This collection celebrates the work of Roger Savory, whose numerous articles, 1980 textbook, Iran under the Safavids (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), and translation of the greatest Safavid chronicle, the Tarikh-i ʿalam-ara-yi ʿAbbasi, (History of Shah Abbas the Great, 3 vols. [Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press], 1978–86), occupy an important place in the establishment of Safavid studies in the English-speaking world. The book opens with a useful bibliography of Savory's publications, which span nearly fifty years.

As Colin Mitchell notes, Safavid studies have enjoyed a surge of interest in recent decades, with scholars “exploring new sources and interpretations of this ‘foundational’ dynasty” (p. 1). The contributions gathered here exemplify this trend, embracing an impressive breadth of subjects, sources and approaches that entails some inevitable loss of cohesion. The chapters are organized in two parts—on “Safavid courtly narrative and politico-cultural practice” and on “Safavid aesthetics”—but not all fit neatly into these categories and the contributions are better appreciated on their individual merits than as part of a whole.

Maria Subtelny's chapter opens the collection with a study of the survival into Safavid times of the Chinggisid practice of the binding pledge (möchälgä). Of all the articles in the volume this is perhaps the one that comes closest in character to Savory's own best work, presenting a thoroughly researched discussion of both the terminology and practice of the binding oath, and tracing its development from the time of Chinggis Khan's son Chaghatay to the Safavid era. Subtelny argues convincingly for the survival of this Mongol institution in Timurid and subsequent periods, even though it is often obscured by translation into Persian and by authors' ignorance of its origins—a challenge for historians that is by no means limited to this example. In a tantalizingly brief closing section, she considers the relationship of the möchälgä to other forms of Mongol, ancient Assyrian, and Perso-Islamic oath, and suggests that it demonstrates not just the long-lasting survival in Iran of Mongol institutions, but also the influence on Mongol practices of Perso-Islamic legal and chancery tradition.

Mitchell's own contribution follows Subtelny's after a brief but informative note on the physical characteristics of Safavid royal letters by the late Iraj Afshar. Diplomatic correspondence generated in the course of a notorious mid-16th-century episode provides the starting point for Mitchell's discussion of the various, sometimes irreconcilable, politico-philosophical outlooks on authority current in the Ottoman-Safavid milieu. Defeat in a fratricidal and premature succession dispute had precipitated Prince Bayazid's flight from Ottoman territory in 1559 and his appeal to the Safavid Shah Tahmasp I for protection. Inevitably, the question of succession looms large in the correspondence and impels Mitchell to consider the range of attitudes towards fratricide (and filicide), fraternal conflict, filial disobedience, divine right, primogeniture, and designation. The imperative to maintain peace with the Ottomans eventually trumped the obligations of hospitality and sanctuary in Shah Tahmasp's calculations, and he handed the fugitive prince and his four sons over to be killed by Ottoman envoys before they had even left Safavid territory in the summer of 1562. Mitchell's arguments are interesting and range well beyond the immediate scope of his subject, but it is a pity that he does not make more of the opportunity to explore the rhetorical and other devices employed by Safavid apologists to excuse the shah's betrayal of the Ottoman royal asylum seeker.

Max Kortepeter's chapter tackles the large and complex subject of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Muscovites in the Caucasus, 1578–1640. While the attempt to contextualize the Caucasus in terms of the interests, policies, and capacities of all three of the surrounding powers is welcome, the chapter has perhaps bitten off more than it can chew. Space does not permit Kortepeter to differentiate sufficiently among the several distinct constituent provinces of the Caucasus, and at times the treatment is condensed to the point of confusion. To give just one example, the statement, “Ottoman pressure on the Safavids via the Caucasus was relieved slightly during the reign of Shah ʿAbbas [I]” (p. 68) is not an adequate characterization of a period which witnessed major treaties, transfers of territory amounting to whole provinces, the most intense campaigns in the entire history of Ottoman-Safavid conflict, and the most damaging impacts on the civilian populations of Azerbaijan, eastern Anatolia, Armenia, and Georgia.

John Perry's discussion of cultural currents in the Turco-Persian world in Safavid and post-Safavid times is erudite and interesting and suggests avenues for future research. The discussion ranges across royal drinking parties, the mutation of the Mongol yak or horse tail military banner (tugh) into the ceremonial standard (ʿalam) of Shiʿi Muharram processions, and the West to East transmission of a series of tales of folk heroes culminating in the unstoppable march from Turkey to China of Nasreddin Hoca stories in the 19th century.

In “From the Battlefield to the Harem” Rudi Matthee casts a critical eye on the generally held view that in the 16th century elite Safavid women, following Turko-Mongol Central Asian custom, enjoyed high public visibility and played active social and political roles, whereas by the latter part of the 17th they were subject to strict seclusion in the harem, exercising influence and patronage from behind its walls. While Matthee does not fundamentally challenge this view, he alerts us to the likelihood that modern scholars may have followed their 16th century European sources (Persian chroniclers being singularly unforthcoming in relation to women) in mistaking the high visibility and shocking underdress of royal courtesans with that of elite women. The chapter lends itself well to teaching purposes, including a well-sourced introduction to the study of Safavid women and also providing a neat example of the methodological pitfalls of reliance on European travel accounts.

Part 2, on Safavid aesthetics, opens with Lisa Golombek's contribution, “A Safavid Bottle with Matchlock Hunt in the Royal Ontario Museum,” which approaches one of Roger Savory's particular areas of interest—Safavid firearms—from an art historical perspective through a study of a series of 17th century ceramic bottles depicting a huntsman with a matchlock gun. (It is, perhaps, pedantic to point out that since the huntsman on the bottle in question appears to be lowering the match to the touchhole by hand, there is no ‘lock’ as such to make this a matchlock, nor can the huntsman's right hand be resting on the trigger, as Golombek suggests (p. 128), since a gun of this primitive kind has no trigger.) Referring to a number of paintings, Golombek notes that firearms made an appearance among weapons of the hunt in Iran by the mid-16th century, although for some decades they remained marginal compared to the traditional bows and swords. In the 17th century, by contrast, firearms appear more frequently and in a wider range of media and, by midcentury, are the predominant form of hunting weapon depicted. Golombek concludes, therefore, that in hunting as in warfare, while firearms may have been known from the start of the Safavid era, their adoption was relatively slow and faced resistance from traditionalists committed to the “manly” tradition of the mounted hunt using bow and arrow, spear and sword. The reign of ʿAbbas I saw the breakthrough in terms of the military uses of firearms, but in hunting it was not until the reign of ʿAbbas II that hunting on foot with firearms became the norm.

Ali Asghar Bakhtiar's “Reminiscences of the Maidan-i Shah” combine discussion of the development of Isfahan as imperial capital by ʿAbbas I with the author's childhood memories of growing up in the Safavid royal quarters adjoining the Maidan in the house of his grandmother, a Qajar princess and “first lady of Isfahan.” The house had formerly been the residence of the last Safavid Chief Eunuch and stood amidst a number of other buildings surviving in various states of repair from the Safavid age. Bakhtiar recollects some of these now vanished buildings in vivid and precise detail and gives also fascinating glimpses of the life and uses of the Maidan during the first half of the 20th century.

Charles Melville takes as his subject the apparent lack of interest in historical subjects among Safavid painters (in contrast to Timurid, Ottoman, and Mughal practice). An extensive survey of manuscripts allows him to qualify the previously held assumption of Safavid neglect of historical painting. First, he finds that the Timurid tradition of illustrating histories continued under the Safavids, though primarily in 16th century Shiraz before the consolidation of Safavid control there and not, as far as we know, through the patronage of Safavid princes. Second, he notes that while Safavid court chronicles were not illustrated, manuscripts of several popular, romanticized histories did frequently contain pictures. This type of history was preferred for illustration, Melville suggests, because of the epic-romantic nature of the text itself, which lent itself to the kind of pictorial treatment given to the Shahnama and other verse epics and romances. Melville does not challenge the consensus that the Safavids showed little interest in the illustration of contemporary historical events, but he argues that this may have been because the mythologized past, first and foremost in the shape of the Shahnama, provided sufficient outlet for the illustration of idealized royal exploits. The principle difference, he suggests, with Ottoman practice was that Safavid artists, whose patrons remain for the most part unidentified, preferred to depict an idealized past, while their Ottoman counterparts, working for official commissions, concentrated on the present.

The final chapter by Paul Losensky is a gem of an article on Safavid architectural chronograms—poems inscribed on buildings to record their date of construction and other information. It opens with an introduction to the subject, based on a single simple chronogram that allows the nonspecialist reader to understand the mechanics of this highly specialized genre of poetry. This is followed by a discussion of the variety and complexity of the Safavid chronogram and the breathtaking virtuosity of its exponents. An appendix listing the architectural chronograms examined in researching the chapter provides all that would be needed to introduce students to this class of inscription, which is so important for dating and contextualizing buildings.

Regrettably, the book is marred by errors and typographic slips in several chapters. However, despite the uneven quality, this is a useful volume containing several contributions that will become essential reading for those working in the field of Safavid studies. The chapters by Matthee and Losensky also particularly lend themselves for use in advanced undergraduate and graduate teaching.