīvān, varying in number from one to six, two and three being
the most common. The dīvān itself is arranged by the final letter of the verses
and each poem is preceded by a rhyming couplet in Persian composed by
Maybudī that crystallizes its moral message. Then he gives an explanation of
words and phrases in those lines, translating certain Arabic words into Persian,
occasionally discussing vocalization and presenting basic grammatical and
historical background. Fairly frequently the words fatḥ (discourse), nukta
(matter), or ḥikāyat (anecdote) introduce longer explanations, generally filling
out the poem’s historical context. For example, stories about the Battle of Siffin
and Ḥusayn’s death at Karbala, which are discussed in greater length than oth-
er episodes, are set off by such words. Next, preceded by the words “it says”
(mī-farmāyad) comes a translation into Persian, “neither adding nor subtract-
ing.” To finish up the section, Maybudī includes a verse in Persian of his own
composition, introduced in several of the manuscripts by the letter ‘sin’ [sic]
which stands for shāriḥ (commentator). The more elaborate the manuscript,
the greater the likelihood that ʿAlī’s verses and the introductory expressions are
written in red ink.
Maybudī moves from Arabic verse through the interface of lexical explana-
tion to simple Persian prose and then completes the circle with Persian verse,
before proceeding to yet another verse in Arabic. Because of the structure, a
study of the commentary naturally divides into three parts. First, the dīvān it-
self requires examination, less as poetry from the early years of Islam than as a
document that Maybudī chose to study centuries later. Second, the subjects
touched upon in the commentary, however wide-ranging, can be grouped into
several major themes. Finally, Maybudī’s own verses, almost as numerous as
ʿAlī’s, should be integrated into the discussion.
One question that has haunted both the prose and poetry of ʿAlī is whether
they are genuine. Sultan makes a case for dating doubts about the authorship
of the Nahj back to the ninth and tenth centuries.161 The dīvān’s authenticity
has also been challenged.162 While Maybudī writes that it is impossible to
160 SDA, 211.

161 Jamil Sultan, É tude sur Nahj al-Balāgha (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1940), 73–78.
162 H. Ewald, “ʿAlī’s Divan” in “Über die Sammlung arabischer und syrischer Handschriften im
British Museum,” Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes Bd. II, Heft 2 (1839), 192–200.
d escribe the poetry and speaks highly of the “dīvān of lofty ayvān and exten-
sive maydān,” he, too, is not convinced that ʿAlī wrote it, or at least not all of it.
Yet even in articulating his doubts, he dismisses them: “Although it is not cer-
tain that this sea [i.e. the dīvān] has not been made impure by [extraneous]
scraps of poetry, if one verse is his [ʿAlī’s], that is enough for me in this world
and the next.”163
Maybudī rarely makes further reference to the matter of reliability in the
body of the commentary. Concerning a poem written about ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
ibn Muljam, he does cite Zamakhsharī’s statement in his Asās [al-balāgha]
that the verses really ought to be attributed to ʿAmr b. Maʿdīkarib.164 After com-
menting on a verse composed after the Battle of Siffin, Maybudī relates that
Ibn Aʿtham attributes it to Maʿqil b. Qays Riyāḥī.165 In neither case does he
himself pass judgment. One verse referring to the Yemen apparently had been
interpreted in such a way as to cast doubt on its authenticity, for ʿAlī was by no
stretch of the imagination a Yemenite.166 Here Maybudī weighs in with an
opinion that resolves the difficulty and preserves the attribution.
In other instances Maybudī indicates that the authorship is suspect because
its message seems to contradict views ʿAlī was known to hold. Interpreting a
verse in which ʿAlī expresses scorn for astrology and agreeing with that assess-
ment, Maybudī continues: “It is clear from that excerpt that the attribution of
the following verses to ʿAlī does not conform to reality.”167 A couple of verses
are then given in which the attitude toward astrology is more favorable. To
show that they were not composed by ʿAlī, the verses are not written in red ink
in those manuscripts that use it to distinguish ʿAlī’s poetry.
Maybudī devotes most attention to spurious attribution when the subject of
the poem concerns succession to the caliphate. In one instance, Maybudī ex-
plicates in his usual manner a poem addressed to ʿUthmān that criticizes his
accession. He follows it with a lengthy excursus beginning: “It is not hidden
Ewald maintains that the dīvān is spuriously attributed to ʿAlī. His primary reason is that
the thoughts and stylistic characteristics of the poetry are too ordinary to be worthy of
ʿAlī. He does not, however, list the writings which he does consider genuine and which
enabled him to evaluate ʿAlī’s poetic talents. He also claims that the style of the poems is
characteristic of an age later than the seventh century. Mudarris, 6:49 holds that the
poems are ʿAlī’s as does Maʿṣūm ʿAlī Shāh, 3:125.
163 SDA, 6.
164 SDA, 449. Zamakhsharī, Asās al-balāgha, 412. I did not verify every citation in the SDA,
because spot checking showed the 2000 edition to be both comprehensive and accurate.
165 SDA, 362.
166 SDA, 769.
167 SDA, 651.
98 Chapter 3
that these two verses are in accordance with the Shīʿa (madhhab-i Shīʿa), while
the Ahl-i Sunnat va Jamāʿat maintain that no enmity existed between ʿUthmān
and ʿAlī … so it would be surprising if ʿAlī composed them.”168 He asserts that
people who want to stir up trouble transfer their own worthless ideas to ʿAlī. As
an example, he says they ascribe to ʿAlī the statement, “Praise to Him who
knows irrational roots.” He proceeds with a discussion of mathematics to prove
how ridiculous that is and how inconceivable that ʿAlī would utter invalid
praise to God. While historical truth can suffer from the absence of concrete
evidence with the passage of time, mathematical laws remain unchanging and
universal, the gold standard against which the statements of an unimpeach-
able believer such as ʿAlī can be tested.
Because Maybudī perceives ʿAlī’s character in such a specific, positive way,
he confidently rejects verses which contradict that view. Another of the verses
in the dīvān reads:
Learn, Abū Bakr, and do not remain ignorant

That ʿAlī is the best of all who go barefoot or shod,
And that the Messenger bequeathed him his rights,
And reinforced his words about him [ʿAlī] excellently.
Do not disregard his rights; return the people to him,
For truly God is the most truthful of speakers.169
Maybudī follows the exegesis and translation with a section (fatḥ) in which he
expresses surprise that such verses would have been written by ʿAlī, given Abū
Bakr’s primacy among the Prophet’s Companions. He states that ʿAlī never
would have sworn loyalty to Abū Bakr had he doubted that devout man’s right
to the caliphate, for the first caliph exhibited the utmost piety and respect for
the Shariʿa. Furthermore, had Abū Bakr’s caliphate been illegitimate, ʿAlī never
would have accepted it, his integrity being proven when he refused to give up
his rights after ʿUthmān’s death and opposed Muʿāwiya. A conversation be-
tween ʿAlī and ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbbās is related in which the latter advises the
caliph to leave Muʿāwiya in his position in Syria until the upstart swore alle-
giance to him, at which time ʿAlī would be free to dismiss him. ʿAlī replied that,
if he did not discharge him at once, the tyranny he would exercise over the
common people would be ʿAlī’s responsibility. Consequently, he ordered his
168 SDA, 372.

169 SDA, 653.
immediate dismissal. Maybudī does not pursue the issue of authenticity any
further, leaving the reader to draw his own conclusions.170
The acceptance of cursing one’s enemies suggests the implausibility of at-
tributing another verse to ʿAlī, but in this case, Maybudī gets around the diffi-
culty by saying that the Imam is permitted to voice certain things that would
be condemned in another person. After a poem about the cursing of ʿAmr b.
ʿĀṣ, Maybudī writes:
If you say that the ulama of Sunna and Jamāʿa forbid the cursing of ʿAmr
b. ʿĀṣ and the third verse testifies to the permissibility of doing so, we say
that even though it seems to be written by al-Murtaḍā [ʿAlī], whatever the
Imam can say about rebellious people is not necessarily permitted to
other people.171
Similarly, a qadi has the authority to criticize legally prescribed punishments,

while if a layman does the same, he becomes liable for punishment. Maybudī
warns his reader a thousand times against cursing a Muslim, especially a Com-
panion of the Prophet, for meeting him in the next world will be a fearsome
encounter. A story from Ibn Aʿtham, in which ʿAlī forbids two of his followers at
the Battle of Siffin to revile their opponents, rounds out the argument that
such cursing is unacceptable.
In an uncharacteristic foray into theology within the body of the Sharḥ,
Maybudī implies that the distinction of ʿAlī’s character and experience offers
much latitude in deciphering what he did or did not say and do. After revisiting
the matter of divine names, he quotes Qayṣarī’s Sharḥ-i Fuṣūṣ for an anecdote
in which ʿAlī makes the extravagant statement during a khuṭba that he is among
other things “the point of the “b” in the bismillah, the Pen, the Preserved Tab-
let, the Throne, the Footstool, the seven heavens and the earth.”172 When sobri-
ety resumed and he returned to the world of human qualities (bashariyat), he
apologized. ʿAlī both provides insight into the mysteries of the divine and sets
the limits of what ordinary men can say in the normal course of human affairs.
In addition to exercising his critical faculties to investigate authorship,
Maybudī uses them to evaluate different manuscripts. Some thirty-five times
he mentions variations in manuscripts, such as the use of different words or
the occasional omission of a particular line, seldom explaining why he chooses
170 SDA, 651–52.

171 SDA, 515.
172 SDA, 457.
100 Chapter 3
one reading over another.173 He may have worked from a commentary in which
variant readings were offered, much the same way he offers them to his reader,
or he might have had several manuscripts in front of him as he worked. No clue
is given in the text as to how he proceeded. It seems that in his studies, one of
his methods was to note and collate the variant opinions of other scholars
rather than engaging in textual analysis himself. In the case cited above where
he states that Zamakhsharī attributed a particular verse to ʿAmr b. Maʿdīkarib
rather than to ʿAlī, the implication is that Maybudī had a body of tafsir infor-
mation against which he compared his manuscript of the dīvān. Near the end
of the Sharḥ he specifies that Ghazālī in the Iḥyāʾ attributed the two verses
under discussion to Abū al-ʿAlāʾ Maʿarrī, but that Ibn ʿArabī in the Futūḥāt said
they were ʿAlī’s.174
Not only the text of ʿAlī’s poetry, but also Maybudī’s own work is treated as a
textual entity in itself. A stylistic feature of the introduction (Favātiḥ) is
Maybudī’s frequent remark that he plans to elaborate on various topics within
the main body of the commentary, which shows that he conceived of his mon-
umental work as a unified whole. Both in the Favātiḥ and in the commentary,
Maybudī directs his reader to other sections of the text, referring not only to
subjects previously discussed, but also to matters which he promises to ad-
dress later in the book.175 Perhaps aware of the magnitude of the work,
Maybudī gives his reader repeated assurances that it possesses coherence.
As for the subjects treated in the commentary on each set of verses, they are
difficult to categorize because the brevity of each entry precludes any sort of
comprehensive treatment and favors short, unconnected comments about
173 See for example SDA, 6–7, 217, 222, 229, 244, 258, 299, 446, 449, 459, 489, 525, 555, 563, 601,
615, 713, 716, 724, 759, 795.
174 SDA, 699. See also 644 for Ghazālī’s attribution of verses to Abū Turāb Nakhshabī
(d. 245/859) and Yaḥyā b. Muʿādh Rāzī (d. 258/871).
175 See SDA, 33 (where the reader is referred to Fātiḥa 7/F7); 36 (letter ‘kaf’); 90 and 93 (F5);
169 (directs his reader for a discussion of Abū Ṭālib and the shahāda to the commentary:
“The details will come in sections ‘dal,’ ‘ʿayn,’ and ‘lam,’ God willing.”); 172 (‘lam’); 184
(‘ʿayn’: about ʿAlī being the valī of all the faithful after Muḥammad); 193 (‘ba⁠ʾ’: wars
between Muʿāwiya and ʿAlī; the death of several of ʿAlī’s supporters in ‘lam’ and ‘mim’); 194
(‘ra’: negotiations between Abū Mūsā Ashʿarī and ʿAmr b. ʿĀṣ); 202 (‘lam’ on the Mahdi);
237 (F2); 241 (‘ra’); 245 (F4); 247 (F4); 250 (F6); 257 (F6); 282 (F7); 425 (‘mim’ and ‘nun’); 449
(‘ba⁠ʾ’); 481 (where he promises to reconcile apparently contradictory verses about the
relative values of poverty and wealth when the second verse appears.); 506 (F5); 512 (F7);
514 (F7); 524 (F3 and 5); 649 (F7); 685 (F4); 740 and 741 (F7); 771 (F7). The phrasing raises
questions about the massive work’s composition. Did Maybudī know how he planned to
organize it looking forward, or were later sections already written when he gave these
references and he expected that it would all appear as one manuscript?
everything from criticism of his contemporaries among the ulama, to women,

the role of Eve in mystical knowledge, historical anecdotes about ʿAlī and his
family, and the Mahdi. Maybudī follows the lead of the poems and remains
faithful to his goal of explicating them, yet he benefits from their brevity as he
decides which subjects require fuller treatment and which can be passed over
quickly.
Beginning with grammar, the earlier verses receive more attention than the
later ones. Maybudī goes into great detail in the first few poems, explaining the
definite article in Arabic with quotations from classical philologists of the Bas-
ran school such as Sībawayh (late 2nd/8th century), Mubarrad (d. 286/900),
and al-Khalīl (late 2nd/8th century), discussing different opinions about the
etymology of the word nās (people) and whether or not it can be used without
the definite article, mentioning that a particular word has a lengthened vowel
for the sake of meter and that such adjustments of vowels are common in Ara-
bic words, and that the placement of short vowels differs among the languages
of Persia, Khwarazm, and Arabia, and so on.176 He frequently cites a Qurʾānic
verse as philological evidence for the point he is making, such as the specific
use of ‘fa’ as a conjunction. In his discussion of morphology and syntax,
Maybudī occasionally refers to the arguments between the well-known gram-
marians of Basra and of Kufa on subjects ranging from the letter waw to the
word awwal to the conditional to the verb form of a particular word. Those is-
sues were of immediate interest to earlier generations of scholars, but seem to
be academic virtuosity in Maybudī’s case.177 He expresses no preference for
one school or the other.
Within the first fifty folios, grammatical explanations virtually disappear ex-
cept for clarifications of vocalization and explanations of singular and plural.178
It is not as if Maybudī covered every possible philological point before his in-
terest in the subject waned nor, judging from his commentary on the Kāfiya, is
it likely that he ran out of things to say. One possibility is that he had a model
commentary in mind, one that offered complete explanations. Having estab-
176 SDA, 213–16.

177 See SDA, 230, 245, 367. He still specifies proper vocalization, even without defining a given
word: see 734 for nabhān and muḥarraq.
178 Grammatical discussions do occasionally surface later in the text.. See SDA, 509 for the
opinions of al-Khalīl, al-Akhfash (d. 177/793), and al-Kasāʾī (d. 189/805) on the word ashyāʾ
(things). Within a few pages of the end, Maybudī cites Abū Zakariyā Yaḥyā al-Farrāʾ (d.
207/822) on the permissibility of dropping the ‘lam’ of the imperative. SDA, 768. That he
had other commentaries on the Kāfiya available emerges from scattered quotations, espe-
cially that of Shaykh Raḍī [al-Dīn Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Astarābādī (d. 686/
1287)], about which he mentions a gloss by Jurjānī. SDA, 274.
102 Chapter 3
lished his scholarly credentials within the first few folios, he may have felt that
he had adhered to that model to his satisfaction and constrained by time and
space put an end to such comprehensive explanations in order to focus on ʿAlī
and his poetry.
The practice that does continue throughout the commentary is the transla-
tion of various words and expressions from Arabic to Persian, not to be con-
fused with the paraphrases in Persian that follow each segment. Most of the
translations are straightforward and helpful, distinguishing, for example, the
Arabic words for ‘price’ and ‘value.’179 In many cases it is unclear why Maybudī
thought his audience would recognize one word and not another, nor do some
of the words chosen for translation seem particularly enigmatic. For example,
he explains that rasūl means ‘prophet’, that the expression Kitāb Allāh refers to
the Qurʾān, and that arkān-i Islām are the shahāda, prayer, fasting, pilgrimage,
and charity—points that seem obvious from the context and simply from gen-
eral knowledge.180 It is also puzzling why he would need to translate ḥubb
(‘love’) as dūstī or, near the end of the work, feel compelled to explain that Da-
mascus is the principal city in Syria after having mentioned it already eight
times.181 In the latter case, that is the first time Damascus appears in one of
ʿAlī’s poems as opposed to Maybudī’s own commentary, a pattern that shows
up with ‘Siffin’ as discussed below. In some cases his discursive comments are
not meant as translations and may serve simply to engage the reader. Near the
end of the commentary, he cites a relatively lengthy passage on the three main
parts of an Arabic name and soon after, the explanation of ‘shaṭranj’ leads to a
two-line digression on the Indian origins of chess.182
Even more remarkable in Maybudī’s approach to translation from a contem-
porary perspective is that in the Favātiḥ he includes lengthy quotations in Ara-
bic from dense texts loaded with technical vocabulary by scholars such as
Suhrawardī, Saʿd al-Dīn Taftāzānī, Ibn ʿArabī, and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī.183 The
many historical anecdotes he includes from Ibn Aʿtham and others often in-
volve dialogue and clever wordplay in Arabic that he presumes his readers will
understand. He clearly worked under the assumption that his audience was
equally comfortable with both languages, for in those cases he provides no
179 SDA, 221.

180 SDA, 257, 270, 707.
181 SDA, 550, 681. Similarly, Aaron receives an entry only on page 671 after numerous previous
references and a repeated emphasis on the parallel between the pairing of Moses and
Aaron and that of Muḥammad and ʿAlī.
182 SDA, 760–01.
183 SDA, 68 and 112, for example.
translation and slips easily from one language to the other. Not infrequently he
even explains an Arabic word with a definition in Arabic taken directly from
his source.184 That the Favātiḥ and the poetic commentary belong to separate
genres may explain Maybudī’s process of translation, but the effect remains
disconcerting.
As the book progresses, the commentary sections are frequently quite short,
sometimes occupying less than a line of text. At other times Maybudī com-
pletely omits any commentary after a particular verse, passing directly to the
paraphrase; only rarely does he omit the paraphrase.185 He may relate the his-
torical circumstances surrounding the poem, introducing them with the word
ḥikāyat or nukta, without addressing the Arabic verse specifically. The most
plausible reason is that the verse posed no difficulty for the reader.
Since Maybudī went on at some length about metaphysical questions in the
Favātiḥ, he frequently contents himself in the commentary proper with refer-
ring the reader to previous remarks, thereby reinforcing the purpose of the in-
troduction. In a few cases he introduces a completely unmentioned aspect of
cosmology or metaphysics, or elaborates on one previously discussed in great-
er detail. After one poem he resumes his arguments about the resurrection of
the dead from the fifth chapter of the introduction.186 In another case, while
he had presented the complex structure of the cosmos in the fourth chapter,
he returns to it near the end of the commentary to explain the following verse:
[The astrologer] came to me, menacing me with the stars,

While from his own evildoing he perceived no threat.
I fear my sins more than astral conjunctions
And in their [the sins’] evil I do believe.
Maybudī discusses the terminology for various kinds of astral conjunctions

(qirān). Then he turns to the true purpose of his comments, which is to put the
effect of the stars on man’s daily life into perspective.187 Man’s sins should con-
184 SDA, 568: thaqb is translated as sūrākh kardan (make a hole), and then thāqib is explained
in Arabic taken directly from the Mufradāt fī gharīb al-Qurʾān of Rāghib Iṣfahānī
(d. 502/1108). 610: The explanation for ‘Qārūn’ (Korach) is in Arabic. Maybudī preserves
the Arabic in his extensive use of Jawharī’s dictionary, al-Ṣiḥāḥ.
185 SDA, 689, 701, 749, 757, 768, 770, 772, 789.
186 SDA, 699.
187 SDA, 758–59. See 650–51 for similar sentiments. Maybudī agrees with ʿAlī that awe is due
the Creator, and that the fear of astral movements instilled by astrologers is nonsense. It
is, however, interesting that when he dates the completion of the Sharḥ in its closing lines,
not only does he give Hijri and Jalālī dates, but also mentions that it was the time of the
104 Chapter 3
cern him more than the secrets of astral movements, for in the one case he
exercises a control that he lacks in the other. Only extraordinary individuals
remain immune to the power of the heavens: “From these two verses you must
not imagine that the celestial bodies lack any influence. No, it is the perfect
man who reaches such a degree that the celestial bodies can have no effect on
him. Similarly, you have heard that some of the Companions ingested poison
and it had no effect on them.” In his own poem, Maybudī emphasizes that ex-
cessive interest in the stars and the world of secrets should not distract a man
from sins that are clear in the light of day.
While Maybudī himself frequently gives scientific or philosophical explana-
tions for various phenomena, he points out that this type of rational inquiry
can never reach the intellectual perfection achieved by the pious ancestors.
After explaining ʿAlī’s lament over the passing of a more morally exemplary
generation, Maybudī veers in a different direction with the following verse of
his own:
A company that was learned has gone.

In theoretical knowledge (ʿilm-i naẓar) they were skillful and percep-
tive.
Today no trace has remained of those people.
It is as if they were bubbles in a wave in the sea.188
He does not criticize philosophers as individuals—they do not fall under the

category of those who sin or are faithless—but does imply that their intellec-
tual efforts do not endure in the way religious truth necessarily will. ʿAlī’s poem
suggests that all believers can take warning from the absence of righteousness
and return to the main road of moral improvement after having lost them-
selves on the byways, while Maybudī’s message about theoretical knowledge
expresses a finality about the accomplishments of the past.
Just as he refers in the commentary to cosmological and philosophical mat-
ters mentioned in the introduction, so Maybudī elaborates on historical events
as the work progresses. In giving the circumstances for the writing of a particu-
lar poem, he frequently provides detailed retellings of stories that must have
been thoroughly familiar to his readers. For instance, he recounts the refusal of
Muḥammad’s camel to settle in any but one particular place in Medina when
conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the sign of Scorpio and the season of the assembly
(ijtimāʿ: see 759) of the seven planets (sayyāra), except for Mars, in that fortuitous sign of
the zodiac. SDA, 799.
188 SDA, 486.
the Prophet emigrated to that city in 1/622 and the construction of a mosque
on the site.189 While the poem praises those who frequent mosques with devo-
tion—so there is a clear connection to the story—the account must have been
well enough known in the fifteenth century not to require such a lengthy retell-
ing. One explanation for the wealth of familiar information provided in the
commentary is that Maybudī’s goal was to demonstrate breadth of knowledge,
an all-encompassing understanding of the poems which enabled him to give
them their proper place in Islamic history and in the larger structure of the
cosmos.
The balance between the familiarity of the audience and Maybudī’s desire
for comprehensiveness suggests why the order of certain explanations can
seem haphazard to the modern reader. The word ‘Siffin’ is but one example of
a definition that seems almost irrelevant by the time it appears. Maybudī de-
scribes the vocalization and location of Siffin long after that battle site is first
mentioned and after at least thirteen occurrences of the word.190 His criterion
for explanation seems to be that this is the first time the word actually appears
in one of ʿAlī’s poems rather than in a historical anecdote or a heading for an
ensuing poem. Underlying that criterion rests the assumption that Maybudī’s
readers already knew about the place, so that his choice to discuss it well into
the commentary is neither careless nor incomprehensible. He does mention it
eventually, thus approaching comprehensiveness, trusting his audience to un-
derstand his method without unnecessary confusion.
Most of the historical themes that are taken up from the introduction natu-
rally concern ʿAlī. The question of Abū Ṭālib’s adoption of Islam reappears in
connection with the following verse:
O Abū Ṭālib, safeguard of him who seeks refuge,

Abundant rain in years of barrenness, light in darkness,
Your loss shattered the community of protectors.
Indeed, you were the best of uncles to al-Muṣṭafā.191
The problem raised by the poem is the description of Abū Ṭālib as the best of
Muḥammad’s uncles, considering that he may not have adopted Islam while
two other uncles, Ḥamza and Al-ʿAbbās, clearly did. The solution lies in the fact
that Abū Ṭālib died two years before Al-ʿAbbās’s conversion, so he was the best
at the time of the verse’s composition. As for Ḥamza, he was but one of twelve
189 SDA, 425–26.

190 SDA, 361.
191 SDA, 709.
106 Chapter 3
uncles, all listed, and a half-uncle at that. The verse itself does not necessarily
demand evaluation of Abū Ṭālib’s relation to Islam—any number of facts
about him could have been mentioned instead—but that is the issue on which
Maybudī concentrates.
History and mysticism coincide in the commentary on another verse. In a
nine-line poem ʿAlī criticizes those who are seduced by the world and express-
es a healthy fear of eternal punishment, which preserves him from being se-
duced by the glitter of this earthly existence. Maybudī breaks the poem into
three sections and explicates them in his usual manner, then recounts the sto-
ry that inspired the verses as related by Imam Jaʿfar [al-Ṣādiq]. ʿAlī was engaged
in some work, when before him appeared an extremely beautiful woman who
resembled Buthayna, daughter of ʿĀmir Jumaḥī. The temptress sought to en-
tice him, but when ʿAlī asked her identity and she admitted to being ‘the World,’
he repulsed her, exclaiming that she should seek a husband elsewhere. Maybudī
remarks that there is no doubt that the vision and conversation took place in
the world of archetypal images (ʿālam-i mithāl) that was examined in the fifth
chapter.192 The historical ʿAlī, who frequented the Prophet and fought numer-
ous battles, is suddenly swept into a completely other dimension, one that
Maybudī finds equally significant.
Another historical and mystical figure who appeared previously in the
Favātiḥ is the Mahdi.193 Maybudī presents different views on the identity of
this promised savior. At one point, he relates ʿAlī’s prediction that his son
Ḥusayn will be killed, whereupon al-Mukhtār b. Abū ʿUbayda al-Thaqafī will
avenge his death. Then Maybudī describes Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafīya, a son of
ʿAlī by a different wife. He gives his date of death, adding “but his adherents
(shīʿa-yi ū) maintain that he is alive in Mount Radwa, that he is the promised
Mahdi, and that when he appears the earth will be filled with justice.”194
Maybudī speaks of the followers of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafīya as if they still
cohered as a group with a specific set of beliefs, but had merged with other
groups around the time of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, many centuries before. With refer-
ence to the Mahdi, the meaning of historical episodes lies not in the past but in
the perfected future.
That focus on the future acts as a counterweight to historical speculation.
Explicating ṣāḥib al-qiyāma, Maybudī equates that figure with the Mahdi, but
192 SDA, 611.

193 SDA, 201–02 where Maybudī simply says that Imam Muḥammad al-ʿAskarī is said by the
Imāmīya to be the promised Mahdi, as will be discussed in ḥarf ‘lam.’ The discussion
appears on 651–53.
194 SDA, 284.
his emphasis is on the time of Resurrection and Judgment: “Some say that ev-
ery Shariʿa matter has an exoteric aspect, about which both the general popu-
lation and the initiated are commanded, and an esoteric aspect which is
specific to the initiated. When the Mahdi appears, the esoteric will be made
manifest and the exoteric realized. Then ‘On the day when hidden thoughts
shall be searched out’ will occur.”195 This millennial moment will be one of
complete cosmic clarification.
Much later in the Sharḥ Maybudī returns to the Mahdi in the context of a
different poem, offering other possibilities for that figure’s identity.196 After
mentioning the tradition that the Turks, the mass movements of whom will
prefigure the coming of the Mahdi, descended from Yāfith b. Nūḥ (Noah),
Maybudī goes on to say that this redemptive individual is characterized by the
attributes of perfection, descended from Fāṭima, and promised by Muḥammad.
Various hadiths show that he will belong to the line of Muḥammad and that
during his reign of seven years he will fill the earth with equity and justice as
much as it had been previously filled with oppression and tyranny. Opinions
differ on the exact nature of the Mahdi. The Ahl al-Sunna maintain that God
will send some descendant of Fāṭima when He will in order to protect His reli-
gion, while the Imami Shīʿa claim that the Mahdi is Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan
al-ʿAskarī (Occultation in 260/874), who hid from men’s sight out of fear of his
enemies. There is no problem with the immense age he must have reached,
since ancient figures such as Noah, Luqmān, and Khiḍr are widely accepted as
believable.
After verses of his own which express longing for the coming of the beloved,
Maybudī remarks that most of those who specialize in the esoteric meaning of
numbers have said something about the Mahdi. He gives the following couplet
by Shaykh Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥamuvayī as an example:
When, after the fast (ṣawm), the time reaches

‘Bismillah,’ then shall the Mahdi appear.197
195 SDA, 282. Qurʾān 86:9.

196 SDA, 651–3.
197 This follows almost immediately on the quotation from Nūrbakhsh’s Risālat al-hudā
referred to above. See Bashir, “The Risālat al-hudā,” 107 and the accompanying note 22 on
page 99. A marginal note in the Bankipore manuscript explains how the numbers add up
to produce the year in which the Mahdi is supposed to appear. The note must have been
written after that date, for the note also says that nothing happened and “God knows
best.”
108 Chapter 3
Maybudī offers his own intricate poetry and prose to express the great joy that
the light of the Mahdi will bring, but leaves the date and further speculation
about the Mahdi’s identity unresolved. Expectation of the imminent, apoca-
lyptic arrival of this promised one about whom so little is known does not pro-
pel Maybudī’s interest in ʿAlī or his descendants. We do not know what he told
his children or the nature of his private discussions with friends and colleagues,
but for the purposes of the Sharḥ, he includes a few bits of information be-
cause the Mahdi comes up in Ibn ʿArabī’s discussion of prophecy and in sev-
eral of ʿAlī’s poems, and that is the ostensible extent of his concern.
Intertwined with Maybudī’s historical interests are those in the law. The two
are closely linked, for examples from the history of the early Muslim commu-
nity influenced the evolution of Islamic law. In his treatment of a poem that
was written just prior to ʿAlī’s assassination, Maybudī relates at length the story
(ḥikāyat) of the caliph’s murder by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ibn Muljam (ʿalayhi al-
laʿna), who was motivated by love for a woman who blamed ʿAlī for her father’s
death.198 He then treats one particular point (nukta) raised by the account—
namely, the disagreement of jurists over the legality of retaliation (qiṣāṣ)
against a killer when that man has young children. Abū Ḥanīfa and Mālik con-
sider it permissible, while Shāfiʿī disagrees. To support their position, the first
group states that Imam Ḥasan ordered retaliation against Ibn Muljam. The
Shafiʿis claim that it was not retaliation, but rather the prescribed punishment
for the crime (ḥadd), because death is the appropriate legal punishment for
the assassination of an imam.
In another case, a verse that begins, “O Hearer of prayers!” triggers a brief
discussion about whether an unbeliever’s prayers are heard, less a legal matter
than a cultic or theological one. The Ahl-i Sunnat prevail with a reply in the af-
firmative, while the Muʿtazila disagree; that distinction merits notice for it
would appear that the latter do not fall under the Sunni rubric, at least in this
context. While the debate may have been of immediate concern in Maybudī’s
day, it must be recalled that all his authorities—more precisely, all his exam-
ples and his entire time frame—were far from contemporary.199
Mention of the Shariʿa is generally less technical and more connected to the
moral choices that regularly challenge all Muslims. One of Maybudī’s verses
reads:
O you who have become negligent of the secrets (asrār) of the Shariʿa!
How long will you commit sins and remain ignorant?
198 SDA, 449–51.

199 SDA, 683.
It [the Shariʿa] is the delight of the soul, and until the end of time
The imprint of sins will remain on the page of the heart.200
What those verses and the many others like it reveal is how closely and simply
are intertwined the language of Muslim morality and the rhetoric of lettrist
esotericism. Mystical significance permeates Maybudī’s worldview and merges
seamlessly with his exoteric religious obligations. The various compartments
of Maybudī’s intellectual outlook were complementary rather than mutually
exclusive.
Maybudī was not only grammarian, translator, historian, legist and philoso-
pher in the Sharḥ, but also poet.201 While the quality of his verse does not place
him in the first ranks of Persian poetry, its sheer quantity evokes admiration for
him as a representative of the educated classes. Producing over six hundred
quatrains (rubāʿī) for this one work is a remarkable exercise in both versifica-
tion and devotion. The majority of the verses are in Persian, with only a few
being composed in Arabic. The poems offer yet further interpretation of the
original text and allow an expansion of meaning.202
Two formal questions are raised by Maybudī’s verses. First, why did he
choose the quatrain form? Second, what are the themes of his verse? The sec-
ond question provides an answer to the first. Almost without exception, the
verses are didactic, simple and direct in their morality. They are reminiscent of
Saʿdī’s verses in the Gulistān, which illustrate or elaborate on the points made
in the preceding anecdote. Another parallel might be drawn with Jāmī’s trans-
formation of forty hadiths into verse form, the Arbaʿīn-i Jāmī (wr. 886/1481),
where he used quatrains. His stated goal was to have them easily understood
and, indeed, the quatrain form lends itself to such pithy messages.203 There is
also the element of practicality. Maybudī could hardly have written a ghazal or
200 SDA, 483.

201 As mentioned in the introduction, Maybudī’s pen name was Manṭiqī. He does not use it
in his poems in the Sharḥ, but it appears several times in the poems he wrote in his letters:
MUN, 85, 176, 180, 181. In other poems in the Munsha⁠ʾāt he writes his name as “Ḥusayn ibn
al-Muʿīn al-Maybudī,” 247, “Ḥusayn ibn al-Muʿīn al-Maybudī,” and “Ḥusayn Maybudī wa
wālidī Muʿīn al-Dīn,” 248. The variations result from the demands of meter.
202 See Zadeh, The Vernacular Qur’an, 574 for the use of Persian poetry in Qurʾānic exegesis.
203 Nūr al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī, Arbaʿīn-i Jāmī, ed. Kāẓim Mudīr Shānahchī (n.p., 1363),
21; Abdülkadir Karahan, Cāmī’nin Erbain-i ve türkçe tercümeleri (Istanbul: Osman Yalçın
Matbaası, 1952), 6. Jāmī says that his aim was to have the verses easily understood so he
chose hadiths with words that could be easily memorized. By extension, we can assume
that he sought ease of learning in his own explanatory verses and they are, in fact, quite
plain.
110 Chapter 3
qaṣīda on every few lines of ʿAlī’s dīvān, while the quatrain is economical. Sev-
eral examples follow:
O possessor of perfect perception and propitious fortune,

How long will you exert yourself for the goods of the world?
Tomorrow when your soul leaves your body,
Your enemies will consume all that wealth with pleasure.204
O heart, however fine a nature you may have,

You will never attain your goal.
If you seek one enemy, you will find a hundred;
Seek a friend for a hundred years and you will not find one.205
Every citadel we built fell to ruin;

Our composure quickly turned to dismay.
Everyone who sets his heart on the base world
Suddenly finds it branded with regret.206
O friend, you have the means of cultivation (zirāʿat).

How long will you spend your life unemployed?
Since knowledge and practice are as water and earth to you,
If you have a worthy heart, sow the seeds of happiness.207
In part, Maybudī’s verse is as epigrammatic as it is because of the subject mat-

ter of ʿAlī’s poems. Many of the latter elaborate on simple, pietistic messages
such as the benefits of silence, the wisdom of frequenting virtuous and schol-
arly people, the need for patience and acceptance of fate’s decrees, the prefer-
ence for knowledge over wealth, and so on. Others of a more historical nature
also provide guidance for mankind, instructing through anecdote rather than
admonition. Maybudī’s Persian verses engage the Arabic text attributed to ʿAlī,
linking the eternal truths of the past to the present day.
Although it has been convenient to follow the two-part division of the
Sharḥ, the Favātiḥ and the commentary proper constitute a single work. Ideas
appear only in passing in the commentary because they receive more thor-
ough treatment in the introduction. Thematically, the two sections are similar.
204 SDA, 239.

205 SDA, 306.
206 SDA, 555.
207 SDA, 492.
Unified by the preeminent role of ʿAlī, they concern his place within a cosmo-
logical, Islamic framework, his mystical significance, and the proper interpre-
tation of historical events. Underlying the nuts and bolts of the known world,
elusive questions about the nature of reality and the limits of human knowl-
edge shift endlessly through language and experience. The inherent inscruta-
bility of the universe is expressed through and reflected by language, which is
both multifaceted and constrained. ʿAlī’s life encapsulates the tension between
mystical truth and legal norms. Maybudī uses it to elaborate on a fundamental
theme in Sufi literature that goes back at least as far as the tenth century, which
is that far from contradicting the teachings of the Qurʾān or Muḥammad, mys-
tical insight is inseparable from them.
Translation and exegesis emerge as eminently suitable mechanisms to ex-
plore a wide variety of intellectual problems, because to translate is to inter-
pret. By its very nature, translation acknowledges the many layers of meaning
within reality. Using it to clarify a text, Maybudī creates his own literary docu-
ment. The Sharḥ ultimately constructs a philosophical and theological struc-
ture dominated by the historical figure of ʿAlī, one shaped over time by the
selective editing of sayings and anecdotes, all the while confined by historical
fact and accepted tradition. Ultimate causation resides with God, but the world
is shaped by man’s multiple capacities for action in historical time.
If a theme of the Sharḥ can be said to be the status of ʿAlī, it acts as a meta-
phor for the subject of the next chapter, which concerns Maybudī’s status
within the Ak Koyunlu sphere and the larger world of Iran and Transoxiana.
Maybudī, too, had to define his place in the government of the state and to
decide how to deal with the problems of succession that characterized Ak
Koyunlu history in the last few decades of the fifteenth century. That is not in
any way to suggest that he placed himself on the same level as ʿAlī. Rather, it
opens up the possibility that the issues raised in the commentary offered mod-
els of both activism and resignation that Maybudī could apply to his own situ-
ation and created a context which could be expanded to include not only the
early years of the Muslim community but also developments in that commu-
nity as they unfolded throughout history.
112 Chapter 4
Chapter 4
Qadi Maybudī
Based on the previous discussion of his education and principal writings,

Maybudī might appear to have lived apart from the turmoil of daily life. Born
into a relatively rich and powerful provincial family, studying with the leading
teachers of his day, and composing weighty tomes of commentary, he might
seem to have inhabited the fifteenth-century equivalent of the ivory tower.
That image can be corrected by looking at his career as a qadi, which reveals
him struggling with natural disasters, communal demands, and personal ani-
mosities. He coped with the practical aspects of education and administration
on a daily basis, so did not have the luxury of withdrawing into a world of eso-
teric speculation. Before exploring the multi-layered story of his appointment
and the details of his job, I will discuss his correspondence with key figures at
the Ak Koyunlu and Timurid courts during his tenure as qadi in order to show
the complexity of the larger social and political framework in which his career
developed.
Concurrent with his life as qadi within the Yazd region, Maybudī cultivated
relations that extended from Tabriz to Herat and beyond as evidenced by his
correspondence of over one hundred letters, the Munsha⁠ʾāt. That collection is
significant for what it uncovers about the qadi’s activities not only within his
city, but also within the Ak Koyunlu and Timurid domains. The letters them-
selves were an essential mechanism in those activities. In his translation of
Navāʾī’s Majālis al-nafāʾis, Qazvīnī explicitly states that the reason the author
wrote so warmly about Najm al-Dīn Sāvajī (d. ca. 898/1493), but not about his
uncle Qadi ʿĪsā, was that the former kept up a friendly correspondence with
him while the latter failed to do so.1
Consequently, it is essential to know with whom Maybudī corresponded, for
it was those men whose good opinion he wanted to earn and maintain. Taking
into consideration Maybudī’s provincial status, it is noteworthy that his corre-
spondents consisted of the leading political and intellectual figures of his day.
They included the following thirty-three men, who are grouped in four catego-
ries according to profession and region of residence—those of the military,
civilian bureaucrats of the Ak Koyunlu administration, provincial ulama, and
1 Niẓām al-Dīn ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī, Tadhkira-yi Majālis al-nafāʾis, ed. ʿAlī Aṣghar Ḥikmat (Tehran:
n.p., 1363/1984), 295.

Qadi Maybudī 113
Timurid luminaries.2 It would be tedious to include all the bits and pieces of
information that can be gleaned from the sources about each man, so I have
chosen to focus on those whose lives are known to have had a significant im-
pact on Maybudī and those who shared a connection that reveals something
about themes explored in this book, even if the letters give few details about
their actual relationship.
The lists below indicate that the focus of Maybudī’s attention as presented
in the Munsha⁠ʾāt was the Ak Koyunlu court and, more specifically, the ulama
and civilian personnel who frequented it. Taking each of the four groups sepa-
rately, I will consider the identity of the various people, similarities and differ-
ences between their stories and Maybudī’s, and the nature of Maybudī’s
communications with them. The unique fragmentary letter sent to Shah Ismāʿīl
will be examined in the next chapter because it stands apart historically.
Beginning with the military class, there are two members of the Ak Koyunlu
family among Maybudī’s correspondents. Ibrāhīm b Jahāngīr was a nephew of
Uzūn Ḥasan and is first heard of fighting with his father and uncle against
Jahānshāh Kara Koyunlu (ca. 871–72/1466–67).3 He and his brother Qāsim Beg
held governorships in the province of Kirman and were early supporters of
their cousin Yaʿqūb. Not long into Sulṭān-Khalīl’s reign, they revolted against
him. In his rebellion, Ibrāhīm invaded Fars, hoping to expel Alvand and the
officers who backed Sulṭān-Khalīl. His attack on Shiraz failed, so he and Qāsim
Beg fled through Isfahan to Qum and on to Sava, where they hoped to join
2 Numbers in parentheses indicate the number of letters sent to an individual and those in
brackets to the group as a whole, but they should not be considered definitive. While useful,
Furūhar’s edition needs to be revised with reference to the addressees of the letters and other
details. The titles “khwaja” and “mawlana” have been kept. Minorsky says that “khwaja” is an
old Iranian title which since Seljuk times was a high title of respect for the Iranian members
of the administration and that “mawlana” points to religious qualifications: “A Civil and
Military Review,” 170. More study on names and titles may reveal subtle distinctions over time.
See Aubin, “Un Santon quhistani,” 202. In addition, the Munsha⁠ʾāt contains some thirty-two
letters or fragments without a specified addressee. It can be stated with some certainty that
most of them were written to bureaucrats in the Ak Koyunlu court in order to strengthen
bonds of loyalty. They thank the addressee for having sent a letter, occasionally confirm that
a commission has been fulfilled, and express effusive good wishes. The finessing of language
in some of the salutations indicates several were written to officials in the financial adminis-
tration, while others were to high-ranking officials who had the ear of the ruler. I use the word
“luminaries” advisedly. The political uncertainty of the times gave Maybudī ample cause to
pursue ties in different centers of power, but his links to the Timurid court seem tenuous and
based primarily on admiration from afar.
3 Ṭihrānī, 2:417.
4114
5 Chapter 4
Military Bureaucrats
Ibrāhīm b. Jahāngīr (d. 893/1488) (2) Qadi Ṣafī al-Dīn ʿĪsā Sāvajī (13)
Amir Nūr al-Dīn Aḥmad (1) Shaykh Najm al-Dīn Masʿūd Sāvajī (3)
Ilāhī Beg (2) Qadi Imām al-Dīn Shaykh ʿAlī Sāvajī (8)
Sultan Yaʿqūb Khān4 (1) Sharaf al-Dīn Shāh-Maḥmūd Jān Daylamī (5)
Sulṭān-Muḥammad Shāh (1) Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū Isḥāq Nayrīzī (3)
Pīr ʿAlī Beg (1) Sirāj al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Vahhāb (2)
Ṣūfī Khalīl Beg Mawṣillū (1) Idrīs Bidlīsī [Munshī] (1)
Jalāl-Al-Dīn Davānī (5)
Unnamed bureaucrats, occasionally designated
as a qadi (19)
Ikhtiyār al-Dīn ʿAbd al- Qādir (1)
[9] [60]
Provincial ulama Timurid court
Darvīsh Maḥmūd (1) or Darvīsh Ḥusayn Amir ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī (1)
Manṣūrī
Mawlana Zayn al-Dīn ʿAlī, Qāḍī Khvāfī (2)5 Khwaja ʿUbayd Allāh Samarqandī (2) [Khwaja
Aḥrār]
Khwaja Ḥusām al-Dīn Ibrāhīm Shāh (1) Khwaja Yaḥyā b. ʿUbayd Allāh Samarqandī (2)
Khwaja Niẓām al-Dīn Aḥmad [Saʿīdī] (3) Jāmī (2)
[7]
Mawlana Sharaf al-Dīn Shaykh Abū Isḥāq
Kūynāfī (2) and a preface to his Munsha⁠ʾāt
Mawlana Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad Lāhījī (3)
Mawlana ʿImād al-Dīn Maḥmūd (1)
Unspecified scholar
Shāh Niʿmat Allāh al-Thānī (2)
Sayyid Naṣr Allāh (1)
Sayyid Muḥammad Rīsmān Bāz (1)
Jalāl al-Dīn Tīrandāz (1)
Muḥammad Qavvās and Pahlavān Jalāl al-Dīn
Kāshī
Mawlana Muḥammad [b. Mūsā] Tālishī (2)
[22]
4 It is not clear that the note about a hamam Maybudī built is to him personally or written
during his reign.
5 A Mawlana Zayn al-Dīn ʿAlī is mentioned as a poor, pious student in a letter to ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī.
Khwāja Aḥrār, The Letters of ʿUbayd Allāh Aḥrār (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 259.
Qadi Maybudī 115
forces with their brother Murād, who was the governor there.6 Murād had
been executed just before their arrival and Ibrāhīm soon fell prisoner to Sulṭān-
Khalīl. He barely escaped being flayed alive before Sulṭān-Khalīl’s downfall.7
Under Yaʿqūb, Ibrāhīm became military commander (dārūgha) of Tabriz, at
least by the summer of 892/1487.8 In that year he fought in the battle that led
to the death of Shah Ismāʿīl’s father, Shaykh Ḥaydar.9 Ibrāhīm’s own demise
from some disease in Shawwāl 893/September 1488 provides the terminus ad
quem for Maybudī’s letters to him.10
In his description of the prince, Khunjī mentions that Ibrāhīm was “inter-
ested in scholarship and studied the whole of Euclid and Ptolemy’s Almagest,
and wrote poetry.”11 Whether or not Ibrāhīm and Maybudī met at some point,
their intellectual interests were at least superficially similar. While Maybudī
indicates that Ibrāhīm had ceased writing to him regularly and asks to be re-
membered once again, that request in itself is not proof of their meeting. The
language of the letters does play up their shared familiarity with the sciences
and with Sufism. The elaborate intitulatio should not be dismissed as mere ver-
bose flattery, because the precise phrases used to glorify Ibrāhīm’s achieve-
ments, however ornate and formulaic, represent deliberate literary choices
which refer indirectly to a reality of person or situation. Crafted from stock im-
ages and words, salutations to rulers, scholars, poets, and mystics reflect the
epistolary artist’s attitude towards his correspondent and his accomplish-
ments. Writing as a scholar, Maybudī emphasizes Ibrāhīm’s intellectual, mili-
tary, and spiritual attributes through references to the planets, ‘primary matter’
and ‘First Cause,’ and the secrets of gnostic knowledge.12
It is worth noting that the Munsha⁠ʾāt contains no letters addressed to Sultan
Yaʿqūb himself. As far as can be determined, high-ranking scholars were in no
way prohibited from addressing their ruler. Jāmī, for instance, wrote many mis-
sives to the Timurid Sulṭān-Ḥusayn Bayqarā. Until more of Maybudī’s letters
come to light, it can be tentatively proposed that he preferred to reach the
6 Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 127.

7 Khunjī-Iṣfahānī, Tārīkh-i ʿĀlam-ārā-yi Amīnī, 26–27/135–38.
8 Khunjī-Iṣfahānī, Tārīkh-i ʿĀlam-ārā-yi Amīnī, 48/237.
9 Khunjī-Iṣfahānī, Tārīkh-i ʿĀlam-ārā-yi Amīnī, 66, 68/291, 297, 301.
10 Khunjī-Iṣfahānī, Tārīkh-i ʿĀlam-ārā-yi Amīnī, 73–74/329–30.
11 Khunjī-Iṣfahānī, Tārīkh-i ʿĀlam-ārā-yi Amīnī, 73/330.
12 MUN, 47, 119. One of the more amusing salutations—at least to this reader of Maybudī’s
letters who has navigated the profusion of extravagant conceits—is the opening to a let-
ter to Ilāhī Beg: “Since the mention of epithets and such things has no worldly or other-
worldly benefit and is even detrimental to both writer and correspondent, I will avoid
them and instead say just two words, which will aid both you and me in the next world,”
190.
116 Chapter 4
military elite through the mediation of fellow civilian scholar-officials.13 For

example, in a letter to Qadi ʿĪsā in which he describes an agricultural disaster
that hit Yazd, he laments that the people were on the verge of destruction,
their only possible salvation being royal assistance (ʿināyat-i sulṭānī).14 A few
lines later, he again asked for the ruler’s help (ʿināyat-i pādishāhī). Thus the
message is directed to the ruling authority through a fellow member of the
ulama.
Most of Maybudī’s correspondents among the military class were not mem-
bers of the Ak Koyunlu family, but high-ranking amirs. Ṣūfī Khalīl Beg Mawṣillū
was one of the most influential figures during Sultan Yaʿqūb’s reign, both as
general and politician, and played a crucial role in the succession struggle that
followed the latter’s death.15 Appointed guardian to Yaʿqūb’s eldest son,
Bāysunghur, he was appointed governor (dārūgha) of the province of Fars
when Alvand, son of Sulṭān-Khalīl, died in Shiraz (883/1478).16 His indepen-
dence led to his reassignment to the Georgian frontier from 891/1486 to
896/1490. Under Yaʿqūb it appears that he was an amir (holding manṣab-i
imārat) and military administrator (kārsāzi-i sipāh) along with his future ene-
my, Sulaymān Beg Bījan, who was Yaʿqūb’s guardian, father-in-law, and former
chief of staff (d. 897/1492).17 The Ḥabīb al-siyār goes on to portray him as ruth-
less in acquiring money and power after Yaʿqūb’s death. He was killed near Ta-
briz in 896/1491 by Sulaymān Beg.18
With Ṣūfī Khalīl Beg, the small world inhabited by Maybudī’s correspon-
dents begins to emerge. For instance, when Jāmī was involved in a controversy
over the Silsilat al-dhahab in Baghdad on his way to Mecca, one of those who
attended the public session concerning the work was Ṣūfī Khalīl Beg, who also
happened to be a brother-in-law of Uzūn Ḥasan.19 In another episode he indi-
rectly ordered the ulama of Tabriz to debate with Qadi ʿĪsā in order to catch the
latter up and thereby have an excuse to punish him.20 Eventually he was
13 Jāmī, Pis’ma, 5, 32.

14 MUN, 126.
15 Sām Mīrzā, 117; Navāʾī, Majālis al-nafāʾis, 293–94; Gülşeni, 76, 117–19, 121–22, 150–51, 203–
05, 209, 211–12, 214, 219, 241, 290: critical of Ṣūfī Khalīl Beg’s responsibility for the death of
Qadi ʿĪsā; Khvāndamīr, 4:186–87, 431, 436–38; Rūmlū, 69:217 (note); Qazvīnī, Lubb al-ta
vārīkh, 224–25. Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 146, 160.
16 Minorsky, “A Civil and Military Review in Fars,” 172.
17 Khvāndamīr, 4:431, 436.
19 Fakhr al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Ḥusayn Kāshifī, Rashaḥāt ʿayn al-ḥayāt, ed. ʿAlī Aṣghar Muʿīnīyān (Teh-
ran: Bunyād-i Nīkūkārī-yi Nūriyānī, 2536/1977), 1:257.
20 Gülşeni, 209.
Qadi Maybudī 117
r esponsible for Qadi ʿĪsā’s execution and Najm al-Dīn Masʿūd Sāvajī’s ruin.
While information about the various members of the military class is scanty in
the Munsha⁠ʾāt, it is sufficient to show the interconnectedness of the people
with whom Maybudī corresponded.
The other military figures remain obscure. A Pīr ʿAlī appears in the Ḥabīb
al-siyār during Alvand’s sultanate (r. 903–10/1497–1504–05)21 and the downfall
of Mīr Mīrzā. That Pīr ʿAlī supported Mīr Mīrzā and after the latter’s capture by
Sulṭān-Murād (d. 921/1514) of Shiraz, he siezed Sava. He was killed after Sulṭān-
Murād and Alvand divided the kingdom in order to establish peace. Pīr ʿAlī
went to join Sulṭān-Murād in Qazvin where he was executed.22 There is no
definitive proof, however, that the Pīr ʿAlī in Khvāndamīr was Maybudī’s cor-
respondent.
The main themes of letters to the military elite are Maybudī’s desire to be
remembered, to have his allegiance to the person in question acknowledged,
and to strengthen the bonds of patronage. Sometimes the letter had a specific
purpose, such as congratulating Ṣūfī Khalīl Beg on a military victory or Pīr ʿAlī
Beg on his recovery from an illness, or describing the legal troubles of a friend.23
In other cases, Maybudī appears in the guise of spiritual counsellor, expanding
on the matter of self-perfection. A pair of letters to Ilāhī Beg offers advice on
the improvement of religious beliefs, which could be accomplished by imitat-
ing the perfect man (insān-i kāmil)—that is, Muḥammad—promulgating the
Shariʿa, prohibiting evil and commanding the good and, finally, following the
Way (ṭarīqa), cultivating praiseworthy virtues and distancing himself from bad
habits. Maybudī sketches the aspects of metaphysical knowledge which will
then be open to the spiritual traveler, ranging from essences and attributes
through annihilation of the self and residing with God (fanāʾ and baqāʾ), resur-
rection and final judgment, punishment and reward. He insists that they exist
on levels which become clear only if acquired in sequence. Then he urges Ilāhī
Beg to observe justice by repairing religious buildings, making a plug for a cer-
tain ribat.24 This particular letter expatiates on metaphysics in a way that
strongly suggests Ilāhī Beg’s familiarity with the topic and perhaps an ongoing
spiritual search with which Maybudī is involved, yet even the more purely
21 This is Alvand b. Yūsuf b. Uzūn Ḥasan and not to be confused with Alvand b. Sulṭān-Khalīl
b. Uzūn Ḥasan.
22 Khvāndamīr, 4:445–46.
23 MUN, 245; 123; 50: One Khwaja Ikhtiyār al-Dīn Farīdūn, a friend of Maybudī, planned to
visit Sultan-Muḥammad Shāh, who had expressed interest in his case. His enemies had
accused him of stealing gifts meant for the court. Apparently he was vindicated and the
slanderers punished.
24 MUN, 190–91.
118 Chapter 4
pragmatic letters to military figures contain some reference to the recipient’s

fulfillment of his obligation to uproot heresy and suppress evildoers. Operating
solely on the exoteric plane has ramifications for the spiritual community at
large. Such language is certainly not unusual in fifteenth-century epistolary
collections, but it takes on a more personal note because of the accusations
leveled against Maybudī himself, which will be discussed below. It is one thing
to urge the suppression of evildoers and quite another to be counted among
them.
While consistently respectful of the military elite in his letters to them,
Maybudī revealed to his patrons among the civilian notables a more ambiva-
lent attitude towards the ruler’s entourage. After initially praising the Padishah
as just, the provincial qadi complains in a letter to his patron that the royal
hangers-on are less admirable. As soldiers and administrators who are accus-
tomed to domination, their goals do not necessarily coincide with those of ju-
dicial authorities and they do not pay attention to what is right.25 In that same
letter, Maybudī declares that as long as he has been qadi of Yazd, his enemies
have repeatedly agitated to get him recalled to the imperial camp (urdū), ap-
parently to accuse him of misappropriation of funds and to investigate his re-
ligious beliefs, as if his thirty years of scholarship and publication counted for
nothing. Regardless of whether or not his enemies came from among the mili-
tary elite, the imperial camp was not a place Maybudī wanted to visit when
under suspicion for misdeeds. He marshals legal sources to prove that they
lack the authority to recall him.26
Turning our attention to the second group, the ulama administrators in Ta-
briz, we see that many of them belonged to prestigious local Iranian families
who had risen to positions of power under Uzūn Ḥasan as officials in the ad-
ministrative, fiscal, and religious branches of government. The Sāvajīs came
from Persian Iraq, the Saʿīdīs from Persian Iraq and Fars, and the Daylamīs
from Persian Iraq and Gilan.27 Of all the families, the Sāvajīs were noticeably
the most important to Maybudī. Thirteen missives were addressed to Qadi Ṣafī
al-Dīn ʿĪsā Sāvajī (d. 896/1491), minister of religious affairs (ṣadr), chief Islamic
magistrate (qāḍī-ʿaskar), and one of the most influential men under Sultan
Yaʿqūb.28 He rose from the position of Yaʿqūb’s tutor to supervisor of much of
25 MUN, 154.
26 MUN, 166–68.
28 The translation of administrative titles comes from Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 17–18.
Qadi Maybudī 119
the government and Maybudī wrote him during the height of his power.29
Eight more letters were directed to Qadi Imām al-Dīn Shaykh ʿAlī Sāvajī, a
brother of Qadi ʿĪsā. Shaykh Najm al-Dīn Masʿūd Sāvajī, son of Qadi ʿĪsā’s sister,
received three letters.
Although for Maybudī what mattered was to stay in the powerful man’s
good graces, Qadi ʿĪsā provoked controversy among later writers. In his transla-
tion of Navāʾī’s Majālis al-nafāʾis, Qazvīnī wrote that Navāʾī did not do Qadi ʿĪsā
justice when he criticized him for failing to perform good deeds when the op-
portunity arose. Qazvīnī claims that Qadi ʿĪsā did, in fact, point out the way of
justice to his sovereign, contribute to the flourishing of the state, and allow
scholars, pious men, and the general populace to live in peace. Indicating ri-
valry between the two statesmen, he says that poets such as Kamāl al-Dīn Shīr
ʿAlī Bannāʾī (d. 918/1512) fled from Navāʾī to Sāvajī. After the qadi’s downfall,
intellectuals were scattered as a result of the injustice of unfeeling governors
and the lowest Turk [Safavid] was able to kill the highest scholar with no ques-
tions asked. What Khunjī and Gülşeni describe as excessive fondness for po-
etry appears in Qazvīnī in a positive light, as generous patronage of the poetic
art.30
Even without considering tensions between Ak Koyunlu and Timurid lumi-
naries, it is clear that Qadi ʿĪsā’s time at court was one of strain. The very begin-
ning of his political career was rocky. According to Gülşeni, Shaykh Ibrāhīm
recommended that Qadi ʿĪsā be appointed tutor to Yaʿqūb when he was qadi of
Tabriz. Other ulama who had hoped to get the job vilified him and engaged in
street fights in which at least one qadi lost an eye.31 Once Yaʿqūb ascended the
throne, Qadi ʿĪsā became chief magistrate while remaining the ruler’s advisor.
Other events in Qadi ʿĪsā’s life reflect tensions more personal than political.
To the dismay of his community, he careened from dissipation to extreme reli-
giosity. Apparently he fell in with disreputable characters who led him to ne-
29 Sām Mīrzā, 117–18; Gülşeni, 56 indicates that Qadi ʿĪsā was an intimate of Sulṭān-Khalīl
before his assassination. Minorsky says his power peaked in Ṣafar 894/January 1489. “The
Aq-Qoyunlu and Land Reforms,” BSOAS 17 (1955): 452. For Qadi ʿĪsā, also see Aubin,
“É tudes,” 64–65; Sām Mīrzā, 117–8; Navāʾī, Majālis al-nafāʾis 118–19, 142, 293, 295; many ref-
erences in Gülşeni. Chad G. Lingwood, Politics, Poetry, and Sufism in Medieval Iran: New
Perspectives on Jāmī’s Salāmān va Absāl (Leiden: Brill, 2014) analyzes Jāmī’s poem as an
ethico-political, mystical, and historical allegory in which Qadi ʿĪsā figures prominently
and he synthesizes much material concerning the Sāvajīs.
30 Navāʾī, Majālis al-nafāʾis, 293, 118; Gülşeni, 103: Qadi ʿĪsā reportedly was so busy with
poetry and riddles that he began to neglect the people’s interest (maṣlaḥat). Shaykh
Ibrāhīm tried to mend matters. Khunjī-Iṣfahānī, Tārīkh-i ʿĀlam-ārā-yi Amīnī, 78/351.
31 Gülşeni, 65.
120 Chapter 4
glect his prayers and it was only after Shaykh Ibrāhīm’s intervention that he
resumed righteous conduct. The qadi then swung in the other direction, isolat-
ing himself with Shaykh Ibrāhīm for fasting and prayer, but failing to perform
his duties as qadi. His followers and relatives came to Shaykh Ibrāhīm to get
him back on the job. In order to temper his disciple’s zeal, the shaykh quoted
the hadith that: “The justice of an hour is better than seventy years of divine
worship (ʿibāda),” and prevailed upon Qadi ʿĪsā to resume his administrative
duties.32 Not only did Qadi ʿĪsā’s spiritual education affect his public obliga-
tions, but it also estranged him from his family. At one point, Shaykh Ibrāhīm
urged Qadi ʿĪsā to give up his possessions. That so disturbed the qadi’s relatives
that they approached Sultan Yaʿqūb, declaring that Qadi ʿĪsā was crazy. Eventu-
ally a reconciliation was effected, the shaykh insisting that, since the qadi had
successfully separated himself from worldly matters, they could no longer
harm him.33
The problem with such accounts is that chroniclers often shape what ap-
pears to be the actual course of a man’s life to serve as a code for larger political
issues, but we cannot then assume automatically that behind every story is a
deep, hidden meaning. Qadi ʿĪsā may, in fact, have experienced some sort of
spiritual crisis. Maybudī, too, constantly referred to his world-weariness in his
correspondence. On the other hand, the author could be making an oblique
reference to the qadi’s questionable religious beliefs, cloaking them in more
acceptable terms.
In one of his cases, Qadi ʿĪsā had to assess accusations against ʿUmar
Rawshanī, the spiritual guide of Shaykh Ibrāhīm, for following the teachings of
Ibn ʿArabī, as we saw in Chapter 2. It will be recalled that the mystic had been
attacked in Qarabagh for being a Fuṣūṣī, or adherent of Ibn ʿArabī’s beliefs as
expressed in the Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, and thereby an unbeliever. The mystic pro-
tested that he was not a representative (vakīl) of Ibn ʿArabī. He was brought to
Tabriz for an investigation before Qadi ʿĪsā who, on Shaykh Ibrāhīm’s urging,
found no fault in him and made the jealous ulama ask his pardon.34 The tale
might be one about three isolated individuals or it could be indicative of wide-
spread religious controversy throughout Ak Koyunlu lands, of internal turmoil
that affected the highest echelons of society and trickled down to their subor-
dinates. Maybudī referred to Ibn ʿArabī in his letters to the Sāvajīs and made no
attempt to conceal his familiarity with the mystic’s writings in his other
works—on the contrary, Ibn ʿArabī is the most frequently cited substantive
32 Gülşeni, 68.
33 Gülşeni, 82–85.
34 Gülşeni, 88–89.
Qadi Maybudī 121
source in the Sharḥ after the Qurʾān and hadith—implying that Maybudī per-
ceived no physical danger as a result of his having studied those dubious mate-
rials or that he knew the Sāvajīs to be sympathetic to his views.35
From the account above, it can be seen that one of Qadi ʿĪsā’s duties was to
act as a liaison among the ulama associated with the court, including everyone
from scholars to religious functionaries to mystics. Access to him became in-
dispensable, for those who had complaints against their fellow men as well as
for those who needed to defend themselves against such complaints. Maybudī
fits both descriptions. In one episode, thirty-four Turkish-speaking ulama
came to Shaykh Ibrāhīm in the royal camp, complaining that they did not
know Persian while Qadi ʿĪsā did not know Turkish, and reporting that they
had urged the grand vizier, Sulaymān Beg, to have Yaʿqūb remove him from of-
fice. Shaykh Ibrāhīm counseled against such plotting, but did make sure that a
Turkish-speaking clerk was hired.36 Although the intent of the anecdotes in
the Manāqib is to display the wonders of Shaykh Ibrāhīm, other sources indi-
cate that it is not far off the mark about intrigues in the Ak Koyunlu court.37
Qadi ʿĪsā did not adjudicate disputes only among the ulama themselves, but
also served as middleman between the ruler and the religious figures of the
realm. It was his task to get members of the ulama such as Maybudī to pray for
Sultan Yaʿqūb’s victory in battle. When a revolt erupted on the western march-
es, the sultan wanted Qadi ʿĪsā to have Shaykh Ibrāhīm pray for him and give
him some sign, but the shaykh was uncooperative, merely urging patience on
the ruler. After the chief rebel’s head was brought to Tabriz some twenty days
later, Sultan Yaʿqūb was so convinced of the shaykh’s wisdom that he never
again opposed him.38
Sometimes the duties of administrator could conflict with those of liaison
and friend to the revered mystics of the state. On one occasion ʿUmar Raw
shanī’s followers were returning to their summer camp in Bardaʿa with textiles
that had been given to them by their leader. At the Arghana pass, the customs
tax (bāj) collectors said that the dervishes were transporting commercial mer-
chandise and must pay the tax. No matter how much the dervishes begged and
implored, it was to no avail. One of them threatened the collectors, exclaiming:
35 MUN, 128, 136, 193 (to ʿAbd al-Vahhāb), 201 (in which Maybudī gives numerous examples
of famous scholars, including Ghazālī, Shihāb al-Dīn Yaḥyā Suhrawardī, Ibn ʿArabī, and
Shaykh ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla Simnānī (d. 737/1336), who were accused of heresy (kufr).
36 Gülşeni, 66–67. For another attempt to remove Qadi ʿĪsā from office, this time with the
sanction of Ṣūfī Khalīl Beg, see 120–23.
37 Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 229–30.
38 Gülşeni, 76–77.
122 Chapter 4
“You’ll be sent to Qadi ʿĪsā and through Mullā [Shaykh] Ibrāhīm, I’ll have you
put in chains and tortured.”39 Eventually the tax collectors came crawling to
Rawshanī for forgiveness. The significance of the story for an understanding of
Qadi ʿĪsā is that he was seen by the dervishes to lean more to their side than to
that of ordinary tax officials.
Qadi ʿĪsā also helped Rawshanī’s descendants ward off the financial arm of
the state. When the mystic died, unnamed viziers tortured his trusted follow-
ers (muʿtamids) and his children in an effort to extort their inheritance, obtain-
ing 170,000 karaca akça in the process. Shaykh Ibrāhīm dashed from Tabriz to
Sultan Yaʿqūb’s winter quarters in Qarabagh, and presented the case to Qadi
ʿĪsā, who then approached the ruler. The upshot was that Yaʿqūb sent a high-
ranking beg with many gifts of textiles to the aggrieved parties, along with
instructions that the collectors were to return everything and never again in-
terfere with them or their regular allowance (razaqa).40
In that case, Qadi ʿĪsā easily pleaded his friends’ case before the sultan. At
other times, social relations between these powerful ulama and their nominal
overlords were tenuous and dangerous. Qadi ʿĪsā became involved in a scandal
when the brother of Qadi Ḥasan, one of Rawshanī’s deputies (khalīfa), secretly
married the widow of Sulṭān-Khalīl. The murdered sultan’s mother was in-
censed that a member of the raʿīyat had married her daughter-in-law, so
plotted the couple’s murder.41 Shaykh Ibrāhīm said that the ulama and shaykhs
were the peers of padishahs, for neither had Uzūn Ḥasan objected to the
marriage of his daughter to Shaykh Ḥaydar Ṣafavī, nor had Jahānshāh Kara
Koyunlu been averse to such alliances. On the shaykh’s insistence, Qadi ʿĪsā
interceded with Sultan Yaʿqūb to spirit the couple safely out of Tabriz.42 The
textual record is too spotty to draw firm conclusions, but unsurprisingly it
seems that the stakes were higher in terms of life and death the closer a scholar
drew to the center of power. For all his many complaints about his enemies in
Yazd, Maybudī does not indicate that he lived in fear for his life in his home-
town. His determination to stay away from the urdū suggests that it represent-
ed a more treacherous political sphere, with its murders and executions.
39 Gülşeni, 161.
40 Gülşeni, 176–78. Those items were added to their suyūrghāl.
41 Raʿīya is “a term which in later Islam came to designate the mass of subjects, the tax-pay-
ing common people, as opposed to the ruling military and learned classes.” EI 2.
42 Gülşeni, 93. The scandal intensified after the wife died in Jerusalem and the widower mar-
ried the woman in charge of her finances. He was accused of taking Sulṭān-Khalīl’s money
and it was some time before the matter was legally settled to all parties’ satisfaction.
Qadi Maybudī 123
Policies of the center had a direct impact on the provinces during the most
important event for which Qadi ʿĪsā was known—namely, what Minorsky des-
ignates as the Ak Koyunlu land reforms. Drawing from Khunjī, Minorsky re-
lates that Qadi ʿĪsā wanted to obtain through legal taxes the same amount the
state received from tamghās (municipal levies from Mongol tradition), thus
enabling the ruler to abrogate those non-Islamic levies. Shāh Sharaf al-Dīn
Maḥmūd Jān Daylamī and Shaykh ʿAlī Sāvajī were sent out to regularize taxes
throughout Ak Koyunlu lands. The policy was apparently opposed by the ula-
ma and nomadic military chiefs who stood to lose their grants from the state.
Qadi ʿĪsā’s plans were cut short by Yaʿqūb’s death and he himself was killed
soon after, on 13 Rabīʿ I 896/24 January 1491.43 Echoing a significant theme that
runs through Maybudī’s story and that of other members of the ulama, Ṣūfī
Khalīl Beg had him indicted on charges of heresy before having him executed.
While Khunjī harshly criticizes Qadi ʿĪsā’s actions, Gülşeni casts them in a
different light. According to the latter, some viziers encouraged Sultan Yaʿqūb
to void all suyūrghāls since the time of Tīmūr, for they afforded no benefit to
the treasury; on the contrary, they were a drain upon it. The sultan issued a
decree implementing their advice. Qadi ʿĪsā, who along with Shaykh Ibrāhīm
had been responsible for the grant of suyūrghāls to members of the ulama,
shaykhs, and other religious figures, failed to speak up at the meeting during
which the matter was discussed, despite his unhappiness with the decision.
The council broke up and the order was written. Soon afterwards Shaykh
Ibrāhīm urged Qadi ʿĪsā to go after Sultan Yaʿqūb. After reassuring his ruler that
the same attempt had been made under Uzūn Ḥasan, Qadi ʿĪsā was to tell him
that the charity of previous rulers should remain in effect. The sultan accepted
the qadi’s petition and rescinded the order.44 According to Gülşeni, Qadi ʿĪsā
had no desire to withdraw any suyūrghāls and, except for wishy-washy behav-
ior, cannot be accused of any misdeed.
Qadi ʿĪsā’s authority extended beyond ulama affairs into those of competing
factions among the ruling classes. For example, Gülşeni claims that under Sul-
tan Yaʿqūb, the rulers, viziers and notables unjustly exacted excessive taxes
(kharāj) from the subject population, who felt compelled to flee to the lands of
other rulers. Shaykh Ibrāhīm and Qadi ʿĪsā went to their sovereign and asked
him if he knowingly allowed the situation to occur or whether he was truly ig-
norant of the state of affairs. Yaʿqūb asked what needed to be done, to which
the shaykh replied that he, as well as the viziers and other notables, must give
43 Minorsky, “The Aq-Qoyunlu and Land Reforms”. Khunjī-Iṣfahānī, Tārīkh-i ʿĀlam-ārā-yi

Amīnī, 78/357, 87/392. Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 151–52.
44 Gülşeni, 111–12.
124 Chapter 4
up one third of their income for several years. Yaʿqūb apparently agreed and
within three years people began to return from abroad.45 Those same con-
cerns about taxation and peasant flight will be seen to have been of concern to
Maybudī, too, as will be discussed below.
With their crucial role in the land reforms, the Sāvajī family acquired con-
siderable power. Nonetheless, relatively little is known about anyone besides
Qadi ʿĪsā. The most troublesome member of the family appears to have been
the qadi’s elder brother, Shaykh ʿAlī, who served as his brother’s deputy on the
tour to regularize the taxes of Ak Koyunlu lands in 894/1489. Shaykh Ibrāhīm
clearly disliked him. In Qadi ʿĪsā’s presence he accused Shaykh ʿAlī of boorish-
ness, claiming that if the courtiers of Yaʿqūb’s mother came to visit, ʿAlī would
jump to his feet and rush to meet them. On the other hand, if the most knowl-
edgeable of scholars, Jalāl al-Dīn Davānī, came to an assembly, he would show
no courtesy and treat him with contempt.46 When Shaykh ʿAlī urged Qadi ʿĪsā
and Sultan Yaʿqūb to bestow a suyūrghāl on Shaykh Ibrāhīm, the mystic re-
fused the gift, even though it gave him revenues not from state land, but from
Sultan Yaʿqūb’s personal lands in Bardaʿa. Shaykh ʿAlī expressed disbelief at the
shaykh’s eccentricity, upon which Shaykh Ibrāhīm warned him that only evil
would result from his attachment to worldly goods. ʿAlī paid the admonition
no heed. In Gülşeni’s opinion, it was only just that when Sultan Yaʿqūb died,
ʿAlī should fall successively into the hands of Manṣūr Beg Pūrnāk (d. 902/1497)
in Shiraz, Sulaymān Beg, and Ṣūfī Khalīl Beg in Tabriz, who expropriated his
money and tortured him to get more. Then he was imprisoned for three years,
during which time he became pious and prepared for the next world.47
Surveying the careers or both Qadi ʿĪsā’s brother and nephew, it seems ap-
parent that the Sāvajīs considered power to be a family business, and Maybudī’s
writing to all three suggests that provincial administrators knew to cultivate
relations with them all. Once while Qadi ʿĪsā was involved with Sultan Yaʿqūb’s
affairs, he entrusted the job of chief magistrate to Shaykh ʿAlī, to the displea-
sure of many, including Maḥmūd Jān Daylamī. After a particularly egregious
act of injustice, Shaykh Ibrāhīm berated Qadi ʿĪsā for his brother’s appoint-
ment and forced him to resume those duties himself.48 Gülşeni claims that
soon before his murder, Qadi ʿĪsā wanted to abandon worldly matters and pre-
pare for the next world. He entrusted the vizierate to his nephew, Shaykh Najm
45 Gülşeni, 113–14.
46 Gülşeni, 145–46.
47 Gülşeni, 239–41.
48 Gülşeni, 144–45. For Shaykh ʿAlī, see Khunjī-Iṣfahānī, Tārīkh-i ʿĀlam-ārā-yi Amīnī, 77, 80,
82, 83, 87, corresponds to pp. 350–398 in the Persian text; MUN, 61, 63, 110, 130, 176, 180, 192
for letters to Qadi Imām al-Dīn Shaykh ʿAlī Sāvajī.
Qadi Maybudī 125
al-Dīn Masʿūd Sāvajī, despite the younger man’s protestations that he did not
want Qadi ʿĪsā’s property and position. Najm al-Dīn did not last long in the job,
since once Ṣūfī Khalīl Beg did away with his uncle, he made Mullā Jān qadi and
had Najm al-Dīn poisoned soon after.49
Until that time, Najm al-Dīn had enjoyed a successful career. He, too, par-
ticipated in the land reform. According to Khvāndamīr, he was “in charge of
civil and financial affairs” and “sowed the seed of attention and kindness in the
hearts of the peasants.”50 Navāʾī also mentions his pleasing ways, kindness, and
aid to the poor and unfortunate.51 Like his uncle, Najm al-Dīn wrote poetry. He
served as royal secretary (parvanachi), then was appointed chief of staff and
president of the council (amīr-i dīvān) by Yaʿqūb in Ṣafar 894/January 1489.52
The relationship was closer than an administrative one because Najm al-Dīn
was linked to the Ak Koyunlu family as Uzūn Ḥasan’s nephew (yeǧen) and is
described as Yaʿqūb’s boon companion (nadīm).53 The captious Shaykh Ibrāhīm
disapproved of his inclination to seek high position and the advantages of this
world.54 His ambitions came to nought for, supporting Bāysunghur in the suc-
cession battles that followed Yaʿqūb’s death, he accompanied the prince to
Sharvan and was poisoned there.55
The most influential member of this group of ulama administrators who
survived into Safavid times was Shāh Sharaf al-Dīn Maḥmūd Jān Daylamī
Qazvīnī, recipient of five letters in the Munsha⁠ʾāt. Coming from a prominent
Qazvīnī family, it was an older brother, Shāh ʿImād al-Dīn Salmān, who hosted
Sulṭān-Abū Saʿīd Tīmūrī in Qazvin during his 873/1468 campaign into Azarbay-
jan.56 Such connections did not prevent either brother from serving Sulṭān-
Khalīl. Maḥmūd Jān began his career as administrator of financial affairs of
49 Gülşeni, 98, 204.

50 Khvāndamīr, cited in Minorsky, “The Aq-Qoyunlu and Land Reforms,” 51, 452.
51 Navāʾī, Majālis al-nafāʾis, 119. Najm al-Dīn’s attributes are mentioned in not unfavorable
contrast to his friend Yaʿqūb’s glory and magnanimity, 295.
52 Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 270, n. 27 points out that the position of chancellor was usually
held by a member of the nomadic military elite. Najm al-Dīn was thus an example of a
civilian administrator who crossed over to a traditionally military post. Minorsky, “The
Aq-Qoyunlu and Land Reforms,” 452: The parvanachi was the official in charge of corre-
spondence and orders of appointment.
53 Sām Mīrzā, 118–19; Navāʾī, Majālis al-nafāʾis, 119.
54 Gülşeni, 199.
55 Minorsky, “The Aq-Qoyunlu and Land Reforms,” 452; Sām Mīrzā says he died like a qalan-
dar in Gilan. Qalandar refers to some kind of wandering dervish, its precise meaning at
this particular period unclear. After the Sāvajī debacle in the mid 890s/early 1490s, the
family managed to hold on and even flourish. Qadi Ṣafī al-Dīn ʿĪsā II, a grandson of Qadi
ʿĪsā through his mother, became chief magistrate under the Safavids. Sām Mīrzā, 119.
56 For ʿImād al-Dīn, see Hinz, 101–02.
126 Chapter 4
Persian Iraq and Fars under Sulṭān-Khalīl, then continued as financial control-
ler (mushrif-i dīvān) under Yaʿqūb. He was described by Navāʾī as one of the
great viziers under that ruler.57 He also served as the second member of the
894/1489 land reform commission, although he escaped Qadi ʿĪsā’s fate by flee-
ing to Qazvin.58 During the succession wars that followed Yaʿqūb’s death,
Maḥmūd Jān moved in and out of government posts. When Ayba Sulṭān
Bāyandur elevated Rustam b. Maqṣūd (r. 897–902/1492–97) to the throne in
897/1492, Maḥmūd Jān was recalled and asked to take charge of fiscal affairs.59
He reappeared in the administration of Alvand b. Yūsuf b. Uzūn Ḥasan.60
Finally, his name appears as vizier under Shah Ismāʿīl in 909/1503–04.61
Follower of Khwaja Aḥrār and prominent Naqshbandi in the Ak Koyunlu
court, Sirāj al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Vahhāb is the last of the ulama administrators and
one who may or may not be linked to Maybudī directly in another source.62
Gülşeni relates an episode in which ʿAbd al-Vahhāb, Shaykh al-Islām Muftī-yi
Anām (Magistrate of Mankind), attended one of Sultan Yaʿqūb’s assemblies
along with Shaykh Ibrāhīm. Among the mufti’s followers was the qadi of Yazd
whose name is not specified. The mufti and the shaykh became caught up in a
discussion of a hadith brought to their attention by the qadi. It effectively stat-
ed that the declaration “There is no god but Allāh” will enable any individual to
enter paradise.63 Shaykh Ibrāhīm maintained that faith and sincerity were
necessary beyond mere utterance of the words; otherwise, any unbeliever
could enter paradise. For some reason, the qadi from Yazd thought that Shaykh
Ibrāhīm had been joking at the Shaykh al-Islām’s expense and reproached
him.64
The second episode in which ʿAbd al-Vahhāb appears concerns the pilgrim-
age. Apparently Sultan Rustam appointed Amir Zakariyā Baghdādī to be the
leader of the pilgrimage. The Shaykh al-Islām of Tabriz who was a Sunni on the
outside and a rāfiḍī on the inside accompanied the pilgrims, with the intention
57 Navāʾī, Majālis al-nafāʾis, 304; Gülşeni, 99; Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 127.
58 Woods, 153.
59 Woods, 155.
60 Woods, 161.
61 Aubin, “É tudes,” 62.
62 Gülşeni, 104–05, 227–36, 253; Khvāndamīr, 4:432. It is ‘amir’ and not ‘mīr.’
63 This is the ‘silsilat al-dhahab’ hadith, controversial for its chain of transmission and the
circumstances of its declaration by Imam ʿAlī al-Riḍā in Nishapur. Some versions of the
hadith are used as proof for the essential role of the Imams in Muslim belief. In its sim-
plest form it states that the phrase “There is no Allah but Allah” is a fortress which protects
the believer from divine punishment.
64 Gülşeni, 104–05.
Qadi Maybudī 127
of wresting the leadership from Amir Zakariyā when the party reached Bagh-
dad. Rāfiḍī was a derogatory term assigned to those who reject Islamic author-
ity and leadership and used from an early date by Sunnis to dismiss Shiʿis.
Conspiring with ʿAbd al-Vahhāb was Rustam’s full brother, Yaʿqūb Khān Beg,
the governor of the city. ʿAbd al-Vahhāb spread rumors that Zakariyā did not
know the road and would lead everyone to destruction in waterless wastes. He
continually tried to sabotage the trip until Shaykh Ibrāhīm successfully prayed
for his repentance.65 In the Rashaḥāt ʿAbd al-Vahhāb is described as the Shaykh
al-Islām of Iraq, not just of Tabriz. Once in Mecca he attended upon Shaykh
ʿAbd al-Muʿṭī, who claimed that he had conversed with Khwaja Aḥrār many
times in the holy city, even though the mystic from Transoxiana never visited
the Hijaz physically.66 Yet again, one of Maybudī’s correspondents is found to
have some connection to another—here, a leader from Timurid domains
linked loosely to one from Ak Koyunlu lands through a spiritually potent fig-
ure’s capacity for multilocation.67
Forming the bulk of Maybudī’s correspondence, the letters to the powerful
ulama of Yaʿqūb’s court indicate that they were the men most likely either to
make or break him. While it is in a letter to a mystic and not a government of-
ficial, one of the more revealing statements Maybudī writes about his tenuous
position is that it is only thanks to the mercy of the great and not through their
own accomplishments that the lowly rise.68 In almost every message, there is
praise of the recipient, along with some request to think kindly of Maybudī
and to disregard the myriad false charges that were incessantly leveled against
him. Hope for further correspondence is generally expressed. As many of the
letters are labelled ‘replies’ (javāb), this was not entirely fan mail, sent off by a
lowly member of the public with no expectation of response. On the contrary,
the letters constituted a part, however small, of the administrative and patron-
age networks of the Ak Koyunlu state.
It is this set of letters that is the most informative about the situation in
Yazd. Qadi ʿĪsā is the one to hear about drought, flooding, and famine in Yazd
and to be implored for aid. He is the official apprised that for some six years
Maybudī has been overwhelmed by the number of cases brought in the big city
65 Gülşeni, 227–36. See Woods, 108 and 260 for the Amīr al-Ḥajj Rustam who in 877/1473 has
the Friday sermon in Medina read in Uzūn Ḥasan’s name, ends up being arrested with one
Qadi Aḥmad Ibn Diḥya, and sent to Cairo in chains.
66 Kāshifī, 2:569–70.
67 The last member of the ulama administrators with whom Maybudī corresponded was
Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū Isḥāq Nayrīzī who will be described below in the account of Maybudī’s
appointment.
68 In a letter to Khwaja Muḥammad Yaḥyā b. Khwaja ʿUbayd Allāh Samarqandī. MUN, 196.
128 Chapter 4
of Yazd by men who are both ignorant and powerful and who take advantage
of the distance between the provincial city and the imperial center to under-
mine his authority and treat his judgments with contempt.69 It is he who is
informed about a garrison commander’s flight and subsequent victory in Firuz
kuh.70 While few of the preserved messages went directly to rulers and military
leaders, it does appear that congratulations and gifts were sent them via civil-
ian members of the government. For instance, Maybudī writes admiringly to
Qadi ʿĪsā of Yaʿqūb’s military ventures (ghazā) into Georgia and hopes that his
unspecified gift will be accepted.71
We have seen that Davānī’s fame rested on his philosophical teachings and
writings, so despite his involvement in Ak Koyunlu administration, he can
serve as a bridge to Maybudī’s correspondents who became known more for
their scholarly or spiritual activities than their role in government. Ḥakīm al-
Dīn Idrīs b. Ḥusām al-Dīn ʿAlī Bidlīsī (d. 926/1520) does not belong strictly to
the group of ulama administrators either, being more of a court bureaucrat,
and his Sufi connection to Maybudī moves us in the direction of the third
group. He was involved in the daily functioning of the court and the produc-
tion of documents, but not as a policy planner and implementer, nor as one
who had authority over the ulama. He served as state secretary (nişancı,
munshī, or kātib-i dīvān) for Sultan Yaʿqūb in Tabriz. His son Abū Faḍl followed
in his footsteps as a defterdār.72 Bidlīsī left Ak Koyunlu lands with the rise of
Shah Ismāʿīl, choosing to serve the Ottoman sultan Bāyazīd II. In Ottoman
lands he achieved fame as the author of several histories written for his new
employers and established a reputation as a practiced versifier.73 Among his
works are commentaries on Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s Khamrīya and Ibn ʿArabī’s Fuṣūṣ,
clear indications of his interest in mystical thought. He died at the beginning
of Sulaymān’s reign (r. 926–74/1520–66).74
The Munsha⁠ʾāt contains only one letter to Bidlīsī.75 In it Maybudī asks Bidlīsī
to consider him an old friend. He urges him to change his practice and to culti-
69 MUN, 163.
70 MUN, 57–58.
71 MUN, 107–110. On 109 Maybudī congratulates Yaʿqūb on the Georgian campaign, the dat-
ing of which is not completely certain. It seems to have taken place in either 891/1486 or
890/1485, with the latter more likely. See Woods, 138, 273 n. 61.
72 Gülşeni, 152, 166, 173 for examples of his writing out Sultan Yaʿqūb’s orders concerning
Shaykh Ibrāhīm.
73 Storey, 1:413.
75 MUN, 118–19. Furūhar lists the addressee merely as “one of the great Nurbakhshi dar-
vishes.”
Qadi Maybudī 129
vate their friendship. The holy Nūrbakhshīya chain (silsila) is supposed to

serve as a link between them. One of Maybudī’s common rhetorical tactics in
attracting the attention of his correspondents is to put himself in the position
of the darvish and his correspondent in that of his murshid (Sufi spiritual guide
or teacher), or at least of someone superior in mystical knowledge. In this case,
the fellowship of dervishes of equal status is conceived as establishing a suffi-
ciently strong bond. It is noteworthy that in Maybudī’s mind, the Nūrbakhshīya
network could be used as sufficient reason for men to share mutual obliga-
tions.76
The Mahdist nature of the Nūrbakhshīya movement introduces an intrigu-
ing element into Maybudī’s life. Founded by Sayyid Muḥammad Nūrbakhsh
(794–869/1392–1464) when he declared himself the Mahdi in 826/1423, the
movement spread throughout Iran and Central Asia, overlapping the trans
formation of the Safavid order into a military juggernaut.77 In contrast to the
Safavids, it had no active military ambitions, espousing a fatalistic view of
the Mahdi’s rise. Maybudī refers to Muḥammad Nūrbakhsh in two places in
the Sharḥ, without acknowledging any personal involvement with the Sufi
movement of his own day. In the first instance, after discussing the separation
of body and soul and transmigration of souls in the tradition of Hermes, Ag-
athodaimon, Pythagorus, Socrates, and Plato, Maybudī makes the following
statement: “Some Sufis say things colored by transmigration, and they are the
most far-out groups within that school (madhhab).” He then immediately
quotes Muḥammad Nūrbakhsh at some length about the transmigration of
76 Maybudī’s writings should be added to the literary mix to push forward the distinctions
Fritz Meier makes between Sufism in the third and eighth centuries in Iran. Sufism in the
earlier age is an individual endeavor, barely touched by philosophy and metaphysics, in
which the visionary experience is rarely articulated in public, outside the canon of reli-
gious studies, mistrusted by political authorities, and expressed in Arabic. By the eighth
century it is organized in ṭarīqas and families which demand obedience, permeated by
philosophy and metaphysics, closely associated with the visionary, sometimes more
salient than theology and jurisprudence in the Islamic canon, courted by government
authorities, and intimately associated with the Persian language. Fritz Meier, “Hurasan
und das ende der klassischen sufik,” in Bausteine I: Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Islamwissen-
schaft, ed. Erika Glassen and Gudrun Schubert, (Istanbul, 1992), 132–156. Originally in La
Persia nel Medioevo (Rome, 1971), 546–570. Laury Silvers-Alario modifies Meier’s analysis
in, “The Teaching Relationship in Early Sufism: A Reassessment of Fritz Meier’s Definition
of the shaykh al-tarbiya and the shaykh al-taʿlīm, Muslim World 93 (2003): 69–97.
77 Shahzad Bashir’s works give a comprehensive treatment of Sufi movements, specifically
the Nūrbakhshīya.
130 Chapter 4
souls (tanāsukh) and the precise terminology to be used to distinguish it from

projection (burūz).78 No further editorial remarks are made.
The second appearance of Muḥammad Nūrbakhsh comes during the discus
sion of the poles, nobles (nujabā), leaders (nuqabā), and substitutes (budalā).
Maybudī describes the Malāmīya [sic] who keep their true state hidden as the
most virtuous of all the different divisions, which he follows with a lengthy
poem by Ḥāfiẓ about avoiding worldly rewards for religious devotion. Then he
paraphrases an anecdote recorded by Muḥammad Nūrbakhsh in Maʿāsh al-
sālikīn about the lovelorn Shaykh Abū ʿUthmān Ḥīrī (d. 298/910) and his being
sent by his own shaykh, Abū Ḥafṣ Haddād (d. ca. 270/879) to Shaykh Yūsuf b.
Ḥusayn in Rayy to learn about true purity of belief despite an outward appear-
ance of impiety.79 Aside from being the source of the charming story, Muḥam
mad Nūrbakhsh receives no particular attention. That is in keeping with
Maybudī’s emphasis in the Sharḥ on abstract ideas within broadly defined
philosophical categories, such as those of Peripatetics, Illuminationists, Muta
kallimūn, and Sufis, rather than on specific, historically conditioned groups
such as the Sufi orders.
What is important to keep in mind is that our sparse knowledge of the qadi’s
involvement in the movement occurred several decades after Nūrbakhsh’s
death, when its adherents had had some time to adjust their views to the un-
settling passing of their Mahdi. Reactions among its adherents to his death
included an emphasis on the founder’s Sufi teachings rather than his messi-
anic expectations. Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad Lāhījī (d. 912/1506), another of
Maybudī’s correspondents fell into that camp, his writings about the Mahdi
passing from specific mention of Nūrbakhsh as Mahdi during the master’s life-
time to more general discussions that do not identify him specifically as the
chosen one. Shahzad Bashir concludes from his research that a sizable number
of Nūrbakhsh’s followers “either discounted his messianic claim within his life-
time or came to disassociate themselves from the movement’s messianic ori-
gins soon after Nūrbakhsh’s death … For these adherents of the order, the
designation ‘Nūrbakhshī’ conferred upon them the prestige of a chain of initia-
tion (silsila) going back to Najm al-Dīn Kubrā (d. 617/1221). They regarded
Nūrbakhsh as the mahdi in only the literal sense (i.e. one who has received di-
vine guidance), without implying a messianic function.”80 This branch of the
order developed an “intellectual stance as a movement transcending the
Sunni-Shiʿi sectarian divide,” only later adopting a more Twelver Shiʿite stance
78 SDA, 124. Bashir, Messianic Hopes, 98–99.

79 SDA, 158–60.
80 Bashir, Messianic Hopes, 176.
Qadi Maybudī 131
as that became prevalent in the Safavid empire.81 Bashir does not detect any
particular devotion to ʿAlī in Nurbakhshi writings until the reign of Shah
Ṭahmāsp.
Another branch pursued a more radical direction. Sayyid Muḥammad’s de-
scendants seemed to have kept alive an active Mahdist claim, meanwhile gain-
ing economic power and establishing ties with Ak Koyunlu and Timurid rulers
and acquiring the patronage of Shah Ismāʿīl when he began to consolidate his
power. Given the correspondents whom he identifies as co-Nurbakhshis and
his writings about the Mahdi, Maybudī apparently falls in the more spiritual
camp. He would not, however, have been perfectly comfortable with the move-
ment’s reformist mission to “shed the accretions of eight centuries of Islamic
history and to transcend the sectarian and ideological divisions permeating
the Islamic social milieu of the times.”82 One of the themes of the Sharḥ-i
Dīvān-i ʿAlī is that those divisions are very real and historically based. Even
though various paths of the intellect and the soul may ultimately lead a whole
range of committed believers to knowledge of God, a knowledge qualified by
their talents and attainments, historically-based divisions fit into a hierarchy
that cannot be wished away by harmonizing individual spiritual proclivities.
Letters to ulama not completely identified with government posts contain
less political information and more about Maybudī’s own writing projects, his
desire to see old friends again, and personal wishes for recovery from illness.83
An insistent theme that carries over from the letters to administrators is
Maybudī’s agitation over the attacks made upon him by his enemies in Yazd,
although no mention of such persecution appears in the two letters to Sayyid
Niʿmat Allāh al-Thānī, the sole correspondent known to have been based in the
Yazd area (see Chapter 2 above for biographical information). One of those let-
ters is entirely in Arabic, and expresses pure praise by playing repeatedly with
the word niʿmat (‘grace’ or ‘favor’), including Qurʾān 16:114 (“Thank the bounty
[niʿmat] of your Lord if it is Him ye serve.”).84 Imbued with the Sufi lexicon, the

83 In tone these letters resemble a number of letters by Davānī, who also frequently
expressed the desire to see a particular friend. Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Asʿad Davānī,
“Du nāma-yi bāstānī,” Armaghān 22 (1320): 14–16; “Az makātib-i ʿAllāma Davānī,” Arma
ghān 22 (1320): 523–24; “Maktūb-i tārīkhī,” Armaghān 13 (1311/1932): 215–16; “Maktūb-i
tārīkhī,” Armaghān 13 (1311/1932): 235–36. Darvīsh Maḥmūd and the anonymous scholar
remain unidentified, while information is available for Niẓām al-Dīn Aḥmad Saʿīdī and
Shams al-Dīn Lāhījī. The former can be situated as coming from the well-known notable
family of Isfahan and being related to Faḍl Allāh Khunjī, the historian.
84 MUN, 84–85.
132 Chapter 4
letter mentions how favorably God looks on those who love the family of
Muḥammad, not quoting Qurʾān 42:23 directly but clearly referring to it.85
Maybudī alludes to the phrase in the verse that enjoins “lovingkindness among
kinsfolk,” words that have been interpreted as an injunction to cherish the Ahl
al-Bayt. Combining both Arabic and Persian, the second letter also ends with
praise for Muḥammad and his family. It expresses a desire to see the sayyid and
to be remembered in his devotions, and includes one of the few poems in
which Maybudī integrates his pen name. Nothing in the letters indicates any
formal affiliation with the Niʿmatallahi order, however.
Given Maybudī’s Nurbakhshi connection, the most plausible candidate for
Mawlana Shams al-Dīn Lāhījī is Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā, a Nurba-
khshi mystic and poet who survived successive dynasties.86 He began to live
in Shiraz sometime around the death of his Sufi master and founder of the
Nūrbakhshīya, Sayyid Muḥammad Nūrbakhsh. According to Zarrinkub, he
was held in high esteem by scholars such as Davānī and Jāmī. Navāʾī spoke well
of him as a Sufi teacher and called him the ‘pole of the age’ (quṭb-i vaqt).87
Among Lāhījī’s writings was a popular commentary on the Gulshan-i rāz of
Maḥmūd Shabistarī, the Mafātīḥ al-iʿjāz fī sharḥ-i Gulshan-i rāz, a lucid intro-
duction to Sufi tenets written about 877/1473.88 Shah Ismāʿīl visited him in
909/1503 in Shiraz and he died in 912/1506, just about the time when his son,
85 Qurʾān 42:23 reads in part: “Say (O Muhammad, unto mankind): I ask of you no fee there-
for, save lovingkindness among kinsfolk.”
86 Aubin, “É tudes,” 53; Bashir, Messianic Hopes, 66, 173–75; A.H. Zarrinkub, “Lāhīdjī,” EI 2,
5:604–05.
87 Navāʾī, Majālis al-nafāʾis, 390–91; A.H. Zarrinkub, “Lahidji,” EI 2. This is not the Qadi Shams
al-Dīn Lāhījī with whom Shah Ismāʿīl studied the Qurʾān during his exile in Lahijan, and
who was appointed chief of religious affairs (ṣadr) before Ismāʿīl’s occupation of Tabriz at
the end of 906/spring 1501. It was the latter Lāhījī who had to rely on the Qawāʿid al-Islām
of Ibn al-Muṭahhar Ḥillī for the teaching of Shiʿi doctrines in the early days of Safavid rule.
He gradually withdrew from that position, while continuing to tutor Ismāʿīl’s sons. Sām
Mīrzā says he was over ninety at his death. Sām Mīrzā, 82; Aubin, “É tudes,” 53; Mazzaoui,
Origins, 80 is aware of two individuals, but in contrast to Zarrinkub gives the mystic’s
name as Muḥammad b. ʿAlī Gīlānī.
88 Pourjavady, Philosophy, 42 who says the Mafātīḥ must have been completed by 882/1477–
78. Bashir, Messianic Hopes, 173–75. The last in the scholarly group is Qadi Zayn al-Dīn ʿAlī
Khvāfī. A mystic by that name is mentioned in Gülşeni, but no time frame is given and
that individual should be identified with Shaykh Zayn al-Dīn Abū Bakr al-Khvāfī (d.
838/1435), a Sufi master in Herat who opposed the views of Ibn ʿArabī and influenced
Khwaja Aḥrār, rather than with one of Maybudī’s correspondents. Gülşeni, 197; Taşkö
prüzade, 70.
Qadi Maybudī 133
Shaykh Muḥyī al-Dīn Aḥmad Shīrāzī, became a close companion of the shah
and rose in his administration.89
Letters sent eastward into the Timurid sphere of influence were directed to
literary and religious figures and form a relatively low proportion of the total
correspondence known to date. Given the renown of Navāʾī, Jāmī, and Khwaja
Aḥrār, there is no need to give extensive biographical information about them
and the focus will remain on how their lives may have intersected with
Maybudī’s. It is precisely because of their celebrity that we may wonder if
Maybudī merely sent fan letters to men he admired, but to whom he had no
closer connection. Several factors suggest that that was not the case. First,
Maybudī’s letter to Navāʾī (d. 906/1500) and another to Jāmī are described as
replies, indicating that even had the qadi of Yazd initiated the correspondence,
he did elicit some response.
Secondly, a curious episode concerning Khwaja Aḥrār’s second son and spir-
itual successor, Khwaja Muḥammad Yaḥyā (k. 906/1500) raises the possibility
that in his case a personal meeting might have occurred. In the hagiography of
Khwaja Aḥrār, the Rashaḥāt ʿayn al-ḥayāt, Kāshifī states that Khwaja Yaḥyā was
much beloved of his father, being appointed successor and guardian of his
shrine as his father approached death. He was jealous of his father’s love, para-
doxically running away from him to Mecca whenever he felt that his father’s
companions came between them. The first time he made it to Bukhara, the
second to Herat, and the third to Yazd, of all places. Always the advice of his
father’s friends and his father’s spiritual powers, manifested in dreams and in-
explicable illness, drew him back home. Each time he tried to pursue his jour-
ney from Yazd, for example, he was stricken with a mysterious fever, until he
finally decided to head back.90 The author of the hagiography made a visit to
Khwaja Aḥrār in Transoxiana that coincided with the third return of Khwaja
Yaḥyā, so it can be dated to Rabīʿ II 893/February-March 1488. It took him a
month at a leisurely pace to reach Samarqand from Herat.
It just so happens that a letter to Khwaja Yaḥyā from Maybudī is one of the
few that can be dated to a specific year. In it Maybudī mentions that the ruler
and nobles have forbidden the drinking of wine, for which he gives thanks. As
recorded in Khunjī, Sultan Yaʿqūb forbade wine consumption in Ramaḍān 893/
August 1488.91 It is unlikely to be a coincidence that Maybudī’s letter to Khwaja
Yaḥyā was written so soon after the latter’s visit to Yazd. The nature of the
89 Colin Mitchell, The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran: Power, Religion and Rhetoric (New
York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2009), 39.
90 Kāshifī, 1:74; 2:582–84. For more information about Khwaja Yaḥyā, see Jāmī, Pis’ma, 21.
91 Khunjī-Iṣfahānī, Tārīkh-i ʿĀlam-ārā-yi Amīnī, 73/317; MUN, 196.
134 Chapter 4
Munsha⁠ʾāt does not permit a conclusive statement that this was Maybudī’s first
letter to the mystic’s son or that the two letters to father and son were sent
around the same time. Still, the probability that Khwaja Yaḥyā and Maybudī
actually met is high, the latter being one of the more prominent men of his city
and the former a distinguished guest. The letter itself hints at an acquaintance,
for Maybudī asks not to be forgotten, but he could just as well have written that
if their relationship with each other had developed solely from correspond-
ence.92 Another tantalizing hint is one of the Qurʾānic quotations in the sec-
ond letter: “… and whoso forsaketh his home, a fugitive unto Allāh and His
messenger, and death overtaketh him, his reward is then incumbent on Allāh.”93
While it cannot go beyond speculation, one wonders whether Maybudī and
Jāmī also met, perhaps during the latter’s visit to Uzūn Ḥasan’s court in Tabriz
in 883/1478 as he returned from the pilgrimage. Both from historical texts and
Jāmī’s poetry, we know that the poet maintained strong ties with the Ak Koy-
unlu and Kara Koyunlu rulers, who held him in high esteem. Jāmī wrote
Jahānshāh Kara Koyunlu a poem upon receiving the latter’s dīvān in which he
described the ruler as “refuge of mystical knowledge” (ʿirfān-panāh).94 He
wrote his allegorical tale of purification and redemption, Salāmān va Absāl, in
commemoration of Sultan Yaʿqūb’s repentance.95 Jāmī also corresponded
with Qadi ʿĪsā Sāvajī.96 If Maybudī was not personally acquainted with Jāmī, it
is nonetheless possible that his name was familiar to the Timurid mystic and
poet through other Ak Koyunlu connections.
Khwaja Aḥrār was revered by the Ak Koyunlu rulers as well. In the Munsha⁠ʾāt
of Idrīs Bidlīsī a tax exemption decree appears, issued in favor of the mystic
and his commercial agents and dated 886/1481–82.97 Another example of the
intertwining of the elite’s lives is that Jāmī wrote the mathnavi Tuḥfat al-Aḥrār
92 MUN, 189.
93 Qurʾān, 4:100.
94 Ḥikmat, 34–35.
95 Woods, 274. As Woods points out, that indicates a date of composition after 893/1488, and
not in 885/1480–81 as proposed in Ḥikmat, 190. See Ḥikmat, 40–41 for ties between Jāmī
and Yaʿqūb. See also Lingwood, Politics, Poetry, and Sufism, especially chapter 4, “Poetry at
the Court of Yaʿqūb and its Background in Establishing an Historical Context for Salāmān
va Absāl,” 111–31.
96 Ḥikmat, 41–42, 207. Even Navāʾī had some connection to Yazd. He was only about six years
old when he passed through the city, but it is curious that during the turmoil that fol-
lowed Shāhrukh’s death, Navāʾī’s father saw fit to stay in Taft near Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī’s
khānqāh. M. Yaʿqūb Vāḥidī Jūzjānī ed., Ba-munāsabat-i 525 sāl-i vilādat-i Niẓām al-Dīn
Amīr ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī Fānī (Kabul: Anjuman-i Tārīkh, 1346/1967), 6.
97 Ḥusām al-Dīn Idrīs Bidlīsī, Munsha⁠ʾāt, İstanbul Ayasofya Kutuphanesi ms. 3986, fol. 46a.
Qadi Maybudī 135
in honor of Khwaja Aḥrār. In addition to exchanging letters, the two of them

met four times, twice in Samarqand, once in Herat, and once in Marv.98 Bring-
ing the relationships farther west, a student of Davānī, one Ismāʿīl al-Sharvānī,
went to Khwaja Aḥrār in Transoxiana and became close to him.99 The friend-
ship between Navāʾī and Jāmī is also well-known and amply documented by
chroniclers and in their own correspondence.100 We could continue indefinite-
ly with this ‘six degrees of separation’ method, but I think the point is clear.
However tight-knit the ties among these outstanding men of their age, an
item in Shushtarī’s Majālis al-muʾminīn calls into question Maybudī’s place in
their ranks. According to Shushtarī, Qadi Mīr Ḥusayn Yazdī Shāfiʿī was one of
those who rejected Jāmī because of the latter’s known hostility to the family of
the Prophet.101 He wrote the following sarcastic verse:
That rightful imam, the friend (valī) of God,

Whom you call the victorious lion of God—
Two people afflict him to his very soul:
One of them from stupidity, the other from immaturity.
Both bear the name ʿAbd al-Raḥmān:
The latter is Muljam, the former, Jāmī.102
Shushtarī is keen on the distinction between Sunni and Shiʿi and on placing his
subjects in one camp or the other. That does not mean that the modern reader
must accept the verse above as evidence of Maybudī’s Shiʿism or of Jāmī’s en-
mity towards descendants of the Prophet, for there are clear signs to the con-
trary.103 Nevertheless, the verse cannot be dismissed out of hand. It opens up
98 Ḥikmat, 9, 71, 194.

99 Taşköprüzade, 356. He spent much of his later life in Mecca until his death around
940/1533. He was in Anatolia during Bāyazīd II’s reign.
100 Jāmī, Pis’ma, 5–6 lists three collections of Jāmī’s correspondence in which the names of
Khwaja Aḥrār and Navāʾī figure prominently. Not only did Jāmī write to each of the two
men, but they wrote each other as well: 7. They did much of what Maybudī did in his cor-
respondence—namely, inquiring after the health of their friends and asking favors.
101 Shushtarī, 309. There is always the possibility that, given the lack of other defining char-
acteristics, Shushtarī’s Qadi Ḥusayn is a different person than the subject of this work.
102 Quoted by Ḥikmat, 142. He does not list his source.
103 On the subject of Jāmī’’s attitudes toward Shiʿism, Ḥikmat includes at the end of his biog-
raphy a letter from Muḥammad Qazvīnī, who suggests that the reason Jāmī may have
been neglected by Iranian scholars in modern times is that he was prejudiced against the
Shīʿa. Qazvīnī claims that Jāmī wrote detailed biographies of such marginal mystics as the
Malāmatīya while omitting famous Shiʿi mystics. Ḥikmat, 395–407.
136 Chapter 4
the possibility that Maybudī changed his opinion of Jāmī over time. Because of
the number of subjects his writings address, it is difficult to trace the develop-
ment of his thought about any one of them. The critical verse hints at a com-
plexity that further research may elucidate. It is certain that Jāmī and Maybudī
disagreed on several matters, if not on the Prophet’s family. Jāmī was sharply
critical of Ibn Sīnā and the Peripatetic philosophers, while Maybudī found a
place for them in his intellectual world.104
The letters to the elite of the Timurid court use Sufism as a form of introduc-
tion and Sufi diction permeates the texts. Given his reference to the Nurbakh-
shis in his letter to Bidlīsī and the absence of the term Naqshbandi in his letters
to the prominent Timurid figures in that order, it is not clear how Maybudī
placed himself among the Sufi orders and certainly we cannot know how any
such affiliation affected the rhythms of his daily life. Nor is anything said about
a specific affiliation in the Sharḥ, which is, however, imbued with Sufi images
and ideas and insists on the importance of the relationship between spiritual
guide and seeker. That may have resonated with his audience in a way that
eludes us today. The notes primarily express friendship and Maybudī’s admira-
tion for the recipient. Unlike his practice in the rest of his correspondence,
Maybudī neither mentions his personal troubles nor makes any specific re-
quest except for prayers.
Before turning to Maybudī’s administrative career, we should pause to con-
sider who is missing from among his correspondents. The only resident of Yazd
among them is Sayyid Niʿmat Allāh al-Thānī and the letters to him display
great respect for the Ahl al-Bayt, so it would be false to detect any neglect of
local sayyids because of lineage. Perhaps local families are salient in their si-
lence because letters to one’s neighbors were too infrequent or too inconse-
quential to survive or merit collection. Beyond regional boundaries, it seems
that the polymath Ḥusayn Vāʿiẓ Kāshifī ought to number among Maybudī’s
correspondents, but at this point it is hard to see how meaningful conclusions
can be drawn from his absence.
Now that we have made the acquaintance of some of the major characters
in Maybudī’s story, it is time to resume the narrative with his appointment as
qadi of Yazd. According to the available account, several factors contributed to
his receiving the position. In the entry on Davānī in his Majālis al-muʾminīn,
104 Jāmī’s criticism comes in the mathnavi “Tuḥfat al-aḥrār.” Ḥikmat, 65–66. One line runs:
“The thinking of the Shifa’ (The Cure) is completely sick/The tendency of his Najāt (The
Salvation) is one of bondage.” But in a letter to ʿAbd al-Vahhāb, Maybudī distances himself
from the Peripatetic school’s view of primary matter and explicitly states that he holds the
position of the Illuminationists. MUN, 193.
Qadi Maybudī 137
Qadi Nūr Allāh Shushtarī (d. 1019/1611) recounts how it happened.105 Some
time in the 1480s, Sultan Yaʿqūb called Davānī from Shiraz to Tabriz, honored
him, and made him chief qadi (qāḍī al-quḍāt) of Fars. One day in the ruler’s
court, Davānī engaged in a scholarly debate with Shaykh Abū Isḥāq Nayrīzī,
one of the outstanding intellects of his day.106 Gaining the upper hand, Nayrīzī
began to use rude language. Maybudī, at this point in his late thirties and one
of Davānī’s better students, was sitting on the fringes of the exalted gathering.
Upset by the verbal thrashing his teacher was receiving, he could not refrain
from exclaiming that he, the lowest of Davānī’s students, requested permission
to take his master’s place in the debate. If Abū Isḥāq were to overcome him,
Maybudī and his teacher would concede defeat. The sultan accepted Maybudī’s
request, and the promising student proceeded with complete decorum and
good manners to rout Abū Isḥāq, not allowing his opponent to sidetrack him
with abusive speech. Once Maybudī emerged victorious, he was the talk of the
assembly. Qadi Ṣafī al-Dīn ʿĪsā Tabrīzī/Sāvajī (d. 896/1491), the sultan’s minister
of religious affairs (ṣadr), inquired into Maybudī’s origins and learned that he
was a notable of Yazd. Davānī asked the sultan to give his defender the qadi-
ship of Yazd and its dependencies, along with the supervision of the waqfs of
the region. Sultan Yaʿqūb sent Maybudī off to Yazd with a suyūrghāl and royal
gifts.
Shushtarī emphasizes the accidental nature of the appointment. It sounds
as if Maybudī just happened to be at the right place at the right time. Whether
or not the episode is literary fancy or an accurate report of an actual event, the
story rests upon a framework of relations between the central government and
the provincial ulama.107 Considering the importance of the qadi as an admin-
istrator and as a guarantor of justice in some corner of the realm, it was in the
interests of the state to have a reliable man for the job. While he may not have
needed stellar scholarly credentials, the qadi had to fulfill competently a
variety of official administrative functions. As discussed in the chapter on
Maybudī’s youth and education, Yazd was not as important as Tabriz or Shiraz,
yet it was a significant manufacturing city, one that a Timurid warlord such as
Amir Chaqmāq had not disdained as a suitable domain over which to exercise
105 Nūr Allāh b. ʿAbd Allāh Shushtarī, Majālis al-muʾminīn, lithograph (Tehran, 1299/1881),
347–48; Afshār, “Qāḍī Mīr Ḥusayn Maybudī,” 221 and Maʿṣūm ʿAlī Shāh, 3:122–23.
106 Reza Pourjavady, Philosophy in Early Safavid Iran (Leiden, 2011), 52 addresses the confu-
sion of names among various scholars with the nisba ‘Nayrīzī.’ He rules out the possibility
that Abū Isḥāq Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Nayrīzī, the figure in this story, could have
been the father of the subject of his monograph, Najm al-Dīn Ḥājjī Maḥmūd al-Nayrīzī.
107 See Knysh, Ibn ʿArabi, 143–44. Tīmūr encourages a public dispute between Saʿd al-Dīn
al-Taftāzānī and Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī.
138 Chapter 4
control. The waqfs were not inconsiderable, given the amount of building that
had accompanied the growth of the city. Because of that situation, it will be
worthwhile to take a closer look at the story of Maybudī’s appointment.
The process assumes greater importance in light of the fact that the new
qadi was not sent off to do as he pleased, all ties broken with the center, as
shown by his collected correspondence. While the Munsha⁠ʾāt includes letters
to high-ranking figures in the Timurid court in Herat and to members of the Ak
Koyunlu military elite, the majority of the missives were addressed to the civil-
ian, especially ulama, administrators at the royal court, such as Abū Isḥāq
Muḥammad Nayrīzī, Shāh Sharaf al-Dīn Maḥmūd Jān Daylamī, and several
members of the Sāvajī family. Since contact was maintained, it becomes of in-
terest to know how Maybudī was appointed, what his patrons expected him to
do, and what they would have censured in his behavior. Another question is
whether local qadis had subordinates. Was one man able to oversee the waqfs
and legal administration of a reasonably large urban center? Did his jurisdic-
tion encompass smaller towns, such as his home town of Maybud? Did he ap-
point deputies once he arrived back in Yazd, drawing from the local ulama?
Were his deputies chosen by the Ak Koyunlu administration?
The first significant point in the story of Maybudī’s appointment is the role
of public debates as a source of recruits for government posts. Court debates
were common practice and it might be suggested that their purpose was not
merely to edify the ruler or glorify him by association, but also to allow him to
observe the rising intellectuals of his realm. The friendly notes Maybudī later
sent Nayrīzī indicate that no hard feelings lingered after the contest.108 On the
contrary, Maybudī avers that he looks forward to Nayrīzī’s arrival, speaks highly
of him everywhere, and counts on the powerful man’s influence to protect him
from slanderers. The outcome of public debates was not necessarily so amica-
ble. In a much later Ottoman case (1176/1763), during the court debates that
were regularly scheduled during Ramaḍān, one of the participants used such
abusive language that he was exiled to Bozcaada.109
Although Sultan Yaʿqūb observed the proceedings, Qadi ʿĪsā Sāvajī emerges
as the person responsible for the actual appointment, acting in the name of
Ak Koyunlu authority. Sāvajī was the person in Tabriz with whom Maybudī
exchanged the most extensive correspondence, writing him at least fifteen let-
ters. In one he states that all that he has comes from Qadi ʿĪsā and he clearly
108 MUN, 68, 70. Furūhar lists him as Mawlana Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū Isḥāq Tabrīzī; 117: Ghiyāth
al-Dīn can be tentatively identified as the addressee of this document which is titled
“another letter” in the manuscripts.
109 Uzunçarşılı, 217.
Qadi Maybudī 139
regarded him as his most powerful patron at court.110 Maybudī repeatedly be-
trays anxiety that the slander his enemies spread about him will make Qadi ʿĪsā
cease to regard him with favor.111
Sāvajī’s inquiry into Maybudī’s background, however informally presented,
shows one of the primary concerns of the central government in the appoint-
ment of provincial qadis. Sāvajī’s request for information was no idle question.
One cannot help but wonder if a different answer would have led to a different
reward for the debater. It is not explicitly stated that not just any virtuoso
scholar would be eligible for the qadiship of Yazd, but it is reasonable to as-
sume that, had Maybudī come from a less important family, he might not have
been shunted into the qadiship of his native city as a first major promotion.
The element of regional authority is of interest because both Davānī and
Maybudī were appointed qadis in their native regions. There is no intimation
that either man was expected to move from province to province, with limited
periods in each area, finally becoming chief qadi of the state, as came to char-
acterize legal administration in the Ottoman empire. On the contrary, Maybudī
apparently had the option to resign but not to seek re-assignment elsewhere.112
Davānī presents a problem, because it is not clear how much time he spent in
Shiraz and how much in Tabriz. Did he cease to be qadi of Fars when he re-
sided in Tabriz? The hagiography of Shaykh Ibrāhīm Gülşeni (d. 940/1543) in-
dicates that Shiraz remained Davānī’s base at least through the reign of
Sulṭān-Khalīl (d. 883/1478).113 In his entry on Mawlana Ḥusām al-Dīn Ḥasan
Tālish, who was born in Tabriz, Taşköprüzade writes that the latter had seen
Davānī in Tabriz in the company of Mīr Ḥusayn al-Yazdī, but gives no indica-
tion of the length of their stay.114
Although accepting the qadiship meant leaving the government center, the
appointment was clearly viewed as a promotion, as a reward for sound scholar-
ship accumulated during years of study and for acquaintance with such pow-
erful men as Davānī. Whatever might have been said and written in the early
centuries of Islamic states about such jobs being tainted, as subordinating
scholarly independence to lucrative awards from the state, seems not to have
applied to Maybudī, or to Davānī for that matter. Maybudī himself recounts
stories about early Islamic scholars who refused with good reason to serve as
110 MUN, 87.

111 MUN, 59–60, 101, 112, 164.
112 But see MUN, 151 where Maybudī mentions the legal barriers to submitting his resigna-
tion.
113 Gülşeni, 41–42.
140 Chapter 4
qadis, but he offsets those anecdotes with statements about the position being
a religious duty incumbent on the community. In other words, it could be a
rotten job, but somebody had to do it.
Maybudī frequently grumbled about his assignment, but he did not ques-
tion it as proof of worldly success. That is, in fact, one of his complaints about
his peers and students in the legal track. In a long disquisition on the nature of
the profession, he states that the goal of many of them in serving as qadis is to
earn money and elevate their status.115 His disapproval of that goal is in the
tradition of Ibn ʿArabī and mysticism in general. While jurists and mystics were
not by definition at odds with each other, the temptations of the legal profes-
sion posed a danger to the spiritually inclined. Ibn ʿArabī writes: “God forbid,
my brother, that you should think that I blame the jurists for being jurists or for
their practice of jurisprudence, for the Law is beyond question … However, I do
censure those jurists who, harbouring merely worldly aims, cynically study the
Law with the sole object of acquiring fame.” Those sentiments had already
been expressed by al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī, Ghazālī, and many others. To be fair,
their disapproval extended equally to Sufis who valued the esteem of men over
humility before God.116
In keeping with the values of his time, Maybudī professes complete disinter-
est in either wealth or fame. It is tempting to find him disingenuous in his Sufi
denial of all ambition for wealth and status, because he fights tooth and nail to
keep his job throughout years of personal attacks from his enemies. The reason
he gives for taking the position in the first place and continuing to serve is obe-
dience to the Padishah and his patron and he asks in exasperation why else he
would bring so much trouble into his life.117 He continues the religio-legalistic
argument with sources that prohibit an appointee of the state from resigning
115 MUN, 199–200 for stories about scholars who refused to serve as qadi; 140, 173 for the
worldly ambitions of his peers; 166 for his own denial of interest in temporal benefit. This
fascinating document of over thirty pages stands out among the much shorter letters that
comprise the bulk of the Munsha⁠ʾāt. Not only does it draw attention to itself with its
length, but it also is more personal and direct than the many short, flamboyant exercises
in stylistic virtuosity. While those are necessary bread-and-butter offerings meant to
establish and maintain bonds of loyalty, complete with conventional complaints about
the absence of dear friends and the trials and tribulations of the job, this long letter seems
to have been a response to a real threat.
116 Josef van Ess, “Sufism and Its Opponents: Reflections on Topoi, Tribulations, and Trans-
formations,” in Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polem-
ics, ed. Frederick de Jong and Bernd Radtke (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 34.
117 MUN, 150.
Qadi Maybudī 141
his position unilaterally.118 As in much of the correspondence, the issue of how

much is self-serving and how much genuine conviction teases the modern
reader. Maybudī himself constantly questions his motives and those of his
peers, both supporters and detractors, yielding as much insight into his indi-
vidual psychology as on any other subject.
In his tantalizing discourse on a qadi’s job, Maybudī reveals that, at least in
retrospect, taking on such an important position was a mixed blessing. A per-
sonal source of ambivalence is the loss of time for study once a religious schol-
ar accepts an official position. Maybudī takes pride in his involvement in
scholarship since his youth, and regrets that he has had to set his studies aside
because his professional duties are so time-consuming.119 Were he relieved of
his responsibilities, he would be able to write and publish once again. Further-
more, he would like to perform his duty of going on pilgrimage, and he gives an
eminently practical reason for considering his duty to perform the hajj at that
stage in his life: when the particular letter was written the weather in the Hijaz
was still fine during pilgrimage season, while in a few years it would be too
hot.120
Once Maybudī was sent back to his native city in a position of power, his
precise duties as a qadi are difficult to determine. The evidence is not system-
atic and the snippets of information that do emerge from the correspondence
are too scattered to allow definitive conclusions. For at least six years of ser-
vice, one crisis after another triggered Maybudī’s cries for help or protestations
of innocence to his patrons, but he seldom goes into detail about his activi-
ties.121 The rare outside sources are anecdotal, the anecdotes serving more to
astonish than to enlighten. For example, Maybudī once recalled how he was
summoned from his qadi’s court to view an unusual newborn girl in a quarter
near the clock tower of Yazd. The baby, named Fāṭima Sar-i Buzurg (Fāṭima Big
Head), had been in her mother’s womb for seven years and quoted poetry and
the Qurʾān at birth. Spurred on by amazement, Maybudī rushed to the house
with an escort of scholars. The girl cried out as they approached: “The qadi of
the city has come with a company to see us. Open the door so they may enter.”
She recited a verse and the gawkers went back to work, astonished. The next
118 Compare MUN, 198: He writes to Ilāhī Beg that he has several times petitioned to resign.
119 MUN, 158–59. As mentioned earlier, however, Maybudī seems to have continued teaching
and writing throughout his time as qadi. MUN, 72.
120 MUN, 160–61. Although Maybudī does not specify his level of comfort, Dhū al-ḥijja in
898/1493 fell in September and with each subsequent year occurred earlier in the sum-
mer, so that by 905/1500 the pilgrimage month coincided with July. It seems reasonable to
date this letter no later than 898/1493 or 899/1494.
121 MUN, 114.
142 Chapter 4
day it was heard that she had died.122 However intriguing the story, the source
does not specify whether the qadi was there in any official capacity or simply
as a curious neighbor.
Normative texts that discuss qadiship in the abstract shape the outlines of
communal expectations, so while we may hesitate to consider them definitive
concerning the facts of Maybudī’s daily life, they did mold how he and his
peers thought about the qadi’s job. One of the most fascinating aspects of
Maybudī’s lengthy defense of his behavior is how he repeatedly interprets his
actions within the framework of legal writings from previous centuries. Those
texts might not be evidence for his personal experiences, but they do mark the
contours of his profession. He most frequently cites Rāfiʿī of Qazwin (d. 623/
1226) and Nawawī of Damascus (d. 676/1277), magisterial figures in the devel-
opment of the Shafiʿi school of law. By demonstrating that committed Muslims
have voiced complaints similar to his own since the inception of Islam, May
budī uses the legitimacy of well-established authority to add weight to his
grievances.
Another reason the precise extent of Maybudī’s duties remains vague is
their familiarity to his community. Because they were known to his patrons
and friends, he did not have to specify them in his correspondence. Someone
from the twenty-first century may not be able to list in detail every responsibil-
ity of a judge or a banker, but he will have a general idea of what the job entails,
and one judge writing to another would certainly not need to explicate the
details of his position. Absent a document with terms of employment, we can
sketch only the general contours of what Maybudī was expected to do as qadi
from his complaints and concerns, without confidently claiming to under-
stand every aspect of the position. It would also be careless to conclude that
the job was a rigid institution, rather than one subject to the fluctuations of
personal relationships and the vagaries of political change.
As mentioned above, waqf supervision was the only task definitely assigned
at the beginning of his tenure, and in several letters it is clear that it constituted
an integral part of his job and not a separate assignment.123 His job was
apparently to oversee waqf supervisors instead of administering the founda-
122 Mustawfī Bāfqī, 3:354. The story raises all sorts of issues. Among them are those of gender,
for the miraculous child born with sacred knowledge is a girl; of theology, for it is unclear
what the divine purpose was in creating such a child and why religious authorities felt the
need to participate in this unusual event; of medicine, for the translation of the physically
monstrous of medieval times into the birth defects of our own age does not seem to apply
in this case.
123 That Maybudī had some authority over supervisors of waqfs is mentioned in a letter to
Sirāj al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Vahhāb. MUN, 82.
Qadi Maybudī 143
tions himself.124 After serving as qadi for six years, he pinpoints waqf malad-
ministration as a primary reason for social decline, and it is unlikely he would
complain so vociferously if matters lay entirely in his own hands. He claims
that waqf income is channelled to the rich either by its fraudulent transfer to
private hands (milkiyāt) or through the misuse of long-term leases. In either
case, the legitimate beneficiaries of the foundations are cheated. The qadi
must either go along with the perpetrators of the fraud against his conscience,
in which case he is rewarded by the corrupt administrators, or he opposes their
schemes and they expend every effort to get the honest qadi fired.125
In one of his most complete descriptions of his preoccupations, Maybudī
writes to Qadi ʿĪsā Sāvajī that he had been attentive to religious matters in Yazd.
That meant reprimanding profligates, including members of the ulama, put-
ting a stop to drunkenness and debauchery, spending on the poor the proceeds
of waqfs of Sufi hostels (khānqāhs), which derived their revenue from farms
and shops, assuring the just of their rights, and re-establishing the Shariʿa.126
Promoting public rectitude was an endless, thankless task.
In a clear-eyed exposition of how he could make money from his position
were he not supported by his income from agriculture, Maybudī drops more
clues about a qadi’s activities. He could increase his income by cultivating
court patronage, accepting bribes from litigants, misappropriating waqf funds
and those reserved for the welfare of orphans, and charging fees for teaching
and fulfilling legal duties such as waqf administration, the care of orphans, and
marriage services.127 Maybudī matter-of-factly presents this list as practices
that have long been in place and are known to everyone rather than as news
that would shock his correspondent. What the qadi does is less at issue for the
two of them than the money involved; the discussion is valuable for us on both
counts.
By listing reasons why any sensible man might resign a qadiship, Maybudī
fills out our picture of what the job entailed in late fifteenth-century Iran. He
sees it as a tremendous responsibility, a punishment in this world and the next
that eminent scholars from the first century of Islam refused to take on, de-
scribed by Ghazālī as butchery without a knife, subjecting its holders to the
whims of rulers whom they must flatter. The qadi reaches decisions which, if
not proving acceptable to the powerful, are either ignored or used to fire him.128
124 But see MUN, 59 where Maybudī himself distributes proceeds from waqfs.
125 MUN, 172.
126 MUN, 59.
127 MUN, 142–147.
128 MUN, 153, 162.
144 Chapter 4
While admitting that numerous hadiths describe the benefits of serving as a

qadi, Maybudī’s disclaimer is that he himself lacks the excellent qualities that
would allow such benefits to devolve upon him.
At this point in his reflections about being a qadi, Maybudī’s discussion
takes on a more personal cast. Maybudī astutely remarks that the very nature
of the job is problematic because at its core it exists as a result of disputes, and
litigants will always be better informed than the judge about the details of a
case. He explains that he himself prefers reconciliation and compromise and
bemoans the fact that in his day and age truthful testimony and respect for
oaths are so lacking that a qadi is at a loss to reach a just decision. Not able to
make definitive decisions because he does not trust anyone to tell the truth,
Maybudī is further handicapped by his soft heart when it comes to capital cas-
es. He is easily upset, especially in cases that lead to corporal punishment. He
claims not to have been forced to put anyone to death yet, but is terrified that
the day will come.129 It is here that the elusive value of the Munsha⁠ʾāt emerges,
for it straddles the fence of normative and documentary texts. As a legal schol-
ar, Maybudī knows the literature of his profession. When he uses it as a win-
dow on to his own experience, on a set of injunctions that one particular man
may or may not be able to fulfill, history becomes human.
Given the nature of the document, the Munsha⁠ʾāt teases us with what it
does not say. It reveals almost nothing, for example, about where Maybudī ran
his court, how many days a week he adjudicated cases, whether he had a large
or small staff, who received a salary and for how much, what kinds of records
were kept, and how he enforced his rulings. Information is meager as well
about Maybudī’s precise relations with the people of his own city, from his
peers in the clerical world to women, minorities, criminals, and law-abiding
citizens.130 Yazd’s sizeable Zoroastrian and Jewish communities receive only
129 MUN, 157.

130 MUN, 230 complains of the abuse of the census system which inflicts injustice on Arme-
nians, Jews, Magians, and non-observant Muslims (ahl-i jaḥūd az Muslimānān: exact
meaning unclear to me). For the Zoroastrian community in Yazd, see Mary Boyce, A Per-
sian Stronghold; and Nile Green, “The Survival of Zoroastrianism in Yazd.” Iran, 38 (2000):
115–122. Boyce claims that after Islam established itself in Iran, “the only two places where
Zoroastrians succeeded in maintaining themselves in any numbers were in and around
Yazd and Kerman,” 1. She gives evidence that the leader of the community, the Dastūr-i
Dastūrān, lived in Turkabad in the region of Yazd at least by the eleventh century and in
1478 was known to receive messengers from the community in India. In Yazd the Zoroas-
trians numbered some 500 heads of households in 1511 (4–5). Mancini-Lander notes that
Mustawfī Bāfqī also rarely mentions the Zoroastrians of the region, who remain conspic-
uous by their absence: “Memory on the Boundaries of Empire,” 70.
Qadi Maybudī 145
passing, uninformative mention in one letter, while women figure solely in the
abstract in normative legal passages. Frequently it is difficult to decide wheth-
er Maybudī acted as qadi, landlord, or friend. Concern for the agricultural pop-
ulation and the ulama can be extracted from the letters, but whether discussing
local friends or enemies with his acquaintances outside Yazd, Maybudī does
not name names, mention factions, or give any indication of the connection
between status, say, and residential locations. He seldom mentions specific
buildings or local customs. Any fashionable propensity for convention aside, a
sense of unease and dissatisfaction pervades many of the letters, but much is
left unhelpfully vague.
Based on what is available in his correspondence, Maybudī emerges as an
advocate of his city, of its agricultural population, and the local ulama. For ex-
ample, he asks Sirāj al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Vahhāb in Tabriz for help in repairing pious
foundations (buqāʿ) and Sufi hostels, because the responsible parties block his
efforts.131 After urging Ilāhī Beg to observe justice by repairing ribats, bridges,
mosques, hostels, and madrasas for his good name in this world and the next,
Maybudī mentions a specific ribat in the area that could be restored with little
effort.132 In another letter, he presents a detailed legal exposition about how
government taxes should be distributed in order to support all the necessities
of the state from military forces to infrastructure, administration, education,
and care for the disadvantaged. Recognizing that the central administration
has a certain amount of latitude in allotting tax income, he encourages his
patron to distribute the money as religious duty requires.133
Maybudī did not expect the government to cover all communal expenses.
Like his father, Maybudī actively involved himself in the construction and im-
provement of local buildings, commissioning the Ḥammām al-Qāḍī and per-
haps other structures.134 Ḥikmat interprets Jāmī’s encouragement of rulers to
do good works and sponsor construction as a sign of the poet’s generosity of
spirit and fundamental goodness.135 That may very well be, but when so little is
131 MUN, 82.

132 MUN, 191. See Mancini-Lander, “Memory on the Boundaries of Empire,” 90–91: “… in the
Yazdī historiography, it [the term “ribāṭ”] fairly consistently signifies a walled settlement
on the frontiers of the desert, designed to serve as a hostel for travelers to and from the
region. The ribāṭāt essentially marked the outermost reaches of the boundaries of the
mamālik of Yazd …”
133 MUN, 174.
134 Mustawfī Bāfqī, 3:355. It still stood in the seventeenth century, but cannot be found today.
Afshār, “Qāḍī Mīr Ḥusayn Maybudī,” 222. MUN, 251: Maybudī says that he built a hammam
in the reign of Nuṣrat al-Dīn Abū al-Muẓaffar Yaʿqūb Bahādur Khān in 887/[1482].
135 Ḥikmat, 101.
146 Chapter 4
known about the personality of figures such as Maybudī and they cannot be
limned with any great accuracy as distinct individuals, it is just as plausible to
view their philanthropy as exemplifying an inseparable concept of both com-
munal and personal responsibility. Philanthropy formed part of the relations
between various elements of society, with the civilian elite helping to conduct
material benefits from the ruling strata to the ruled, using informal channels
such as personal letters.
In addition to expressing concern for the physical development of Yazd,
Maybudī acted as spokesman for the rural population to the decision-makers
at court. He emerges as an important link in the chain of dependence that
bound the elites and common people together. Rarely addressing the ruler
himself, he worked through powerful members of the civilian authority to in-
form and implore. In a letter to Qadi ʿĪsā, he indirectly addresses Sultan Yaʿqūb
to laud the sultan’s reign as a harbinger of the coming of the Mahdi and en-
courage him to continue his practice of resting content with the kharāj taxes
from his subjects and of strengthening the Shariʿa.136 Another document in the
Munsha⁠ʾāt uses conventions of the ‘Mirrors for Princes’ genre, with their pasto-
ral images of responsible shepherds and seditious wolves, while being clearly
grounded in the local situation in Yazd.137 For the ruler’s good name and his
fate in the world to come, Maybudī reiterates the need for justice. Rather than
accuse the ruler personally, he directs his criticism to governmental subordi-
nates who undoubtedly act without the ruler’s knowledge, a problem in itself.
Extra exactions imposed on farmers, who serve as the foundation of the world,
are self-defeating because the people lose their love of their native land (waṭan)
and choose to leave.138 Minority populations of Armenians, Jews and Magians
are squeezed for money; merchants encounter difficulties in traveling from
place to place because of robbers and officials who misappropriate their goods;
136 MUN, 101. In another letter to Qadi ʿĪsā, Maybudī says that no sultan or padishah has been
as just and the time for the appearance of the Mahdi and the descent of Jesus has arrived,
97.
137 MUN, 228–35.
138 From warnings about the repercussions of tyranny and excessive taxation, we occasion-
ally catch a glimpse of that majority of the population, on whose economic well-being the
power of the elites depended but who had limited options when subjected to mistreat-
ment. Maybudī mentions brigandage, although a greater concern is that the common
people may move away from oppressive conditions, leaving the kingdom depopulated
and unprofitable. That emerges as a warning image throughout the centuries, addressed
in writings as far apart as Saʿdī’s Gulistān of 656/1258, for example, and documents attest-
ing to floods of refugees during the political upheavals of Central Asia in the early 18th
century. Ron Sela, The Legendary Biographies of Tamerlane: Islam and Heroic Apocrypha in
Central Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 126–27.
Qadi Maybudī 147
small businessmen in the bazaars cannot conduct trade because of rampant

bribery, rapacious bureaucrats, and marauding soldiers. Such a document is a
flare shot up from Yazd to alert the authorities that the local population suffers.
More specific requests to benefit the general population were for aid from
the central government after natural disasters. Maybudī informs Sāvajī that
heavy rains followed by swarms of locusts had spoiled the crops. The seed sup-
ply for the next year had been exhausted and starvation threatened the people.
The local governor, Amir Zayn al-Dīn Pīr ʿAlī Beg, had tried to help, but to no
avail. Maybudī urges Sāvajī to act quickly in order to prevent widespread fam-
ine. Again, Sāvajī is addressed as a representative of the central government
and not as a private individual.139 A final example comes in a letter to Shāh
Sharaf al-Dīn Maḥmūd Daylamī, who is told of the fragile agricultural situation
which resulted from a particularly severe winter. Locusts had revisited the
area, milk had dried up in cows’ udders, and wells had frozen over. Unscrupu-
lous buyers were defrauding farmers of their holdings. At the end of the letter
comes a plea for help to Daylamī, whose familiarity with the area and commit-
ment to justice are cited as additional reasons for his solicitude.140
While Maybudī’s intercession on behalf of the agricultural population
might appear to be disinterested kindness, it must be remembered that his
family’s wealth most likely derived from landholdings. His father had been ac-
tive in a number of villages around Maybud, as mentioned in Chapter 2. In
letters to Shaykh ʿAlī Sāvajī, Maybudī himself mentioned agriculture as a source
of revenue and a subject of concern.141 The main point of the letter excerpted
by Afshār is that the qadi was considering resigning his post, in part because he
did not need the money he derived from it. As Afshār translates: “The founda-
tion for my livelihood is agriculture and I am content with the dry bread that I
earn from it.”142 Since it is improbable that Maybudī worked out in the fields
behind a plow, he necessarily stood to gain from a prosperous and productive
peasantry.
Lest we go too far in interpreting every action as a calculated political and
economic gesture, it is worthwhile to recall that Maybudī also would have ex-
ercised charity as part of his conception of the afterlife. To give but one exam-
ple, Qadi ʿĪsā Sāvajī was worried about one Mawlana Fakhr al-Dīn after the
139 MUN, 124–26.

140 Cold winter in letter to Shaykh Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad Lāhījī: MUN, 67b (Istanbul
manuscript: only part of the letter is in the published edition); to Daylamī, 67–68. This
raises the question of whether Daylamī had visited the region during his survey of Ak
Koyunlu lands for Qadi ʿĪsā’s land reforms.
141 MUN, 57, 63.
142 Afshār, “Qāḍī Mīr Ḥusayn Maybudī,” 222. MUN, 141.
148 Chapter 4
latter’s death. His friend Shaykh Ibrāhīm went to the gravesite and perceived
that the deceased was suffering. He told Qadi ʿĪsā that the way to help was
through charity and prayer, so the qadi made a special effort to relieve the dis-
tress of widows and orphans. Later he had a dream in which the recipients of
his kindness were protecting Fakhr al-Dīn from tormenting demons.143 That
such concerns and their working out in the world of dreams were an unsurpris-
ing subject of conversation among the ulama and were considered worth re-
cording implies that they were not isolated phenomena.144 Inasmuch as he
was a qadi who supervised waqfs, a landowner keeping an eye on his revenues,
a religious man who valued pious action, and an influential individual who
had the power to obtain some relief in times of disaster, to which he and his
lands were as vulnerable as the poorest farmer with a small landholding,
Maybudī can only be expected to have acted as he did.
In addition to his links to the agricultural population, Maybudī maintained
close ties to his own social group, the ulama of Yazd, and acted as their spokes-
man to the authorities in Tabriz. In the letter discussed above in which he
praises Yaʿqūb’s policies towards the people, he states that with the situation so
good, it would be injustice on the ruler’s part to allow evildoers to belittle and
undermine people like himself, the sinews of the Shariʿa.145 He tells Qadi ʿĪsā
about scholars who held high positions under previous regimes and whose de-
scendants currently held those positions by hereditary right, rather than by
their own qualifications, while those more suited for the jobs remained unem-
ployed.146 To Shaykh ʿAlī Sāvajī, he complains of the decline of tafsir, hadith,
and fiqh in the madrasas. He asserts that the students are not really interested
and that they quibble over phrases and expressions, with none of the loftier
aims of their predecessors. Then he asks for some encouragement, especially
for the qadis, muftis, and waqf supervisors.147 Finally, in a letter to an unnamed
recipient, he defends a scholarly preacher who faced false accusations that he
143 Gülşeni, 119–20.

144 Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 469–70. Aubin places great emphasis on the power of the occult
over the imaginations of fifteenth-century men and of the authority that accrued to men
who were seen to control the forces of the other world. See also Maybudī’s lengthy riff on
the name and qualities of Muḥammad in a letter to Sayyid Muḥammad Rīsmān Bāz.
MUN, 91.
145 MUN, 101.
146 MUN, 54–55.
147 MUN, 192.
Qadi Maybudī 149
did not know Arabic, embroiled himself in disputation, and denigrated the
scholars of the Yazd region.148
Another activity that Maybudī describes in his correspondence is the fulfill-
ment of commissions for the civilian personnel in Tabriz. Again, it is not known
if this was part of the job, a way of maintaining good relations with powerful
patrons, or simply an act of friendship. At one point, he informs Shaykh ʿAlī
Sāvajī that a carpet he had ordered for a Dār al-Ḥadīth was being made accord-
ing to his specifications.149 He also mentions to Abū Isḥāq Nayrīzī that he had
settled some case about which Nayrīzī had written him and expresses his will-
ingness to fulfill any other requests.150 An unspecified order received in a letter
from Shaykh Najm al-Dīn Masʿūd Sāvajī is reported to have been obeyed.151
One thing we do know about the qadiship of Yazd is that it exposed its hold-
er to repeated accusations from his detractors.152 The majority of the letters
from Maybudī to his correspondents in Tabriz mention slander against him
and implore his reader not to listen to such falsehoods. In the letter cited above
in which he describes his activities to Qadi ʿĪsā, he laments that his enemies
overwhelm him with their fabrication of lies about his neglect of duty. He
claims not to be greedy and to be rooted in justice. The nature of a qadi’s job
exposed the holder to charges of illicit personal enrichment, which, with his
oversight of waqfs and involvement in legal cases, was undoubtedly a tempta-
tion.
In another letter to Qadi ʿĪsā, Maybudī lists three slanderous rumors that are
floating around to his detriment.153 The first two are matters of religious opin-
148 MUN, 88–89. This was not simply an argument about scholarly credentials, because the
requirement or lack thereof for non-Arabic speaking Muslims to know the language con-
cerned validity of ritual practice and authenticity of belief. Inquiry into the primacy of
the Arabic language in scripture and learning and its importance in avoiding heresy had
been going on for centuries, with Persian gaining acceptance over time. See Zadeh, The
Vernacular Qur’an, 129, 331, 352.
149 MUN, 63.
150 MUN, 118.
151 MUN, 98.
152 Ibn Turka also defended himself from attacks against his beliefs and his performance as
qadi, objecting that many oppressors of the poor turn to powerful backers in order to
subvert his decisions. Melvin-Koushki, “Quest,” 64. Davānī, too, complains about unjust
accusations, which might suggest that the subject is fancifully literary rather than
anchored in a specific situation: Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Asʿad Davānī, “Maktūb-i
tārīkhī,” Armaghān, 13 (1311): 215–16. An alternative is that scholars in Timurid and Ak
Koyunlu lands were genuinely nervous about the ramifications of such attacks. I favor the
latter interpretation.
153 MUN, 135–39.
150 Chapter 4
ion, charges that also appeared in a letter to Shaykh ʿAlī Sāvajī in which he re-
ports accusations of unsound belief (takfīr).154 In Qadi ʿĪsā’s letter, they are
specified as his views on primary matter (hayūlā) and Muḥammad. His ene-
mies claim that he equates primary matter with God. What is at issue here is
whether he believes in creation ex nihilo or in the eternity of the universe. If he
equates primary matter with God, he might be claiming that the world is inher-
ent in God’s existence, hence eternal and not created, which would contradict
several fundamental principals of Muslim belief including creation and the
possibility of God’s unconstrained will. The view that some sort of primary
material existed before creation, which God formed into the world, while not
without problems, could be considered more compatible with traditional reli-
gious belief, because it does not deny God’s will. In his letters Maybudī defends
himself by describing primary matter as pure potentiality and well below the
rational soul in the metaphysical hierarchy. He briefly quotes Ibn Sīnā to vali-
date his views and the Qurʾān to express his displeasure with his opponents.
He urges Qadi ʿĪsā to examine his treatment of the issue in his numerous writ-
ings as proof of his innocence.155
The second accusation was that he belittled the Prophet. Again, he protests
with righteous indignation, marshaling verse after verse of the Qurʾān in his
defense. Given his substantial commentary on ʿAlī’s poetry, it is tempting to see
him as the target of a Sunni backlash against ʿAlid sympathies, but as was dis-
cussed in Chapter 3, Maybudī in no way attacks the primacy of Muḥammad.
On the contrary, the Sharḥ repeatedly declares Muḥammad’s superiority and it
is the rare letter that does not begin or end with praise of the Prophet and his
family. To put the accusations in perspective, the official charge which led to
154 MUN, 131. The accusation about unsound beliefs concerning primary matter resurfaces in
Maybudī’s lengthy letter about his qadiship, MUN, 168; and in another to Sirāj al-Dīn ʿAbd
al-Vahhāb, MUN, 193. In the latter, he defends himself with a lengthy philosophical dis
cussion of why he would never commit such an error. While he sees himself as following
the Illuminationist school (madhhab-i Ishrāqīyān), he gives a detailed explanation of
Peripatetic and Sufi understandings as well, quoting Ibn Sīnā, Ibn ʿArabī, Naṣīr al-Dīn
Muḥammad al-Ṭūsī, Niẓām al-Dīn Nishāpūrī, and the poets Shabistarī and Rūmī.
155 In SDA, 94–95 Maybudī wraps up a philosophical discussion by citing legal scholars
(fuqahāʾ) who list belief in the priority of the world over the creating form (al-ṣūra
al-kāʾina) among other examples of unbelief (kufr). Terminology poses difficulties in
determining the parameters of this accusation which rendered Maybudī so vulnerable.
The same fluidity of language that he considered in the Sharḥ and an absence of docu-
mentation means much of this is approximate. See Kiki Kennedy-Day, Books of Definition
(London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003) for the variety of ways Kindī, Fārābī, and Ibn Sīnā
defined hayūlā—and that was several hundred years before Maybudī.
Qadi Maybudī 151
Qadi ʿĪsā’s execution in 896/1491 was heresy, specifically holding doctrines of

‘incarnation and deviation’ (ḥulūl and ilḥād), and he, too, defended himself as
a loyal follower of the Prophet and his descendants. Although political and
economic animosities strike the modern historian as more plausible reasons
for his death at the instigation of Ṣūfī Khalīl Beg, the power of religious rheto-
ric and conviction should not be lightly dismissed.156
The final accusations seem to concern Maybudī’s performance as qadi.
Against the complaint that he is hard-hearted, he insists that he has mastered
the choleric faculty and disciplined his soul through spiritual exercises. He
quotes hadith, ʿUmar, ʿAlī, Ghazālī, and others to underscore his understanding
of the need for kindness. What is significant about all the charges is that
Maybudī felt the need to defend himself repeatedly to the Sāvajīs and other
administrators against accusations that ranged from the theological to the pro-
fessional. That indicates either that the charges could be substantiated or that
they were sufficient, true or not, to cause the disgrace and dismissal of a qadi.157
To sum up the ramifications of Maybudī’s appointment, the picture is not
one of an entirely isolated or independent qadi, nor of someone who served
only as an extension of the central government in his native city. Rather than
belonging to either the provincial or the central government camp, Maybudī
experienced the tension of having ties to both groups and of negotiating the
ambiguities inherent in those ties. His regular contacts with the central au-
thorities imposed obligations upon him, as well as affording him privilege. He
used the latter to protect the peasants of Yazd and, indirectly, the landowners,
to which group he belonged, and to represent the concerns of the ulama. The
displeasure of his contacts either at the center or in Yazd could adversely affect
his reputation with his other patrons and friends. That in itself does not radi-
cally change the current picture of the ulama’s role in medieval Islamic society,
but the mechanics of a qadi’s appointment under the Ak Koyunlu helps to re-
fine our knowledge of Iranian history and to avoid viewing the entire Middle
East as a monolithic whole.158
156 Woods, 151–52.

157 Furūhar and Raḥmānī/Ashk-Shīrīn are certain that Maybudī either tendered his resigna-
tion or was fired after six years on the job. MUN, 24; SDA, sī va seh. They cite MUN, 57, 122,
129. On 120 Maybudī does describe himself as experiencing troubles worse then he has
ever known. Raḥmānī/Ashk-Shīrīn also cite a verse on SDA, 14, which indicates that once
Maybudī turned to Sufism, he regretted his past life and official positions.
158 Knysh’s description of the features of the ulama in Mamluk Egypt in the thirteenth cen-
tury applies in general outlines to Maybudī, two centuries later and many miles away: the
importance of an authoritative mentor in career advancement, the role of the qadi in
protecting the population from excessive taxation, the opportunities for financial gain
152 Chapter 4
The foregoing discussion of Maybudī’s connections to the greater world of

the Ak Koyunlu and Timurid states sums up most of what can be known about
him until his death. It demonstrates that the provincial ulama both depended
on patrons in the administrative and military centers while being deeply en-
sconced in the politics of their own cities. To investigate only what happened
in Tabriz, or only those events which concerned the principal military leaders
and their supporters among the ulama concentrated at the court is to miss the
complexity of life during that period. Maybudī’s appointment shows that the
powers at the center were attentive to their representatives in the provinces
and maintained close ties to them. Maybudī had grown up and studied far
from the locus of Ak Koyunlu power, and his incorporation into a broad ad-
ministrative structure signals the powerful provincial families’ simultaneous
independence from and dependence on the state.
Maybudī’s ties to the center lasted throughout his documented career as
qadi and illustrate the services civilian notables at the center and in the prov-
inces performed. Through their network, factual information was exchanged.
The notable citizens of a city such as Yazd appear to have been well aware of
actions on the state level, informed about the ban on wine and Yaʿqūb’s cam-
paigns in Georgia. Similarly, letters were sent in the other direction to relate
events in the provinces to important figures at court. Maybudī told his corre-
spondents about small civil disturbances and more threatening natural disas-
ters. While not invariably requesting government action, in a significant
number of cases he did demand immediate assistance. It is through provincial
notables such as Maybudī that the affairs of the common people were brought
to the attention of the governing elite.
Qadis emerging from the city gates to negotiate with nomadic conquerors
or traveling to capitals to request disaster aid appear with relative frequency in
the chronicles. Their philanthropy was not entirely disinterested, because their
own political position could be at stake. In the case of Yazd, we have seen the
disagreements among the notables after the great flood of 860/1456 and their
individual attempts to deal with the court. Maybudī’s insecurity about his posi-
tion and his constant demands that the slanders of his enemies be ignored
signal that he was obliged to do a good job in order to avoid dismissal. It sounds
as if he was constantly on the defensive in Yazd and lived in fear that the
from the administration of waqfs and the estates of orphans, dependence on the ruler for
appointment and tenure in office, and fierce competition for jobs. What we do not see,
which does not mean it did not exist, is that Maybudī’s enemies formed an identifiable
faction. Ibn ʿArabi, 56. See Manz, Power, 238, on the need for care in distinguishing indi-
vidual rivalries from factional conflict.
Qadi Maybudī 153
calumnies against him would be believed by someone in power at court or

among the community of religious scholars.
Another element of self-interest in Maybudī’s role as spokesman for the
common people is that his prosperity partially depended upon them, for he
derived some of his income from agriculture. When he asked for a message of
encouragement for the ulama of Yazd who were suffering from dangerously
low morale, he acted on behalf, not of the common people, but of his own so-
cial stratum. Such action also carried an element of self-protection, as is seen
in his complaint that scholars of merit were overlooked for advancement in
favor of those who gained their positions through heredity. Although a suc-
cessful member of the establishment, Maybudī seems to have come from a
family of landowners rather than scholars. The civilian notables were not able
to mediate between the common people and military rulers because they
stood disinterestedly apart from both groups, but precisely because their pros-
perity and preservation were intimately linked to the smooth functioning of
those groups.
Maybudī’s correspondence shows that he, at least, cultivated relations with
military as well as civilian figures at the center, although the documents avail-
able suggest that his business was more frequently conducted with the latter.
Furthermore, it is important to bear in mind that, not only did Maybudī cor-
respond with civilian notables at the locus of Ak Koyunlu power, but he also
had friends in that social milieu in other parts of the realm and beyond. The
breadth of Maybudī’s contacts offsets any notion that he may have been ut-
terly absorbed by his position vis-a-vis the ruling powers in Tabriz. As the Sharḥ
demonstrates, Maybudī’s identity as a scholar opens a window on to the social
and intellectual lives of the notables, one opened even wider by the informa-
tion provided in his correspondence.
The balance among the various sectors of society and within each of them
was precarious, as evidenced by the brutal ends of many of Maybudī’s corre-
spondents. With Sultan Yaʿqūb’s death and that of many of his close advisors,
Maybudī’s life entered its fourth and final stage, one sent into upheaval by the
rise of Shah Ismāʿīl. While the civilian notables endured as a collective unit,
certain individuals, including Maybudī, did not fare so well.
154 Chapter 5
Chapter 5
Last Years and Safavid Confrontation
The approximately fifteen years that separate the last datable events in the
Munsha⁠ʾāt from Maybudī’s death are even more difficult to document than his
early years or education. By examining the political environment in which
Yazd found itself on Sultan Yaʿqūb’s death and considering Maybudī’s one
piece of writing from that time, we can at least catch a glimpse of the qadi’s
shadow. His unpleasant demise will then carry us into the Safavid period.
Two questions arise with the death of Yaʿqūb in 896/1490. First, what hap-
pened to the Ak Koyunlu state as a whole? Second, what transpired in Yazd? A
detailed answer to the first question is complex and beyond the scope of this
work; the interested reader is strongly encouraged to study the research of
John Woods. Throughout the subsequent decade, fierce struggles for power
persisted, with young princes falling into the hands of ambitious guardians
and distant relatives of Uzūn Ḥasan entering the fray. As mentioned in the last
chapter, Ṣūfī Khalīl Beg, one of Maybudī’s correspondents, played a key role
until his death in 896/1491. No one succeeded in holding power for long and
the entire state eventually fell to the Safavids.
The strife over succession during that decade was reflected in events in Fars
and Persian Iraq. Other developments in those provinces were the repercus-
sions of decisions made earlier under Uzūn Ḥasan and Yaʿqūb. For example,
Yaʿqūb continued his father’s policy of dismantling the appanage system,
whereby provinces were put under the jurisdiction of members of the Ak
Koyunlu family. Under the new system, the major regions fell under the control
of either a member of the ruler’s personal retinue or of one of the chiefs of the
confederate clans that provided the state’s military power. The last of the prov-
inces to be brought under the central authority of the supreme administrative
council were Shabankara and Fars, which ceased to be royal appanages shortly
after the coup in Yaʿqūb’s name in 883/1478. It took another decade for such
regions to develop into strong bases for local autonomy, the Pūrnāk clan en-
trenching itself in Fars and Arabian Iraq and the Mawṣillū (to which clan Ṣūfī
Khalīl Beg belonged) in Arminiye and Diyar Bakr. According to Woods, the
conversion of the appanage system “into a regime of semi-independent tribal
enclaves reminiscent of some later Safavid institutions, presaged the devolu-
tion and chaos of the period of Confederate Clan Wars and must be accounted
one of the most significant internal political developments of Yaʿqūb’s reign.”1
1 Woods, 132–34.

Those local clan chiefs participated in the succession battles that erupted in
896/1490. Of immediate interest to Maybudī would have been Manṣūr Beg
Pūrnāk, the governor of Fars. He initially recognized Yaʿqūb’s son Bāysunghur
(d. 898/1493), then shifted his allegiance to Maḥmūd b. Ughurlū Muḥammad b.
Uzūn Ḥasan (d. 896/1491), before once again supporting Bāysunghur. The mat-
ter was not simply the preference for one prince over another; support for
Bāysunghur really meant submission to Ṣūfī Khalīl Beg, the young ruler’s
guardian. The effects of such issues of loyalty were felt in Yazd, where Manṣūr
Beg Pūrnāk was ordered to suppress the anti-Bāysunghur uprising of the Kara-
ʿUthmānid Qayitmas Bāyandur—that is, of a cousin of Yaʿqūb. The arrival of
Qayitmas’s head in Tabriz in 896/1491 thus signified the end of Pūrnāk resis-
tance to Mawṣillū power and marked the extension of Ṣūfī Khalīl Beg’s author-
ity over Arabian Iraq, Persian Iraq, and Fars.2
That insurrection was only one of the several manifestations in Yazd of the
political turmoil in the state, for the city continued to be involved in the long
struggles for succession. With the death of Aḥmad b. Ughurlū Muḥammad in
903/1497, two sons of Yūsuf b. Uzūn Ḥasan, Alvand (r. 903–910/1497–1504 or
-05) and Muḥammadī (r. 903–905/1497–1499 or 1500), were proclaimed rulers
of the Ak Koyunlu state. The former reigned in the west and was supported by
Qāsim b. Jahāngīr (d. 907–08/1502), among others, including Mawṣillū chiefs,
while Muḥammadī had the backing of Ibrāhīm Ayba Sulṭān Bāyandur’s (d.
904/1499) brothers, among them Murād b. Dānā Khalīl, the governor of Yazd.3
Faced with the Safavid steamroller, the Bāyandur governors of Yazd and Kir-
man abandoned their posts and sought refuge in Sulṭān-Ḥusayn Bayqarā’s
court in Herat. It was the descendants of Murād b. Dānā Khalīl, the governor of
Yazd, who represented one of the only two branches of the Kara-ʿUthmānids to
survive the collapse of the Ak Koyunlu empire, thanks to Murād’s flight to the
Timurid court in 908/1503.4
The Jām-i gītī-numā
Maybudī’s connection to the larger Ak Koyunlu state during this period ap-
pears in the dedication of the one work he is known to have written after
896/1490. That work is the treatise entitled Jām-i gītī-numā, also known as
Waḍʿ-i jadīd. In the abjad system, the latter title produces 897 [1492], which is
the year the work was completed in Shiraz. It is a brief introduction to the
2 Woods, 153.
3 Woods, 159.
4 Woods, 166.
156 Chapter 5
principles of philosophy (ḥikmat), written in Persian for an unnamed member

of the elite. Mention of Shiraz actually raises more questions than it answers.
Because the work is so short, Maybudī’s presence in that city during its compo-
sition is no proof that he had permanently moved from Yazd or even lived in
Shiraz for any significant length of time. His position as qadi may or may not
have terminated with Yaʿqūb’s death. Another possibility is that he resigned, a
desire he certainly expressed more than once in the Munsha⁠ʾāt. It is not known
how long he remained in Shiraz, and whether he was merely paying social calls
on his former teachers, colleagues, and students, or actively fishing for another
position.
A second issue is the identity of the patron. In one passage he is described
as “ʿālī-ḥaḍrat shāhzāda-yi ʿadālat panāh …”(“The exalted prince, refuge of jus-
tice”). The manuscripts differ considerably in other effusive honorifics, but not
in a way that reveals his identity. In addition to standard plaudits for the indi-
vidual’s justice, virtue, and patronage of scholars, conceits based on philosoph-
ical terminology are woven through the passage. Although he is described as
having reached the pinnacle of intellectual perfection, it does not seem that
his interest in philosophy could have been particularly profound prior to the
composition of the work because the contents are so elementary.5
While historical matters remain ambiguous, the text itself is concrete. As far
as can be determined, the work awaits a critical edition, so a brief description
of its contents is not out of place and suggests the continuity of Maybudī’s
writings.6 After the customary invocation, Maybudī states that, because man
is distinguished from other animals by his reason, the more perfect a person is
in reasoning, the higher the degree of humanity to which he attains. Following
the tradition of the latter-day philosophers (muta⁠ʾakhkharīn-i ḥukamāʾ),
Maybudī decided to describe those various levels of existence in a digest
5 Pourjavady, Philosophy in Early Safavid Iran, says the work “is dedicated to an unspecified
Qāsim, who according to a marginal note in one of its manuscripts was [Sayyid Muḥammad]
Nūrbakhsh’s son and successor Sayyid Qāsim (d. 919/1513–14),” 36. He refers the reader to the
edition of ʿAbd Allāh Nūrānī, 95–96: “Referring to Qāsim as ‘prince’ (shāhzada), Maybudī in
the introduction to this work implied that he would attend the majālis of Qāsim from time to
time,” 36. The language in the introduction is characteristic of Maybudī’s addresses to political
figures.
6 See Pourjavady, Philosophy, 35: “An Arabic version of this work, together with a translation
into Latin by Ibrāhīm al-Ḥaqilānī (Abraham Ecchellensis, 1605–64), was published in 1641 in
Paris.” According to Daiber, it is “the first philosophical text published in Europe, preceding
the edition of Ibn Ṭufayl, Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān published by E. Pococke (1671).” Hans Daiber,
Bibliography of Islamic Philsophy (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 1: 628.
(mukhtaṣar) of basic philosophical information in order to be remembered

kindly and generously in the councils of the prince.
The treatise is then divided into an introduction (fātiḥa), thirty topics
(maqṣad), and a conclusion (khātima). In the introduction Maybudī discusses
the necessary existent (vājib al-vujūd) and the contingent existent (mumkin
al-vujūd), the latter comprising two parts, substance (jawhar) and accident
(ʿaraḍ). He sums up by saying that the basics (uṣūl) of existent beings (maw
jūdāt) are seven: the necessary existent, intellect (ʿaql), soul (nafs), primary
matter (hayūlā), form, material body, and accident. Then he proceeds to the
thirty sections in which he gives succinct information about those technical
terms, the heavenly bodies, and the elements.
In the Jām-i gītī-numā Maybudī did not intend to write more than a brief
summary of philosophical topics. Indeed, the work resembles an article in an
encyclopaedia. Its subject matter corresponds primarily to various sections of
the Hidāyat al-ḥikma and to the fourth chapter of the Sharḥ-i Dīvān-i ʿAlī. In
style and organization, correspondences with the former work are fewer and
Maybudī does not refer to the Hidāyat directly as a source text. When he dis-
cusses the properties of the four elements in his commentary on the Hidāyat,
for example, he follows the order dictated by Abharī’s text (air, fire), whereas
the Sharḥ and the Jām-i gītī-numā share a different order. That may in part be
because the Hidāyat was written in Arabic and the Sharḥ and Jām-i gītī-numā
are in Persian, making the Sharḥ a more convenient source.
While certain passages are taken verbatim from the Sharḥ, examples being
the section on the four elements and the length of days in different climes, the
later work is not merely a culling of general statements from the earlier.
Lengthy discussions of contrasting views or fine points are omitted in the Jām-i
gītī-numā, subjects have been rearranged, and the language simplified. The
most significant difference from the Sharḥ is the absence of any reference to
the Sufis and their cosmological views. Likewise, much less emphasis is placed
on attributing particular opinions to the Illuminationists. Plato, Aristotle, Ibn
Sīnā, Ghazālī, and Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī are the only philosophers whose ideas are
presented at all, and then only in passing. This offering to a patron was a text
for teaching and discussion, whereas the Sharḥ was a more complex, personal,
and potentially controversial enterprise.
Comparisons may not be drawn to the thought of Sufis and Illuminationists,
but Maybudī does return to his theme that Greek-inspired philosophy cannot
be pursued without parameters, specifically those imposed by canonical reli-
gious texts. In his conclusion to the Jām-i gītī-numā, Maybudī states that al-
though he has presented a number of ideas as expressed by philosophers, it
must not be thought that whatever they say is necessarily true. Some of their
158 Chapter 5
ideas contradict the Sharīʿa, such as the anteriority (qidam) of the world, the
impossibility of creation, and the harmony (iltiyām) of the spheres. On the
other hand, their views are not necessarily wrong, for they have solved a num-
ber of problems in their books. Scholastic theologians tried to object to the
proofs of the philosophers and provide their own demonstrations for the order
of the universe, but their work was generally weak in comparison. The sound-
est policy is to follow the path of the Qurʾān and the hadith and to weigh one’s
beliefs in their balance. Only after righting (istiḥkām) one’s religious beliefs
should one examine the words of the scholastic theologians, philosophers, and
mystics. Building a structure of faith in itself sharpens man’s critical facilities,
so that when he approaches complex writings, he will have the tools to use
them properly and they will strengthen his belief immeasurably rather than
undermining its foundations.
Death
From the composition of the Jām-i gītī-numā to the final months of his life,
nothing is known about Maybudī. By the time of his death, Maybudī knew that
circumstances had changed significantly from those earlier times when he had
been able to write to Qadi ʿĪsā Sāvajī that: “It is evident that the foundation of
the state [the Ak Koyunlu] and its felicity are enduring and perpetual.”7 The Ak
Koyunlu state had disintegrated and the Safavid star was in the ascendant. All
that we have to anchor Maybudī in the new era is one letter to Shah Ismāʿīl and
much later, perhaps fanciful accounts of the qadi’s death in 910/1504.
The rise of that Safavid star was marked by intense violence and a self-con-
sciously apocalyptic blood-thirstiness that was meant to intimidate opponents
and validate its leader’s claims to messianic authority. Colin Mitchell cogently
presents the story of Shah Ismāʿīl’s rise to power and much useful material
about the adaptation of the administrative elite during that tumultuous
period. He shows how chancellery practice reflected and shaped the new re-
gime’s identity, its language encompassing an “impressively variegated range
of legitimization, which included ʿAlid messianic rhetoric (to mobilize their
zealot nomadic adherents); Turco-Mongol symbols and apocryphal legends
(to accentuate martial traditions and a sense of loyalty to Steppe); legalistic
and orthopraxic aspects of Twelver Shiʿite doctrine; ancient, pre-Islamic Ira-
nian notions of divine kingship and statecraft; and, lastly, a vigorous commit-
7 MUN, 54. Woods, 151–61 details the confederate clan wars that destroyed Ak Koyunlu power.
ment to citing Abrahamic Prophetic history.”8 Running a government requires

men adept in the use of words, and the Safavids found themselves relying on
professionals, as had their predecessors.
So it comes as no surprise that epistolary traditions continued as well, with
notables outside the center of government sending letters to those with power,
assuring them of loyalty, submitting requests, keeping the machinery of state
oiled with erudite, symbolically charged language. It is in that context that we
should read the one letter in the Munsha⁠ʾāt addressed to Shah Ismāʿīl Ṣafavī.
For its particular epithets and unusual contents, it merits inclusion in its en-
tirety:
The reason for writing these just (sharʿī) words is that His most exalted
majesty, Shah of leadership (imāmat) and majesty, locus of dominion
and justice, possessing the status of Solomon and bearing a resemblance
to Alexander [the Great] …9 military, shadow of divine imperial grace,
the padishah who commands obedience and whom it is obligatory to fol-
low, dispenser of the royal mandates of justice in every quarter, eradica-
tor of the traces of tyranny, oppression and deviance, favored with the
guidance of God, the king of great riches, he who is aided by God the All-
Sufficient and Protecting Friend, Abū al-Muẓaffar Shāh Ismāʿīl al-Ḥusaynī
freed from among his personal property a Circassian ghulām of open
brow and dark eye, about sixteen years old, named ‘Lāchīn.’10 In drawing
closer to God—may He be exalted—and seeking His pleasure, the eman-
cipation [of slaves] is [especially] sound, valid, and lawful (mashrūʿ),
although all the legal edicts (aqārīr-i sharʿīya) of His Majesty are heard.
Now that created beings have been freed and liberated from the bonds of
servitude and slavery and like …11 man who is free by nature has been
freed and no creature can take issue with him by reason of being fettered
and enslaved. And so was freed in the eighth …
While undated, the letter indicates that Shah Ismāʿīl had already attained suf-
ficient power for Maybudī to address him using the rhetoric of lawful, authori-
tative kingship. The qadi places Shah Ismāʿīl within the Islamic tradition of
Solomon and Alexander and repeatedly uses forms of the root ‘sh-r-ʿ’ with its
overtones of canonical law. Nonetheless, as an isolated expression of
8 Colin Mitchell, The Practice of Politics, 5.

9 Furūhar explains the ellipsis as illegibile text. MUN, 204.
10 Lachin is a Turkmen tribe.
11 Furūhar: “illegible.”
160 Chapter 5
admiration, the letter leaves us wondering about the significance of this topic,12
of the precise connotation of a term such as imāmat, and of Maybudī’s deci-
sion to address to the young ruler directly.13 What information did Maybudī
have about this zealous warrior whose heterodox beliefs make theological dis-
putes about primary matter seem harmlessly mainstream? By positioning the
Safavid conqueror within a traditional rhetorical framework, was Maybudī re-
vealing ignorance about the nature of the new regime or engaging in the pro-
cess of shaping it through conventional epistolary means, however insignificant
and ephemeral—the wishful thinking of a solid citizen? That ambiguity calls
for interpretive caution. Precisely because it is but one letter, it must remain on
the table with the other puzzle pieces to await its proper placement in the
larger picture.
The account of Maybudī’s death is equally murky.14 Sources for the story
pose the first problem because they come from separate historiographical tra-
12 Slavery under the Ak Koyunlu, Timurids, and Safavids is too vast a subject to address here
and this one letter too fragmentary a source to tell us much about Maybudī’s experiences
with it. The interested reader might start with Sussan Babaie et al., Slaves of the Shah: New
Elites of Safavid Iran (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2004), although its focus is on the Safavids in
the seventeenth century; 3–4 for the development of Islamic practices of slavery, which
were primarily domestic and military, and ideals of manumission; 29: “Early references in
the chronicles to slaves belonging to the Safavid family (ghulaman-i khandan-i Safaviyya)
point to the use of household slavery by Shahs Ismail and Tahmasb.”
13 In the Sharḥ, he uses it to cover a range of meanings according to context. At the close of
the Favātiḥ, he presents it in the context of Simnānī’s hierarchy of authority. Simnānī
characterizes valāyat as esoteric knowledge (bāṭin), varāthat (legacy or inheritance) as
exoteric knowledge (ẓāhir), imāmat as both esoteric and exoteric knowledge, vaṣāyat as
the preservation of the esoteric chain, and khilāfat as the preservation of the exoteric
chain: ʿAlī was valī, vārith, imām, and vaṣī after Muhammd, but not khalīfa until after
ʿUthmān: SDA, 210. In a poem near the end of the book, he translates it as pīshvāʾī in the
sense of leadership: SDA, 713. He usually uses it with political connotations, unless refer-
ring specifically to one of the Shiʿi Imams: SDA, 29, 31, 370. On 29 he also applies it to the
founders of the four Sunni legal schools, as he does in MUN, 171.
14 The sources give different dates for Maybudī’s death. One error is to place it in 904/1498–
99, but the person in question is probably Mīr Ḥusayn Muʿammāʾī, a skilled writer of
poetic riddles in Sulṭān-Ḥusayn Bayqarā’s court who died of diarrhea (ishāl) in that year.
Khvāndamīr, 4:343; Rūmlū, 69:11; 57:23–24. Maybudī also wrote an essay (risāla) on riddles,
which could account for the confusion as does the similarity of their names. Khvānsārī,
Rawḍāt al-jannāt, 3:241 indicates the distinction. Brockelmann II:210 gives 904/1498 as the
death date, and is used by Rescher, Development, 239. Afshār gives 910 or 911/1505–06
as possible death dates in “Qāḍī Mīr Ḥusayn Maybudī,” 222. Aḥmad ʿAlī Khān Hāshimī
Sandīlavī, Tadhkira-yi makhzan al-gharāʾib (Lahore: Instishārāt-i Dānishgāh-i Panjāb,
1968), 1:642–43, gives 904/1498–99, 911/1505–06, and 909/1503–04. Those dates are taken
ditions. The standard histories which tell about Shah Ismāʿīl’s activities in the
Yazd region are Ghiyāth al-Dīn Khvāndamīr’s (d. ca. 941/1535) Ḥabīb al-siyār,
Ḥasan Beg Rūmlū’s (ca. 986/1578) Aḥsan al-tavārīkh, Qadi Mīr Aḥmad Qummī’s
(ca. 1014/1605) Khulāṣat al-tavārīkh, and Iskandar Beg Munshī’s (d. 1043/1633)
Tārīkh-i ʿālam-ārā-yi ʿAbbāsī, written during the reign of Shah ʿAbbās. They
present similar chronological accounts of Shah Ismāʿīl’s attack on the city and
focus on the rebellious Muḥammad Karra and his grisly end.15 Recent research
has dated the sole source for Maybudī’s involvement in events, the “Ross Anon-
ymous,” to the 1680s, whereas it was once considered a much earlier work. No
longer anonymous, its author was Bījan, a reciter of Safavid history, and the
book probably bore the title Jahān-gushāʾī-i Khāqān-i Ṣāḥibqirān.16 The other
main popular source for Shah Ismāʿīl’s conquest of Yazd is the ʿĀlam-ārā-yi
Shāh Ismāʿīl (wr. 1086/1675–6). Written in the popular historiographical tradi-
tion of the day, like other works in that tradition it shapes historical and folk-
loric material to promote a particular agenda—in Yazd’s case to highlight the
importance of Shāh Niʿmat Allāh Yazdī and Shah Ismāʿīl’s preference for nego-
tiation over brute military strength. Since Bījan’s history is the sole source for
Maybudī’s involvement in the attack on Yazd, we must be sensitive to the fact
that it reflected concerns of a much later period of time, not one of charis-
matic Safavid explosiveness but rather of administrative complexity and eco-
nomic uncertainty.
Bījan’s tale runs as follows. While Shah Ismāʿīl was in the region of Mount
Alvand in 909/1503, news came of the activities in Fars of Sulṭān-Murād, the
third son of Yaʿqūb (d. 920/1514), and his gathering of scattered Turkmen.
Ismāʿīl decided to quash the opposition before Sulṭān-Murād’s forces grew any
stronger. He marched from Hamadan to Isfahan and Shiraz and conquered
from Mudarris, Rayḥānat, 6:50. Rūmlū, 69:35, 57:82 also gives the 909/1503–04 date. ʿUmar
Riḍā Kaḥḥāla, Muʿjam al-muʾallifīn (Damascus: Maktabat al-ʿArabīya, 1377/1957), 4:63
mentions 870/1466. That is taken from ʿĀmilī, Ayan, 27: 282–83, and is impossible. With
the abjad system of assigning numerical value to letters, the word ‘qāḍī’—so closely asso-
ciated with Maybudī—adds up to 911/1505–06, which may explain the choice of that date.
15 Tārīkh-i ʿĀlam-ārā-yi ʿAbbāsī, 1:30–31/Savory, 49; Qummī, KT, 1:84–85 (dates rebellion to
910/1505).
16 Tārīkh-i Shāh Ismāʿīl-i Ṣafavī. MS. London, British Library, Or. 3248, fols. 107a-b. See Alex-
ander Morton, “The Date and Attribution of the Ross Anonymous: Notes on a Persian
History of Shah Ismāʿīl I,” in Pembroke Papers I. Persian and Islamic Studies in Honour of
P.W. Avery, ed. Charles P. Melville (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Centre of Middle
Eastern Studies, 1990), 179–212. Also Sholeh A. Quinn, “Rewriting Niʿmatu’llāhī History in
Safavid Chronicles,” in The Heritage of Sufism, ed. Leonard Lewisohn and David Morgan
(Oxford: Oneworld, 1999) 3:201–22.
162 Chapter 5
Persian Iraq, Fars, and Kirman, including the city of Yazd.17 He appointed
Ḥusayn Beg Lālā [Sulṭān-Shāmlū] as dārūgha of Yazd, who in turn delegated
authority to one Shuʿayb Aqā. Shah Ismāʿīl then went from Fars to Kashan, and
on to Qum.
Indicating the close tie between political and spiritual outlooks, at least in
the mind of the author of the account, it is mentioned that two sorts of trou-
blemakers needed to be suppressed in the Fars campaign. Some evildoers
(badkārān) who fomented rebellion and corruption in Shiraz were executed by
royal decree. Also judged subversive were several Sufi masters (mashāʾikh), fer-
vent (mutaʿaṣṣib) Sunnis to whom people used to bring substantial amounts of
money every year as votive offerings (nadhr and niyāz). Tombs of other Sufis
had become popular places of pilgrimage. Those structures were razed on
Ismāʿīl’s orders and it was further ordered that all prayers should be said for the
shah rather than be misdirected to unholy purposes.18
While the Safavid troops were off on various campaigns, trouble brewed
back in Yazd.19 The garrison commander (dārūgha) of Abarquh under the Ak
Koyunlu, Ra⁠ʾīs Muḥammad Karra, attacked Yazd with 4,000 horse and killed
Aḥmad Beg Sarūʾī, an appointee of Shah Ismāʿīl in the region.20 He seized
Aḥmad Beg’s treasury and equipment (amvāl, asbāb, vujūhāt), and assumed
control over the citadel. Bījan accuses him of harboring personal ambitions
and satanic delusions (tasvīlāt-i shayṭānīya), such that he stepped outside the
path of loyalty (ikhlāṣ). He disregarded the gratitude rightfully owed his sover-
eign and raised the banner of independence. Oppression of both rich and poor
marked his ascent to power, for he tortured anyone who was suspected of pos-
sessing even a shred of wealth.
Qadi Mīr Ḥusayn Maybudī, “a virtuous and scholarly man, firmly ensconced
in the Sunni madhhab,” was courted by Muḥammad Karra, who involved him
in his insurrection. Shah Ismāʿīl swooped down on Yazd to quell the revolt
(910/1504). Following Maybudī’s advice, Muḥammad Karra fortified the gates
of the city (durūb-i shahr) and the citadel (qalʿa) and deployed Lur troops. The
siege lasted one month, the armies doing battle each day from dawn to dusk.
The Safavid forces had the advantage of firearms and many of Muḥammad
17 Tārīkh-i Shāh Ismāʿīl-i Ṣafavī, fols. 94b-95a.

18 Tārīkh-i Shāh Ismāʿīl-i Ṣafavī, fol. 94b.
19 The revolt in Yazd as related in Tārīkh-i Shāh Ismāʿīl-i Ṣafavī, fols. 107b-110a; Ghulam Sar-
war, History of Shāh Ismāʿīl Ṣafawī (Aligarh: Muslim University, 1939), 49. As Sarwar points
out, Browne’s account of Maybudī’ death is incorrect in Literary History of Persia, 4:57.
20 Muḥammad Mīrkhvānd, Tārīkh-i rawḍat al-ṣafā [Rawḍat al-Ṣafāʾ fī Sīrat al-Anbiyāʾ va-al-
Mulūk va-al-Khulafāʾ] (Tehran: Markazī-yi Khayyām Pīrūz, 1338–39/[1959–60]), 8:17.
Karra’s Lurs lost their lives. When the city fell, Muḥammad Karra, Maybudī,
and a small group fled inside the citadel, while some Lurs and other rebels
fortified themselves in the citadel of Abarquh.
The latter group was soon suppressed by ʿAbdi Beg Tuvājī Shāmlū, but
Muḥammad Karra and Maybudī held out for yet another month before the
citadel of Yazd fell and they were taken prisoner.21 The instigator of all the
trouble was shut in a cage and his body was smeared with honey in order to
attract bees and increase his torment as a cautionary lesson to others. He was
taken to Isfahan where his body was burned in the central square (maydān) in
the presence of Ottoman envoys and his ashes scattered. All of his followers
were put to the sword. As for Maybudī, Bījan says that because he was so ar-
dently Sunni, he attracted the wrath of Ismāʿīl and was executed.22 Another
ulama victim was Shāh Taqī al-Dīn Muḥammad Iṣfahānī who was accused of
treason after being sent on a political mission to Muḥammad Karra in Yazd.
Ismāʿīl claimed he made common cause with the rebel and consequently had
him executed.23
To some extent, the story of Maybudī’s death does shed some light on his
activities during the previous fifteen years. Had the qadi disappeared from
public view or withdrawn completely from political life to devote himself to
his studies and spiritual development, it is unlikely that Muḥammad Karra
would have had much use for him or that Maybudī himself would have en-
gaged in such a dangerous undertaking. The extent of his connections as re-
vealed in the Munsha⁠ʾāt also renders any such withdrawal implausible. Simply
because the letters that have so far come to light do not seem to date much
after the time of Yaʿqūb’s death does not mean that Maybudī cut off his ties to
the elite world in which he moved at that time.
Since he showed himself interested in the political world around him in his
correspondence and wrote to the young leader himself, it is highly unlikely
that Maybudī underestimated Ismāʿīl’s military success. Knowing of the shah’s
coronation in Tabriz in 907/1501 and of his territorial ambitions, Maybudī was
one of the prominent ulama who decided to stay in his native region. Unlike
others of Davānī’s students who were discussed in Chapter 2, Maybudī moved
neither to Ottoman nor to Timurid places of refuge. In that he was no different
21 For tuvājī, see Doerfer, 1:260–64. The term refers to an inspector of troops.
22 Sām Mīrzā, 76: his entry on Maybudī makes no reference to his death. ʿAbbās Futūḥī
Yazdī, Tadhkira-yi shuʿarā-yi Yazd (Tehran: 1987), 33: his grave is in Yazd near the Ḥaram-i
Imāmzāda Jaʿfar.
23 Quiring-Zoche, Isfahan im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, 212.
164 Chapter 5
than many other members of elite families, but it is important to note that he
had options which he declined.
Turning to larger issues implied in the story, they include the transforma-
tion of the Ak Koyunlu dispensation, the tension between centralization and
decentralization in the nascent Safavid state, and the conflict between Sunnis
and Shiʿis.24 Clearly the Ak Koyunlu and those associated with them were not
about to disappear without a fight. The revolt in Yazd was a sign of their reluc-
tance to abandon political ambitions in Iran. Muḥammad Karra was not a
member of the Ak Koyunlu family, but one of its appointees. He did not join
the Safavid enterprise and still held hopes of carving out some territory for
himself. Yazd stood on the fringes of western Iran and with Kirman might have
seemed a reasonable place to establish an independent regime. In the strug-
gles between the Kara Koyunlu, Ak Koyunlu, and Timurids throughout the fif-
teenth century, those border regions had passed back and forth. When the
Kara Koyunlu absorbed much of western Iran, the Timurids were still able to
hold on to Kirman until 858/1454.25 In the early days of the Safavid state, it
might have seemed that a similar situation could emerge, with the southwest-
ern regions eluding Ismāʿīl’s grasp, at least for some time.
Maybudī’s role in the turmoil of the southwestern provinces is open to sev-
eral interpretations. On one hand, he could have voluntarily chosen to oppose
the Safavid forces and to throw in his lot with a local leader. The puzzling ques-
tion is why he chose to support an apparently minor warlord.26 On the other
hand, he may have had little or no say about his participation in the rebellion.
It was not unknown for military leaders to commandeer civilian and religious
24 Woods, 163–72; Aubin, “É tudes,” 59.

25 Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 451.
26 Parallels can be drawn with Shāhrukh’s execution of many urban notables of Fars, includ-
ing sayyids, after his grandson Sulṭān-Muḥammad’s unsuccessful rebellion in 850/1446.
Mancini-Lander, “Memory on the Boundaries of Empire,” 273: “… the fact that Shāhrukh
would have these men of the pen killed, many of them not directly involved in the admin-
istration of Sulṭān-Muḥammad’s household, speaks to the power and value these notable
men actually wielded in the imperial system. Certainly, this power was due in part to their
elevated social standing—many of them were sayyids … It was also due to the close ties
these notables fostered with the Timurid princes and administrators who had been
installed in Fars … However [they] were important (and potentially dangerous) to the
imperial center, not only because of their social standing and their political connections
with potentially dangerous rivals of the Timurid house, but also because of the particular
configurations of esoteric knowledge and literary skills they possessed.” See also Binbaş,
“Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī,” 9, 53–70.
figures in their campaigns.27 Finally, the thorny matter of sectarian divisions

could have influenced Maybudī’s decision to resist Shah Ismāʿīl’s Shiʿi army.
Religious issues are tricky and require great care as we try to assign meaning
to political chronology, especially because sloppy distinctions between reli-
gion and politics create confusion rather than clarity. We run the risk of sim
plifying the motives of the actors involved in complex events, when they
themselves were conscious of the multitude of factors that influenced their
decisions, of the “intimate interplay between the spiritual and the temporal.”28
As Colin Mitchell pointedly remarks, it is a mistake to rigidly rely on the ‘Sunni-
Shiʿite binary’ as the key to understanding everything in the Islamic world of
the sixteenth century: “The medieval Irano-Islamic world was clearly hybrid-
ized by a complex array of cultural customs and political traditions. An unsur-
passed religious heterogeneity and confessional ambiguity among Sufi, Shiʿite,
and Sunni groups in fifteenth-century Iran allowed for the Safavids to emerge
with an equally abstruse set of political and doctrinal imperatives.”29 That
does not mean that the educated elite of Iran lacked a sense of identity.
Maybudī was a Shafiʿi with Sufi loyalties and deep respect for the Ahl al-Bayt.
Quantifying how much his actions resulted from ideology and how much from
social or regional solidarity is an impossible task. The task of the modern
scholar is not to paint the period with one monochromatic brush, but to iden-
tify the specific assumptions and intentions of individual authors in order to
develop a greater understanding of the elements at play.
The conflict between Sunni and Shiʿi probably had some connection to
Maybudī’s death, but the evidence is too scarce to specify its precise role. One
of the undeniably major changes that the Safavids introduced was the trans-
formation of their territories, which corresponded roughly to modern-day
Iran, into a Shiʿi state, and it is tempting to see every event through that filter.
Various studies have been undertaken to show that the Safavid mystical order
began without Shiʿi connections, that it became indisputably associated with
such beliefs at least by the time of Shaykh Junayd (d. 864/1460), and that under
Shah Ismāʿīl’s leadership, it might more accurately be described as a ghulāt, or
extremist, entity than as strictly Twelver Shiʿi. Shah Ismāʿīl’s poetry reveals that
on occasion he equated ʿAlī with God and that he identified himself with vari-
ous prophetic figures of the past, going so far as to call himself an incarnation
27 Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 443; Ibn Shihāb, 120: When Sayyid Shirvānī, governor of Kirman,
went out from his city to fight a force besieging Bam in 857/1453, he took with him “all the
sayyids, qadis, mawlas, and notables (ahl-i uṣūl).”
28 Babayan, “The Safavid Synthesis,” 148.
29 Mitchell, Colin, “Am I my brother’s keeper?,” 33, 51.
166 Chapter 5
or manifestation of Muḥammad, ʿAlī, and even God Himself, which enabled

him to claim divine rights such as obeisance.30 Such extreme views would
have caused Maybudī, Shafiʿi jurist that he was, to recoil in distaste, if not hor-
ror.
A second characteristic of the early Safavid regime about which much has
been made is the reported inability of the leaders of the movement to find
anyone deeply versed in Twelver Shiʿi beliefs when the latter were declared of-
ficial doctrine in Tabriz in 907/1501. In that year Shah Ismāʿīl appointed as high-
est religious functionary (ṣadr) the scholar with whom he had studied the
Qurʾān, Qadi Shams al-Dīn Lāhījī, but apparently his former teacher lacked a
thorough grounding in Twelver theology, having to dig up in some qadi’s li-
brary a volume of the Qawāʿid al-Islām of the ʿAllāma Ibn al-Muṭahhar al-Ḥillī
to use as a reference tool.31
30 Vladimir Minorsky, “The Poetry of Shāh Ismāʿīl,” BSOAS 10 (1942): 1006–1053, especially
1025a-26a. Aubin, “La politique religieuse des Safavides”; Arjomand, Shadow of God,
77–82. In “The Safavid Synthesis,” 137, Babayan negotiates the fluctuations in Safavid
beliefs: “Ismāʿīl’s public allegiance to the Imamite faith points to an awareness that to
unify and centralize his domains it would be imperative to alter the nature of Safavid
legitimacy and to forge a uniform religion: heterodoxies like his own had to be contained
… After all, as shah of Iran, Ismāʿīl would have an Iranian elite to contend with if he
desired to make use of their administrative expertise and consolidate power locally.”
31 Aubin, “É tudes,” 53. Said Amir Arjomand, “Religion, Political Action and Legitimate Dom-
ination in Shiʿite Iran: fourteenth to eighteenth centuries ad,” European Journal of Sociol-
ogy, 20 (1979): 89–90. Arjomand’s source is the Ross Anonymous (fn. 119). Another Twelver
Shiʿite scholar who greatly influenced the development of Shiʿism in Safavid lands was
Shaykh ʿAlī al-Karakī al-ʿĀmilī (d. 940/1533–34). He accepted Shah Ismāʿīl’s invitation to
come to Iran from Jabal ʿĀmil in what is present-day Lebanon, meeting with the ruler in
Isfahan in 910/1504–05. Colin Turner, Islam Without Allah? The Rise of Religious External-
ism in Safavid Iran (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000), 82. Several articles in the 1990s
about the influence of Twelver Shiʿi scholars from outside Iranian lands on Safavid reli-
gious developments demonstrate the usefulness, limitations, and frustrations of proso·
pography. Contrary to previous assumptions as evidenced in the work of Jaʿfar al-Muhajir,
Andrew Newman claimed that Arabic Twelver clerics did not flock to the Safavid enter-
prise and certainly did not view it as the advent of a Twelver utopia. In his view, they
expressed deep reservations about the speed with which Ismāʿīl adopted Shiʿism, the
extremist religio-political discourse of the regime, its lack of understanding of and inter-
est in Twelver Shiʿism, and its chances for achieving political stability. Andrew Newman,
“The Myth of the Clerical Migration to Safavid Iran: Arab Shiite Opposition to ʿAlī
al-Karakī and Safawid Shiism,” Die Welt des Islams 33 (1993): 66–112. Devin Stewart modi-
fies some of Newman’s statements to add nuance to the interpretation. Devin Stewart,
“Notes on the Migration of ʿĀmilī Scholars to Safavid Iran,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies
55 (1996): 81–103.
The identification of the ultimately successful regime with Twelver Shiʿism

changed in the course of time. With relation to Maybudī’s death its ambiguous
application to the Safavids indicates the need for care in the use of the term
‘Shiʿi’ as diametrically opposed to ‘Sunni’ or as a clear-cut, well-defined de-
scription of Ismāʿīl’s beliefs or of that of his followers. We cannot on one hand
write studies about the breathtaking heterogeneity of religious beliefs and
their expression, encompassing minority religions, mystical brotherhoods,
Shiʿi offshoots, and Sunnis, and on the other hand reduce the conflicts that
erupted during Shah Ismāʿīl’s rise to power as a simple Sunni-Shiʿi struggle.
Maybudī was one of many who were firmly grounded in a Sunni madhhab,
with all the learning and adherence to legally permissible and desirable acts
that implied, as well as being active in Sufi circles, with their emphasis on a
spiritual connection to the divine. On one hand, Sufi self-definition as a prod-
uct of ʿAlid tradition might make a switch to Twelver Shiʿism seem easy. On the
other, a different intellectual and legal tradition of legitimacy made submis-
sion to Imami authority a religious stumbling-block.
Because of the uncertainty involved in the use of religious terminology, it is
tempting to dismiss the religious aspects of Maybudī’s death and to concen-
trate on more tangible factors such as political ambitions and loyalties. Aubin
claims that Maybudī was put to death not as a Sunni, but as a rebel in the revolt
of Yazd against Kizilbash authority.32 Undeniably, Maybudī was a rebel affili-
ated with a military commander’s insurrection. Perhaps Maybudī’s prestige
obliged the author of the Jahān-gushāʾī-yi Khāqān-i Ṣāḥibqirān to justify his
execution on deep-seated sectarian grounds as a way of driving an extra nail
into the argument against clemency.
Maybudī’s ignominious end apparently did not adversely affect at least one
member of his family, the only descendant mentioned in the sources. That was
Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Rashīd, identified by Mustawfī Bāfqī as one of several sons of the
qadi, the rest remaining anonymous.33 ʿAbd al-Rashīd is not described as hav-
ing acquired great fame or fortune, nor does he seem to have met an unpleas-
32 Aubin, “É tudes,” 59. One of Aubin’s main points in the article is that the rise of the Safa-
vids gave many the opportunity to pay off old scores, regardless of religious affiliation. The
confusion of explanations for the execution of Shāh Qavām al-Dīn Ḥusayn Nūrbakhshī by
Shah Ṭahmāsp in 944/1537–38 parallels those for Maybudī’s. Ties to Timurid and Ak
Koyunlu rulers, poor political judgment concerning rebels, and concerns about religious
elements asserting independence from the Safavid dynasty were all in play. Aside from
the similarities, what is interesting is that Shāh Qavām al-Dīn fared relatively well several
decades into the Safavid regime, despite ties to other centers of power. Bashir, Messianic
Hopes, 186–92.
33 Mustawfī Bāfqī, 3:355, 166 and 641 respectively.
168 Chapter 5
ant end or suffered any other difficulties. The references to him in Mustawfī
Bāfqī include Munajjim as part of his name, although nothing is said about
anything he did or wrote concerning astrology. One reference concerns his po-
etry and the other two are incidental to Maybudī’s waqfs. It is quite possible
that the manuscript is deficient or that a completely different ʿAbd al-Rashīd
merited that epithet. If Maybudī’s son was indeed an astrologer, one can only
speculate on how seriously he took his father’s reservations about the profes-
sion. Was he a mathematical astronomer or a poetic prognosticator?
The two events known about Maybudī’s last years—the composition of an-
other work on philosophy and his death—are symbolic of his public life, which
is all that is really known to us. Scholarship and political activity were seldom
separate during his career, from his politically active teachers to the role of his
knowledge in gaining him an appointment as qadi. Whether the views pre-
sented in his works had any effect on his execution cannot be determined and
is, in fact, too neat an explanation. That contemporary historians drew such a
connection demonstrates their awareness of the multi-layered lives of civilian
notables, but does not necessarily tell the whole story.
Conclusion 169
Chapter 6
Conclusion
The treasure troves of manuscripts which remain unstudied and unpublished

entice us with the riches of the unknown. It is quite possible, even probable,
that in a marginal note or textual variant patiently waits some piece of infor-
mation that will modify or even dramatically change the picture I have painted
of the life and works of Qadi Ḥusayn Maybudī. On the most basic level, we
know something about his education, professional life, and network of friends
and mentors, and we can draw satisfactory conclusions about his thoughts on
a variety of subjects. His education was seen to have been reasonably typical
for the time, his written works broad in scope. The book most closely analyzed
was the Sharḥ-i Dīvān-i ʿAlī, significant for its social and intellectual implica-
tions in the late Ak Koyunlu and early Safavid periods. Maybudī’s career as
scholar was pursued simultaneously with that as qadi in the provincial city of
Yazd. Maybudī profited from contacts made while a student and protege of
Davānī, although the particular network of civilian notables in which he oper-
ated appears to have frayed beginning with Sultan Yaʿqūb’s death in 896/1490.
Perhaps that was one reason why no one prevented Maybudī’s execution after
an unsuccessful revolt against Shah Ismāʿīl.
While Maybudī will in many respects remain a mystery, in others his life
sheds light on late fifteenth-century Iran, especially on the lives of the provin-
cial elites in that time and place. Glimmerings of the rich lives of the civilian
elites shine through even so rudimentary a study as this. The first two chapters
indicated the scope of medieval Iranian education. Not only did it engross the
minds of its participants, but it also had political and social ramifications that
continued to affect the mundane aspects of their lives until their deaths. Stu-
dents learned about everything from Scripture to law to cosmology, history,
and poetry. Maybudī’s confidence in his ability to encompass universal knowl-
edge is evident: “There is no discipline among the speculative and transmitted
sciences (ʿaqlī and naqli), the difficult books of which I could not teach with-
out intensive study, and no substantial element of knowledge the essence of
which I could not penetrate with some reflection.”1 Furthermore, his educa-
tion provided him with a moral framework, largely influenced by mystical
training, that shaped his relations to his peers and inferiors. After admitting his
1 Letter to Imām al-Dīn Shaykh ʿAlī Sāvajī. MUN, 131. Maybudī was defending himself from ac-
cusations of false belief, which apparently were extended to one of his students.

170 Chapter 6
intellectual prowess, Maybudī goes on to say that his heart is set on a higher
goal and his mind is devoid of desire for anything but that goal, such that he
does not boast of his knowledge.
Exegesis being his primary mode of inquiry and literary creation meant that
he spent his life confronting his vast heritage, seeing what he shared with his
predecessors in a range of disciplines and making that material intelligible to
his contemporaries and future generations. His crowning work, the Sharḥ-i
Dīvān-i ʿAlī, offers sufficient testimony to the extent of his intellectual ambi-
tions and achievements. It reflects a particular moment in textual interpreta-
tion that perhaps can be generalized into some larger historical and literary
understanding once more texts have been studied in depth.
Maybudī’s type of education encouraged the creation of multi-faceted reli-
gious men who took as a matter of course their involvement in the production
of food for the body as well as for the mind, their potential to affect the func-
tioning of the state directly, while they themselves were affected by the prog-
ress of the heavens. The main result of this study has been less to analyze
provincial notables as a distinct group or class than to illustrate the complexity
of a particular representative of that class. The institution of qadis may be
studied separately from Sufi orders or poetic developments, but all those ele-
ments were frequently combined in a single individual.
In conjunction with other monographs on Davānī, the Sāvajīs, and Lāhījī, at
the very least, Maybudī’s biography will eventually allow us to determine how
an individual was typical of his age and how he stood apart. At present, reach-
ing into the grab bag of chronicles and hagiographies provides interesting par-
allels here and there, but any conclusions from them rest on shaky, anecdotal
foundations. Themes such as lines of patronage and family ties are interesting
avenues to pursue in pre-modern Islamic history, but the life of one man does
not provide enough information to permit much elaboration on accepted doc-
trine about the sources of material wealth for the ulama, the self-perpetuation
of the civilian elite, and the importance of knowing the right people. It comes
as no surprise that land ownership was of interest to Maybudī, that his father
was a bureaucrat and his son a scholar, and that he benefited from his ties to
such influential people as Davānī. In order to go beyond those generalizations,
much additional research will have to be done. Studies of eminent intellectu-
als of the Ak Koyunlu—or Kara Koyunlu, or Timurid—periods need to be un-
dertaken because, without basing generalizations in fact, the hope of crafting
more subtle analyses of the social and intellectual history of the period will
remain fruitless.
The value of studying Maybudī is that, having identified the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries as a period of political, social, and religious ferment that
Conclusion 171
was later transformed yet again under the Ottoman and Safavid empires, we
gain insight into the accommodating stance of one group among the ulama.
Active administrators and politicans, highly educated in a society that de-
manded intellectual excellence, firmly ensconced in local politics and econo-
mies, deeply religious, these are remarkable men who coexisted with other,
quite different, men who took messianic, esoteric knowledge as a call to vio-
lent action.
172 Chapter 6
Bibliography
Bibliography 173
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Maybudī’s Writings
Abharī, Athīr al-Dīn Mufaḍḍal b. ʿAmr (d. 1264). Hidāyat al-mughtadhī ilā ḥall al-
Maybudī. Edited by M. Qāsim Nānautvī et al. Vol. 1. n.p., 1968.
———. Hidāyat al-ḥikma. n.p., 196-?.
———. Sharḥ Hidāyat al-hikma. Lithograph edition [by Karbalāyi Muḥammad Ḥasan],
Tehran 1297/1879.
Hawrāʾīya. d. 1056. Dānishgāh, no. 1038.
Jām-i gītī-numā [Shiraz/897]. Edited by ʿAbd Allāh Nūrānī, Taḥqīqat-Islāmī, 1 (1365/1986):
93–112.
———. no date. Dār al-Kutub, Cairo ms.: Majāmīʿ Fārsī Talʿat, No. 26, ff. 85–174.
———. dated 1036. Dār al-Kutub, Cairo ms.: Majāmīʿ Talʿat, No. 873, ff. 36–53.
———. no date. 21 ff. Dār al-Kutub, Cairo ms.: III Ḥikmat Taymūr. Attributed to Ghiyāth
al-Dīn Manṣūr al-Shīrāzī (d. 930).
———. no date. Kitābkhāna-yi Mashhad, no. 404.
———. 952/1545. 41 ff. Bibliothèque Nationale, Supplément 1143.
———. 44 leaves. Bibliothèque Nationale. Ravius; Colbert 3663; Regius 1549, 3. Ancien
fonds 34.
———. 17th c. 12 ff. Bibliothèque Nationale, Supplément 76.
———. Bodleian Library. LAUD 313.
———. 1029/1619. Bodleian Library. ff. 21b-30b in Ms. Arab f. 65 (total 9 works, 181 ff.).
———. Ff. 63–106. British Museum, Add. 7720.
Munsha⁠ʾāt. dated 938. ff. 1–78 in majmūʿa. Dār al-Kutub, Cairo ms.: Ādāb-i Fārsī Talʿat,
No. 32.
———. no date. ff. 66–140 in majmūʿa. Dār al-Kutub, Cairo ms.: Ādāb-i Fārsī Talʿat, No.
116.
———. no date. ff. 1–79. İstanbul Üniversitesi ms. FY584.
———. 46 leaves. Konsularakademie [of Vienna].
———. dated 1254. In majmūʿa No. 4724. Kitābkhāna-yi Markazī-yi Dānishgāh-i Tihrān.
———. dated 985. In majmūʿa No. 5. Kitābkhāna-yi Markazī-yi Dānishgāh-i Tihrān.
———. dated 985. Kitābkhāna-yi Sānā, no. 13715.
———. Munsha⁠ʾāt-i Maybudī: Qāḍī Ḥusayn Ibn Muʿīn al-Dīn Maybudī. Edited by Nuṣrat
Allāh Furūhar. Tehran: Nuqṭa, 1376/1997.
Sharḥ-i dīvān-i ʿAlī al-Murtaḍā. [Ṣafar/890]
———. dated 20 Shawwāl 924. 194 ff. Dār al-Kutub, Cairo ms.: Adab-i Fārsī, no. 115.

174 Bibliography
———. no date. 317 ff. Dār al-Kutub, Cairo ms.: Adab-i Fārsī, no. 109.
———. dated 969. 215 ff. Dār al-Kutub, Cairo ms.: Adab-i Fārsī Talʿat, no. 82.
———. 17 c. 259 ff. Bibliothèque Nationale. Ravius-Ancien fonds 253.
———. 1688. ff. 111–210. Bodleian Library. Ms. Ind. Inst. Pers. 78. Favātiḥ only.
———. dated 928 and 17th c. 356, 392, 246, 275 ff. respectively. Bankipore, No. 927–32.
———. 16th c.? 318 ff. British Museum, Add. 7536.
———. 16th c.? 265 ff. British Museum, Or. 125.
———. 252, 449, 280, 270 ff. India Office Library. (No. 2663: Bibliotheca Leydeniana, No.
2681; No. 2664: No. 1230: No. 2665: Bibliotheca Leydeniana, No. 2337; No. 2666: No.
2967.)
———. Sharḥ-i Dīvān-i Mansūb ba Amīr al-Muʾminīn ʿAlī Ibn Abī Ṭālib. Ed. Ḥasan
Raḥmānī & Sayyid Ibrāhīm Ashk-Shīrīn. Tehran: Mirāth-i Maktūb, 1379/2000.
Sharḥ al-Risālat al-Shamsīya. Autograph. 886/1481–2. fols. 1–99 (in total 128). Chester
Beatty, No. 3759 (1).
———. Lithograph Edition, Istanbul, Shaʿban 1289/October 1871.
Sharḥ al-Risāla fī ādāb al-baḥth. No date. fols. 100–27. Chester Beatty, No. 3759 (2).
Other Primary Sources
Abīvardī, “Fayzi,” Ḥusayn (fl. late 9th/15th c.). “Du āthār az Ḥusayn-i Abīvardī.” Edited
by Īraj Afshār. FIZ 15 (1347/1968): 5–160.
Abū al-Fidāʾ. Géographie d’Aboulféda. [Taqwīm al-buldān]. Edited by M. Reinaud and M.
de Slane. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1840.
Abū Ṭālib b. Muḥammad, Iṣfahānī. Khulāṣat al-afkār. India Office Library Ms. Pers. 2692.
University of Chicago uncatalogued ms. no. 1198.
ʿĀlam-ārā-yi Ṣafavī. Edited by Yād Allāh Shukrī. Tehran, 1350/1971.
ʿĀlam-ārā-yi Shāh Ismaʿīl. Edited by Aṣghar Muntaẓir Ṣāḥib. Tehran, 1349/1970.
ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib. Carmina, arabice et latine: al-qaṣāʾid. Edited by G. Kuypers. Lugduni
Batavorum, n.p., 1745.
ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī, Niẓām al-Dīn (d. 906/1510). Ali Şir Nevaī: Divanlar ile hamse dışındakı
eserler. Edited by Agāh Sırrı Levend. 4 vols. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi,
1965–68.
———. Tadhkira-yi Majālis al-nafāʾis. Edited by ʿAlī Aṣghar Ḥikmat. Tehran: n.p.,
1363/1984.
Amīr Khusraw Dihlavī (ca. 651–725/1253–1325). Kulliyāt-i ghazalīyāt-i Khusraw. Edited
by Iqbāl Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn. 4 vols. Lahore: Packages, 1972.
———. Kulliyāt-i qaṣāʾid-i Khusraw. Edited by Iqbāl Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn. 2 vols. Lahore: National
Book Foundation, 1977.
Bibliography 175
Aubin, Jean, ed. Matériaux pour la biographie de Shāh Niʿmatullāh Walī Kirmānī.
Bibliothèque Iranienne; no. 7. Tehran: Département d’Iranologie de l’Institut Franco-
Iranien, 1956.
Bābānī, Ismāʿīl Bāshā. Hadīyat al-ʿārifīn. 2 vols. Istanbul: Wikālat al-Maʿārif, 1951–55.
———. Īḍāḥ al-maknūn fī al-dhayl ʿalā Kashf al-ẓunūn. 2 vols. Istanbul: n.p., 1364/1945.
Barbaro, Josafa and Contarini, Ambrogio. I Viaggi in Persia degli Ambasciatori Veneti
Barbaro e Contarini. Edited by L. Lockhart, R. Morozzo della Rocca, M.F. Tiepolo.
Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato. Il Nuovo Ramusio, vol. 7. Rome: Libreria dello Stato,
1973.
Barbaro, Josafa and Contarini, Ambrogio. Travels to Tana and Persia. [1471] Translated
by W. Thomas and S.A. Roy. New York. Reprint of Hakluyt Society, series 1, no. 49.
Contains A Narrative of Italian Travels in Persia in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.
Translated by C. Grey. London: Hakluyt Society, 1873.
Bidlīsī, Ḥusām al-Dīn Idrīs (d. 926/1520). Hasht bihisht. 919 A.H. Ms. Istanbul, TKS,
Emanet Hazinesi 1655.
———. Munsha⁠ʾāt. Ms. İstanbul, Ayasofya Kütüphanesi 3986.
Chekhovich, O.D. Samarkandskie Dokumenty XV-XVI Veka. Moscow: Nauka, 1974.
Davānī, Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Asʿad (d. 908/1503). ʿArḍ-nāma. Edited by Ī. Afshār.
Tehran: n.p., 1335/1956.
———. “Az makātib-i ʿAllāma Davānī.” Armaghān 22 (1320): 523–24.
———. “Du nāma-yi bāstānī.” Armaghān 22 (1320): 14–16.
———. Lawāmiʿ al-ishrāq fī makārim al-akhlāq. [Akhlāq-i Jalālī]. Lithograph. Lucknow,
1283/1866–67.
———. “Maktūb-i tārīkhī.” Armaghān 13 (1311/1932): 215–16.
———. “Maktūb-i tārīkhī.” Armaghān 13 (1311/1932): 235–36.
Dawlatshāh Samarqandī (d. 904/1494). Tadhkirat al-shuʿarāʾ. Edited by Muḥammad
ʿAbbāsī. Tehran: Kitābfurūshī-yi Bārānī, 1337/1958.
Gāvān, ʿImād al-Dīn Maḥmūd (d. 886/1481). Riyāḍ al-inshāʾ: A manual of letter-writing.
Edited by Chand b. Ḥusayn. Hyderabad: Sarkar ʿAlī, 1938.
Ghaffārī Qazvīnī, Qāḍī Aḥmad (d. 975/1567). Nusakh/[Tārīkh]-i jahān-ārā. Edited by H.
Narāqī. Tehran: n.p., [1963].
———. Tārīkh-i Nigāristān. Edited by Murtaḍā Mudarris-Gīlānī. Tehran: Kitābfurūshī-yi
Ḥāfiẓ, 1340/1962.
Gülşeni, Muḥyī-al-Dīn. Menāqıb-ı İbrāhīm Gülşeni ve Şemleli-zāde Aḥmed Efendi Şive-i
Ṭarīqat-i Gülşeniye. Edited by Tahsin Yazıcı. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi,
1982.
Ḥāfiẓ. Dīvān. Edited by Sayyid Abū al-Qāsim Anjavī Shīrāzī. 3d ed. Tehran: Intishārāt-i
Jāvīdān-i ʿIlmī, 1346/1966.
Ḥājjī Khalīfa, 1609–1657. Kashf al-ẓunūn ʿan asāmī al-kutub wa-al-funūn. 2 vols. Istanbul:
Maarif Matbaası, 1360/1941.
176 Bibliography
Hāshimī Sandīlavī, Aḥmad ʿAlī Khān. Tadhkira-yi makhzan al-gharāʾib. 2 vols. Lahore:
Intishārāt-i Dānishgāh-i Panjāb, 1968.
Ḥaydar Dughlat, Mīrzā M. (d. 958/1551). A History of the Moghuls of Central Asia: Being
the Tarikh-i Rashidi. Edited by N. Elias. Translated by E. Denison Ross. London: S. Low,
Marston and company, 1898.
Hidāyat, Riḍā Qulī Khān (1800–71). Tadhkira-yi riyāḍ al-ʿārifīn. [Tehran]: Kitābfurūshī-yi
Maḥmūdī, 1344/1965.
Ḥusaynī Qazvīnī, Mīr Yaḥyā b. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Sayfī (d. 962/1555). Lubb al-tavārīkh. Edited
by Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn. Tehran: Muʾassasa-yi Khāvar, 1314/1936.
———. Lubb al-tavārīkh. Facs. ed. 1st ed. Tehran, 1363/1984.
Ḥusaynī Yazdī, Rukn al-Dīn. Jāmiʿ al-khayrāt: vaqfnāma. Edited by M. Taqī Dānishpazhūh
and Ī. Afshār. Farhang-i Īrān-zamīn, Intishārāt no. 6. Tehran: Shirkat-i Sihāmī-yi Ofset,
1341/1962.
Ibn al-ʿArabī. The Bezels of Wisdom. Translated by R.W.J. Austin. New York: Paulist Press,
1980.
———. al-Futūḥāt al-Makkīya. 4 vols. Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1968.
Ibn al-Ṭayyib. Arabic Logic: Ibn al-Ṭayyib’s Commentary on Porphyry’s “Eisagoge”.
Translated by and commentary by Kwame Gyekye. Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1979.
Ibn Ḥawqal, Abū al-Qāsim (fl. 366/977). Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ. Edited by J.H. Kramers.
Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum, vol. 2. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967.
Ibn Khurdādhbih (fl. 3rd/9th c.). Kitāb al-masālik wa-al-mamālik. Edited by M. J. de
Goeje. Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum, vol. 6. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967.
Ibn Rusta, Abū ʿAlī b. ʿUmar. Kitāb al-aʿlāq al-nafīsa. Edited by M. J. de Goeje. Bibliotheca
Geographorum Arabicorum, vol. 7. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967.
Ibn Shihāb Shāʿir Munajjim, Tāj al-Dīn Ḥasan. Jāmiʿ al-tavārīkh-i Ḥasanī. Ms. Istanbul,
Fatih 4307.
———. Jāmiʿ al-tavārīkh-i Ḥasanī. Ms. Tehran, Kitābkhāna-yi Millī (dated 880/
1475–76).
———. Jāmiʿ al-tavārīkh-i Ḥasanī. Edited by Ḥ.M. Ṭabāṭabāʾī and Ī. Afshār. Karachi:
Institute of Central and West Asian Studies, University of Karachi, 1987.
Idrīsī, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad. (ca. 495–561/1100–1166). Opus Geographicum. Edited
by E. Cerulli, F. Gabrieli, et al. Vol. 4. Leiden: E.J. Brill, for the Istituto Universitario
Orientale di Napoli and the Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente,
1970–84.
Iṣfahānī, ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿĪsā Afandī (d. 1130/1718). Riyāḍ al-ʿUlamāʾ wa-Ḥiyāḍ al-Fuḍalāʾ.
Edited by Aḥmad al-Ḥusaynī. 6 vols. Qum: Maṭbaʿat al-Khayyām, 1401/1981.
Iṣfahānī, Abū al-Faḍl Kamāl al-Dīn Ismaʿīl. Dīvān. Edited by Ḥusayn Baḥr al-ʿUlūmī.
Tehran: n.p., 1348/1969.
Bibliography 177
Iskandar Beg Munshī. History of Shah ʿAbbas the Great (Tārīkh-i ʿĀlamārā-yi ʿAbbāsī).
Translated by R.M. Savory. 2 vols. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1978.
———. Tārīkh-i ʿĀlam-ārā-yi ʿAbbāsī. Tehran: Amīr Kabīr, 1350/1971.
Iṣṭakhrī, Abū Isḥāq al-Fārisī (1st half of 4/10 c.). Kitāb Masālik al-mamālik. Edited by M.
J. de Goeje. Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum, vol. 1. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967.
Jaʿfarī, Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad (15th c.). Tārīkh-i Yazd. Edited by Ī. Afshār. 2nd ed. Tehran:
Bungāh-i Tarjuma va Nashr-i Kitāb, 1965.
———. “Chand Faṣl az ‘Tārīkh-i kabīr’.” Edited by Ī. Afshār. FIZ 6 (1958): 89–94.
Jāmī, Nūr al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (d. 898/1492). Arbaʿīn-i Jāmī. Edited by Kāẓim Mudīr
Shānahchī. With facsimile by Sulṭān ʿAlī Mashhadī. n.p., 1363.
———. Dīvān. Edited by H. Pazhmān. Tehran: Ḥusayn Maḥmūdī, 1335/1955.
———. Nafaḥāt al-uns. Edited by Mahdī Tawḥīdī-pūr. Tehran: Kitābfurūshī-yi Saʿdī,
1336/1958.
———. Pis’ma-avtografi Abdarrahmana Jami iz “Al’boma Navoi”. Edited by A. Urunbaev.
Tashkent: Fan, 1982.
———. Ruqaʿāt. 142 pp. University of Chicago uncatalogued microfilms, 1286. Calcutta,
1226/1811 ms. India Office Library Persian book: 306. 32. E15.
Kāshifī Ṣafī, Fakhr al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Ḥusayn (fl. 938/1532). Rashaḥāt ʿayn al-ḥayāt. Edited by
ʿAlī Aṣghar Muʿīnīyān. 2 vols. Tehran: Bunyād-i Nīkūkārī-yi Nūriyānī, 2536/1977.
Kātib, Aḥmad b. Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī (after 862/1458). Tārīkh-i jadīd-i Yazd. Edited by Ī. Afshār.
Intishārāt-i Farhang-i Īrān-zamīn, Silsila-yi Mutūn va Taḥqīqāt, no. 10. Tehran: Ibn
Sīnā, 1345/1966.
Khayyāmpūr, ʿAbd al-Rasūl. Farhang-i sukhanvarān. Tabriz: n.p., 1340/[1961].
Khunjī-Iṣfahānī, Faḍl Allāh b. Rūzbihān (d. 926/1519–20). Persia in A. D. 1478–1490: An
Abridged Translation of Faḍlullāh b. Rūzbihān Khunjī’s Tārīkh-i ʿĀlam-ārā-yi Amīnī.
Edited by V. Minorsky. Royal Asiatic Society Monographs. vol. 26. London: Luzac for
the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1957.
———. Tārīkh-i ʿĀlam-ārā-yi Amīnī. Persian text edited by John E. Woods with the
abridged English translation by Vladimir Minorsky: Persia in ad 1478–1490 (Turkmenica
12)/Revised and augmented by John E. Woods. London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1992.
———. Tārīkh-i ʿĀlam-ārā-yi Amīnī. Bibliothèque Nationale Ms. Suppl. pers. 101.
Khvāndamīr, Ghiyāth al-Dīn (d. ca. 942/1536). Dastūr al-vuzarāʾ. Edited by S. Nafīsī.
Tehran: Iqbāl, 1317/1938.
——— Ḥabīb al-siyār fī akhbār afrād al-bashar. Edited by J. Humāʾī and M. Dabīr-Siyāqī.
4 vols. Tehran: Kitābkhāna-yi Khayyām, 1333/1954.
———. Inshāʾ. Ms. London, British Library Persian Ms. 11012.
———. Nāma-yi nāmī. Ms. Paris, Bibl. Nat. Pers ms. 1842. Ms. London, India Office
Library 2711.
Khwāja Aḥrār. The Letters of Khwāja ʿUbayd Allāh Aḥrār and His Associates. Edited and
translated by Asom Urunbaev and Jo-Ann Gross. Leiden: Brill, 2002.
178 Bibliography
Khwārazmī, Tāj al-Dīn Ḥusayn b. Ḥasan. Sharḥ-i Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam. [835–838] 2 vols.
Tehran: n.p., 1364.
Lāhījī, ʿAlī (d. ca. 922/1516). Tārīkh-i khānī: Muhammedanische Quellen zur Geschichte
der südlichen Küstenländer des Kaspischen Meeres. Edited by Bernhard Dorn. 2 vols.
St. Petersburg: Buchdruckerei der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1857.
Lāhījī, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad. Mafātīḥ al-iʿjāz fī sharḥ-i Gulshan-i rāz. Edited by
Muḥammad Riḍā Barzgar Khāliqī and ʿIffat Karbāsī. Tehran: 1371/1992.
Maqdisī, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Aḥmad (d. 390/1000). Aḥsan al-taqāsim fī maʿrifat
al-aqālīm. Edited by M. J. de Goeje. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967.
Marvārīd, Khwāja ʿAbd Allāh (d. 948/1541). Staatsschreiben der Timuridenzeit: Das
Sharaf-nāma des ʿAbdallāh Marwārīd in kritischer Auswertung. Edited and translated
by Hans Robert Roemer. Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur,
Veröffentlichungen der orientalischen Kommission, Bd. 3. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner,
1952.
Maʿṣūm ʿAlī Shāh, M. Maʿṣūm. Ṭarāʾiq al-ḥaqāʾiq. Edited by M. Jaʿfar Maḥjūb. 3 vols.
Tehran: Kitābkhāna-yi Bārānī, 1960–66.
Mīrkhvānd, Muḥammad (d. 903/1498). Tārīkh-i rawḍat al-ṣafā [Rawḍat al-Ṣafāʾ fī Sīrat
al-Anbiyāʾ va-al-Mulūk va-al-Khulafāʾ]. 10 vols. Tehran: Markazī-yi Khayyām Pīrūz,
1338–39/[1959–60].
Mudarrisī-Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Ḥusayn, ed. Farmānhā-yi Turkmānān-i Qarāqūyunlū va Aqqūyunlū.
Qum: n.p., 1352/1973.
Mustawfī Bāfqī, Muḥammad Mufīd (fl. ca. 1099/1679). Jāmiʿ-i Mufīdī. Edited by Ī. Afshār.
Vols. 1 and 3. Intishārāt-i Kitābfurūshī-yi Asadī, no. 5. Tehran: Asadī, 1340–42/
1961–63.
———. “Juzʾī az jild-i duvvum-i ‘Jāmiʿ-i Mufīdī’.” FIZ 11 (1963): 193–228.
Naṣrābādī, M. Ṭāhir. Tadhkira-yi Naṣrābādī. Tehran: n.p., 1317/1938.
Navāʾī, ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn. Asnād va mukātabāt-i tārīkh-i Īrān: az Tīmūr tā Shāh Ismāʿīl.
Majmūʿa-yi Īrān-shināsī, no. 22. Bungāh-i Tarjuma va-Nashr-i Kitāb. Intishārāt, no.
145. Tehran: Bungāh-i Tarjuma va-Nashr-i Kitāb, 1341/1963.
Pickthall, Mohammed Marmaduke, trans. The Meaning of the Glorious Koran. New York:
New American Library, n.d.
Qāsim Anvār, ʿAlī b. Naṣīr. Kulliyāt. Edited by Saʿīd Nafīsī. Tehran: Kitābkhāna-yi Sanāʾī,
1337/1958.
Qazvīnī, Fakhr al-Zamānī. Tadhkira-yi maykhāna. Edited by Aḥmad Gulchīn-Maʿānī.
Tehran: Shirkat-i Nasabī-yi Ḥājj Muḥammad Ḥusayn Iqbāl, 1340/1961.
Qazwīnī, Zakariyā b. Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd. Āthār al-bilād wa-akhbār al-ʿibād. Beirut:
Dār Ṣādir, 1969.
Qummī, Aḥmad b. Mīr Munshī Sharaf al-Dīn Ḥusayn. Khulāṣat al-tavārīkh. 2 vols. Edited
by Iḥsān Ishrāqī, Tehran: University of Tehran Press, 1359-/[1980-].
Bibliography 179
Raḍī, Muḥammad b. Ḥusayn, al-Sharīf (359–404/969 or 970–1016). Nahj al-balāgha. Com-

mentary by Muḥammad ʿAbduh. 2nd edition. 4 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Andalus, 1382/1963.
Rāzī, Amīn Aḥmad (fl. ca. 1005/1595). Haft Iqlīm. Edited by J. Fāḍil. 3 vols. Tehran: n.p.,
1961.
Rūmī, Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn. Kitāb-i Mathnavī. Edited by R.A. Nicholson. 7 vols.
E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Series, new series, no. 4. London: Gibb Memorial Series, 1925.
Rūmlū, Ḥasan Beg. Aḥsan al-tavārīkh. Translated and edited by Charles Norman Seddon.
Gaekwad’s Oriental Series, vols. 57 and 69. Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1931–34.
———. Aḥsan al-tavārīkh. Edited by ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Navāʾī. 2 vols. Tehran, 1349/1970.
Ṣabā, M. Muẓaffar Ḥusayn. Tadhkira-yi rūz-i rawshan. Tehran, 1343.
Sām Mīrzā Ṣafavī. Tadhkira-yi Tuḥfa-yi Sāmī. Edited by Rukn al-Dīn Humāyūn Farrukh.
Tehran: ʿIlmī, [1960].
Samarqandī, ʿAbd a-Razzāq b. Isḥāq (816–87/1413–82). Maṭlaʿ-i saʿdayn va majmaʿ-i
baḥrayn. Edited by Muḥammad Shafīʿ. 2 vols. Lahore: Gīlānī Press, 1941–49.
———. Maṭla-ʿi saʿdayn va majmaʿ-i baḥrayn. Leningradskii Vostochnyi Institute AN
SSR ms. c 443.
Sāmī, Fraşeri, Şemseddin. Qāmūs al-aʿlām. 6 vols. Istanbul: Mihran Maṭbaʿsī, 1306–16.
Sāvajī, Salmān. Dīvān. Edited by Manṣūr Mushfiq. Tehran: Bungāh-i Maṭbūʿāt-i Ṣafī ʿAlī
Shāh, 1336/1958.
Shushtarī, Nūr Allāh b. ʿAbd Allāh. Majālis al-muʾminīn. Lithograph. Tehran, 1299/1881.
Sīrāfī, Abū Saʿīd al-Ḥasan b. ʿAbd Allāh. Biographies des grammariens de l’école de Basra.
Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1936.
Tarāz, ʿAbd al-Vahhāb. “Kitābhā-yi mawqūfāt-i Yazd.” Edited by Ī. Afshār. FIZ 10 (1341/1962):
5–123.
Tārīkh-i Shāh Ismāʿīl-i Ṣafavī. MS. London, British Library, Or. 3248.
Taşköprüzade, Aḥmad (d. 968/1561). Al-Shaqāʾiq al-nuʿmānīya fī ʿulamā al-dawla al-
ʿUthmānīya. Edited by Ahmed Subhi Furat. İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi
Yayınları, no. 3353. Istanbul: Edebiyat Fakültesi Basımevi, 1985.
Ṭihrānī, Abū Bakr. Kitāb-i Diyārbakrīya. Edited by Necati Lugal and Faruk Sümer. 2 vols.
Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, seri III, no. 7/7a. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu,
1962–64.
Thābitiyān, Dh. Asnād wa-nāmahā-yi tārīkhī-yi dawra-yi Ṣafavīya. Tehran: Kitābkhāna-yi
Ibn Sīnā, 1343/1964.
Yāqūt. Muʿjam al-buldān. Edited by F. Wüstenfeld. Vol. 4 of 7. Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus
for the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, 1924.
Yūsuf Ahl, Jalāl al-Dīn. Farāʾid al-Ghiyāthī. Edited by Heshmat Moayyad. Tehran:
Foundation for Iranian Culture, 1977.
Ẓahīr Fāryābī, Abū al-Faḍl Ṭāhir b. Muḥammad (d. 598/1201–02). Dīvān. Edited by Taqī
Bīnish. n.p., 1337/1958.
———. Dīvān. Edited by Hāshim Raḍī. Tehran: Intishārāt-i Kāva, 1959.
180 Bibliography
Zamakhsharī, Maḥmūd b. ʿUmar (d. 1144). Asās al-balāgha. Beirut: Dār Ṣādir/Dār Bayrut,
1385/1965.
Secondary Sources
Adamson, Peter. The Arabic Plotinus: A Philosophical Study of the Theology of Aristotle.
London: Gerald Duckworth & Co., 2002.
Adamson, Peter and Richard C. Taylor. The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Afnan, Soheil. A Philosophical Lexicon in Persian and Arabic. 2d ed. Tehran: n.p., 1362/1983.
Afshār, Īraj. “Farmāni az Sulṭān Rustam Aq Qoyunlū.” Barrasīhā-yi tārīkhī 8 (1352):
207–28.
———. “Qāḍī Mīr Ḥusayn Maybudī.” Yaghmā 1 (1327/1948–49): 221–22.
———. Yādgārhā-yi Yazd. 2 vols. Silsila-yi Intishārāt-i Anjuman-i Āthār-i Millī, no. 68.
Tehran: Anjuman-i Āthār-i Millī, 1368.
Algar, Hamid. “Bibliographic Notes on the Naqshbandī Ṭarīqat.” In Essays on Islamic
Philosophy and Science, edited by G.F. Hourani, 254–59. Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1975.
———. “The Naqshbandī Order: A Preliminary Survey of its History and Significance.”
Studia Islamica 44 (1979): 123–52.
ʿĀmilī, Muḥsin. Aʿyān al-Shīʿa. 1st ed. 56 vols. Beirut: Maṭbaʿat al-Inṣāf, 1951-.
Anawati, G.C., and L. Gardet. É tudes de philosophie musulmane. Paris: J. Vrin, 1974.
Anay, Harun. “Devvani.” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi. vol. 9. Istanbul 1994:
257–62.
Angeles, Peter A. Dictionary of Philosophy. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1981.
Arberry, A.J. Sufism: an account of the mystics of Islam. Ethical and Religious Classics of
East and West, no. 2. London: G. Allen & Unwin., 1950.
Ardakānī, Ḥusayn Maḥbūbī. “Jāmiʿ-i Mufīdī.” Rahnamā-yi Kitāb 7 (1343): 87–96.
Arjomand, Said Amir. “The Law, Agency, and Policy in Medieval Islamic Society:
Development of the Institutions of Learning from the Tenth to the Fifteenth Century.”
Comparative Studies in Society and History, 41/2 (1999): 263–93.
———. “Religion, Political Action and Legitimate Domination in Shiʿite Iran: fourteenth
to eighteenth centuries ad.” European Journal of Sociology, 20 (1979): 58–109.
———. The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1984.
Aubin, Jean. “Deux sayyids de Bam au XVe siècle. Contribution à l’histoire de l’Iran ti-
mouride.” Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur,
Geistes-u. Sozialwiss. Klasse, no. 7. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1956.
Bibliography 181
———. “Eléments pour l’étude des agglomérations urbaines dans l’Iran médiéval.” In
The Islamic City, edited by A.G. Hourani and S.M. Stern, 65–76. Oxford: Bruno
Cassirer, 1970.
———. “É tudes safavides I: Šāh Ismāʿīl et les notables de l’Iraq persan.” JESHO 2 (1959):
37–81.
———. “La politique religieuse des safavides.” In Le Shiʿisme imamite, edited by T. Fahd,
235–44, Paris: 1970.
———. “Quelques notices du Mukhtaṣar-i Mufid.” FIZ 6 (1337): 164–77.
———. “Un Santon quhistani de l’époque timouride.” REI 35 (1967): 185–216.
Babaie, Sussan and Kathryn Babayan, Ina Baghdiantz-McCabe and Massumeh Farhad.
Slaves of the Shah: New Elites of Safavid Iran. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2004.
Babayan, Kathryn. “The Safavid Synthesis: From Qizilbash Islam to Imamite Shiʿism.”
Iranian Studies 27 (1994): 135–161.
———. Mystics, Monarchs and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003.
Bashir, Shahzad. Messianic Hopes and Mystical Visions: The Nūrbakhshīya Between
Medieval and Modern Islam. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003.
———. “The Risālat al-hudā of Muḥammad Nūrbakš (d. 869/1464): Critical Edition with
Introduction.” Rivista degli Studi Orientali 75, nos. 1–4 (2001): 87–137.
———. Sufi Bodies: Religion and Society in Medieval Islam. New York: Columbia Uni
versity Press, 2011.
Berkey, Jonathan. The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo: A Social History of
Islamic Education. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
Beveridge, H. “The Rashahat-i ʿAin al-Hayat.” JRAS (1916): 59–75.
Binbaş, İlker Evrim. “Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī (ca. 770s-858/ca. 1370s-1454): Prophecy,
Politics, and Historiography in Late Medieval Islamic History.” PhD diss., University
of Chicago, 2009.
Birge, John Kingsley. The Bektashi Order of Dervishes. 1937. Reprint. London: Luzac, 1965.
Bonine, Michael. Yazd and its Hinterland: A Central Place System of Dominance in the
Central Iranian Plateau. Marburger Geographische Schriften, Heft 83. Marburg: Im
Selbstverlag des Geographischen Institutes der Universität Marburg, 1980.
Boyce, Mary. “Bībī Shahrbānū and the Lady of Pārs.” BSOAS 30 (1967), 30–44.
———. A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
Brockelmann, Carl. Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur. Original edition: 2 vols. Weimar:
E. Felber, 1898–1902. 3 supplement vols. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1937–42. Revised edition of
Vols. I-II. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1943–49.
Brown, L. Carl. From Madina to Metropolis: Heritage and Change in the Near Eastern City.
Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1973.
Browne, Edward G. A Literary History of Persia. Vol. 4: Modern Times (1500–1924).
182 Bibliography
Bulliet, Richard W. The Patricians of Nishapur: A Study in Medieval Islamic Social History.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.
Burge, Stephen. “Al-Suyuti on the Merits of Imam ʿAli.” The Institute of Ismaili Studies
Website, 2010: 1–10. < http://www.iis.ac.uk/SiteAssets/pdf/Al%20Suyuti%20arti-
cle%20final%20PDF.pdf >
Carra de Vaux, Bernard. Avicenne A. H. 370–428/A. D. 980–1037. 1900. Reprint. Amsterdam:
Philo Press 1974.
Chipman, Leigh. The World of Pharmacy and Pharmacists in Mamlūk Cairo. Leiden: Brill,
2010.
Chittick, William C. “The Perfect Man as the Prototype of the Self in the Sufism of Jāmī.”
Studia Islamica 49 (1979): 135–57.
———. “The School of Ibn ʿArabī.” In History of Islamic Philosophy, edited by Seyyed
Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman, Vol. 1, 510–23. London: 1996.
———. The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Cosmology. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1998.
Cooperson, Michael. Classical Arabic Biography: The heirs of the prophets in the age of
al-Ma⁠ʾmūn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Corbin, Henry. Creative Imagination in the Ṣūfism of Ibn ʿArabī. Translated by R. Manheim.
Bollingen Series 91. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.
Daiber, Hans. Bibliography of Islamic Philosophy. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1999.
Djebli, Moktar. “Encore à propos de l’authenticité du Nahj al-Balagha!” Studia Islamica
75 (1992): 33–56.
Doerfer, Gerhard. Türkische und Mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen. 4 vols.
Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1963–75.
Eaton, Richard Maxwell. Sufis of Bijapur 1300–1700: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.
Elias, Jamal J. “A Second ʿAlī: The Making of Sayyid ʿAlī Hamadānī in Popular Imagination.”
Muslim World 90 (2000): 395–420.
———. The Throne Carrier of God: The Life and Thought of ʿAlāʾ ad-Dawla as-Simnānī.
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.
Erzi, Adnan Sadık. “Akkoyunlu ve Karakoyunlu tarihi hakkında araştırmalar.” Türk Tarih
Kurumu, Belleten 18 (1954): 179–221.
Escovitz, Joseph H. The Office of Qāḍī al-Quḍāt in Cairo Under the Baḥrī Mamlūks.
Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, Bd. 100. Berlin: Schwartz, 1984.
Ethé, Carl Hermann. Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the Library of the India
Office. Oxford: H. Hart, 1903.
———. “Neupersische Litteratur.” In Grundriss der iranischen Philologie, edited by W.
Geiger and E. Kuhn, 212–368. Strassburg: Karl J. Trübner, 1896–1904.
Bibliography 183
Ewald, H. “ʿAlī‘s Divan” in “Über die Sammlung arabischer und syrischer Handschriften
im British Museum.” Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes. Bd. II, Heft 2 (1839):
192–200.
Fleischer, Cornell H. Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian
Mustafa Âli (1541–1600). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.
Frank, R.M. Beings and Their Attributes. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1978.
Futūḥī Yazdī, ʿAbbās. Tadhkira-yi shuʿarā-yi Yazd. Tehran, 1366/1987.
Gilsenan, Michael. Saint and Sufi in Modern Egypt: An Essay in the Sociology of Religion.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.
Glassen, Erika. “Schah Ismāʿīl, ein Mahdī der Anatolischen Turkmenen?” ZDMG 121
(1971): 61–69.
Golombek, Lisa. “Urban Patterns in Pre-Safavid Isfahan.” Iranian Studies 7 (1974):
18–44.
Green, Nile. “The Survival of Zoroastrianism in Yazd.” Iran, 38 (2000): 115–122.
Griffith, Sidney H. The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the “People of the Book” in the
Language of Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.
Gross, Jo-Ann. “Khojar [sic] Aḥrār: A Study of the Perceptions of Religious Power and
Prestige in the Late Timurid Period.” PhD. diss., New York University, 1982.
Gulchīn-Maʿānī, Aḥmad. Tārīkh-i tadhkira-hā-yi Fārsī. 2 vols. Tehran: Dānishgāh-i Tihrān,
1348–50/1969–71.
Gutas, Dimitri. “Aspects of Literary Form and Genre in Arabic Logical Works.” In Glosses
and Commentaries on Aristotelian Logical Texts: The Syriac, Arabic and Medieval Latin
Traditions, edited by Charles Burnett, 29–76. London: The Warburg Institute, 1993.
———. Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition: Introduction to Reading Avicenna’s
Philosophical Works. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988.
———. “The Study of Arabic Philosophy in the Twentieth Century.” British Journal of
Middle Eastern Studies, 29 1 (2002), 5–25.
Habib, Madelain. “Some Notes on the Naqshbandi Order.” Muslim World (1969):
40–49.
Haren, Michael. Medieval Thought: The Western Intellectual Tradition from Antiquity to
the Thirteenth Century. London: Macmillan, 1985.
Heinen, Anton M. Islamic Cosmology: A Study of as-Suyūṭī’s “al-Hayʾa as-sanīya fī l-hayʾa
as-sunnīya.” Beirut: Orient-Institut der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft;
In Kommission bei Franz Steiner, 1982.
Ḥikmat, ʿAlī Aṣghar. Jāmī. Tehran: Chāpkhāna-yi Bānk-i Millī-yi Īrān, 1320/1941.
Hinz, Walther. Irans Aufstieg zum Nationalstaat im fünfzehnten Jahrhundert. Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 1936.
Hodgson, Marshall G.S. The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World
Civilization. 3 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.
184 Bibliography
Holod-Tretiak, Renata. “The Monuments of Yazd, 1300–1450: Architecture, Patronage,

and Setting.” PhD diss., Harvard University, 1972.
Homerin, Th. Emil. From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint: Ibn al-Fāriḍ, His Verse, and His Shrine.
Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994.
Hourani, Albert. “Shaikh Khalid and the Naqshbandi Order.” In Islamic Philosophy and
the Classical Tradition, edited by S.M. Stern, A. Hourani, and V. Brown, 89–103.
Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1972.
Hourani, A.H. and S.M. Stern. The Islamic City: A Colloquium. Oxford: Bruno Cassirer
and University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970.
Iwatake, Akio. “Ghâzân Khân’s dâr al‑siyâda.” Itoyoshi kenkyû 50 (1993): 48–82.
———. “The Waqf of a Timurid Amir: The example of Chaqmaq Shami in Yazd.” In
Persian Documents: Social History of Iran and Turan in the fifteenth to nineteenth cen-
turies, edited by Nobuaki Kondo, 87–105. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004.
Jackson, P. and L. Lockhart, eds. The Cambridge History of Iran. vol. 6: The Timurid and
Safavid Periods. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Jaques, R. Kevin. Authority, Conflict, and the Transmission of Diversity in Medieval Islamic
Law. Leiden: Brill, 2006.
Jūzjānī, M. Yaʿqūb Vāḥidī, ed. Ba-munāsabat-i 525 sāl-i vilādat-i Niẓām al-Dīn Amīr ʿAlī
Shīr Navāʾī Fānī. Kabul: Anjuman-i Tārīkh, 1346/1967.
Kaḥḥāla, ʿUmar Riḍā. Muʿjam al-muʾallifīn. 15 vols. Damascus: Maktabat al-ʿArabīya,
1376/1957.
Karahan, Abdülkadir. Cami’nin Erbain-i ve türkçe tercümeleri. İstanbul: Osman Yalçın
Matbaası, 1952.
Kennedy-Day, Kiki. Books of Definition in Islamic Philosophy: The limits of words. London:
RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.
Khādīʿ, Ardashir. Tadkhira-yi sukhanvarān-i Yazd. 1st ed. Vol. 1. Bombay: n.p., 1963.
Khvānsārī, M. Bāqir b. Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn (d. 1313/1895). Rawḍāt al-jannāt fī aḥwāl al-ʿulamāʾ
wa-al-sādāt. 8 vols. Qum: Khiyābān-i Aram, 1391/1971.
Kissling, Hans Joachim. “The Sociological and Educational Role of the Darvish Orders
in the Ottoman Empire.” American Anthropologist 56 (1954): 23–35.
Knysh, Alexander. Ibn ʿArabi in the Later Islamic Tradition: The Making of a Polemical
Image in Medieval Islam. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999.
Kuehn, Sara. The Dragon in Medieval East Christian and Islamic Art. With a foreword by
Robert Hillenbrand. Leiden: Brill, 2011.
Lambton, Ann K. S. “The Qanāts of Yazd.” JRAS 2/1 (1992): 21–35.
Lapidus, Ira. Muslim Cities in the Late Middle Ages. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1967.
Lingwood, Chad G. Politics, Poetry, and Sufism in Medieval Iran: New Perspectives on Jāmī’s
Salāmān va Absāl. Leiden: Brill, 2014.
Bibliography 185
Lory, Pierre. “Kāshifī’s Asrār-i Qāsimī and Timurid Magic.” Iranian Studies 36/4 (2003):
531–541.
Losensky, Paul E. Welcoming Fighānī: Imitation and Poetic Individuality in the Safavid-
Mughal Ghazal. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1998.
Makdisi, George. The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981.
Mancini-Lander, Derek J. “Memory on the Boundaries of Empire: Narrating Place in the
Early Modern Local Historiography of Yazd.” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2012.
Manz, Beatrice Forbes. Power, Politics and Religion in Timurid Iran. Cambridge: Cam
bridge University Press, 2007.
———. The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization.
Mazzaoui, Michel M. The Origins of the Ṣafawids. Šīʿism, Ṣūfism, and the Ġulāt. Freiburger
Islamstudien, no. 3. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1972.
McChesney, R.D. Waqf in Central Asia: Four Hundred Years in the History of a Muslim
Shrine, 1480–1889. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.
Meier, Fritz. “Soufisme et déclin culturel.” In Classicisme et déclin culturel dans l’histoire
de l’Islam, 217–45. Paris: n.p., 1957.
———. “Hurasan und das Ende der Klassischen Sufik.” In Bausteine I: Ausgewählte
Aufsätze zur Islamwissenschaft, edited by Erika Glassen and Gudrun Schubert, 132–
156. Istanbul, 1992. Originally in La Persia nel Medioevo (Rome, 1971): 546–570.
Melvin-Koushki, Matthew. “The Quest for a Universal Science: The Occult Philosophy
of Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Turka Iṣfahānī (1369–1432) and Intellectual Millenarianism in Early
Timurid Iran.” PhD diss., Yale University, 2012.
Miller, Isabel. “Local History in Ninth/Fifteenth Century Yazd: The Tārīkh-i Jadīd-i Yazd.”
Iran 27 (1989): 75–79.
Minorsky, Vladimir. “Aḳ Ḳoyunlu,” EI 2, 1: 311–12.
———. “A Soyurghal of Qāsim b. Jahāngīr Aq-qoyunlu.” BSOAS 9/4 (1938): 927–60.
———. “The Aq-Qoyunlu and Land Reforms.” BSOAS 17 (1955): 249–62.
———. “A Civil and Military Review in Fars.” BSOAS 10 (1942): 741–78. [Turkmenica, 9:
141–78]
———. “La Perse au XVe siècle.” Orientalia Romana 1 (1958): 99–117.
———. “The Poetry of Shāh Ismāʿīl.” BSOAS 10 (1942): 1006–1053.
Mitchell, Colin P. “Am I my brother’s keeper?: Negotiating corporate sovereignty and
divine absolutism in sixteenth-century Turco-Iranian politics.” In New Perspectives
on Safavid Iran: Empire and society, edited by Colin P. Mitchell, 33–58. London:
Routledge, 2011.
———. The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran: Power, Religion and Rhetoric. New York:
Tauris Academic Studies, 2009.
186 Bibliography
———. “To Preserve and Protect: Husayn Vaʿiz-i Kashifi and Perso-Islamic Chancellery
Culture.” Iranian Studies 36/4 (2003): 485–507.
Moin, A. Azfar. The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam. New
York: Columbia University Press, 2012.
Molé, M. “Autour du Daré Mansour: l’apprentissage mystique de Bahāʾ ad-dīn Naqsh
band.” REI 27 (1959): 35–66.
———. “Les Kubrawiya entre sunnisme et shiisme au huitième et neuvième siècles de
l’hégire.” REI 29 (1961): 61–142.
———. Les Mystiques musulmans. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1965.
———. “Quelques traités naqshbandis.” FIZ 5 (1957): 273–323.
Momen, Moojan. An Introduction to Shiʿi Islam. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.
Moosa, Matti. Extremist Shiites: The Ghulat Sects. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press,
1988.
Morton, A.H. “The Date and Attribution of the Ross Anonymous. Notes on a Persian
History of Shāh Ismāʿīl I.” In Pembroke Papers 1: Persian and Islamic Studies in Honour
of P.W. Avery, edited by Charles Melville, 179–212. Cambridge: University of Cambridge,
1990.
Mottahedeh, Roy. The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran. New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1985.
Mudarris, Mīrzā M. ʿAlī. Rayḥānat al-adab dar tarājim aḥwāl maʿrūfīn bi-kunya wa-laqab.
2d ed. 8 vols. Tabriz: Kitābfurūshī-yi Khayyām, 1948–55.
Mudarris Raḍavī, M. Taqī. Aḥvāl va āthār-i Abū Jaʿfar M. b. M. al-Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī. [Tehran]:
n.p., 1354/1975.
Nasr, Sayyed Hossein. An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines. Cambridge:
Belknap Press, 1964.
———. Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present: Philosophy in the Land of
Prophecy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006.
———. “Shiʿism and Sufism: Their Relationship in Essence and in History.” Religious
Studies 6 (1970): 229–42.
———. Three Muslim Sages: Avicenna-Suhrawardī-Ibn ʿArabī. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1964.
Newman, Andrew. “The Myth of the Clerical Migration to Safavid Iran: Arab Shiite
Opposition to ʿAlī al-Karakī and Safawid Shiism,” Die Welt des Islams 33 (1993):
81–103.
Nicholson, Reynold A. “The Lives of ʿUmar Ibnul-Farid and Ibnul-ʿArabi.” JRAS (1906):
797–824.
———. The Mystics of Islam. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1914. Reprint, 1975.
———. Studies in Islamic Mysticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921.
Nizami, K.A. “Naqshbandi Influence on Mughal Rulers and Politics.” Islamic Culture 39
(1965): 41–52.
Bibliography 187
Nūrbakhsh Kirmānī, Javād. Zindagī va āthār-i Niʿmat Allāh Valī. Tehran: n.p., 1337/1959.
Paul, Jürgen. Die politische und soziale Bedeutung der Naqshbandiyya in Mittelasien im
15. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991.
Petrushevskii, I.P. “K istorii instituta soyurgala.” Sovetskoe Vostokovedenie 6 (1949):
227–46.
Petry, Carl F. The Civilian Elite of Cairo in the Later Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton
Pourjavady, Nasrollah. “Opposition to Sufism in Twelver Shiism.” In Islamic Mysticism
Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics, edited by Frederick de
Jong and Bernd Radtke, 614–23. Leiden: Brill, 1999.
Pourjavady, Reza. Philosophy in Early Safavid Iran: Najm al-Dīn Maḥmūd al-Nayrīzī and
His Writings. Leiden: Brill, 2011.
Pourjavady, Reza, and Sabine Schmidtke. “An Eastern Renaissance? Greek Philosophy
under the Safavids (16th-18th centuries ad).” Intellectual History of the Islamicate
World 3 (2015): 248–90.
Quinn, Sholeh A. “Rewriting Niʿmatu‘llāhī History in Safavid Chronicles.” In The Heritage
of Sufism, edited by Leonard Lewisohn and David Morgan. Vol. 3, 201–22. Oxford:
Oneworld, 1999.
Quiring-Zoche, Rosemarie. Isfahan im 15. und 16 Jahrhundert: Ein Beitrag zur persischen
Stadtgeschichte. Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, B. 54. Freiburg: Schwarz, 1980.
Qummī, ʿAbbās b. Muḥammad Riḍā. Hadīyat al-aḥbāb fī dhikr al-maʿrūfīn bi-al-kunā
wa-al-alqāb wa-al-ansāb. Tehran: Amīr Kabīr, 1329/1950.
Qutbuddin, Tahera. “Ali b. Abi Talib.” In Arabic Literary Culture, 500–925, vol. 311 in series
Dictionary of Literary Biography. Edited by Michael Cooperson and Shawkat Toorawa.
Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2005. 68–76.
al-Rahim, Ahmed H. “The Twelver-Shīʿī Reception of Avicenna in the Mongol Period.”
In Before and after Avicenna. Proceedings of the First Conference of the Avicenna Study
Group, edited by David C. Reisman with the assistance of Ahmed H. Al-Rahim, 219–31.
Leiden: Brill, 2003.
Rahman, Fazlur. The Philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā (Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī). Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1975.
Rescher, Nicholas. The Development of Arabic Logic. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1964.
———. Studies in the History of Arabic Philosophy. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1963.
Ritter, Hellmut. Das Meer der Seele: Mensch, Welt und Gott in den Geschichten des Farīdud
dīn ʿAṭṭār. Leiden: Brill, 1955.
Rogers, Michael. “Waqfiyyas and Waqf-Registers: New Primary Sources for Islamic
Architecture.” Kunst Des Orients 11 (1976/77): 182–96.
188 Bibliography
Rose, H.A. “Some Problems in Naqshbandi History.” The Indian Antiquary 52 (1923):

204–11.
Ross, E. Dennison. “The Early Years of Shāh Ismāʿīl, Founder of the Safavī Dynasty.” JRAS
28 (1896): 249–340.
Ṣafā, Dhabīh Allāh. Tārīkh-i adabīyat dar Īrān. 5 vols. Tehran: n.p., 1983.
Saleh, Walid A. The Formation of the Classical Tafsīr Tradition: The Qurʾān Commentary
of al-Thaʿlabī (d. 427/1035). Leiden: Brill, 2004.
———. “The Last of the Nishapuri School of Tafsīr: Al-Wāḥidī (d. 468 [sic]/1076) and
His Significance in the History of Qurʾanic Exegesis.” JAOS 126/2 (2006): 223–43.
Saliba, George. A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories during the Golden Age
of Islam. New York: New York University Press, 1994.
———. “A Sixteenth-Century Arabic Critique of Ptolemaic Astronomy: The Work of
Shams al-Dīn al-Khafrī.” Journal of the History of Astronomy 25 (1994): 15–38.
———. “Writing the History of Arabic Astronomy: Problems and Different Perspectives.”
JAOS 116 (1996): 709–18.
Sands, Kristin Zahra. “On the Popularity of Husayn Vaʿiz-i Kashifi‘s Mavāhib-i ʿaliyya: A
Persian Commentary on the Qurʾan.” Iranian Studies 36/4 (2003): 469–83.
Sarwar, Ghulam. History of Shāh Ismāʿīl Ṣafawī. Aligarh: Muslim University, 1939.
Savory, Roger M. Studies on the History of Safawid Iran. London: Variorum Reprints, 1987.
Schimmel, Annemarie. Deciphering the Signs of God: A Phenomenological Approach to
Islam. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.
———. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1975.
Sela, Ron. The Legendary Biographies of Tamerlane: Islam and Heroic Apocrypha in
Central Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Serjeant, R.B., ed. The Islamic City: Selected papers from the colloquium held at the Middle
East Centre, Faculty of Oriental Studies, Cambridge, United Kingdom, from 19–23 July
1976. Paris: UNESCO, 1980.
Semenov, A.A. “Two Letters of Khoja Ahrar.” Epigrafika vostoka (1951): 51–57.
Siddiqi, B.H. “Jalāl-Dīn Davānī.” In History of Muslim Philosophy, edited by M.M. Sharif,
2: 883–888. 2 vols. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1966.
Silvers-Alario, Laury. “The Teaching Relationship in Early Sufism: A Reassessment of
Fritz Meier‘s Definition of the shaykh al-tarbiya and the shaykh al-taʿlīm.” Muslim
World 93 (2003): 69–97.
Stewart, Devin. Islamic Legal Orthodoxy: Twelver Shiite Responses to the Sunni Legal
System. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1998.
———“Notes on the Migration of ʿĀmilī Scholars to Safavid Iran.” Journal of Near Eastern
Studies. 55 (1996): 81–103.
Storey, Charles Ambrose. Persian Literature: a Bio-bibliographical Survey. 3 vols. in pro-
gress. London: Luzac & Company, 1927–84.
Bibliography 189
———. Persidskaya literatura: bio-bibliograficheskii obzor. Revised and translated by Yu.

E. Bregel. 3 vols. Moscow: Central Department of Oriental Literature, 1972.
Subtelny, Maria Eva and Anas B. Khalidov. “The Curriculum of Islamic Higher Learning
in Timurid Iran in the Light of the Sunni Revival under Shāh-Rukh.” JAOS 115/2 (1995):
210–36.
———. “Husayn Vaʿiz-i Kashifi: Polymath, Popularizer, and Preserver.” Iranian Studies
36/4 (2003): 463–67.
———. “Socioeconomic Bases of Cultural Patronage under the Later Timurids.” IJMES
20 (1988): 479–505.
———. “A Taste for the Intricate: The Persian Poetry of the Late Timurid Period.” ZDMG
136/1 (1986): 56–79.
———. Timurids in Transition: Turko-Persian Politics and Acculturation in Medieval Iran.
Leiden: Brill, 2007.
Sultan, Jamil. É tude sur Nahj al-Balāgha. Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1940.
Sümer, Faruk. Kara Koyunlular: Başlangıçtan Cihan-Şah’a kadar. 2d ed. Vol. 1. Ankara:
Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1984.
———. Safevi Devletinin Kuruluşu ve Gelişmesinde Anadolu Türkler’in Rolü. Selçuklu
Tarih ve Medeniyeti Enstitüsü Yayınlar, Tarih No. 2 Dizesi. Ankara: Selçuklu Tarih ve
Medeniyeti Enstitüsü, 1976.
Sutūda, Manūchihr. “Jāmiʿ-i Mufīdī.” Rahnāma-yi Kitāb 5 (1341): 165–8.
Svidina, Evgeniia Dmitrievna. Alisher Navoi-Biobibliographica (1917–66). Tashkent, 1968.
Ṭabāṭabāʾī, ʿAllāma Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn. Shiʿite Islam. Translated by Seyyed
Hossein Nasr. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975.
Taqīzādeh, S.H. “Various Eras and Calendars used in the Countries of Islam.” BSOAS 9
(1937–39): 903–22; 10 (1939–42): 107–32.
Ṭihrānī, Aqā Buzurg. Dharīʿa ilā taṣānīf al-Shīʿa. 26 vols. Najaf: Maṭbaʿat al-Ghurrā, 1936.
al-Tikriti, Nabil. “The Hajj as Justifiable Self-Exile: Şehzade Korkud‘s Waṣīlat al-aḥbāb
(915–16/1509–10),” al-Masaq 17/1 (2005): 125–46.
Trimingham, J.S. The Sufi Orders in Islam. Oxford, 1971.
Tritton, A. Materials on Muslim Education in the Middle Ages. London: Luzac, 1957.
Turner, Colin. Islam Without Allah?: The Rise of Religious Externalism in Safavid Iran.
Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000.
Tyan, É mile. Histoire de l’organisation judiciaire en pays d’Islam. Leiden: Brill, 1960.
Ullmann, Manfred. Islamic Medicine. Islamic Surveys, 11. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
Uzunçarşılı, İsmail H. Osmanlı Devletinin İlmiye Teşkilātı. Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları,
seri 8, no. 17. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1965.
Van Ess, Josef. “Sufism and Its Opponents: Reflections on Topoi, Tribulations, and
Transformations.” In Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies
190 Bibliography
and Polemics, edited by Frederick de Jong and Bernd Radtke, 22–44. Leiden: Brill,
1999.
Wisnovsky, R. “Some Remarks on the Nature and Scope of Arabic Philosophical
Commentary in Post-Classical (ca. 1100–1900 ce) Islamic Intellectual History: Some
Preliminary Observations.” In Philosophy, Science and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and
Latin Commentaries, edited by P. Adamson, H. Baltussen, and M.W.F. Stone, Vol. II,
149–91. London: Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University
of London, 2004.
Woods, John E. The Aqquyunlu: Clan, Confederation, Empire. Salt Lake City: University
of Utah Press, 1999.
———. “The Rise of Timurid Historiography.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 46 (1987):
81–108.
———. The Timurid Dynasty. Papers on Inner Asia No. 14, Research Institute for Inner
Asian Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1990.
Yazıcı, Tahsin. “Nakşbend.” İA. 1964.
Yınanç, Mükrimin Halil. “Akkoyunlular.” İA. 1964.
Zadeh, Travis. The Vernacular Qur’an: Translation and the Rise of Persian Exegesis. Oxford:
Oxford University Press in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2012.
Zarrinkub, A.H. “Lāhīdjī.” The Encyclopaedia of Islam (New Edition), 5:603–05.
Zhukovsky, V.A. “Persian Sufism.” BSOAS 5 (1928–30): 475–88.
Index Index 191
Index
Aaron 71, 87, 88, 102n181 Akhlāq-i Jalālī 34

Abā Bakr b. Mīrānshāh b. Tīmūr (Timurid) 18 Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī 72
ʿAbbasids 91 Ak Koyunlu 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 19, 23, 24,
ʿAbbās (Safavid) 161 26, 31, 35, 36, 42, 51, 52, 53, 92, 111, 112, 113,
ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbbās 98 116, 119, 120, 121, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128,
ʿAbd al-Muʿṭī (Shaykh) 127 131, 134, 138, 149n152, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155,
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAwf 83 158, 160n12, 162, 164, 167n32, 169, 170
ʿAbdi Beg Tuvājī (Shāmlū) 163 ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla b. Bāysunghur (Timurid) 20
Abharī, Athīr al-Dīn Mufaḍḍal b. ʿAmr 7, Al-ʿAbbās b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib 105
29n83, 36n117, 43, 44, 157 Aʿlām al-hudā 91
Abraham 89, 159 ʿĀlam-ārā-yi Shāh Ismāʿīl 161
Abū al-Fidāʾ 15 Alexander the Great 14, 159
Abū al-Jārūd 56 ʿAlī al-Riḍā (Imam) 64, 74, 83n114, 91, 92, 93,
Abū al-Qāsim Bābur b. Bāysunghur b. 126n63
Shāhrukh (Timurid) 20 ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 32n92, 39, ch.3
Abū al-Qāsim b. Jahānshāh (Kara Koyunlu) passim, 131, 150, 151, 160n13, 165, 166
23 ʿAlī b. Ḥusayn Zayn al-ʿAbidīn (Imam) 92
Abū Bakr, ʿAbd Allāh b. Abī Quḥāfa (Caliph) ʿAlidism 3, 4, 5, 32, 51, 53, 85, 93, 94, 150, 158,
64, 65, 84, 86, 87, 89, 92, 98 167
Abū Dāwud 39 Almagest 115
Abū Ḥafṣ Haddād 130 Alvand b. Sulṭān-Khalīl b. Uzūn Ḥasan (Ak
Abū Ḥanīfa, Nuʿmān b. Thābit 64, 75, 108 Koyunlu) 24, 113, 116, 117n21
Abū Hāshim b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafīya 73 Alvand b. Yūsuf b. Uzūn Ḥasan (Ak Koyunlu)
Abū Hurayra, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 61 117, 126, 155
Abū Mūsā Ashʿarī 100n175 Amahraspands 70
Abū Saʿīd (Il-Khan) 16 Amāsī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAlī b. Muʾayyad 47,
Abū Ṭālib b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib 32n92, 87, 48
100n175, 105, 106 ʿĀmilī, ʿAlī al-Karakī 166n31
Abū Yūsuf b. Jahānshāh (Kara Koyunlu) 23, Amīrak Aḥmad 21n40
24 ʿĀmir Jumaḥī 106
Adam 89 Amīr Khusraw Dihlavī, Naṣīr al-Dīn 40
Agathodaimon 61, 129 ʿAmr b. ʿĀṣ 99, 100n175
Ahl al-Bayt 84, 85, 86, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 132, 165 ʿAmr b. Maʿdīkarib 97, 100
Aḥmad Beg b. Ughurlū Muḥammad (Ak Anahita 92
Koyunlu) 36, 155 Anas b. Mālik 56, 86
Aḥmad b. Mūsā al-Kāẓim 83n114 Anṣārī, Jābir b. ʿAbd Allāh 56
Aḥmad Ibn Diḥya (Qadi) 127n65 Anvār-i Shāfīʿīya 40n126
Ahmadīya 83n114 Anvarī, Awḥad al-Dīn ʿAlī 76
Aḥmad Khurdak 83 Arbaʿīn-i Jāmī 109
Aḥrār, Khwāja ʿUbayd Allāh b. Maḥmūd 9n15, Ardabīlī, Kamāl al-Dīn al-Ilāhī 7n10
10, 12, 48n152, 80n107, 114, 126, 127, 132n88, Aristotle 34, 41, 62, 157
133, 134, 135 Armenians 144n130, 146
Aḥsan al-tavārikh 161 Asās [al-balāgha] 97
ʿĀʾisha b. Abū Bakr 65, 85, 88, 93 Ashʿarites 65
Akhfash, Abū al-Khaṭṭāb ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd ʿĀṣim 93
101n178 Astarābādī, Raḍī al-Dīn Muḥammad 101n178

192 Index
astral conjunction: see qirān Davānī, Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Asʿad 1,

astrology 75, 76, 77, 97, 103, 104, 168 6, 7n8, and n9, 10, 12, 31n90, 33, 34, 36, 39,
Averroes 62n36, 94 40n126, 41n128, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 57,
awtād (Poles). See also quṭb 40n126 70n69, 71n75, 72n78, 74, 80, 88n136, 114, 124,
Ayba Sulṭān Bāyandur Ibrāhīm b. Dānā Khalīl 128, 131n83, 132, 135, 136, 137, 139, 149n152,
26n67, 126, 155 163, 169, 170
Davānī, Saʿd al-Dīn Asʿad 34
Bāfqī, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Vāʿiẓ 32 Daylamī, Shāh ʿImād al-Dīn Salmān Qazvīnī
Baghdādī, Abū al-Qāsim Junayd 68, 82, 91 125
Baghdādī, ʿAlī b. Ḥusayn 83 Daylamī, Sharaf al-Dīn Shāh-Maḥmūd Jān
Baghdādī, Amir Zakariyā 126, 127 Qazvīnī 114, 118, 123, 124, 125, 126, 138, 147
Bahman 70
Bannāʾī, Kamāl al-Dīn Shīr ʿAlī 119 Elias 84
Bāqillānī, Abū Bakr 64, 65 Euclid 41, 45, 48n150, 115
Barbaro, Joseph 13, 24, 25
Bardaʿī Ḥamdī, Shams al-Dīn 45 Fāḍil (Mawlana) 45
Barsbay, al-Ashraf Sayf al-Dīn (Mamluk) 18 Fakhr al-Dīn Ḥaydar 35
Battle of the Camel 88 Fakhr al-Dīn (Mawlana) 147, 148
Bāyazīd II (Ottoman) 24n58, 35, 46, 47, 48, Falāḥ [li-Ahl al-Ṣalāḥ] 82n111
128, 135n99 Fārābī, Abū Naṣr Muḥammad 41, 60, 62, 94,
Bayḍāwī, Naṣīr al-Dīn 7, 39, 85 150n155
Bayhaqī, Abū al-Ḥasan Muḥammad (see Farāhīdī, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Khalīl b.
Kaydarī) 54 Aḥmad 74, 75n88, 101
Bayhaqī, Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn 89 Farāʾid al-Ghiyāthī 10
Bāysunghur b. Yaʿqūb (Ak Koyunlu) 24, 116, Farrāʾ, Abū Zakariyā Yaḥyā 101n178
125, 155 Fāṭima b. Asad b. Hāshim 87
Bībī Fāṭima 17, 32 Fāṭima b. Muḥammad 29, 32n92, 52n5, 63,
Bidlīsī, Abū Faḍl b. Idrīs 128 85, 86, 87, 107
Bidlīsī, Ḥakīm al-Dīn Idrīs (Munshī) 114, 128, Fāṭima Sar-i Buzurg 141
134, 136 Favātiḥ 8, 55, 58, 60, 75, 77, 94, 96, 100, 102,
Bījan 161, 162, 163 103, 106, 110, 160n13
Bīkīsī Sulṭān 18n21 Fighānī 52
Bisṭāmī, Bāyazīd 5, 68 fitna (civil strife) 64
Bukhārī, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl 39, 82n113, Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam 41, 42, 79, 81, 120, 128
84, 89, 94 Futūḥāt al-Makkīya 40n126, 79, 80, 82n113, 84,
Buthayna 106 100
futuwwa 78
Chaldiran 31, 47
Chaqmāq, Jalāl al-Dīn 17, 19, 21n40, 32, 34, 137 Galen 41, 73
Chaqmāq (Mamluk) 49 Genghis Khan 76
Chaqmāq, Shams al-Dīn b. Jalāl al-Dīn 19 Georgia 116, 128, 152
Companions of the Prophet: see Ṣaḥāba Gerekyarak, Amir Maḥmūd 21
Contarini, Ambrogio 13, 24, 25 Ghadir Khumm 90
Ghaffārī, Qadi Aḥmad 40n127
Dāmghānī, Pīr Ḥusayn 32 Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad 5, 41,
dār al-siyāda (sayyid hospice) 29n82 44n137, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 65, 66, 67, 72, 76,
dārūgha (military commander) 18, 115, 116, 79, 82n110, 83, 100, 121n35, 140, 143, 151, 157
162 ghulāt (extremists) 52, 64, 165
Darvīsh Ḥusayn Manṣūrī 114 Ghunāshirīn, Ghiyāth al-Dīn 17n18
Darvīsh Maḥmūd 114, 131n83 Ghurār 41, 75
Index 193
Gīlānī, Muḥammad b. ʿAlī 132n87 Ibn ʿAbbās, ʿAbd Allāh 56, 86, 98
Gospels 55 Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām 82n110
Greek philosophy 41, 60, 62, 66, 73, 77, 157 Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd 54
Gulistān 109, 146n138 Ibn Aʿlam, ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn Abū al-Qāsim 71
Gülşeni, Shaykh Ibrāhīm 12, 35, 41, 42, 119, Ibn al-Athīr, ʿIzz al-Dīn ʿAlī 39, 56, 64, 84, 93
120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128n72, Ibn Diḥya, Aḥmad (Qadi) 127n65
139, 148 Ibn al-Fāriḍ, ʿUmar b. ʿAlī Sharaf al-Dīn 40,
Gülşenī, Muḥyī-i 12, 119, 123, 124, 125, 126, 139 128
Gulshan-i rāz 7, 43n136, 132 Ibn al-Ḥājib 7
Ibn ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn Muḥammad 5, 39,
Ḥabīb al-siyār 44, 45, 116, 117, 161 40n126, 41, 42, 43, 57, 67, 68, 71, 72, 77, 78,
Ḥaddād, Abū Ḥafṣ 130 79, 80, 81, 82n113, 83, 84, 100, 102, 108, 120,
Ḥadīth al-ʿAskarī 45 121n35, 128, 132n88, 140, 150n154
Ḥāfiẓ, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad 40, 55, 63, Ibn Aʿtham, Abū Muḥammad Aḥmad 57, 97,
68, 130 99, 102
Ḥall-i [nuṣūṣ ʿalā al-] Fuṣūṣ 79 Ibn Ḥanbal, Aḥmad 56, 89, 90
Hamadānī, Sayyid ʿAlī 57, 79, 83 Ibn Ḥawqal 12
Ḥamuvayī, Saʿd al-Dīn 57, 107 Ibn Ilyās, Muḥammad 41n131
Ḥamza b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib 105 Ibn Khallikān 39
Hanafi madhhab 40n126, 93 Ibn Māja 83n114, 84
Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr 85n122 Ibn Muljam, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 88, 97, 108, 135
Ḥaqāʾiq, Ṣaʿd Nādhirī 45 Ibn Sīnā, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn 37n118, 41, 44,
Ḥaqilānī, Ibrāhīm (Abraham Ecchellensis) 57, 60, 62, 63, 75, 76, 136, 150, 157
8n12, 156n6 Ibn Taymīya, Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad 85
Ḥaram-i Imāmzāda Jaʿfar 163n23 Ibn Ṭufayl, Abū Bakr Muḥammad 8, 94,
Harawī, ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī 79n100 156n6
Hārūn al-Rashīd (ʿAbbasid) 57, 92 Ibn Turka Iṣfahānī, Ṣāʾin al-Dīn 33n102, 57,
Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Jahānshāh (Kara Koyunlu) 23 63n39, 74, 78, 149n152
Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (Imam) 56, 84, 85, Ibrāhīm b. Jahāngīr (Ak Koyunlu) 113, 114, 115
86, 88, 89, 108 Ibrāhīm Paşa (vizier) 35
Ḥasan (Qadi) 122 Idrīs 61
Ḥāwī al-ṣaghīr 85 Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn 41, 61, 62, 67, 72n78, 100
Hayākil al-nūr 39 Ījī, ʿAḍud al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 27n68, 57,
Ḥaydar (Shaykh; Ṣafavī) 7n10, 115, 122 79
hayūlā (primary matter) 69, 115, 136n104, 150, Ījī, Ṣafī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 88
157, 160 ijtihād 65
Hermes Trismegistus 61, 70, 129 Ikhtiyār al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Qādir 114
Hidāyat al-ḥikma 7, 36n117, 29n83, 38, 39, 43, Ikhtiyār al-Dīn Farīdūn 117n23
44, 45, 46, 49, 70, 157 ikhvānīyāt (friendship notes) 9
Ḥillī, Jamāl al-Dīn Ḥasan b. Yūsuf b. ʿAlī b. Ikhwān al-Ṣafā 77
Muṭahhar al-ʿAllāma 64, 132n87, 166 Ilāhī Beg 114, 115n12, 117, 141n118, 145
Ḥīrī, Shaykh Abū ʿUthmān 130 Il-Khanids 16
ḥulūl (incarnation) 66, 67, 79, 151 Illuminationists: see Ishrāqiyūn
Humāyūn Shāh, Jalāl al-Dīn Murshid b. ʿImād al-Dīn Maḥmūd 114
Iftikhār 32 imām/imāmat 52, 53, 64, 65, 84, 90, 91, 92, 93,
Ḥusām al-Dīn Ibrāhīm Shāh 114 99, 107, 108, 126n63, 135, 159, 160, 167
Ḥusayn b. ʿAli b. Abī Ṭālib (Imam) 84, 85, 86, imāmzāda 30
89, 92, 96, 106 Imāmzāda Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad 28, 30
Ḥusayn Beg Lālā (Sulṭān Shāmlū) 162 Imāmzāda Maʿṣūm 27
194 Index
Imāmzāda Muḥammad b. ʿAlī 32 Jesus (ʿĪsā b. Maryam) 65, 66, 82, 83, 88, 89,
incarnation: see ḥulūl 90, 146n136
insān-i kabīr (macrocosm) 8, 58, 69 Jews 55n15, 90, 144, 146
insān-i kāmil (Perfect Man) 95, 104, 117 Junayd (Shaykh; Ṣafavī) 165
insān-i ṣaghīr (microcosm) 8, 58, 72, 74, 75 Jurjānī, ʿAlī b. Muḥammad Sayyid al-Sharīf
iqtibās (rhetorical use of scriptural excerpts) 35, 44. 68, 101n178, 137n107
11n23 Juvaynī, ʿUthmān b. Yaʿqūb 83
ʿIrāqī, Fakhr al-Dīn Ibrāhīm 40, 57, 79n101 Juwaynī, Imam al-Ḥaramayn 65, 66, 67
Irbīlī, ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā 91n153
Iṣfahānī, Abū al-Qāsim al-Ḥusayn b. Kāfiya 7, 40, 44, 45, 46, 48, 101
Mufaḍḍal al-Rāghib 67 Kāmil al-ṣināʿa al-ṭibbīya 63
Iṣfahānī, Shāh Taqī al-Dīn Muḥammad 163 Kara Koyunlu 11, 17n18, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23,
Isfandarmudh 70 24n55, 25n62, 27, 31, 35, 113, 122, 134, 164, 170
Isfarāʾīnī, Shāhfūr 56n17 Kara Yūsuf (Kara Koyunlu) 18
Ishrāqiyūn (Illuminationists) 6, 46, 59, 60, Karbala 32, 96
61, 62, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 130, 136n104, Karkhī, Maʿrūf 93
150n154, 157 Karra, Muḥammad 161, 162, 163, 164
Iskandar Beg Munshī 161 Kasāʾī 101n178
Iskandar b. Kara Yūsuf (Kara Koyunlu) 17n18 Kashf al-ghumma fī maʿrifat al-aʾimma 91n153
Iskandar b. ʿUmar Shaykh (Timurid) 18, 19, Kashf wa-al-bayān ʿan tafsīr al-Qurʾān 43n136,
26n64, 31 85
Ismāʿīl (Safavid) 1, 4, 9n16, 51, 65, 113, 115, 126, Kāshifī, Ḥusayn Vāʿiẓ 10, 136
128, 131, 132, 153, 158, 159, 161, 162, 163, 164, Kāshifī Ṣafī, Fakhr al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Ḥusayn 12,
165, 166, 167, 169 133
Isnawī, Jamāl al-Dīn 41 Kāshī/Kāshānī, Kamāl al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Razzāq
Iṣṭakhrī, Abū Isḥāq al-Fārisī 12 57, 79, 84
Iṣṭilāḥāt-i Ṣūfīya 79 Kāshī, Pahlavān Jalāl al-Dīn 114
ittiḥād (mystical union) 67, 73n83, 79 Katha 14
Kātib, Aḥmad b. Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī 11, 15, 22, 27,
Jābir b. Samura 82n113 28, 29, 32
Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (Imam) 30, 92, 93, 106 Kātibī, Najm al-Dīn ʿAlī b. ʿUmar 7, 38, 44
Jaʿfarī, Sayyid Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad b. Ḥasan Kaydarī, Quṭb al-Dīn (see Bayhaqī) 54
11 Khadīja 56
jafr (numerology) 74, 77 khalīfa (deputy) 81, 82n113, 90, 122, 160n13
Jahān-gushāʾi-yi Khāqān-i Ṣāḥibqirān (Ross Khalīl Allāh (Niʿmatallahi) 31
Anonymous) 12, 161, 167 Khalīl Sulṭān b. Muḥammad Jahāngīr (Timu-
Jahānshāh (Kara Koyunlu) 11, 17n18, 20, 21, 23, rid) 20, 21
24, 27, 28, 31, 113, 122, 134 Khamrīya 128
Jalāl al-Dīn Maqṣūd 22 khānqāh (Sufi hostel) 28, 29, 31, 134n96, 143,
Jamāl al-Dīn Abū Isḥāq 28 145
Jām-i gītī-numā 8, 60, 155, 156, 157, 158 Khaṭībzāda (Mawlana) 35
Jāmiʿ-i Mufīdī 11 khātim (seal) 78, 80, 83
Jāmī, Nūr al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 5, 9n15, 10, Khātūn Jān 22
35n112, 40, 45, 46, 49n154, 80, 109, 114, 115, Khiḍr 84, 107
116, 119n29, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 145 Khulāṣat al-tavārīkh 161
Jāndarvīsh b. Quldarvīsh 21 Khunjī, Faḍl Allāh b. Rūzbihān 11, 115, 119, 123,
Jandī, Muʾayyad al-Dīn 57, 79 131n83, 133
Jawharī, Abū Naṣr Ismāʿīl b. Ḥammād 57n20, Khurdad 70
103n184 Khvāfī, Zayn al-Dīn Abū Bakr (Qadi) 132n88
Index 195
Khvāfī, Zayn al-Dīn ʿAlī (Qadi) 114, 132n88 Maʾmūn (ʿAbbasid) 74, 91, 92
Khvāndamīr, Ghiyāth al-Dīn 10, 11, 45, 117, Manāqib-i Ibrāhīm-i Gülşeni 12, 121
125, 161 Manṣūrī, Darvīsh Ḥusayn 114
Khvānsārī, M. Bāqir b. Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn 54 Manṭiqī 12, 109n201
Khvānzāda 19 Maʿqil b. Qays Riyāḥī 97
Khwājaka Mirāk b. Quldarvīsh 21, 22 Maqṣūd b. Uzūn Ḥasan (Ak Koyunlu) 26
Khwājazāda (Mawlana) 35 Maʿrūf al-Karkhī 93
Khwārizmī, Maḥmūd b. Muḥammad Marvārīd, ʿAbd Allāh 10
Chaghmīnī 45 Marwān b. al-Ḥakam (Umayyad) 93
Kīmiyā-yi saʿādat 61 Masʿūd (Mawlana) 45
Kindī, Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb 62n36, 150n155 Maṭāliʿ al-anwār fī al-manṭiq 33, 36, 38
Kindī, ʿAfīf 56 Mawlana al-Munshī 35
Kitāb al-Futūḥ 57 Mawṣillū (clan) 154, 155
Kitāb-i Diyārbakrīya 23 Mawṣillū, Ṣūfī Khalīl Beg 114, 116, 117, 121n36,
Kubrā, Najm al-Dīn 68, 79n101, 130 123, 124, 125, 151, 154, 155
kufr (unbelief) 68, 121n35, 150n155 Maybudhī, ʿAbd al-Rashīd b. ʿAlī 15
Kūynāfī, Sharaf al-Dīn Abū Isḥāq 45n142, 114 Maybudī, Muʿīn al-Dīn 11, 26, 27, 28, 29, 32
Maybudī, Quṭb al-Dīn 22, 29
Lāchīn 159 Maybudī, Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Rashīd Munajjim
Lāhījī, Shams al-Dīn (Qadi; ṣadr) 132n87, 166 167, 168
Lāhījī, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Yahyā 6, Maybudī, Muʿīn al-Dīn Jamāl b. Jalāl al-Dīn
7n10, 43n136, 114, 130, 131n83, 132, 147n140, 27n68
170 Mehmet II (Ottoman) 46, 47
land reforms (Ak Koyunlu) 123, 124, 147n140 microcosm; see insān-i ṣaghīr
Luqmān 61, 107 Milal wa-al-naḥal 65n45
Lurs 162, 163 Mīr Dāmad 67
Mīr Ghiyāth al-Dīn Manṣūr 8n11
Maʿarrī, Abū al-ʿAlāʾ 100 Mīr Mīrzā 117
Maʿāsh al-sālikīn 130 Mīr Muḥibb Allāh (Niʿmatallahi) 31n90
macrocosm: see insān-i kabīr Moses 84, 87, 89, 102n181
Mafāḥiṣ 74 Muʿammāʾī, Mīr Ḥusayn 160n14
Mafātīḥ al-iʿjāz fī sharḥ-i Gulshan-i rāz 132 Muʿāwiya b. Abī Sufyān (Umayyad) 61, 84, 88,
Maghribī, Muḥyī al-Dīn 71 90, 94, 98, 100n175
Magians: see Zoroastrians Mubarrad 101
Mahdi 3, 77, 82, 83, 84, 100n175, 101, 106, 107, Mufradāt fī gharīb al-Qurʾān 103n184
108, 129, 130, 131, 146 Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh (Prophet) 56, 63,
Maḥmūd b. Ughurlū Muḥammad (Ak 65, 66, 67, 78, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89,
Koyunlu) 155 90, 91, 92, 95, 100n175, 102n181, 104, 105, 107,
Majālis al-muʾminīn 12, 135, 136 111, 117, 132, 148n144, 150, 151, 166
Majālis al-nafāʾis 45, 112, 119 Muḥammad b. al-Munkadir 56
Majd al-Dīn Faḍl Allāh 32 Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafīya 73, 89, 106
Majūsī, ʿAlī b. ʿAbbās 63 Muḥammad b. Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī (Imam) 83,
Makhzan al-inshāʾ 10 84, 106n193, 107
Makkī, Muḥammad b. ʿAlī Abū Tālib 57 Muḥammad Darvīsh 17
Malāmīya/Malāmatīya 130, 135n103 Muḥammadī b. Yūsuf b. Uzūn Ḥasan (Ak Ko-
Mālik b. Anas 59, 75, 108 yunlu) 155
Maliki madhhab 93 Muḥammad Karra 161, 162, 163, 164
Mamluks 18, 42, 52n5, 151n158 Muḥammad Qavvās 114
196 Index
Muḥammad Shāriḥ 35 Niʿmat Allāh al-Thānī, Sayyid 26, 30, 31, 114
Muḥammad Yaḥyā b. ʿUbayd Allāh Aḥrār 114, Niʿmatallahis 30, 52, 72
127n68, 133, 134 Niʿmat Allāh, Shāh Valī Nūr al-Dīn Kirmānī
Muhimmāt 41 30, 31, 72, 74, 161
Muʿizz al-Dīn Yūsuf Bahādur 22 Nīshābūrī, Abū al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī 54
mujaddid (Renewer) 64, 83 Nīshāpūrī, ʿAṭāʾ Allāh 45
Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-hayʾa 45 Niẓām al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Bāqī (Niʿmatallahi) 31
Mullā Jān 125 Niẓām al-Dīn Shāh Valī Beg 22
Mullā Ṣadrā 5, 67, 71n70 Nizāmī, Faṣīḥ al-Dīn Muḥammad 46
munshaʾāt 8 Noah 89, 107
Munshaʾāt (Kūynāfī) 114 numerology: see jafr
Munshaʾāt (Maybudī) 8, 9, 10, 33, 51n1, 83n114, Nūr al-Dīn Aḥmad (Amir) 114
109n201, 112, 113, 115, 117, 125, 128, 134, 138, Nūrbakhshī, Shāh Qavām al-Dīn Ḥusayn
140n115, 144, 146, 154, 156, 159, 163 167n32
Munshī (Mawlana) 35 Nūrbakhshī, Ḥusām al-Dīn 35
Murād b. Dānā Khalīl Bāyandur 26, 155 Nūrbakhshīya 5, 128n75, 129, 130, 131, 132, 136
Murād b. Jahāngīr (Ak Koyunlu) 115 Nūrbakhsh, Sayyid Muḥammad 77, 107n197,
Murdad 70 129, 130, 131, 132
Murtaḍā-yi Sharīfī, Sayyid 35 Nūrbakhsh, Sayyid Muḥammad II 156n5
Mūsā al-Kāẓim (Imam) 92 Nūrbakhsh, Sayyid Qāsim 156n5
Muṣliḥ al-Dīn Muṣṭafā 45
Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj 39, 82n113, 84, 85 Öljeytü (Il-Khan) 16
Mustawfī Bāfqī, Muḥammad Mufīd 11, 167, Ordibihisht 70
168 Ottomans 12, 35, 36, 41n131, 46, 47, 48, 49,
Mutakallimūn (scholastic theologians) 58, 77n92, 128, 138, 139, 163, 171
59, 66, 68, 69, 130, 158
Muʿtazila 108 Pārsīnī, ʿImād al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 83
Muʿtazilī, ʿAbd al-Jabbār 41n129 Perfect Man: see insān-i kāmil
Muzaffarids 16, 17, 26n68 Peripatetics 46, 59, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 130,
Muẓaffar, Mubāriz al-Dīn Muḥammad 16 136, 150n154
Muẓaffar, Sharaf al-Dīn 16 Persian philosophers 70, 71n73
mystical union: see ittiḥād Pīr ʿAlī Beg 114, 117, [Zayn al-Dīn] 147
Pīr Būdāq b. Jahānshāh (Kara Koyunlu) 21,
Nahj al-balāgha 53, 54, 96 22, 23
Najāt 136n104 Pīr Muḥammad b. Jahāngīr (Timurid) 17
Nakhjavānī, Muḥammad 45 Pīr Muḥammad b. ʿUmar Shaykh (Timurid)
Nakhshabī, Abū Turāb 100n174 17, 18
Nāma-yi nāmī 10 Plato 41, 58, 62, 70, 129, 157
Naqshbandīya 5, 10, 52, 126, 136 Porphyry 73
Nasāʾī 39 primary matter: see hayūlā
Naṣr Allāh, Sayyid 114 Ptolemy 61n33, 71, 115
Navāʾī, ʿAlī Shīr 9n15, 10, 46, 112, 114, 119, 125, Pūrnāk (clan) 154, 155
126, 132, 133, 134n96, 135 Pūrnāk, Manṣūr Beg 124, 155
Nawawī, Muḥyī al-Dīn Abū Zakariyā 40n126, Pythagorus 61, 129
41, 75n89, 85, 142
Nayrīzī, Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū Isḥāq 114, Qadi Ḥasan 122
127n67, 137, 138, 149 Qalqashandī, Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAlī 10
Nayrīzī, Najm al-Dīn Ḥājjī Maḥmūd 36n117, Qanbar, Amir Sayyid Ṣadr al-Dīn 17
137n106 Qanbar, Niẓām al-Dīn Ḥajjī 27
Index 197
Qānūn fī al-ṭibb 63 ṣadr 35n108

Qāsim Beg b. Jahāngīr (Ak Koyunlu) 113, 155 Ṣadr al-Dīn, Sayyid Mir 35
Qawāʿid al-Islām 132n87, 166 Safavids 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8n10, 13, 30, 31, 40n127,
Qawl al-jalī fī faḍāʾil ʿAlī 52n5 46, 47, 50, 51, 52, 53, 119, 122, 125, 129, 131,
Qayitmas Bāyandur 155 132n87, 154, 155, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163, 164,
Qayṣarī, Sharaf al-Dīn Dāwud 57, 79, 99 165, 166, 167, 169, 171
Qazvīnī, Ḥakīm Shāh Muḥammad 12, 48, 112, Ṣaḥāba (Companions of the Prophet) 64, 65,
119 91, 98, 99, 104
Qazwīnī, Najm al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār 85 Ṣaḥīḥ 94
Qazwīnī, Zakariyā b. Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd Saʿīdī, Niẓām al-Dīn Aḥmad 114, 131n83
15 Saladin 74
qirān (astral conjunction) 76, 103 Salāmān va Absāl 119n29, 134
Qubād b. Fīrūz 15n5 Salmān b. Kara Yūsuf (Kara Koyunlu) 17n18
Qummī, Mīr Aḥmad (Qadi) 161 Samarqandī, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad 45
Qūnawī, ʿAbd al-Ghaffār b. Kamāl Ghāzī 83 Sām Mīrzā (Safavid) 34
Qūnawī, Ṣadr al-Dīn 57, 72, 79n101, 84 Sarakhsī, Shams al-Dīn Abū Bakr Muḥammad
quṭb (Pole) See also awtād 79, 83, 84, 130, 132 b. Aḥmad 40n126
Sarūʾī, Aḥmad Beg 162
Rabīʿa 56 Sassanians 14, 92
Raḍī, Muḥammad b. al-Ṭāhir 54 Sāvajī, Imām al-Dīn Shaykh ʿAlī (Qadi)
rāfiḍī/rawāfiḍ 65, 126, 127 40n27, 114, 119, 123, 124, 147, 148, 149, 150,
Rāfiʿī, ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Muḥammad Qazvīnī 169n1
41, 75, 85, 142 Sāvajī, Najm al-Dīn Masʿūd (Shaykh) 112, 114,
Rāghib Iṣfahānī 103n184 117, 119, 125, 149
raʾīya (common people) 122 Sāvajī, Ṣafī al-Dīn ʿĪsā (Qadi) 51n1, 63, 114, 116,
Rashaḥāt ʿayn al-ḥayāt 12, 127, 133 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 127,
Rashḥ-i bāl bi-sharḥ-i ḥāl 46 128, 134, 137, 138, 139, 143, 146, 147, 148, 149,
Rashīd al-Dīn, Faḍl Allāh Hamadānī 16 150, 151, 158
Rawḍat al-jannāṭ 54 Sāvajī, Ṣafī al-Dīn ʿĪsā II (Qadi) 125n55
Rawḍat [al-ṭālibīn] 41 Sāvajī, Salmān 40
Rawshanī, Dede Ḥaḍratları ʿUmar 42, 120, 121, sayyid 29, 30, 31, 136, 164n26, 165n27
122 Scholastic theologians: see Mutakallimūn
Rāzī, Fakhr al-Dīn 39, 41, 44, 49, 59, 72, 157 seal: see khātim
Rāzī, Ghiyāth al-Dīn Ḥāfiẓ 26n64 Selīm I (Ottoman) 47, 48
Rāzī, Yaḥyā b. Muʿādh 100n174 Shabistarī, Maḥmūd 7, 43n136, 68, 132,
Renewer: see mujaddid 150n154
Risāla dar Asrār al-ḥurūf 72 Shāfiʿī, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Idrīs
Risāla-i Ādāb-i baḥth 45 40, 59, 64, 85, 93, 108
Risālat al-hudā 77, 107n197 Shafiʿi madhhab 40, 41n128, 48, 51n2, 65, 93,
Rīsmān Bāz, Sayyid Muḥammad 114, 148n144 108, 142, 165, 166
Riyāḥī, Maʿqil b. Qays 97 shahāda 65, 87, 100n175, 102
Rūmī, Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad 40, 55 Shāh Niʿmat Allāh al-Thānī 26, 30, 31, 52, 114,
Rūmī, Masʿūd 33 131, 136
Rūmī, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Mūsā Qāḍīzāda 45n141, 48 Shahrastanī, Muḥammad 65n45
Rūmlū, Ḥasan Beg 11, 44, 161 Shahrazūrī, Shams al-Dīn 58
Rustam (Amīr al-Ḥajj) 126n65 Shahrbānū (Kanizak Ghazāla) 92
Rustam b. Maqṣūd (Ak Koyunlu) 126 Shāhrukh b. Tīmūr (Timurid) 11, 17, 18, 19, 20,
23n51, 26n64, 31, 49, 134n96 164n26
Saʿdī 109, 146n138 Shāmī, ʿAbd Allāh 83
198 Index
Shāmlū, ʿAbdi Beg Tuvājī 163 Sufi hostel: see khānqāh

Shams al-Dīn Bahrām Baḥḥāth 35 Sufis 3, 5, 13, 28, 30, 31, 37, 46, 51n1, 52, 53, 59,
Shamsīya fī al-manṭiq 7, 36, 38, 44, 45 60, 63, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 77, 78,
Shaqāʾiq al-nuʿmānīya 12 80n107, 81, 83n117, 115, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132,
Sharafnāma-yi shāhī 10 136, 140, 143, 145, 150n154, 151n157, 157, 162,
Sharḥ al-ʿAqāʾid al-ʿaḍudīya 48, 94 165, 167, 170
Sharḥ al-Kabīr 41 Suhrawardī, Shihāb al-Dīn Yaḥyā 39, 41, 62,
Sharḥ al-Maqāṣid 61 67, 70, 72, 91, 102
Sharḥ al-Maṭāliʿ 48 Sulamī, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 85n122
Sharḥ al-Shamsīya 48 Sulaymān (Ottoman) 41n131, 128
Sharḥ-i Dīvān-i ʿAlī 3, 7n7, 39, 40n126, 41, 43, Sulaymān Beg Bījan 116, 121, 124
50, ch. 3 passim, 121, 129, 130, 131, 136, 150, Sulṭān-Abū Saʿīd (Timurid) 23, 24, 45, 125
153, 157, 160n13, 169, 170 Sulṭān-Ḥusayn Bayqarā (Timurid) 5, 115, 155,
Sharḥ-i Fuṣūṣ (Kāshī) 79 160n14
Sharḥ-i Fuṣūṣ (Qayṣarī) 99 Sulṭān-Khalīl b. Uzūn Ḥasan (Ak Koyunlu)
Sharḥ-i Manāzil al-sāʾirīn 79n100 24, 113, 115, 116, 117n21, 119n29, 122, 125, 126,
Sharḥ Īsāghūjī (Isagogue) 48 139
Sharḥ-i Ṣaḥīḥ-i Muslim 85 Sulṭān-Maḥmūd b. Sulṭān-Abū Saʿīd
Shariʿa 42, 59, 64, 81, 82, 98, 107, 108, 109, 117, (Timurid) 45
140, 143, 146, 148, 158, 159 Sulṭān-Muḥammad b. Bāysunghur (Timurid)
Sharvānī, Ismāʿīl 135 19, 20, 164n26
Shīʿa 37, 40n127, 50, 52, 64, 65, 66, 85, 92, 98, Sulṭān-Muḥammad Shāh 114, 117n23
107, 127, 135n103, 158, 165 Sulṭān-Murād b. Yaʿqūb (Ak Koyunlu) 117, 161
Shifaʾ 136n104 Sunni [-Jamaʿi] 3, 4, 6, 13, 40n126, 44n137, 50,
Shīftagī, ʿAlī 35 51, 52, 53, 64, 65, 85, 86, 91n153, 95, 108, 126,
Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad 32 127, 130, 135, 150, 160n13, 162, 163, 164, 165,
Shīrāzī, Mīr Ṣadr al-Dīn 47, 48n150 167
Shīrāzī, Quṭb al-Dīn Maḥmūd b. Masʿūd suyūrghāl 9n17, 20n37, 28, 122n40, 123, 124,
70n66 137
Shīrāzī, Muḥyī al-Dīn Aḥmad (Shaykh) 133 Suyūṭī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jalāl al-Dīn 52n5,
Shīrāzī, Muẓaffar al-Dīn ʿAlī (Shaykh) 47 70n65
Shirvānī, Sayyid 165n27
Shuʿayb Aqā 162 Ṭabarī, Muḥammad b. Jarīr 39n125
Shushtarī, Sayyid Nūr Allāh Najm al-Dīn 12, Tabrīzī, Muḥyī al-Dīn Muḥammad 35
135, 137 tadhkira (biographical dictionary) 1
Sībawayh 101 Tafsīr-i Qāḍī 41
Siffin 94n159, 96, 97, 99, 102, 105 Taftāzānī, Saʿd al-Dīn Masʿūd 57, 61, 67, 102,
Ṣiḥāḥ: see Tāj al-lugha 137n107
Silsilat al-dhahab 116 Ṭahmāsp (Safavid) 40n127, 131, 160n12, 167n32
silsilat al-dhahab (hadith) 126 Taḥrīr-i Uqlīdis 7, 45, 46
Simnānī, ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla 39n124, 53, 82, 83, 84, Tāj al-ashʿar wa-salwat al-Shīʿa 54
86n126, 121n35, 160n13 Tāj al-lugha wa-ṣiḥāḥ al-ʿArabīya 57n20,
Sirāj al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Vahhāb 114, 121n35, 126, 103n184
127, 136n104, 145, 150n154 Tālish, Ḥusām al-Dīn Ḥasan 139
slavery 159, 160 Tālishī, Muḥammad b. Mūsā 114, 44n137
Socrates 61n33, 129 tamghā 23n51, 123
Solomon 62, 159 Tamhīd [al-awāʾil wa-talkhīṣ al-dalāʾil] 65n45
Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā 10 Tamīmī, ʿImād al-Dīn Masʿūd b. Ḍiyā al-Dīn
Suddī 86 Muḥammad 32
Index 199
Taqī al-Dīn Dādā Muḥammad 17 ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān (Caliph) 57, 84, 89, 97, 98,
Tārīkh-i ʿālam-ārā-yi ʿAbbāsī 161 160n13
Tārīkh-i jadīd-i Yazd 11, 16, 28 Uvays Beg 26
Tārīkh-i Yazd 11 Uzūn Ḥasan (Ak Koyunlu) 13, 19, 23, 24, 25,
Taşköprüzade 12, 35, 46, 47, 48, 139 26, 30, 31, 34, 35, 42, 113, 116, 118, 122, 123,
Ṭawāliʿ al-anwār 7, 36, 44, 45, 46 125, 127n65, 134, 154, 155
Thaʿlabī, Abū Isḥāq Aḥmad b. Muḥammad
39, 43n136, 53, 54, 56, 85, 86, 87 valāyat 78,79, 80, 83, 90, 160n13
Thaqafī, al-Mukhtār b. Abū ʿUbayda 106 valī 21, 27, 65, 100n175, 135, 160n13
Tīmūr 5, 17, 18n21, 21, 30, 123, 137n107 Varzana, Qūṭb al-Dīn 21n40
Timurids 1, 5, 7n10, 8, 9, 10, 13, 16, 17, 18, 19, 23,
25n62, 26, 28, 31, 32, 45n139, 46, 76n91, 80, Waḍʿ-i jadīd 155
92, 112, 113, 114, 115, 119, 127, 131, 133, 134, 136, Wāḥidī, ʿAlī b. Aḥmad 39, 56, 86, 87
137, 138, 149n152, 152, 155, 160n12, 163, 164, waqf 28, 137, 138, 142, 143, 148, 149, 152n158,
167n32, 170 168
Tīrandāz, Jalāl al-Dīn 114 Waṣāyā 79
Tirmidhī, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad
al-Ḥakīm 80, 140 Yāfiʿī, ʿAbd Allāh b. Asʿad 57, 60n28
Tirmidhī, Abū ʿĪsā Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā 39, 56, Yāfith b. Nūḥ 107
84, 91 Yaʿqūb (Ak Koyunlu) 1, 9n16, 12, 24, 26, 35,
Torah 55 42, 113, 114, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123,
ṭughrā 9n17 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 133, 134, 137, 138,
Tughrul (Seljuk) 76 145n134, 146, 148, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 161,
Tuḥfa al-shāhīya fī al-hayʾa 70 163, 169
Tuḥfat al-Aḥrār 134 Yaʿqūb Khān Beg b. Maqṣūd (Ak Koyunlu) 127
Ṭūsī, Naṣīr al-Dīn Muḥammad 7, 34, 64, Yāqūt 12, 15
70n66, 71, 72n78, 86, 102, 150n154 Yār Aḥmad 22
tuvājī (inspector of troops) 163n21 Yazdigird II (Sassanian) 15
Yazdigird III (Sassanian) 92
Ughurlū Muḥammad b. Uzūn Ḥasan (Ak Yazdī, Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī 10, 20n36, 30, 32, 74
Koyunlu) 24 Yazīd b. Muʿāwiya (Umayyad) 94
ūlāq 21 Yūsuf Ahl, Jalāl al-Dīn 10
Ulugh Beg (Timurid) 37, 45 Yūsuf b. Ḥusayn (Shaykh) 130
ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (Umayyad) 94 Yūsuf b. Jahānshāh (Kara Koyunlu) 35
ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb (Caliph) 65, 84, 87, 89, Yūsuf b. Uzūn Ḥasan (Ak Koyunlu) 155
91, 151
Umayyads 84n121, 88, 89n137, 93, 94 Zamakhsharī, Maḥmūd b. ʿUmar 39, 85, 86,
Umm Salama 85 87, 97, 100
unbelief: see kufr Zayd b. Arqam 56
ʿUqla 79 Zaydis 64, 92
urdū 9n17, 118, 122 Zayn al-Dīn Pīr ʿAlī Beg 147
Urmawī, Sirāj al-Dīn Maḥmūd 38 Zoroastrians 14, 70, 92n154, 144, 146
ʿUrwa [li-ahl al-khalwa wa-al-jawla] 39n124,
82n111, 83

The Cosmic Perils of Qadi Husayn Maybudi in Fifteenth Century Iran by Alexandra Dunietz PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Cosmic Perils of Qadi Husayn Maybudi in Fifteenth Century Iran by Alexandra Dunietz PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

ii ﻿

Islamicate Intellectual History

Judith Pfeiffer (University of Oxford)

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/iih

The Cosmic Perils of

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dunietz, Alexandra Whelan, 1961-

Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

DeWitt Alexander (Dutch) Higgs (1907-1994)

Committed to Learning, Law, and Public Service

2 Early Years and Education 14

3 The Sharḥ-i Dīvān-i -ʿAlī 51

5 Last Years and Safavid Confrontation 154

The transliteration system is that of the International Journal of Middle East

amir imam *mawlana ribat tafsir

BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004302327_002

ence to a Sunni-Jamaʿi legal doctrine and with Shiʿi historicism.”3 Coexistence

which we negotiate our analyses of philosophical texts. Uneasy with labeling a

Maybudī’s principal writings will be discussed in detail within the text of

As mentioned above, a commentary of a different nature is that on the

popular literary genre in Maybudī’s day. Sometimes they served as handbooks

19 Jāmī, Pis’ma, 5–6, 8.

Early Years and Education

Yazd From Pre-Islamic Times to the Mongols

Contemporary references to Qadi Ḥusayn’s name often include either ‘Maybudī’

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004302327_003

While the region as a whole apparently prospered under the Il-Khanids

The Timurid Period

31 Ṭihrānī, 2:293–96; Quiring-Zoche, Isfahan im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, 38.

The Kara Koyunlu Period

39 Aubin, “Deux sayyids,” 438; Ibn Shihāb, 90–91; Kātib, 269.

The Ak Koyunlu Period

establish his predominance among the Ak Koyunlu, he went on to dispose of

Barbaro continues with a description of the combination entrepôt and inn

decorated in Yazd before proceeding to Tabriz. One of the prominent men of

Growing up in this city of textile manufactures and fruit production, Maybudī

histories as becoming vizier of Yazd when Jahānshāh Kara Koyunlu rose to

75 Kātib, 158, 283.

79 Kātib, 284. The description suggests that Kātib was present.

perhaps because of stronger alliances, more effective religious authority, better

Maybudī’s preserved correspondence, the Munsha⁠ʾāt, which will be a major

provincial backwater from which to flee at the earliest opportunity. It was a

113 Taşköprüzade, 149.

These tabulations bring to light the essentially geological character of the

That pedagogical distinction between explanation and instruction is puzzling

texts. Even had he not eventually become a qadi, it is understandable that, as

insecurity of any one person’s position in intellectual and political circles. A

Those of my companions who were engaged in reading it requested that

Abharī’s work is a skeletal introduction to the basic tenets of philosophy. The

of cryptographic poems (muʿammā).139 Maybudī wrote a commentary in Ara-

ḥikma written by Faṣīḥ al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Niẓāmī (d. 919/1513), an expert in

Those students of Davānī who achieved prominence in the Ottoman Em-

in Bursa in 922/1516. Taşköprüzade finishes his biographical notice by saying

153 Uzunçarşılı, 20–23.

teachers—specifically Davānī—concentrated. Since Davānī penned at least

The Sharḥ-i Dīvān-i ʿAlī

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004302327_004

terms ‘Shiʿi-Sunnism,’ ‘imamophilism,’ ‘‘Alid loyalism,’ and ‘crypto-Shiʿism’ ad-

13 Saleh, Formation, 175.

16 SDA, 765. Qurʾān, 36.

(mutakallimūn and ḥukamāʾ) and Peripatetic thinkers (ḥukamāʾ-i mashshāʾiyīn)

ii

everything from criticism of his contemporaries among the ulama, to women,