Focusing on the interplay between domestic-level changes and region-wide interaction, this book provides a comprehensive analytical and theoretical survey of Iranian foreign relations in the Middle East from Antiquity until the Islamic Republic. It charts developments from the earliest regimes in Persia, including the Median kingdom and the Sassanid Empire, through rule by, amongst others, Abbasids, Mongols, Safavids and Qajars, up to the modern states of the Shah and the Islamic Republic. Throughout the author reflects on the enduring factors which have shaped Iran’s relations with the rest of the region, factors such as geography, culture, the belief systems of policy makers, the structures of decision-making and government, and sub-regional systems. Overall, the book provides a deep analysis of Iranian foreign relations in the Middle East over 4,700 years.

The Safavid dynasty, which reigned from the late fifteenth to the eighteenth century, links medieval with modern Iran. The Safavids witnessed wide-ranging developments in politics, warfare, science, philosophy, religion, art and architecture. But how did this dynasty manage to produce the longest lasting and most glorious of Iran's Islamic-period eras?Andrew Newman offers a complete re-evaluation of the Safavid place in history as they presided over these extraordinary developments and the wondrous flowering of Iranian culture. In the process, he dissects the Safavid story, from before the 1501 capture of Tabriz by Shah Ismail (1488-1524), the point at which Shiism became the realm's established faith; on to the sixteenth and early seventeenth century dominated by Shah Abbas (1587-1629), whose patronage of art and architecture from his capital of Isfahan embodied the Safavid spirit; and culminating with the reign of Sultan Husayn (reg. 1694-1722).Based on meticulous scholarship, Newman offers a valuable new interpretation of the rise of the Safavids and their eventual demise in the eighteenth century. "Safavid Iran," with its fresh insights and new research, is the definitive single volume work on the subject.

This book explores social cohesion in rural settlements in western Europe from 700–1050, asking to what extent settlements, or districts, constituted units of social organisation. It focuses on the interactions, interconnections and networks of people who lived side by side – neighbours. Drawing evidence from most of the current western European countries, the book plots and interrogates the very different practices of this wide range of regions in a systematically comparative framework. It considers the variety of local responses to the supra-local agents of landlords and rulers and the impact, such as it was, of those agents on the small-scale residential group. It also assesses the impact on local societies of the values, instructions and demands of the wider literate world of Christianity, as delivered by local priests.

A critical biography of Zahīr al-Din Muhammad Bābur, the founder, in 1526, of the Timurid-Mughal Empire of India, offering