Published in association with the Iran Heritage Foundation.

I.B.Tauris in association with the Iran Heritage Foundation The Safavid era is of special significance in the history of Iran. Under the Safavids - between the sixteenth and the mideighteenth century - Iran was transformed and a state emerged which was the forerunner of the Iran of today in several important ways. The age is known for its wealth of contributions to Persian culture and to the arts of the Islamic world, its robust military encounters with its Ottoman and Mughal neighbours and growing contacts with western Europe. With the exception of diplomatic and commercial contacts with western European countries, little is known about the Safavids' foreign relations - their commercial, cultural, social and political exchanges with the rest of the world. Iran and the World in the Safavid Age presents the most recent research into Safavid Iran's foreign relations. It challenges the long-held notion that, with the adoption of Shi'ism, Iranians retreated into relative isolation, suggesting rather that they engaged with the world in unprecedented and exciting ways. With contributions from the leading authorities in the field, Iran and the World in the Safavid Age explores Iran's relations with other countries and cultures. Examining how Iran was itself perceived as well as how it viewed the outside world, this groundbreaking book sheds new light on the history of Iran's relations with the world beyond its borders and expands our understanding of this pivotal period.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the establishment of the new Safavid regime in Iran. Along with reuniting the Persian lands under one rule, the Safavids initiated the radical transformation of the religious landscape by introducing Imami Shi'ism as the official state faith and in this as in other ways, laying the foundations of Iran's modern identity. In this book, leading scholars of Iranian history, culture and politics examine the meaning of the idea of Iran in the Safavid period by examining contemporary experiences of both insiders and outsiders, asking how modern scholarship defines the distinctive features of the age. While sometimes viewed as a period of decline from the high points of classical Persian literature and the visual arts of preceding centuries, the chapters of this book demonstrate that the Safavid era was nevertheless a period of great literary and artistic activity in the realms of both secular and theological endeavour. With the establishment of comparable polities across western, southern and central Asia at broadly the same time, the book explores some of the literary and political interactions with Iran's Ottoman, Mughal and Uzbek neighbours. As the volume and frequency of European merchants and diplomats visiting Safavid Persia increased, especially in the seventeenth century, and as more Iranians recorded their own travel experiences to surrounding Muslim lands, the Safavid period is the first in which we can document and explore the contours of Iran's place in an expanding world, and gain insights into how Iranians saw themselves and others saw them.

In the early modern world, the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal empires sprawled across a vast swath of the earth, stretching from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. The diverse and overlapping literate communities that flourished in these three empires left a lasting legacy on the political, religious, and cultural landscape of the Near East and India. This volume is a comprehensive sourcebook of newly translated texts that shed light on the intertwined histories and cultures of these communities, presenting a wide range of source material spanning literature, philosophy, religion, politics, mysticism, and visual art in thematically organized chapters. Scholarly essays by leading researchers provide historical context for closer analyses of a lesser-known era and a framework for further research and debate. The volume aims to provide a new model for the study and teaching of the region’s early modern history that stands in contrast to the prevailing trend of examining this interconnected past in isolation.

Using a wide range of archival and written sources, Rudi Matthee considers the economic, social and political networks established between Iran, its neighbours and the world at large, through the prism of the late Safavid silk trade. In so doing, he demonstrates how silk, a resource crucial to state revenue and the only commodity to span Iran's entire economic activity, was integral to aspects of late Safavid society, including its approach to commerce, export routes and, importantly, to the political and economic problems which contributed to its collapse in the early 1700s. In a challenge to traditional scholarship, the author argues that despite the introduction of a maritime, western-dominated channel, Iran's traditional land-based silk export continued to expand right up to the end of the seventeenth century. The book makes a major theoretical contribution to the debates on the social and economic history of the pre-modern world.

The Safavid World draws together scholars of Iranian history to explore every aspect of this fascinating dynasty and places the Safavids in a global context. The volume is divided into four parts, the first part adresses the question of the rise of the Safavids; their coming to power and their success in forging a religiously inspired polity that marked off Iran as the world¿s only Twelver-Shi`i state. Part two addresses social history, court life, military matters, religion and culture. Part three examines Safavid Iran¿s place in the world as viewed through its commercial and diplomatic ties with countries in Asia and Europe and lastly part four provides a glossary of names and terms.

The two-volume Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture bridges the gap between monograph and survey text by providing a new level of access and interpretation to Islamic art. The more than 50 newly commissioned essays revisit canonical topics, and include original approaches and scholarship on neglected aspects of the field. This two-volume Companion showcases more than 50 specially commissioned essays and an introduction that survey Islamic art and architecture in all its traditional grandeur Essays are organized according to a new chronological-geographical paradigm that remaps the unprecedented expansion of the field and reflects the nuances of major artistic and political developments during the 1400-year span The Companion represents recent developments in the field, and encourages future horizons by commissioning innovative essays that provide fresh perspectives on canonical subjects, such as early Islamic art, sacred spaces, palaces, urbanism, ornament, arts of the book, and the portable arts while introducing others that have been previously neglected, including unexplored geographies and periods, transregional connectivities, talismans and magic, consumption and networks of portability, museums and collecting, and contemporary art worlds; the essays entail strong comparative and historiographic dimensions The volumes are accompanied by a map, and each subsection is preceded by a brief outline of the main cultural and historical developments during the period in question The volumes include periods and regions typically excluded from survey books including modern and contemporary art-architecture; China, Indonesia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Sicily, the New World (Americas)