In the 17th century, Christians in the Safavid Empire could be divided into three major groups: Georgians belonging to the Orthodox Church, Armenians belonging to the Armenian Apostolic (i.e., Gregorian) Church, and Roman Catholics comprising Western missionaries and recent converts who had been recruited mainly from among the Armenians.[1] Below, these groups will each be treated in turn.  Georgians Throughout the first half of the 16th century, Georgian principalities largely preserved their sovereignty, even though in 1522 Shah Ismāʿīl (r. 1501-24) sacked …

The Ottoman Empire by Claire Norton The Ottoman Empire was a poly-ethnic, multi-faith, Islamic empire with substantial Christian and Jewish populations that stretched from central Europe east to Mesopotamia, west along the north African coast to Morocco, south to the Ḥijāz and Yemen and north of the Black Sea to the Crimea. Although the 16th century, especially the reign of Sultan Süleyman (r. 1520-66), has been conventionally interpreted by modern historians and Ottoman chroniclers as a golden age of Ottoman rule, the empire continued to thrive in the 17th century, expanding terr…

Date of Birth: Around 1626 Place of Birth: Possibly Gori Date of Death: Probably after 1694 Place of Death: Possibly Isfahan Biography Pʻarsadan Gorgijaniże was a Georgian politician and historian who followed a unique political and cultural career in the Safavid Empire. He was originally from Gori in Georgia, and since according to his own statement he was 65 when he finished a copy of his Georgian translation of  Jāmiʿ-i ʿAbbāsī in October 1691 (he had made the translation itself in 1666), he was probably born around 1626. He was apparently not of aristocratic l…

Tʻeimuraziani, Cʻxovreba mepʻisa Tʻeimuraz pirvelisa'Dialogue between Tʻeimuraz and Rustʻveli'‘The lay of Tʻeimuraz’, ‘The life of Tʻeimuraz I’ Archʻil II Bagrationi Date: 1681-5 Original Language: Georgian Description Gabaaseba Tʻeimurazisa da Rustʻvelisa (‘Dialogue between Tʻeimuraz and Rustʻveli’) is a historical poem dedicated to the king and poet Tʻeimuraz I. It is also known as  Tʻeimuraziani (‘The lay of Tʻeimuraz’). It comprises 1,133 stanzas in the edition by R. Baramiże (1989), of which 950 cover the one hundred years of Georgian histo…

Jamiabasi k‘art‘ulad‘Jāmiʿ-i ʿAbbāsī in the Georgian language’ Pʻarsadan Gorgijaniże Date: 1666-91 Original Language: Georgian Description Jāmiʿ-i ʿAbbāsī bi lughat-i Gurjī is a translation from Persian into Georgian of Shaykh Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-ʿAmilī’s  Jāmiʿ-i ʿAbbāsī.  There are two known manuscripts, in Tbilisi and St Petersburg. The former covers 140 folios (280 pages). P’arsadan Gorgijaniże made this translation during his six-year exile in Shushtar, in south-west Iran, in 1666-71. The introduction contains such statement…

Date of Birth: 1589 Place of Birth: Kaxeti Date of Death: 1663 Place of Death: Astarabad Biography Tʻeimuraz I was king of the eastern Georgian kingdoms of Kartli (1625-32) and Kaxetʻi (1606-48) at the time of the hegemony of the Shīʿī Safavid dynasty in the region (1501-1722). Little is known about his childhood. As the result of a feud among the potential heirs to the throne, he was sent to the Safavid court by his mother, Queen Kʻetʻevan, to guarantee his safety. There, he grew up under the personal protectio…

‘A poem on the life of King Šahnavaz’ P‘ešangi P‘ašvibertqaże, P‘ešangi Pashvibertqaże Date: 1664-5 Original Language: Georgian Description Šahnavaziani is the earliest surviving example of a documentary poem in Georgian literature. There is only one extant manuscript, and this has several pages missing, including the last part of the epilogue. The poem comprises a prologue, a main section and an epilogue, in 60 chapters and 1151 stanzas of 16-syllable lines. Šahnavaziani  describes a seven-year period (1658-65) during the reign of King Vaxtang V of Kartli, who…

Date of Birth: Second half of the 16th century Place of Birth: Tʻušetʻi, Georgia Date of Death: Probably in the second half of the 17th century Place of Death: Isfahan Biography There is almost no biographical information available about Iase Tʻuši. As is indicated by his pseudonym Tʻuši, he was very probably born in Tʻušetʻi, Georgia, in the second half of the 16th century.  Iase Tʻuši was evidently a well-educated man by the standards of his time, familiar with both secular and religious literature. At the start of the 17th century, he went to Iran, and there he converted to Islam…

‘The book and passion of Queen Kʻetʻevan’ King Tʻeimuraz I Date: 1625 Original Language: Georgian Description This poem describes the story of the death of Queen Kʻetʻevan, the mother of its author Tʻeimuraz I. After many years of imprisonment for political reasons, she was condemned to death by Shah ʿAbbās because she refused to convert to Islam. She was publicly executed in Shiraz in 1624. The poem was written in 1625. The established copy of the extant version consists of 86 stanzas, a deviation from the original version, which according to a note by the …

- Tpʻileli, Babatʻašvili Tpʻileli Date: 1684-7 Original Language: Georgian Description According to the introductory stanza, Tʻbileli wrote  Didmouraviani at the behest of King Arčʻil II (d. 1714). It is generally agreed that the work was composed between 1684 and 1687, after Arčʻil had written his own  Tʻeimuraziani (1681-5), as the king would otherwise have mentioned it in his own telling of the events it covers. In the first published edition of 1851, edited by Platon Ioseliani from a manuscript that can no longer be traced, the poem consists of 482 stanzas over 73 pages. The poem…

Archʻil II Bagrationi Date of Birth: 1647 Place of Birth: Georgia Date of Death: 16 April 1713 Place of Death: Moscow BiographyArchʻil II, Bagrationi of Imeret‘i (r. 1661-3, 1678-9, 1690-1, 1695-6, 1698) and of Kaxetʻi (1664-75), was the son of Vakht‘ang V of Kʻartʻli (r. 1658-75) alias Shahnavāz. Following the peace treaty of Amasya, Imeret‘i became a vassal kingdom of the Ottoman Empire and Kaxetʻi fell under Safavid suzerainty. In 1663, Archʻil was sent to Iran on the instruction of the court in Isfahan, and he w…

Gospel translation of Nādir-Shah Nādir Shah Afshār; Tahmāsp Qulī Khān; Nāder Shah Date: 1741 Original Language: Persian Description This is part of a Persian translation of the Bible commissioned by Nādir around 1740, following his defeat of the Mughals and his conquest of India. Nādir had teams of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars brought to Isfahan to translate into Persian: the Pentateuch and Psalms; the Acts of the Apostles, New Testament Epistles, the Apocalypse of John, and the Four Gospels; the Qurʾ…

Tpʻileli, Babatʻašvili Tpʻileli Date of Birth: 1620 Place of Birth: Georgia Date of Death: 1688 Place of Death: Georgia Biography Ioseb Tʻbileli was descended from the family of Giorgi Saakaże, the hero he depicts in his poem  Didmouraviani. There are various theories about his relationship to Giorgi Saakaże, but it seems safe to assume that he was the son of Saakaże’s nephew. He grew up in the Kvatʻaxevi monastery in Georgia, and there became a monk. He was well-versed in literature and philosophy, and initially had a successful career in the church hi…

Date of Birth: 27 January 1571 Place of Birth: Unknown Date of Death: 19 January 1629 Place of Death: Ashraf, Mazandaran Biography Shah ʿAbbās I (r. 1587-1629), the fifth ruler of the Safavid dynasty (1501-1722), came to power at a time when tribal factionalism was tearing at the fabric of the state and foreign invaders had greatly reduced Iran’s territory. In his 40-odd-year reign, he managed to retake the borderlands lost by his predecessors, and also to add the Persian Gulf littoral to Safavid control and to incor…

‘The story of Queen Rusudan’ Rusudaniani Date: Uncertain; possibly mid 17th century Original Language: Georgian Description Rusudaniani (‘The story of Queen Rusudan’) is a lengthy prose work, extant in five known manuscripts. It covers over 800 pages in the first edition by I. Abuladze and I. Gigineishvili, published in 1957.  Rusudaniani describes the life of Rusudan, the queen of an imaginary country, Iamaneti, and daughter of Aptvimiane, a nobleman ‘on a par with the kings’, living ‘on the border of the East and West’. The name of the main …

Date of Birth: 1610 or 1611 Place of Birth: Unknown Date of Death: 12 May 1642 Place of Death: Qazvin Biography Shah Ṣafī, whose given name was Sām Mīrzā, was born in 1610 or 1611, the son of Muḥammad Bāqir Mīrzā, Shah ʿAbbās I’s eldest son, and Dilārām Khānum, his Georgian wife. Since his father had been killed in 1615 on the orders of Shah ʿAbbās, Sām Mīrzā grew up in the secluded environment of the royal harem. He learned to read and write in this period, yet does not seem to have been a quick student, and throughout his reign he showed little interest in learning. Ṣafī was enthroned on 28 January…

Date of Birth: Unknown; mid-17th century Place of Birth: Unknown; probably New Julfa, Isfahan Date of Death: After 27 January 1708 Place of Death: Unknown; probably Isfahan BiographyThe identity of the renegade Armenian merchant known after his conversion to Islam as ʿAlī Akbar Armanī remains a historical enigma. Some anecdotal cues in his memoir have led Sebouh Aslanian to infer that he may have been a member of the prominent Velijanian (or Veligianian) merchant family of Venice (I am thankful to Prof. Sebouh Aslanian of…

‘Bare-headed’ Akaki Tsereteli Date: 1895-6 Original Language: Georgian DescriptionThe historical novel  Bashi-Achuk (Baši-Ačʻuk, ‘Bare-headed’) was first published in 1895 in the magazine  Kvali (‘Traces’) and later in  Akakis krebuli (‘Akaki’s collection’), and was twice published as a book during Akaki’s lifetime, in 1900 and 1913. In the latter edition, it is 95 pages long. In writing it, Akaki drew upon both written sources and stories from oral tradition. The title refers to the hero of the novel, Glakhuna Bakradze,…

- ʿAbbās I, Shah of Persia Date: 1605-29 Original Language: Description The first  farmān involving the Armenians issued by Shah ʿAbbās I dates from Rabiʿ II 1014 (16 August-13 September 1605). It lays out the conditions for the settlement of the Armenians who were transplanted from Julfa to the newly built suburb of Isfahan, New Julfa. That the settlement of Armenians in Isfahan met with local resistance is reflected in the same  farmān, since it admonishes the original residents to treat the newcomers fairly (Nawāʾī,  Shah ʿAbbās, vol. 3, pp. 290-1; Ghougassian,  Emergence, pp. 201-3…

- Antony Shierlie, Seigneur Scierley, Antonius Sherleyus, Antonius Scherleyus, Antonio Sceles, Antonio Sirley, Antonio Syrley, Antonio Xerlei, Antonio Xerley, Antonio Cherley Date: 1613 Original Language: English Description Sir Anthony Sherley probably completed his  Relation of his travels into Persia between his dismissal as admiral and his brother Robert’s departure from Madrid for London with the manuscript in 1610-11 (the full title is  Sir Antony Sherley his relation of his travels into Persia. The dangers, and distresses, which befell him in his p…