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Economic Activities of Safavid Women in the Shrine‐City of Ardabil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Fariba Zarinebaf‐Shahr
Fariba Zarinebaf‐Shahr*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Illinois at Chicago
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Extract

After more than half of the urdū has gone by, the Shah's maidens pass on fine horses; and they ride like men and dress like men, except that on their heads they do not wear caps but white kerchiefs. And in the company of those maidens go 10 or 12 old men, who are called īshīk-āqāsīs, that is masters of the house. And I have seen that there were about 14-15 of those maidens, and they were beautiful, though their faces could not be fully seen. But what could be seen was beautiful and very fair. And sometimes they galloped and performed marvels with their horses, making them jump and do many other skillful tricks. They went thus behind the court, where the Shah's tents were pitched. (Membré, the Venetian envoy in Maraghah, September 1539)

Despite extant, though often indirect references to women in manuscript and archival sources, modern historians of Safavid Iran have paid little attention to the active role of women in the formative period of its history.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 2: Historiography and Representation in Safavid and Afsharid Iran , Spring 1998 , pp. 247 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1998

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Footnotes

I would like to express my thanks to Bruce Craig of the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago for access to archival material.

References

1. Membré, Michele Mission to the Lord Sophy of Persia (1539-1542), trans. Morton, A.H. (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1993), 25.Google Scholar

2. See Szuppe, Maria “La participation des femmes de la famille royale à 1'exercise du pouvoir en Īrān safavide au XVIe siècle,” (part one) Studia Īrānica 23 (1994): 211-58Google Scholar; idem, “The Jewels of Wonder: Learned Ladies and Princess Politicians in the Provinces of Early Safavid Īrān,” in Women in the Medieval Islamic World, ed. Hambly, Gavin (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998), 325-47Google Scholar. Szuppe's works are largely based on Safavid chronicles and the accounts of European travelers. See also Golsorkhi, Shohreh “Pari Khan Khanum: A Masterful Safavid Princess,” Īrānian Studies 28 (1995): 143-56Google Scholar. No scholarly work is available on the history of harem in Īrān. Safavid archival sources remain unknown and unexplored by scholars of Īrānian history.

3. See Ferrier, Ronald “Women in Safavid Īrān: The Evidence of European Travelers,” in Hambly, Gavin ed., Women in the Medieval Islamic World, 383-406Google Scholar; also Babayan, Kathryn “The cAqacid al-Nisa: A Glimpse at Safavid Women in Local Isfahani Culture,” in ibid., 349-81Google Scholar. While Ferrier's work totally relies on the accounts of European travelers as promised in the title, Babayan combines Safavid religious and normative sources, chronicles, and accounts of foreign travelers like Chardin. Both authors, however, focus exclusively on the position of women in an urban cosmopolitan environment during the late sixteenth and the early seventeenth century.

4. For example, Savory uncritically attributes the decline of Safavid power partly to the negative influence of the harem on Safavid politics. Savory, Roger Īrān Under the Safavids (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 228.Google Scholar

5. For recent works see Sonbol, Amira ed., Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws in Islamic History (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; and Zilfi, Madeline C. ed., Women in the Ottoman Empire (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1997).Google Scholar

6. Membré, Mission, 31.

7. Legend has it that when the Ottomans captured Tabriz during the battle of Caldiran in 1514, they found out that many Safavid women like Tajlu Khanum, Shah Ismacil's wife, were fighting on the battlefield dressed as men. Tajlu Khanum was subsequently captured by the Ottomans, but managed to escape and returned to Tabriz. Shaybani, N.M. Tashkīl-i shāhanshāhī-i Ṣafavīyah: iḥyāc-i vaḥdat-i millī (Tehran, 1346/1967), 204-8.Google Scholar

8. Ibid.; see the diagrams on pages 224, 225, 230, 231, 234, 237, 238.

9. Chick, H.G. ed., A Chronicle of the Carmelites in Persia and the Papal Mission of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1939), 1:157Google Scholar. See also McNeill, William H. and Waldman, Marilyn Robinson The Islamic World (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983), 376-77.Google Scholar

10. Some Īrānian scholars have been at the forefront of this scholarship. See the pioneering work of Bayani, Shirin Zan dar Īrān-i caṣr-i Mughūl (Tehran, 1352/1973)Google Scholar. More recently, see Sattari, Jalal Sīmā-yi zan dar farhang-i Īrān (Tehran: Nashr-i markaz, 1373/1994).Google Scholar See also the essays in Hambly, Women in the Medieval Dar al-Islam.

11. Ṣarīḥ al-Milk (SM), Microfilms 1655 (176 folios), 1656 (177 folios), 1658 (199 folios), University of Tehran Library. The earliest document dates from 1305 and the latest dates from 1629. See also Fragner, Bert “Ardabil zwischen Sultan und Schah. Zehn Urkunden Schah Tahmasps II,” Turcica 6 (1975): 177-225Google Scholar; and Morton, A.H. “The Ardabil Shrine in the Reign of Shah Tahmasp I,” Īrān 12 (1974): 31-64; 13 (1975): 39-58Google Scholar. Morton had access to part of the Ṣarīḥ al-Milk collection and used it to reconstruct the physical layout of the shrine in his two articles.

12. SM, microfilm 1655, fol. 4-7.

13. For Ottoman tax records on this shrine during the eighteenth century, see Zarinebaf-Shahr, Fariba “The Ottoman Administration of Shici Waqfs in Azerbaijan,” in Bilici, Faruk ed., Le waqf dans le monde musulman contemporain (XIXe-XXe siècles) (Istanbul: Institut français des études anatoliennes, 1994), 233-36.Google Scholar

14. For a comparison with Damascus in the Ayyubid period see Humphreys, R. Stephen “Women as Patrons of Religious Architecture in Ayyubid Damascus,” Muqarnas 11 (1994): 35-54CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Humphreys has noted the active role of Ayyubid elite women as founders of (14-24 percent) religious and charitable institutions. He also emphasizes the predominant number of these endowments (20 percent) to Sufi hospices. Ibid., 35-37.

15. Petry, Carl F. “Class Solidarity versus Gender Gain: Women as Custodians of Property in Later Mamluk Egypt,” in Keddie, Nikki R. and Baron, Beth eds., Women in Middle Eastern History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 122-43.Google Scholar

16. Kozlowski, Gregory C. “Muslim Women and the Control of Property in North India,” in Krishnamurty, ed., Women in Colonial India (Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1989), 114-33Google Scholar. See also McChesney, R.D. Waqf in Central Asia: Four Hundred Years in the History of a Muslim Shrine, 1480-1889 (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. Peirce, Leslie The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).Google Scholar See also my article, “Women, Law, and Imperial Justice in Ottoman Istanbul,” in Sonbol, Amira ed., Women and Divorce Laws in Islamic Society (Syracuse: University Press, 1996), 81-95.Google Scholar

18. Kozlowski, “Muslim Women,” 120-22.

19. Peirce, The Imperial Harem, ix-x.

20. Mashkur, Muhammad Javad Tārīkh-i Tabrīz ta pāyān-i qarn-i nuhum-i hijrī, (Tehran: 1973), 657-71Google Scholar; see also my dissertation, “Tabriz Under Ottoman Rule, 1725-1730” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1991), 59-67.Google Scholar

21. For historical information on Ardabil, see Bosworth, C.E. “Ardabil,” Encyclopedia Īrānica, vol. 2, 358-60.Google Scholar

22. See document at the end of the article.

23. Jennings, Ronald “Women in Early 17th Century Ottoman Judicial Records: The Sharica Court of Anatolian Kayseri,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 18 (1975): 97-101Google Scholar; Baer, Gabriel “Women and Waqf: An Analysis of the Istanbul Tahrir of 1546,” Asian and African Studies (Jerusalem) 7, nos. 1-3 (1983): 9-28Google Scholar; Marcus, Abraham “Men, Women, and Property: Dealers in Real Estate in 18th-Century Aleppo,” Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient 26 (1983): 144-45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. Kiyani, Muhsin Tārīkh-i khānqāh dar Īrān (Tehran: Tahuri, 1369/1990), 324-25.Google Scholar

25. SM, Microfilm 1658, fol 140.

26. Ibid., fol. 73.

27. Ibid., fol. 124. These documents were found in complete disarray; the numbers do not represent any order or continuity.

28. Sahm, dāng, tasuj, and shacir were units of size. Dāng was one-sixth of everything. 1 dāng=4 tasuj; 1 dāng=16 shacir.

29. Ibid., fols. 126-28.

30. The patronage of Ghazan Khan's minister, Rashid al-Din Fazlallah (d. 718/1318), played a crucial role in the development of the Shaykh Safi order. For a list of his endowments to the order see, M. Shafaci ed., Mukātibāt-i rashīdī (Lahore, 1945), 268-72Google Scholar (letter no. 45 to Shaykh Safi).

31. Khadijah Khatun was also the sister of Uzun Hasan Aq-quyunlu. Uzun Hasan's daughter, cAlamshah Begum (Martha Halima Begi Agha), married Haydar and gave birth to Ismacil Safavi.

32. SM 1658, fol. 192.

33. Ibid., fol. 182.

34. Ibid., fol. 104.

35. Ibid., fol. 113.

36. Ibid., fol. 89.

37. Kiyani has underlined the active role of women in the foundation of the Khalvati order of dervishes. Kiyani, Tārīkh-i khānqāh dar Īrān, 255.Google Scholar See also Smith, Julia Clancy “The House of Zainab: Female Authority and Saintly Succession,” in Keddie, Nikki and Baron, Beth eds., Women in Middle Eastern History, 256-57.Google Scholar

38. Munshi, Iskandar Beg History of Shah cAbbas the Great, 2 vols., trans. Savory, R.M. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1978), 2: 953-56.Google Scholar

39. Ibid., 955.

40. A unit of coinage; 1 tūmān=10,000 dinars.

41. SM 1655, fols. 100-102.

42. Ibid., fols. 91-92.

43. Ibid., fol. 85.

44. Munshi, History of Shah cAbbas, II: 688-89.

45. SM 1655., fol. 33.

46. Munshi, History of Shah cAbbas, II: 1009-10.

47. SM 1655, fols. 74-75.

48. Ibid., fols. 67-68.

49. Ibid., fols. 55-56.

50. Ibid., fol. 34.

51. Ibid., fols. 21-22.

52. Ibid., fol. 24.

53. Ibid., fol. 34.

54. See Faroqhi, Suraiya Towns and Townsmen of Ottoman Anatolia: Trade, Crafts, and Food Production in an Urban Setting, 1520-1650 (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

55. Davis, Natalie Zemon Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975)Google Scholar; see particularly chapter three, “City Women and Religious Change,” 65-95.