When, after some twenty eight years of working, teaching and researching in another discipline, I decided to revert to my original field of Near-Eastern Studies, I had no difficulty in deciding on the general area in which I wanted to do research. As an undergraduate, my interest in the Mongol period in Iran had been stimulated by reading the Tärikh-i jahän-gushä and the Jämi' al-tavarikh, and the presence of an acknowledged expert in that field at Manchester University in the person of the late Professor John A. Boyle, made my decision to work in that field almost inevitable. After my acceptance by the University as a part-time Ph.D student in 1977, two meetings with Professor Doyle led us to agree that the research would be based on the Zafar-nämah of HamdAllah Mustaufi Qazvlni. Several factors indicated the desirability of building a research topic around that work. Firstly, very little work had been done on it by European scholars, since Browne had partially translated some of the third book, dealing with the Mongol period. Rieu had suggested that it might have historical value, and K. Jahn and J. Boyle both echoed that suggestion, expressing their opinion that the work should be edited and examined. Boyle's own preoccupation with the works of Mustaufi's - mentor, Rashid al-Din, made a parallel examination of the Zafar-namah all the more logical.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:521201 |
| Date | January 1983 |
| Creators | Ward, Lenorad James |
| Publisher | University of Manchester |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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