The Manaqib al-`Arifin is a series of hagiographic biographies of the first Mevlevi masters. It was written in Persian by the dervish Eflaki in the first half of the fourteenth century in Konya. Because of the limited number of narrative sources from that period, Eflaki appears as an outstanding witness of the late Seldjuk, Ilkhanid, and early Beylik period in Anatolia. / This thesis intends to evaluate the Manaqib al-`Arifin as a source for political history. While previous historical scholarship has made frequent use of this source for isolated episodes, barely any systematic study of the Manaqib has been published yet. / The evaluation presented in this thesis results from a comparison between every element of information that can be considered "political" in the Manaqib al-`Arifin and current scholarship on the respective topic. These elements of information fall into four broad categories: The Seldjuk of Anatolia, the akhi organization, the Ilkhan state, and the beylik states. / The most part of this thesis consists in an exhaustive enumeration of the elements of political history that could be found in the Manaqib. In turn, these elements set the tone of the global conclusion of the inquiry, that is to say that the Manaqib al-`Arifin, without being a revolutionary source, offers information which is often original and which, under certain conditions, can prove highly reliable.

No description available.

Considered one of the pinnacles of the arts of the book in the entire history of Persian art, the life of the Timurid prince, Bāysunghur (1397-1433) and his royal library-atelier have been studied for more than a century. Yet previous scholarship, although solid on it own terms, has not combined study of the entirety of production with sustained analysis of individual productions of Bāysunghur’s atelier. Prior to this study, a number of manuscripts were completely neglected, and several others were studied only briefly. What is more, the single extant document describing procedures and progress in the atelier, although well known, demanded further clarification on various levels. This dissertation discusses in six chapters the operation and productions of the library with particular attention paid to its highlight, Bāysunghur’s famous Shāhnāma. After an introduction to the field and an overview of previous studies, I turn to the report of the head of the atelier, clarifying some technical terms and establishing the date of the report. Secondly, the corpus of Bāysunghurī productions is examined chronologically and in relation to the librarian’s report, with individual manuscripts analysed with regard to their textual and aesthetic traits and their placement in an art historical context. Next, the Shāhnāma of Bāysunghur, which for many years has been inaccessible for close scholarly study, receives extended treatment. The final chapter presents a discussion of the textual and aesthetic content of the corpus and reconsiders the role of the atelier supervisor. The overall aim is to enhance and extend understanding of the arts of the book in a unique royal library, that of Prince Bāysunghur.