Charles Melville

Mázandarán and Astarábád was first published as volume VII of the new series of the E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Series (1928). Much of the data was retrieved in the course of two expeditions by the author, one in spring of 1908 and the other between November 1909 and January 1910, the latter providing the chronological framework for Rabino’s observations along his itinerary. It is a remarkable work, the product of many years of the careful accumulation of information about a region cut off from the Iranian Plateau by the formidable barrier of the Alburz Mountains and enjoying a complex history commensurate with its peculiar physical geography and inaccessible valleys. The book is a mixture of gazetteer and travelogue, informed by detailed research not only in the historical sources available, but also in the works of previous European and local writers. Notable among its valuable qualities is the substantial selection of Persian inscriptions provided in addition to Rabino’s descriptive text. Here we have a scholarly and sensitive account of two Iranian provinces full of character and variety. This is a classic work that has long been out of print and an essential resource for subsequent work on the Caspian provinces, which all draw on the efforts of H. L. Rabino. Included with this new edition is a large-scale facsimile reproduction of the original accompanying map.

Guy Le Strange (1854-1933) pioneered the study of the historical geography of the Middle East, and especially Persia, notably in his Lands of the Eastern Caliphate (Cambridge, 1905) and the present work which contains an English translation of Mustaufi’s Nuzhat al-qulub?amd-Allah Mustaufi was a fourteenth-century historian and geographer. His Nuzhat al-qulub (Hearts’ delight) sets out to give a description of Iran in the form of a gazetteer. Despite some repetition of previous accounts, there are many snippets of up to date information embedded in his descriptions of the various provinces and cities and villages of Iran, including altered circumstances and productivity, and changes in their names and prosperity, and his work gives a graphic account of the area in the latter days of the Il-Khans. Mustaufi’s Nuzhat al-qulub captures a moment in time caught between an old world and a new – the familiar but moribund universal Islamic Caliphate, fatally destroyed by the Mongol invasions, and the new dispensation of the Mongol Empire, within which Iran once more found independence and cultural self-determination. But this world too was in transition, as the Ilkhanate was in the process of collapsing and new insecurities threatened. This accessible new edition will make this important work, extensively used but little studied and long out of print available to a new generation of scholars.

Edgard Blochet (1870-1937), the French orientalist, left his mark in several areas of Middle Eastern and Asian studies. In 1910 his introduction to Rashid al-Din’s Jami‘ al-tawarikh was published as volume XII in the E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Series. The Jami‘ al-tawarikh has been described as the first ‘world history’; written at the start of the fourteenth century, in the Mongol Ilkhanate in Persia, it describes cultures and major events in world history from China to Europe and in addition, it covers Mongol history. Introduction à l’Histoire des Mongols is a rich and complex work, and one that has been unduly lost sight of in more recent scholarship. Blochet is concerned chiefly with the transformation of the Mongol Empire from the death of its founder into a Chinese dynasty with complex relations with its former constituent territories in Transoxania, Russia and Iran in the period covered by the portion of the Jami‘ al-tawarikh that he was editing. This introductory volume does not offer conclusions, but it provides a valuable survey of the place of Rashid al-Din’s chronicle in the historical literature of the time and its impact on later historiography. Despite the very considerable body of work dedicated to Rashid al-Din, his chronicle, the history of Ilkhanid Iran and Yuan China and the linguistic analysis of the primary sources since Blochet’s time, this reprint of a work that has long been unavailable aims to encourage a re-evaluation of his pioneering contributions to the field. The original French text is re-published here, accompanied by a new preface by Charles Melville.

Accompanying a major scholarly exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery, this book explores one of the most beautiful and enigmatic objects in The Courtauld's collection: the so-called 'Courtauld wallet', a brass container richly inlaid with gold and silver, imitating a lady's textile or leather bag, and probably made in Mosul in northern Iraq around 1300. No other object of this kind is known. Decorated all round with courtly figures and on the top with an elaborate banqueting scene featuring an enthroned couple, it has long been recognized as a masterpiece of Arab metalwork. Yet, despite the superb quality of its design and craftsmanship and its status as a unique object, this exceptional metalwork bag has never been properly published. Thus it remains little known outside a small circle of specialists, and little understood even within that circle. Encompassing a variety of multidisciplinary essays by distinguished historians and art historians - on subjects ranging from music at the Mongol court, Mosul under Mongol governorship and Mongol marriage customers to the role of women under the Ilkhanids - this publication aims to explore the origins, function and iconography of this splendid luxury object as well as the cultural context in which it was made and used. It will bring together other images of enthroned Mongols with female consorts, as well as scenes of hunters, revelers an musicians in a variety of media, including illustrated manuscripts, ceramics, textile, and metalwork. By presenting the bag alongside carefully selected contemporary material, it will provide an insight into courtly life under the Mongols in the newly conquered areas of their empire, and will also provide an unrivaled opportunity to investigate the inlaid brass tradition in Mosul after the Mongol Conquest. Objects made before and after this seismic event will be reproduced side by side to demonstrate how the Mosul metalworkers adapted their work for their new patrons.

The last two volumes in this series have looked at the confrontation between Christian and Moor in Medieval Spain exclusively from the Christian side. This book attempts to redress the balance by looking at many of the same incidents from the Moslem point of view. Apart from military encounters, some attention is paid to diplomacy, and also to lawsuits, legal judgements and regulations governing the co-existance of the rival communities. The 112 texts, many available in English for the first time, are also given in Arabic.