Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Some Reflections on Totalitarian Tendencies in the Ṣafavid State

Some Reflections on Totalitarian Tendencies in the Ṣafavid State Some Reflections on Totalitarian Tendencies in the Safavid State Roger M. Savory, University of Toronto Professor Minorsky made several major contributions to Persian studies, and one of these was his translation of, and commentary on, the Tadhkirat al-Mulük, published in 1943. The Tadhkirat alMulük, a manual of Safavid administration written in 1726, is almost unique among the source materials available for the study of Persian history, in that it is a political manual, and deals äs Minorsky put it, "with the more permanent and solid facts of state Organisation, in contradistinction to our narrative sources, which pay too much attention to the caleidoscopic succession of battles, appointments and intrigues".1) In the course of his eommentary on the Tadhkirat al-Mulük, Minorsky made the remark from which the idea of this paper germinated. He observed that "the basic Organisation of the early Safavids" was "very similar to the single party of a modern totalitarian state".2) If one takes the U.S.S.R. äs one's model of a modern totalitarian state, what points of simüarity can one see between it and the Safavid state? The first and most obvious point of comparison is that both states came into being äs the result of http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Der Islam de Gruyter

Some Reflections on Totalitarian Tendencies in the Ṣafavid State

Savory, Roger M.
Der Islam , Volume 53 (2) – Jan 1, 1976
Download PDF
16 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/de-gruyter/some-reflections-on-totalitarian-tendencies-in-the-afavid-state-UBEvJsB0Wk

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Walter de Gruyter
ISSN
0021-1818
eISSN
1613-0928
DOI
10.1515/islm.1976.53.2.226
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Some Reflections on Totalitarian Tendencies in the Safavid State Roger M. Savory, University of Toronto Professor Minorsky made several major contributions to Persian studies, and one of these was his translation of, and commentary on, the Tadhkirat al-Mulük, published in 1943. The Tadhkirat alMulük, a manual of Safavid administration written in 1726, is almost unique among the source materials available for the study of Persian history, in that it is a political manual, and deals äs Minorsky put it, "with the more permanent and solid facts of state Organisation, in contradistinction to our narrative sources, which pay too much attention to the caleidoscopic succession of battles, appointments and intrigues".1) In the course of his eommentary on the Tadhkirat al-Mulük, Minorsky made the remark from which the idea of this paper germinated. He observed that "the basic Organisation of the early Safavids" was "very similar to the single party of a modern totalitarian state".2) If one takes the U.S.S.R. äs one's model of a modern totalitarian state, what points of simüarity can one see between it and the Safavid state? The first and most obvious point of comparison is that both states came into being äs the result of

Journal

Der Islam – de Gruyter

Published: Jan 1, 1976

There are no references for this article.