Elements for a social History of Timurid and Safavid Quhistān: the rural sanctuaries of the region

Abstract

The present work contributes to the reconstruction of the social and religious history of the East-Iranian region of Quhistān during the 15th and 16th centuries. The first part of the article is an overview of studies on Quhistān. The second part investigates a forgotten source of the early 16th century, the so-called Mazārnāma of ʿAlī b. Muḥammad Yāsirī Ḥusāmī. The work of Ḥusāmī nowadays is considered lost, but thanks to the early 20th century polymath Muḥammad Ḥusayn Āyatī Bīrjandī a part of the work still survives. Āyatī acquired a manuscript of the Mazārnāma and used it to write a history of Quhistān. Analyzing Ḥusāmī's descriptions of the rural sanctuaries and comparing them with the coeval sources, the author sheds light on the socio-economic and religious landscape of Quhistān in late Timurid and Safavid period.