Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh () is a work of literature and history, produced in the Mongol Ilkhanate.Inal. p. 163. Written by Rashid al-Din Hamadani (1247–1318 AD) at the start of the 14th century, the breadth of coverage of the work has caused it to be called "the first world history". It was in three volumes and published in Arabic and Persian versions. The extant manuscripts represent "one of the most important surviving examples of Ilkhanid art in any medium",Compendium of Chronicles, p. 9 and are the largest surviving body of early examples of the Persian miniature.

The work describes cultures and major events in world history from China to Europe, while spotlighting Mongol history with a view to securing the Mongol Empire's cultural legacy.Carey. p. 158 The lavish illustrations and calligraphy required the efforts of hundreds of scribes and artists, with the intent that two new copies (one in Persian, and one in Arabic) would be created each year and distributed to schools and cities around the Ilkhanate, in the Middle East, Central Asia, Anatolia, and the Indian subcontinent.

Approximately 20 illustrated copies were made of the work during Rashid al-Din's lifetime, but only parts have survived, covering roughly 400 pages of the original work. The oldest known copy is an Arabic version, of which half has been lost, but one set of pages is currently in the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art (London, England), comprising 59 folios from the second volume of the work. Another set of pages, with 151 folios from the same volume, is owned by the Edinburgh University Library. Two Persian copies from the first generation of manuscripts survive in the Topkapı Palace Library in Istanbul.

Contents The Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh consists of four main sections of different lengths:

The Taʾrīkh-ī Ghazānī, the most extensive part, which includes: The Mongol and Turkic tribes: their history, genealogies and legends The history of the Mongols from Genghis Khan up to the death of Mahmud Ghazan (d. 1304). The second part includes: The history of the reign of Öljaitü up to 1310 (no known copy) The history of the non-Mongol peoples of Eurasia (a universal history from the time of Creation, following the organization of work of the Abbasid historian al-Tabari in his History of the Prophets and Kings, often referred to as at-Tabari's History, and to the historic Muslim history of Qazi Beiza'i in the Neẓām al-Tawārīkh: Adam and the patriarchs the kings of pre-Islamic Iran Muhammad and the Caliphs (Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid Caliphates) the Islamic dynasties of Persia (Ghaznavids, the shahs of Khwarezm, the Isma'ili state of Alamut) the Turkic peoples the History of China Jewish history Frangistan (i.e., Europe, primarily the Papal States and Holy Roman Empire) the Indians The Shu'ab-i panjganah ("Five genealogies, of the Arabs, Jews, Mongols, Franks, and Chinese"). This text exists in two copies of the manuscript in the library of the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul (ms 2937), but has only been published on microfilm. The Suwar al-aqalim, a geographical compendium. Unfortunately, it has not survived in any known manuscript.

Author

Rashid-al-Din Hamadani was born in 1247 at Hamadan, Iran into a Jewish family. The son of an apothecary, he studied medicine and joined the court of the Ilkhan emperor, Abaqa Khan, in that capacity. He converted to Islam around the age of thirty. He rapidly gained political importance, and in 1304 became the vizier of emperor and Muslim convert Ghazan. He retained his position until 1316, experiencing three successive reigns, but, convicted of having poisoned the second of these three Khans, Öljaitü, he was executed on July 13, 1318.

Hamdani was responsible for setting up a stable social and economic system in Iran after the destruction of the Mongol invasions, and was an important artistic and architectural patron. He expanded the university at Rab'-e Rashidi, which attracted scholars and students from Egypt and Syria to China, and which published his many works. He was also a prolific author, though few of his works have survived: only a few theological writings and a correspondence which is probably apocryphal are known today in addition to the Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh. His immense wealth made it said of him that he was the best paid author in Iran.

Description

The Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh was one of the grandest projects of the Ilkhanate period, "not just a lavishly illustrated book, but a vehicle to justify Mongol hegemony over Iran".Blair and Bloom, 3 The text was initially commissioned by Il-Khan Ghazan, who was anxious for the Mongols to retain a memory of their nomadic roots, now that they had become settled and adopted Persian customs. Initially, the work was intended only to set out the history of the Mongols and their predecessors on the steppes, and took the name Taʾrīkh-ī Ghazānī, which makes up one part of the Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh. To compile the History, Rashid al-Din set up an entire precinct at the university of Rab'-e Rashidi in the capital of Tabriz. It contained multiple buildings, including a mosque, hospital, library, and classrooms, employing over 300 workers.

After the death of Ghazan in 1304, his successor Öljaitü asked Rashid al-Din to extend the work, and write a history of the whole of the known world. This text was finally completed in sometime between 1306 and 1311.

After Rashid al-Din's execution in 1318, the Rab-i-Rashidi precinct was plundered, but the in-process copy that was being created at the time survived, probably somewhere in the city of Tabriz, possibly in the library of Rashid's son, Ghiyath al-Din. Later, Rashid's son became Vizier, in his own right, and expanded the restored university precinct of his father. Several of the Jāmiʿs compositions were used as models for the later seminal illustrated version of the Shahnameh known as the Demotte Shahnameh.Blair. pp. 31–32.

In the 15th century, the Arabic copy was in Herat, perhaps claimed after a victory by the Timurid dynasty. It then passed to the court of the Mughal Empire in India, where it was in the possession of the emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605). There is then a record of it passing through the hands of later Mughal emperors for the next few centuries. It was probably divided into two parts in the mid-1700s, though both sections remained in India until the 19th century, when they were acquired by the British. The portion now in the Edinburgh library was presented as a gift to Ali-I Ahmad Araf Sahib on October 8, 1761, and in 1800 was in the library of the Indian prince Farzada Kuli. This fragment was acquired by Colonel John Baillie of Leys of the East India Company, and then in 1876 passed to the Edinburgh University Library. The other portion was acquired by John Staples Harriott of the East India Company sometime prior to 1813. At some point during the next two decades it was brought to England, probably when Harriott came home on furlough, when the manuscript entered the collection of Major General Thomas Gordon. He then bequeathed it to the Royal Asiatic Society in 1841. In 1948, it was loaned to the British Museum and Library, and in 1980 was auctioned at Sotheby's, where it was purchased by the Rashidiyyah Foundation in Geneva for £850,000, the highest price ever paid for a medieval manuscript.Blair. p. 36 The Khalili Collection acquired it in 1990.

Sources To write the Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, Rashid al-din based his work on many written and oral sources, some of which can be identified: From Iran, it is very similar to work by Ata-Malik Juvayni, a Persian historian who wrote an account of the Mongol Empire entitled Tārīkh-i Jahāngushāy "History of the World-Conqueror". Also from Iran, the Shahnameh is drawn upon.Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge For Europe, the Chronicle of the Popes and the Emperors of Martin of Opava For the Mongols, it seems that he had access to the Altan Debter, through the ambassador of the Great Khan to the court of the Il-Khanate. For China, the author knew the translation of four Chinese manuscripts: three on medicine and one on administration. Furthermore, it is known that he enjoyed calligraphy, painting and Chinese music. The links with this world were made all the easier because Mongols also ruled China.

Illustrations

Much of the illustration for the various copies of the Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh was done at the Rab-al Rashidi university complex, though they were also done elsewhere in the Mongol empire. The illustrations in this text are part of the artistic tradition of Persian miniatures and the medium of the numerous Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh manuscripts vary slightly, with most of the miniatures being made using ink, watercolor, and occasionally silver. The images within, designed to correspond to its texts, depict historical and religious events, courtly scenes, and authority figures spanning nationalities and ethnicities. Because of Rashid al-Din's mandate for an Arabic and Persian version of the text to be produced every year there was an adopted standard style for the illustrations, giving characters Mongol countenance and dress, that made the differentiation between key figures difficult.

Stylistic Influences

Elements of the illustrations are influenced by Chinese painting techniques; most notably, the use of dark outlines and transparent washes, in contrast to the opaque watercolor style which would later become characteristic of Persian painting. The rendition of the landscape echoes conventions of Chinese painting under the Yuan dynasty, as seen in handscrolls and woodblock illustration. The illustrations also reflect late Byzantine influence in the elongation and gesture of the figures. Illustrators of the Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh likely used Byzantine illustrations as references for some of the scenes depicted in the first section of the non-Mongol history of the world, about Adam and the patriarchs.

Hazines 1653 & 1654

Hazine 1653 (MS H 1653), made in 1314, includes later additions on the Timurid era for Sultan Shah Rukh. The full collection, known as the Majmu'ah, contains Bal'ami's version of Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari's chronicle, the Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, and Nizam al-Din Shami's biography of Timur. These portions of the Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh cover most of the history of Muhammad and the Caliphate, plus the post-caliphate dynasties of the Ghaznavids, Seljuks, Khwarazmshahs, Is'mailis, and the Turks. MS H 1653 contains 68 paintings in the Ilkhanid style.Hazine 1654 (MS H 1654), a fragmentary piece of the second volume of the Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh is the most complete surviving example of the Persian transcriptions made in Rab'-e Rashidi.The illustrations in this version of the text are made up of direct copies of illustrations from MS H 1653 and emulate illustrations from the Arabic Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh. The manuscript was left unfinished by the Ilkhanids after the inscription's completion in 1317, with only seven illustrations having been added to the beginning and other pages having blank spaces left for illustrations. A selection of the illustrations would be completed at the end of the fourteenth century. MS H 1654 later came into the ownership, along with the Arabic and other Persian versions, of the Timurid ruler Shahrukh, whose royal library both refurbished and added illustrations to the Hazine 1654.

While increasingly simplified, the illustrations from the MS H 1654 are significant in that they display an increase in production under Ilkhanid and Timurid workshops and help modern scholars fill in the gaps from fragmentary manuscripts made earlier that cover non-Islamic histories. Mongol, Shahrukh, and Timurid styles are exemplified among these depictions of Ughuz Turks and Chinese, Jewish, Frankish, and Indian history.

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