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Iranian Studies, volume 36, number 4, December 2003

ISSN 0021-0862 print/ISSN 1475-4819 online/03/040485-23 ©2003©The Society for Iranian StudiesDOI 10.1080/021086032000139195

Colin Paul Mitchell

To Preserve and Protect: Husayn Vafiiz-i Kashifi and Perso-IslamicChancellery Culture

IT IS GENERALLY AGREED THAT THE BEGINNING OF THE PERSIAN LITERARY RENAISSANCE

of the tenth–eleventh centuries was concomitant with the emergence of a bureaucratictradition that had its roots in pre-Islamic Sasanian Iran. The avatars of these bureau-cratic principles in medieval Perso-Islamic history—Nizam al-Mulk, Rashid al-Din,Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, to name the most famous—were trained in Arabic and Persian,wrote scholarly treatises on a wide array of religious, philosophical, and scientific top-ics, and advocated, among other things, the need for responsible rule and consistentadministration according to Islamic law and custom. These admonitions were generallydirected at their Turkic and Mongol dynastic patrons whose steppe traditions wereoften at cross-purposes with the running of a sedentary society that depended on irri-gated agriculture, commerce, public works, and systems of taxation. Prominent Persianbureaucrats and their descendents undertook these duties and were able to accrue con-siderable power and wealth, but often at a high cost when we read of the fates ofRashid al-Din, Safid al-Dawla and Juvayni.1 In terms of classical Perso-Islamic politi-cal notions, the presence of a military elite, which was usually of Turkic background,working in conjunction with a bureaucratic class, which was usually of Persian back-ground, was expressed by the division of elite society into “the men of the sword” (ahlal-sayf) and “the men of the pen” (ahl al-qalam).2 Furthermore, it was these men of thepen, or “scholar-bureaucrats”—to borrow Cemal Kafadar’s term3—who preserved,copied, and transmitted the classical Persian poetry and literature of the Saljuq, Mon-gol, and Turkmen periods. When we acknowledge that these pen-holders also producedcommentaries and super-commentaries on philosophy, Prophetic traditions, scripturalexegesis, ethics, mysticism, history, geography, astronomy, and medicine, their role as

Colin Mitchell is Assistant Professor of Islamic History at Dalhousie University.

1. On the intrigue and insecurity involved in serving as a Persian administrative official inSaljuq and Mongol times, see Ann K. S. Lambton, Continuity and Change in Medieval Persia:Aspects of Administrative, Economic and Social History, 11th–14th Century (Albany, 1988),63–67.

2. Lambton, Continuity and Change, 221–24; W. Barthold, Turkestan Down to the MongolInvasion (London, 1928), 227.

3. Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (Berkeley,1995), 18.

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custodians of medieval Persian culture—a hybrid of pre-Islamic Iranian concepts ofkingship and social hierarchy and Islamic tenets of monotheism, egalitarianism, andprophetic revelation—becomes clear.

In recent decades, there has been a surge of interest in the Timurid dynasty and theextent to which the court of Timur and his successors was responsible for the preser-vation and transmission of various aspects of this cultural hybridity.4

The intensity and commitment with which the Timurids expressed themselves interms of Persian monarchical and courtly rhetoric—both literary and artistic—is im-pressive.5 However, the bulk of these, as well as the later Safavid works, from poetryto political ethics, are substantively imitations or commentaries on what had beenwritten during the “height” of classical Persian culture in the eleventh–fourteenth cen-turies. The imitative dimension of later Timurid and Safavid poetic and prose produc-tion has resulted in an historiographical tendency to denigrate and, in some cases, dis-miss this period in terms of any significant contribution, thus reinforcing traditionalinterpretations of a “long decline” in the Islamic world after the Mongol invasions.

However, as Paul Losensky has noted, the concept of imitation and replication isan integral component of Arabic and Persian literature, and repetition as a literary actcan in fact be multifaceted and complex.6 Sholeh Quinn has made a similar observationin her study of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Safavid historiography.7

Timurid poets, painters, historians, and littérateurs sought rationalization in copyingand preserving the Persian literary past, and in doing so, were part of a long-standingand wide-reaching “Timurid project of cultural education and assimilation.”8 ThomasLentz and Glenn Lowry have demonstrated convincingly that visual media, such asillustrated manuscripts and paintings, were invaluable in the attainment of this objec-tive. Losensky has done likewise for literary conventions, suggesting that a “consoli-dating impulse” in poetry resulted in the systematization of topoi in the poetic tradi-tions.9 It is the argument here that we encounter a similar dynamic in the literary-cum-administrative tradition of insh, or stylized composition. Usually pigeonholed in tra-ditional Orientalist scholarship simply as “belles-lettres,” insh in fact encompasses awide range of definitions. While insh has been associated with a genre of literature

4. See Thomas Lentz and Glenn Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art andCulture in the Fifteenth Century (Los Angeles, 1989); and Maria Eva Subtelny, “The TimuridLegacy: A Reaffirmation and a Reassessment,” Cahiers d’Asie Centrale 3–4 (1997): 9–19. Seealso Thomas Lentz, “Dynastic Imagery in Early Timurid Wall Painting,” Muqarnas 10 (1993):253–65.

5. Lentz and Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision, 160; Paul Losensky, WelcomingFighani: Imitation and Poetic Individuality in the Safavid-Mughal Ghazal (Costa Mesa, 1998),135.

6. Losensky, Welcoming Fighani, 112.

7. Sholeh Quinn, Historical Writing during the Reign of Shah Abbas: Ideology, Imitation,and Legitimacy in Safavid Chronicles (Salt Lake City, 2000).

8. Losensky, Welcoming Fighani, 136.

9. Losensky, Welcoming Fighani, 136.

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that took the form of elaborate epistles, it can also connote didactic texts composed forcourt scribes and stylists on matters of financial and bureaucratic procedure.10 More-over, insh was understood as a creative literary genre which allowed extensive use ofrhetorical and rhyming devices; in this sense, insh is very much a hybrid vehicle ofcreative expression which appeared in state correspondence and personal missives. Atthe same time, it was understood that insh was still a vehicle of instruction for courtsecretaries and administrators.

The science of epistolary composition (fiilm al-insh) has a rich and varied historyin the Arabo-Islamic world, and epistolographic manuals were written by such admin-istrative and literary giants as fiAbd Allah ibn Muslim ibn Qutaybah (Adab al-ktib),11

and Muhammad ibn Yahya al-Suli (Adab al-kuttb).12 These prominent works weremore concerned with informing scribes and secretaries of the proper etiquette and pro-tocol associated with adab; they often included practical sections on the mechanics ofwriting, including the types of ink, paper, and pens to use.13 Since scribes (ktibs) andstylists (munshıs) were often the same men who were responsible for assigning andcollecting taxes, insh was also inextricably bound up with financial administration.Thus, treatises were composed on proper financial procedures, or as administrative for-mularies that could be copied and modified to suit particular circumstances. The NewPersian “renaissance” under the Samanid and Ghaznavid dynasties of Eastern Iran andCentral Asia invested a healthy dynamic of imagination and creativity into the writingof epistolary prose, as seen in the works of Abu Nasr Mishkhan, Baha√ al-Din ibnMu√ajjad al-Baghdadi,14 Amir Khusraw15 and Abu al-Fazl ibn Husayn Bayhaqi.16 Butit was during the Timurid period of the late fifteenth century that we encounter a genu-ine resurgence of interest in insh by Persian scholar-bureaucrats: Risla-i qavnın byMufiin al-Din Zamchi Isfizari,17 Mansha√ al-insh by Nizam al-Din fiAbd al-Vasifi,18

10. H. R. Roemer, “Insh√,” EI2 , 3: 1241.

11. Ibn Qutaybah, Adab al-ktib, ed. M. Grµnert (Leiden, 1900).

12. Muhammad b. Yahya al-Suli, Adab al-kuttb, ed. L. Cheikho (Beirut, 1921).

13. Joseph Sadan, “Nouveaux documents sur scribes et copistes,” Revue des ÉtudesIslamiques 45 (1977): 41–87; Adam Gacek, “Technical Practices and RecommendationsRecorded by Classical and Post-Classical Arabic Scholars Concerning the Copying andCorrection of Manuscripts,” in Les Manuscrits du Moyen-Orient: Essais de codicologie et depaléographie (Actes du Colloque d’Istanbul, 26–29 mai 1986), ed. F. Déroche (Paris, 1989),51–60.

14. Baha√ al-Din ibn Mu√ajjad al-Baghdadi, al-Tawassul il al-tarassul, ed. Ahmad Bah-manyar (Tehran, 1936).

15. The famous Delhi Sultanate poet wrote a work in 1319 on epistolography entitledRas√il al-ifijz (Lucknow, 1876).

16. Bayhaqi’s insh work, the Zınat al-kuttb, has unfortunately been lost.

17. Mufiin al-Din Muhammad Zamchi Isfizari, Risla-i qavnın (or Insh-yi MufiınZamchı), Ms., Lahore, Punjab University Library, Pe II Li 2324/231; Ms., Tehran, Kitabkhanah-iMajils-i Sina, no. 318.

18. Nizam al-Din fiAbd al-Vasifi, Mansh√ al-insh, vol. 1 (Tehran, 1978).

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the Munsh√t of fiAbd al-Rahman Jami,19 and the well-known Sharaf-nmah by fiAbdAllah Marvarid.20 If we acknowledge the Timurid impetus to preserve and codify the“Persian cultural complex” in poetic circles and library-ateliers, we are compelled tolook at those treatises and manuals that were produced by the ahl al-qalam. Was therean impulse among Timurid “men-of-the-pen”—those administrators and bureaucratsresponsible for officiating and representing the empire—to use the genre of insh in asimilar vein? Did Timurid chancellery officials produce epistolographic manuals inthis spirit of systematization, preservation, and dissemination?

A valuable perspective on these questions is provided by the little-studied Makh-zan al-insh [Treasure House of Insh] by Kamal al-Din Husayn Vafiiz-i Kashifi ofHerat (d. 910/1504–05).21 Undoubtedly, this scholar-bureaucrat and polymath has beenovershadowed by the great administrator and Chaghatay poet, Mir fiAli-Shir Nava√i,during the reign of Sultan-Husayn Bayqara (r. 873/1469–911/1506). Moreover, schol-arship has not been kind to Kashifi, since it has suggested that his better known works,such as Anvr-i Suhaylı, Raw„zat al-shuhad, and Akhlq-i Mu˛sinı, are verbose to thepoint of incoherence.22 Contemporaries, however, accorded Kashifi a high rank inTimurid literary history: Mir fiAli-Shir put him on a par with the master historian,Mirkhvand, in his Majlis al-naf√is, while Vasifi noted Kashifi’s skill as a master ofwit in his Badyifi al-vaqyifi.23 Khvandamir states that he “was without peer in histime in the sciences of the stars and epistolary stylistics.”24 Some fifty years later, theSafavid historian, Hasan Rumlu, lauded Kashifi as “the greatest authority of the age onastronomy and composition.”25

19. Nur al-Din fiAbd al-Rahman Ahmad Jami, Nmah-h va munsha√t-i Jmı, ed. fiIsamal-Din Urunbayif and Asrar Rahmanof (Tehran, 2002) (henceforth Jami, Munsha√t).

20. Hans R. Roemer, Staatsschreiben der Timuridenzeit: Das ¯Saraf-nmä des fiAbdallhMarwrıd in kritischer Auswertung (Wiesbaden, 1952).

21. Husayn Vafiiz-i Kashifi, Makhzan al-insh, Ms., Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, ancienfonds persan 73 (henceforth Kashifi, Makhzan). I relied primarily on the French manuscriptsince it was one of the earliest copies (1543), and came from the personal library of the greatFrench Renaissance statesman, Jean-Baptiste Colbert. In all likelihood, this copy came originallyfrom the Ottoman empire since Colbert had sent men like the Marquis de Nointel and AntoineGalland to the Levant in the 1670s and 1680s for the purposes of, among other things, collectingOriental manuscripts. I also consulted a seventeenth-century copy in the British Library, Ms.Add. 25,865. A lithographed abridgment is available under the title ∑a˛ıfa-i shhı. For a descrip-tion of the Paris manuscript, see Francis Richard, Catalogue des manuscrits persans, vol. 1:Ancien fonds (Paris, 1989), 101.

22. J. Rypka, History of Iranian Literature (Dordrecht, 1968), 313; G. M. Wickens, “Aklq-e Mo˛senı,” EIr, 1: 724.

23. E. G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia (Cambridge, 1964), 3: 438; Maria E.Subtelny, “Scenes from the Literary Life of Timurid Herat,” in R. Savory and D. A. Agius, eds.,Logos Islamikos: Studia Islamica in Honorem Georgii Michaelis Wickens (Toronto, 1984), 145.

24. Ghiyas al-Din b. Humam al-Din Khvandamir, ˘abıb al-siyar fı akhbr-i afrd al-bashar, ed. M. Dabirsiyaqi (Tehran, 1984), 1: 346.

25. Hasan Rumlu, A˛san al-tavrıkh, ed. and trans. C. N. Seddon (Baroda, 1934), 2: 37.

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While contemporaries and near-contemporaries credited Kashifi’s influence, mod-ern scholarship has been less impressed. E. G. Browne cites the Makhzan al-inshperipherally in his Literary History of Persia,26 and Felix Tauer mentions it only inpassing in his survey of Persian insh literature.27 Almost certainly, this disdain forKashifi’s efforts is based on the presentation and organization of the epistolographicmanual itself. This work, which is written in both Arabic and Persian, and which in themanuscript copy of the Bibliothèque Nationale consists of 191 folios, offers thousandsof appropriate verses, honorifics, and stylized phrases in tabular format that a profes-sional scribe could refer to when composing state correspondence. Even more inter-esting is the fact that Kashifi organizes these formulas according to the societal posi-tion of the addressee. Eschewing the replication of entire model letters, Kashifi insteaddeconstructs a letter into its various, constitutive elements—intitulatio, inscriptio,salutatio, invocatio, sanctio, apprecatio, datio, locatio, honorifics, titles, blessings,etc.—and he organizes and presents these in the form of a section-by-section inventoryof prose and poetic possibilities. Rather than follow the path of blind imitation (taqlıd)of past and contemporary compilers of insh works, readers of Kashifi are providedwith an opportunity to assemble a composite text of verse and prose from a variety ofsources in a way that encourages both originality and imitation. Concurrently, thesemodel epistolary components are organized according to the ranks (†abaqas) and pro-fessions of Perso-Islamic society of the time. For example, a chancellery scribe writinga letter to a Muslim king would consult folio 27a (al-ßift va al-nu†uq li-ahl al-†abaqaal-afil al-mulük wa’l-sal†ın wa’l-khulaf al-fiar„zayn) for a variety of Arabic phrasesin prose (manshürt fiarabiyya) which describe kingly qualities, but he would consult alater section (awßf al-nuqab) for the poetic verses (man÷üma-i frsı) which bestreferred to the qualities of a high-ranking naqıb. Since the Makhzan al-insh providesmodel verses and prose phrases for all segments of society including rulers (sultans),nobles (amirs), chief administrators (vazırs), administrators (dıvnıs), accountants(mustawfıs), bookkeepers (ktib-daftars), ambassadors (ılchıs), sayyids, shaykhs,Qur’anic commentators (mufassirs), traditionists (mu˛addiths), painters (naqqshn),poets (shufiar), musicians (ahl-i müsıqı), and Sufis (zviya-drıs), it also provides amodel schema of Timurid society.

It is my contention that Kashifi’s Makhzan al-insh constitutes a consciousattempt by one of Timurid Herat’s leading Persian scholar-bureaucrats not only to pre-serve and promote the “classical” Persian cultural heritage via epistolography, but alsoto protect and advocate the time-honored role and elite status of the Persian adminis-trative class—the men of the pen—in an era of ethnic rivalry and competition betweenTurks and Tajiks in western Asia. By examining how Kashifi surveyed and selectedfrom the growing Persian literary canon, we can perhaps understand how the Makhzanal-insh served as a treasury, or bank, for literary and rhetorical exemplars and theircorresponding ideals. Moreover, by examining the extent to which later, sixteenth- andseventeenth-century scribes, from Istanbul to Delhi, made use of this epistolary

26. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, 3: 504.

27. Rypka, History of Iranian Literature, 433–35.

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repository, it will become evident that Kashifi’s Makhzan al-insh enjoyed consistentuse in a number of chancelleries across the Perso-Islamic world. Lastly, by reviewinghis stratification of different societal ranks and the professions within those ranks, weencounter the very real and intriguing possibility that Kashifi was striving to legitimatethe Persian intellectual tradition in the face of Turko-Mongol political primacy on theone hand, and Islamic judicial authority on the other.

Preservation and Proliferation

Kashifi provides a prodigious number of prose and poetic examples that a professionalscribe could select from in writing a letter. If we make the conservative estimate ofroughly twenty sets of blessings, invocations, or encomiums per folio, it appears thatover 10,000 prose formulae and poetic examples are provided in the Makhzan al-insh(see fig. 1). A review of the model verses to be cited in the introductions of letters topeople belonging to the higher ranks and professions of society—such as rulers, amirs,governors, judges, sayyids, and shaykhs—suggests that Kashifi made fairly extensiveuse of qaßıdahs, ghazals, and mathnavıs from the “classical” Persian canon, particu-larly from the poets of twelfth-century Saljuq Iran. In terms of odes and eulogies,Kashifi looked to the panegyrist par excellence, Anvari Abivardi(520/1126–585/1189). Anvari’s skill in the use of rhetorical prose and poetry was wellattested—he was often referred to as ˛akım (“the sage”)—and later scholars lauded hisverse and wrote commentaries on it.28 In his section on introductory verses in letters tokings and sultans, Kashifi quotes from Anvari’s eulogy on fiImad al-Din Firuzshah:“O! the planted, sublime standard of him who arranges the world’s affairs/Whosenoble origins are in line with those of the progeny of Adam.”29 For letters addressed tochief administrative officers (ßudür) and heads of the financial bureaucracy (vuzar),Kashifi provides a lengthy list of poetic encomiums taken from Anvari’s Dıvn, inclu-ding those originally addressed to Nasir al-Din al-Tahir: “O! State and religion blos-som from your opinion,” “How excellently the hand of administration prospers fromyour guidance/In the same manner that Moses stood at the foot of Mount Sinai,” and“With your hand, the light of the vazirate shines like the gleam of the moon.”30 In onesuch example, Kashifi creates a hybrid-bayt in his section on suggested introductory

28. Jami talked of Anvari as “almost a miracle,” and later Abu al-Hasan Husayni Farahaniwrote an extensive commentary, Shar˛-i mushkilt-i Dıvn-i Anwrı in 1015/1606. Rypka,History of Iranian Literature, 198; de Bruijn, “Anwrı,” EIr, 1: 143.

29. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 7a. See Awhad al-Din Anvari, Dıvn-i Anvrı, ed. Safiid Nafisi(Tehran, 1958), 199.

30. No less than seven of the model verses provided on fol. 7b are from previous classicalPersian poets, including four from Anvari. See Kashifi, Makhzan, fols. 7a, 7b. See Anvari,Dıvn-i Anvrı, 159, 151, and 155.

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Makhzan al-insh 491

Fig. 1. Husayn Vafiiz-i Kashifi, Makhzan al-insh, Ms., Paris, Biblioth™equeNationale, ancien fonds persan 73, fol. 37b. Introductory phrases and versesto be used in addressing marshals of sayyids (nuqab).

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verses in letters to the descendants of rulers (awld-i sal†ın), using a part of a qaßıdahby Anvari: “May your kingship be everlasting in the world,”31 and combining it withpart of a mathnavı from Nizami’s Haft paykar, “May every forehead of the world beon your threshold!”32 Nizami Ganjavi (535/1141–605/1209) was also a source foremulation and one of the first model verses in the Makhzan al-insh comes from theMakhzan al-asrr, the first book of Nizami’s Khamsah: “O! You are the nobility of theprogeny of the world/You are the light illuminating the world.”33 In Nizami’s work,Kashifi finds a compelling combination of panegyrical poetry and the evocative use ofmytho-historical exemplars. Kashifi inserts a line of poetry from Nizami’s Iqbl-nmah, which was originally dedicated to the Saljuq ruler of Mosul, Malik fiIzz al-DinMasfiud ibn Arsalan, which constitutes half of the umbrella-text, Iskandar-nmah(“The Story of Alexander”), and typical of the Alexandrian romance tradition, recountsthe miraculous life, feasts, and prophetic powers of the Macedonian boy-king: “O Welldone! Heir to the banquet of Cyrus/With your arm, the state will be extremelypowerful.”34 In another acknowledgment of the power of Alexander as an ideal ruler,Kashifi quotes from the other half of Nizami’s Iskandar-nmah, the Sharaf-nmah(which was dedicated to the atabeg, Afizam Malik Nusrat al-Din Abu Bakr): “May yourhead always be placed on the Takht-i Jamshid/May the generals of the earth lay at thefeet of your throne.”35

Lines from the Dıvn of Safidi (610/1213–691/1292) are replicated as models forintroductory verses (farsiyya-i ibtid√iyya): “O! The eternity of your rule is the best ofall/May the strength of your rule be eternal for those who resist it”36 and “O! Like thatwhich is from heaven and the blessed revelation/You will bring truth to the world withour help.”37 A portion of a ghazal by Hafiz, “The ruler of the worlds is shown as theresplendent intention of amity,” and “Your pen—God bless it—has with faith andrulership opened/one hundred fountains of life with one drop of its ink,” appears in anindex of model poetry for dıvniyn.38 Parts of qaßıdas by Khaqani (515/1121–595/1199) dedicated to the Saljuq ruler, Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad, appear in a latersection on verses describing the qualities of kings (abyt-i ßift-i mulük): “[You drinkfrom] the cup of Khusraw and Jamshid, [hold] the sword of Sam and Rustam/[Youlead] the army of Khizr and Alexander, [share] the knowledge of Faridun,” and“[Yours is] the land of thunderous clouds, whose family is an ocean of jewels/[Yours

31. Anvari, Dıvn-i Anvrı, 92.

32. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 25a; Nizami, Haft paykar (Lucknow, 1934), 51.

33. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 25a; Nizami, Kulliyt-i Khamsah (Tehran, 1958), 12.

34. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 7b; Nizami, Kulliyt-i Khamsah, 690.

35. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 25a; Nizami, Kulliyt-i Khamsah, 507.

36. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 7b.

37. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 7b.

38. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 81a; Hafiz, Dıvn, nos. 33 and 489.

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is] the spirit of the army of angels, whose progeny is a sky of stars.”39 By quoting fromKhaqani, arguably the most evocative of the classical Persian poets in terms of hisreferences to historical figures from the pre-Islamic Iranian past, Kashifi appears to beusing the epistolographic genre as a means of preserving and codifying ancient Persianconcepts of monarchical rule. Besides citing the panegyrical poetry of Masfiud SafidSalman (438/1046–515/1121),40 Kashifi also looked to the Shh-nmah of Firdawsi formodel verses to be used in letters addressed to the descendants of rulers: “May thethrone always be held by you/May the world be led by your decrees and opinions!”41

In addition to preserving, codifying, and propagating the standards of Persianpolitical, cultural, and literary norms of the “high” period of the eleventh–thirteenthcenturies, Kashifi used the genre of insh to safeguard and disseminate the prose andpoetical works written by his Timurid contemporaries. Of particular note, not surpris-ingly, is one of the greatest fifteenth-century poets and littérateurs, the Naqshbandimystic, fiAbd al-Rahman Jami (818/1414–898/1492). A review of concluding verses tobe used in letters addressed to sultans and religious figures suggests that, in assemblinghis own manual, Kashifi had access to and cited from parts of Jami’s Majmüfia-imursalt-i Jmı.42 Ironically, Kashifi’s suggested panegyrical verses to be used forsultans were taken from the list compiled by Jami as “different verses that have beenused in letters” (abyt-i mutafarriqa kih dar maktübt navishtah shudah büd).43 On thesame folio, we find again two successive panegyrical verses from Jami’s Munsha√t.One appears in a “brotherly ruqfia” (no. 363) while the other verses are in fact theopening lines of one of Jami’s most important letters, the javb-nmah he sent to UzunHasan, in which he lionized the Aq Quyunlu ruler as “the Sultan of the Ghazis.”44

The Makhzan al-insh is thus not only a complex reference manual for epistolo-graphy, but also a repository of prose and poetic citations which circulated in thePersian “cultural complex” as a result of the literary contributions of such writers asFirdawsi, Anvari, Nizami, Khaqani, Safidi, Hafiz, and Jami. Moreover, the use of suchpoetic formulae was no doubt part of a larger agenda designed to use the epistolarysciences as a means of perpetuating the imagery and topoi relating to kingship,administration, and the role of state and religion. Undoubtedly, the principal means todo this in epistolary writing was to compare the addressee to certain mythical andhistorical exemplars, a process that Kashifi understood well when compiling his indexof appropriate epistolary phrases and lines of poetry. As we will see later on, Kashifi

39. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 28b; Afzal al-Din Shirvani Khaqani, Dıvn, ed. Ziya al-DinSajjadi (Tehran, 1960), 60 and 261.

40. “Everywhere and every time is prosperous and civilized/With the emperor of the earthand the king of the age.” Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 7b.

41. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 25a.

42. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 81b; Jami, Munsha√t, 112.

43. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 81a; Jami, Munsha√t, 275.

44. Jami, Munsha√t, 239; also fiAbd al-Husayn Nava√i, Asnd va muktabt-i trıkhı-i ˆrnaz Tımür t Shh Ismfiıl (Tehran, 1963), 446. For a reference to it see, John Woods, TheAqquyunlu: Clan, Confederation, Empire, rev. ed. (Salt Lake City, 1999), 89.

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was indeed part of that Persianate intellectual tradition which advocated the modelsociety as being not only hierarchically structured, but also ruled by a king who couldboast both genealogical connections and ideological affinities with the ancient Iraniankings and heroes of the past. If Kashifi’s intentions in compiling the Makhzan al-inshwere to preserve and propagate various cultural and political aspects of the Persianclassical heritage, one might ask whether there is any evidence that his intentions wereever realized. Kashifi’s work was designed to serve as a reference tool for scribes andsecretaries writing correspondence in Herat and other Timurid centers, but the manu-script tradition was very much alive in the eastern Islamic world and, as a result, hiswork would be transmitted well beyond the temporal and spatial limits of TimuridKhurasan. To return then to the issue of rehabilitating the importance of this work inthe context of early modern Muslim bureaucracies, it is the specific objective here totrace, track, and map the role of the Makhzan al-insh in Perso-Islamic chancellerypractice during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Five years after the Makhzan al-insh was completed, the Timurid empire underSultan-Husayn Bayqara was overrun by the Uzbeks under Muhammad Shibani Khan(r. 905/1500–915/1510). While some Timurid bureaucrats and administrators remainedto serve the Uzbeks in Central Asia, a large number fled south to India and west toIran.45 Whether it was these refugee scholars who brought works like the Makhzan al-insh to these lands, or whether such works were copied and transmitted at a later time,is difficult to state with certainty. The evidence presented here, however, does suggestthat chancellery functionaries, operating in a number of different dynastic milieusacross the Islamic world, had access to the Makhzan al-insh and made use of it inter-mittently. Kashifi’s work appears to have served as a powerful model for scribes, and itrepresents yet another strand of Timurid culture that exerted a significant influence onIslamic lands well beyond its original theater of Khurasan. In the sixteenth and seven-teenth centuries, Persian was the unrivalled language of diplomacy, and it is perhapsnot surprising that a work on Persian epistolography, such as the Makhzan al-insh,should have enjoyed such popularity from Istanbul to Hyderabad. The methodologyemployed here is straightforward: a number of sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuryPersian compilations of letters (majmüfia-i munsha√t) from Iran, India, and other partsof the Islamic world were consulted and the formulary sections of let-ters—benedictions, honorifics, and salutations—were scrutinized in order to determinewhether they matched what Kashifi provided as models in the Makhzan al-insh.

One would expect to find evidence of the Makhzan al-insh’s use in early six-teenth-century northern India more than anywhere else. When Zahir al-DinMuhammad Babur finally chose to pull up stakes in Samarqand and Bukhara and re-locate to the Indo-Gangetic Plain, he was joined by sizeable numbers of bureaucratsand functionaries who had originally been trained at the court of Sultan-Husayn Bay-qara. The possibility that a copy of the Makhzan al-insh was brought into India duringthese tumultuous times would seem to be borne out by the existence of a work entitled

45. See Maria Szuppe, Entre Timourides, Uzbeks, et Safavides: Questions d’histoirepolitique et sociale de Hérat dans la première moitié du XVIe siècle (Paris, 1992), 69–77.

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Badyifi al-insh (“The Miracles of Insh”) by one Yusuf ibn Muhammad, who wasoriginally from Herat.46 While he certainly lived in Herat in Kashifi’s time, Yusuf fledKhurasan at some point and found himself new patrons in Babur and Humayun inIndia in the 1520s and 1530s. A work of poetry by him, Qaß√id-i Yüsufı, describes thedeath of Babur and the coronation of Humayun in 932/1526, while another poem,Qaßıda dar ˛if÷-i ßi˛˛at, is in fact dedicated to Babur.47 The Badyifi al-insh wascompiled in 940/1533, some seven years after the Battle of Panipat, and includesmodel letters written to Sultan-Husayn Bayqara, Babur, and Humayun. What is inter-esting to note is that Yusuf ibn Muhammad presents his epistolographic manual in themanner of Kashifi’s organization of his material according to social rank (†abaqa).Normally in such works, model letters are put together haphazardly as specimens ofliterary acumen, with little concern for organization. The only other contemporarywork which approaches epistolographical material in terms of social ranking is theNmah-i nmı by the historian Khvandamir.48

Any doubts as to where Yusuf ibn Muhammad may have gotten his material areput to rest on the second folio of his Badyifi al-insh where he presents a model letterwritten from one sultan to another. The first line of this letter, in which the ruler is de-scribed as the “world-illuminating sun of the victorious dynasty, the world-dazzlingmoon of excellent statehood” (ftb-i filam-tb-i dawlat-i qhira va mh-i jahn-afrüz-i sal†anat-i bhira) is directly copied from Kashifi’s first page of suggested for-mulae for introductory felicitations (dufit-i iftit˛iyya) in letters between kings.49 Oneline later, Yusuf ibn Muhammad continues the intitulatio, the portion of the letterdesigned to honor the addressee, by describing him as “the reason for the rising lightsof security and safety and the cause of signs replete with justice and goodness” (vsi†a-i †ulüfi-i anvr-i amın va amn va vasıla-i vufür-i sr-i fiadl va i˛sn).50 Once again,this is borrowed directly from Makhzan al-insh, although from a later section entitled“Qualities for People of the Highest Rank: Kings, Sultans, and Caliphs of BothWorlds.”51 We continue to see use of Kashifi’s model verse and prose in Yusuf ibnMuhammad’s model response (javb-nmah) from one sultan to another in which thesultan is described as “the embroidered robe of statehood and established sovereignty,the seal of magnificence and conquest” (†irz-i kiswat-i sal†anat va farmn-rav√ı-imakın khatm-i fia÷amat va kishvr-gush√ı),52 taken directly from Kashifi’s suggestions

46 Yusuf ibn Muhammad, Badyifi al-insh, Ms., London, British Library, I.O. Islamic1972.

47. D. N. Marshall, Mughals in India: A Bibliographic Survey of Manuscripts (London,1967), 495–96.

48. Khvandamir, Nmah-i nmı, Ms., Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Suppl. persan 1842,fol. 8.

49. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 6b.

50. Yusuf ibn Muhammad, Badyifi al-insh, fol. 2b.

51. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 27a.

52. Yusuf ibn Muhammad, Badyifi al-insh, fol. 3a.

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for descriptions of kingly qualities.53 We know that later Mughal insh works wouldcontinue to consult Kashifi’s work, as may be seen from the very popular Munsha√tal-Namakın which made extensive use of “prayers, complimentary adjectives, andverses” from Kashifi’s abridgment of the Makhzan al-insh, entitled ∑a˛ıfa-i shhı.54

Interestingly, the compiler of the Munsha√t al-Namakın was Harkaran (whose laqabwas Ifitibar Khan), the first notable Hindu munshı to serve the Mughal dynasty. HereHarkaran emerges as one of the principal transmitters of high Persian epistolary proseand poetry in seventeenth-century India, thereby underscoring the ethnic and religiousheterogeneity which characterized the Mughal administration.55

There seems to be little doubt that Kashifi’s work found its way into Mughalchancelleries. The use of Persian as the administrative and courtly language by theMughals has been a topic of some debate. There is no contesting that Persian was “thelanguage of the king, the royal household, and the high Mughal elite,”56 but scholars,more often than not, look to Indo-Iranian contacts in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies to rationalize this phenomenon. Moreover, as the Mughals worked closelywith surrounding Hindu nobility and scribal elements, especially during the reign ofAkbar the Great (r. 963/1556–1013/1605), the role of Persian in the Mughal bureauc-racy diminished, according to some scholars. The epistolographic evidence however,suggests that the Central Asian milieu was in and of itself a rich source of Persian liter-ary culture for the Mughal elite. Moreover, the conscious reference to Perso-Islamicmythical and historical firgures in Mughal correspondence suggests that Persian cul-ture remained a powerful tool of legitimation for these “Indian Timurid” rulers wellinto the eighteenth century. In fact, recent studies have endeavored to suggest that theMughals’ Central Asian roots ran very deep indeed,57 and these roots represented ahybrid of Persian literary culture and Turkic political and tribal features. If Perso-Islamic insh had such a valuable function for the Mughals, we can speculate that otherdynasties may also have accessed Kashifi’s Makhzan al-insh in order to promotesimilar agendas. The region of the Deccan in particular had a long history of religious,economic, and cultural contact with Iran and Central Asia. Two Deccani dynasties, theQutbshahs and the fiAdilshahs, were founded by individuals who had traveled fromIran to the Indian subcontinent in quest of wealth and political power. Moreover, thesedynasties, as well as the more indigenous Nizamshahs of Ahmadnagar, would ulti-mately promulgate Twelver Shifiism as their state religion, and contacts between Iran,specifically Khurasan, and the Deccan plateau would intensify. Not surprisingly, we

53. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 27a.

54. M. Mohiuddin, The Chancellery and Persian Epistolography under the Mughals(Calcutta, 1971), 176.

55. Riazul Islam, A Calendar of Documents on Indo-Persian Relations, 2 vols. (Tehran,1979), 1: 35.

56. Muzaffar Alam, “The Pursuit of Persian Language in Mughal Politics,” Modern AsianStudies 31 (1998): 324.

57. G. Watson, “Interpretations of Central Asian Influences on Mughal India: TheHistorical Debate,” South Asia 18 (1995): 1–3.

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see this Persian influence at work in their chancellery practice, and the ruling familiesran their bureaucracies according to well-established Perso-Islamic standards. Note-worthy is a letter preserved in the munsha√t of the Safavid chief secretary, fiAbd al-Husayn al-Nasir al-Tusi, which was compiled in 1042/1633, from the ruler of Gol-conda (modern-day Hyderabad) in the Deccan region of India to Shah fiAbbas of Iran.The first line of this letter, written probably in the late 1620s, is a verse offered bySultan fiAbd Allah Qutbshah, extolling Shah fiAbbas as the pinnacle of the steps ofsovereignty and the place where emperors should prostrate themselves.58 This particu-lar verse had been recommended for royal epistles in the Makhzan al-insh (fol. 6b)roughly a century earlier. In another letter written by the Qutbshahi chancellery onbehalf of fiAbd Allah, this time to the Mughal ruler Shahjahan, we encounter the use ofyet another list of alqb first prescribed by Kashifi.59

There is also evidence that Kashifi’s epistolographic manual found its way fromHerat to the Safavid imperial capitals of Qazvin and Isfahan. To imagine such culturaland bureaucratic movement between Central Asia and Iran is not difficult when weconsider the careers of men like Ghiyath al-Din Khvandamir who originally servedSultan-Husayn Bayqara, then found himself at the court of Shah Ismafiil, and later atthat of the Mughal emperor, Humayun. Similar observations could be made about anumber of scholar-bureaucrats who fled to Iran from Khurasan after the Uzbek inva-sions, namely Khvaja Sayf al-Din Muzaffar Bitikchi, Khvaja Kamal al-Din Sagharchi,and the Nurbakhshiyya shaykh, Shah Qasim Nurbakhsh.60 The inclusion of theMakhzan al-insh in Safavid chancellery procedure took some time, however, and it isnot until the later reigns of Shah Tahmasp (r. 930/1524–983/1576) and Shah fiAbbas(997/1589–1038/1629) that we find evidence of its more regular use. Our first evidencefor the implementation of Kashifi’s manual by Safavid bureaucrats comes in two let-ters written in the mid-1530s. Both letters were addressed to the Doge of Venice andwere written by Qazi Jahan Qazvini, the vazir-cum-vakıl of Shah Tahmasp.61 Realizingthat the usual invocation to God to have the addressee’s rule and dominion extendedmight not be appropriate in this case, Qazi Jahan chose instead to ask that “God illumi-nate [the Doge’s] heart with the light of faith” (nawwara Allahu tafil qalbahu bi-nüral-ımn).62 Beyond that, however, Qazi Jahan uses a number of the same honorificsthat Kashifi indexes for Muslim kings and sultans in his Makhzan al-insh. The Vene-

58. fiAbd al-Husayn al-Nasir al-Tusi, Munsha√t al-‡üsı, Ms., Paris, BibliothèqueNationale, Suppl. persan 1838, fol. 213b.

59. fiAbd al-fiAli Tabrizi, Munsha√t-i n÷ir al-mamlik al-sul†niyya ˘jjı fiAbd al-fiAlıTabrızı, Ms., London, British Library, Add. 6600, fol. 3a.

60. Khvandamir, ˘abıb al-siyar, 4: 507; Khurshah ibn Qubad al-Husayni, Trıkh-i ılchı-iNi÷mshh, ed. M. R. Nasiri and K. Haneda (Tehran, 2000), 54. See also Szuppe, EntreTimourides, 79–97, and Jean Aubin, “R©evolution chiite et conservatisme: Les soufis de Lâhejân,1500–1514,” Moyen Orient et Océan Indien 1 (1984): 1–40.

61. Both are available in Lajos Fekete, Einfµhrung in die persische Paläographie(Budapest, 1977), 383–94.

62. Fekete, Einfµhrung, 384, and 390.

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tian Doge, Andrea Gritti (r. 1523-38), is thus described in Kashifi’s language as “themeans of acquiring grandeur and empire and example of glory and prosperity,” andQazi Jahan hopes that “the lights of [his] everlasting fortune will rise and increase hourby hour.”63 In a response to the Ottoman sultan, Selim II, written most likely in the late1560s, the scribe writing on behalf of Shah Tahmasp quotes one of the indexed versesfrom fol. 28b of the Makhzan al-insh: “Extend your neck and take hold of thecrown/O refuge of kings and rulers.”64

It would appear that use of the Makhzan al-insh in the Safavid chancellery inten-sified during the reign of Shah fiAbbas the Great. Perhaps the most consistent utiliza-tion of Kashifi comes in a letter from the Safavid court to Akbar the Great in 999/1591,some four years after the enthronement of fiAbbas. Following praise of the Mughaladdressee, in both prose and poetry, the Safavid letter begins a lengthy intitulatio sec-tion of Arabic and Persian prose which has been assembled, in sequence, from a list ofmodel intitulatios offered by Kashifi in various sections (fols. 22a, 27a, 52a, 52b) ofhis treatise.65 In a message of condolence sent to Jahangir after the death of his father,Akbar, in 1014/1605, Shah fiAbbas praises the new king for being as “strong as the sun,as powerful as the heavens, the shadow of benevolence, his excellency the [royal] pro-vider” (ftb-qadr falak-iqtidr syah-fi†ifat ˛a„zrat-parvardagr), a suggested proseformulary in Kashifi’s section on kingly qualities.66 This phrase would also appear in alater letter written by Shah fiAbbas to Jahangir’s son, Prince Khurram, who would takethe name Shahjahan after his coronation in 1625.67 Evidence of the use of Kashifi’smanual is also found in Safavid correspondence with the Ottomans. In a letter probablywritten in the late 1590s, Safavid chancellery officials extol the Ottoman ruler, Meh-med III, employing titulature and honorifics represented in Kashifi’s work.68 In anotherSafavid letter to Mehmed III, from the munsha√t of Mawlana Shifa√i (d. 1037/1628),a poetic verse comparing the revolving heavens with the Ottoman ruler’s court is cop-ied from Kashifi’s treatise.69

The transmission of Kashifi’s epistolary manual in Iran also went beyond the Sa-favid capitals of Qazvin and Isfahan. Sixteenth-century tributary polities in Mazanda-ran, Gilan, Lar, and Makran—all of which would be later incorporated into Iran during

63. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 6b; Fekete, Einfµhrung, 384.

64. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 28b; fiAbd al-Husayn Nava√i, Shh ‡ahmsp ∑afavı: Majmüfia-iasnd va muktabt-i trıkhı hamrh b yddsht-h-yi tafßıl (Tehran, 1971), 462.

65. fiAbd al-Husayn Nava√i, Shh fiAbbs: Majmüfia-i asnd va muktabt-i trıkhı hamrhb yddsht-h-yi tafßıl, (Tehran, 1987), 3: 338.

66. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 27a; al-Tusi, Munsha√t, fol. 160a.

67. al-Tusi, Munsha√t, fols. 242b–43a.

68. Anonymous, Maktübt, Ms., London, British Library, I.O. Islamic 379, fols. 113a-114a;Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 6b.

69. Sharaf al-Din Hasan Shifa√i, Ms., London, British Library, Munsha√t-i Shif√ı, fol.91a. This work is included on fols. 67–97 in Anonymous, Majmüfia, Ms., London, BritishLibrary, Or. 13215.

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the reign of fiAbbas—boasted functioning administrations and lively court cultures, andno doubt followed suit in sponsoring Persian scholars and scribes in their respectivechancelleries. A case in point is the prodigious number of letters and missivesexchanged by Shah Tahmasp and the Kar Kiya dynasty in Gilan.70 While next tonothing is known about the administration and governance of this semi-autonomousregion, we can at least make the assertion that Kashifi’s Makhzan al-insh had made itsway into the Gilani chancellery. In response to a decree (manshür) from Shah Tahmaspissued in 975/1567, the ruler Ahmad Khan Gilani ordered that an fiar„zah-dsht (peti-tion) be drafted and sent to the Safavid capital of Qazvin. The preamble containinghonorifics and obeisance contains a line of Persian verse, “In his most exemplifiedrule, the sunlight of imperialness/Empowers his command and prohibition continu-ously,” which was modified slightly from a verse Kashifi cites on his first folio of sug-gested epistolary poetry for kings.71 This line was apparently a popular one since it wasrepeated in its entirety in a condolence letter (tafiziyat-nmah) sent by an aging ShahTahmasp to the Ottoman sultan, Murad III, after the death of his father, Selim II, in981/1574.72

Because insh compilations, such as the one assembled by the munshı al-mamlik,fiAbd al-Husayn al-Tusi, in 1042/1633, were expansive enough to include and preservethose letters which had been sent from abroad to the Safavid court, we can also explorethe extent to which dynasties like the Uzbeks and the Ottomans were likewise influ-enced by Kashifi’s Makhzan al-insh. In a letter from fiAbd al-Mu√min to ShahfiAbbas, written in 1593, we find the Uzbek chancellery functionary—in all likelihooda Persian—combining model titulatures found in different sections of the Makhzan al-insh. For example, the phrase, “embroidered robe of statehood and established sover-eignty, the seal of conquest,” is combined with a phrase that appears in a different partof the Makhzan al-insh, in this case “the sun illuminating the heavens of sovereignty,the moon in the sky of world conquest.”73 Probably more compelling is the suggestionthat Kashifi would later be used for correspondence emanating from the OttomanTurkish court. It should not be surprising to find a sizeable number of Ottoman diplo-matic letters written in Persian, considering its status as a court language in the medie-val Islamic world. Also, the number of Persian-speaking bureaucrat-scholars whofound patronage in Sunni-oriented Istanbul was not insignificant. We do know thatPersian works on epistolography made their way from east to west. Specifically, fiAbdal-Ghaffar Siddiqi Husayni Haravi dedicated his insh work, ∑a˛ıfat al-ikhlß, to theOttoman sultan, Selim I, and had it sent to Istanbul from Herat in 1516.74

70. See F. Nawzad, Nmah-h-yi Khn A˛mad Khn Gılnı (Tehran, 1994). A number ofGilani documents have also been transcribed and edited by Nava√i. See Nava√i, Shh ‡ahmsp∑afavı, 102–41.

71. Nava√i, Shh ‡ahmsp ∑afavı, 127.

72. Nava√i, Shh ‡ahmsp ∑afavı, 476.

73. al-Tusi, Munsha√t, fol. 254a.

74. fiAbd al-Ghaffar Siddiqi Husayni Haravi, ∑a˛ıfat al-ikhlß, Ms., Paris, BibliothèqueNationale, Suppl. persan 1061, fols. 2a and 4a.

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The Ottoman connection to Kashifi becomes more clearly defined in the explora-tion of two letters sent by Sultan Sulayman to Shah Tahmasp at some point duringPrince Bayazid’s attempts to seek asylum in Iran during the early 1560s.75 These letterswere preserved in the other great Safavid official insh collection, Abu al-Qasim Hay-dar Ivughli’s Nuskha-i jmifi-i mursalt-i ülü al-albb. The first letter eulogizes ShahTahmasp with several qualities (ßift) originally listed by Kashifi. Moreover, the Otto-man chancellery official makes use of one of Kashifi’s suggested invocations: “Maythe banners of [Shah Tahmasp’s] exalted statehood never cease [flowing],” along withothers listed in the appropriate section on invocations in the Makhzan al-insh.76 Thesame royal praise and claims are made in another letter sent by Sulayman to ShahTahmasp, which has been preserved in Ivughli’s work.77

The Men of the Pen

In addition to mapping the intertextuality between the Makhzan al-insh and medievalPerso-Islamic chancelleries in Turkey, Iran and India, we can discuss Kashifi’s pres-entation—via the genre of insh—of the schema of Timurid society. Ostensibly atabularized reference work for writing letters to specific classes of society, and to peo-ple who held positions within these classes, the Makhzan al-insh in fact reflects theworldview of an urban Persian scholar-bureaucrat. The implications of Kashifi’s Welt-anschauung are worth noting in that it reflects the tensions of a multilingual and multi-ethnic society which was governed according to a combination of Turko-Mongol tribalprinciples, Islamic law and tradition, as well as ancient Iranian social and political con-ventions. Kashifi leaves no doubt as to what posed the greatest threats to the hegemonyof the Persian bureaucrats: Turko-Mongolian military primacy and Islamic judicialauthority.

To understand the import of Kashifi’s work in this regard, we should begin bylooking at what Kashifi himself has to say on the subject. The introduction to his workdiscusses a number of themes, including the importance of the ahl al-qalam, the menof the pen, and the aforementioned concept of social stratification. Kashifi begins byciting Qur’anic scripture and Prophetic traditions to rank knowledge, learning, and theact of writing as the highest of human activities. Kashifi writes, “The created worldwas bestowed [by God] with the qualities of elegant reason, the generous power ofexcellent and perfect speech, and ineffable honor.”78 He goes on to add that “because itis essential that Man be able to inform his fellow humans of his designs and affairs,God the Benevolent, distinguished him in perfect generosity with the honor of speechso that what remains hidden in the treasury of his heart may spring forth into the realm

75. Abu al-Qasim Haydar Ivughli, Nuskha-i jmifi-i mursalt-i ülü al-albb, Ms., London,British Library, Add. 7688, fols. 83a-84a.

76. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 22a.

77. Ivughli, Nuskha-i jmifi-i mursalt-i ülü al-albb, fols. 84a–84b.

78. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 2b.

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of existence by means of utterance, as stated in Chapter 55 of the Qur’an: ‘God hascreated man and taught him utterance.’”79 Kashifi equates the importance of writingwith that of speech by stating how “the science of writing elegantly is a flash from thebounteous lights of God’s endless grace.”80 For Kashifi writing is a means of guardingand preserving “the body of sciences consisting of tafsır, ˛adıth, jurisprudence, and allother beneficial things connected with religious and traditional sciences.”81 Withoutwriting, there would be no way to preserve “the tales of the prophets, the hagiographiesof the saints, the biographies of the kings and grandees, nor the customs and literaryworks of learned men and wise people.”82 It should be noted, however, that Kashifi’sviews are not unique in this respect; insh manuals and works on adab had long beenmaking such justifications for the centrality of scribal culture.83

However, what is unique in Kashifi’s presentation is his justification of scribalculture on the basis of Aristotelian and Platonic thought via the thirteenth-century Per-sian philosopher-vazır, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi. Kashifi writes that, for those who arelearned, “it is clear that man is a civic being” (insn madaniyy bi’l-†abfi), an idea takendirectly from al-Tusi’s Akhlq-i Nßirı.84 Kashifi clarifies how civilization (tamaddun)is necessary for man’s survival; moreover, classes of people are necessary for a suc-cessful society, a non-egalitarian sentiment Tusi justifies by stating that, “if men wereall equal, they would all perish.”85 Terms associated with ranking and stratification,such as martaba, rutba, and tartıb, were central to the philosophical ideas of al-Tusiand al-Farabi, which were founded on a First and Perfect Principle. The created uni-verse consists of a series of emanations, and these are ranked according to their level ofperfection using the aforementioned terms. In a perfect political state (al-madına al-f∂ila), a corresponding order should be established, beginning with the ruler andmoving downwards.86

There are a number of reasons to support the thesis that Kashifi was intellectuallyinfluenced by the writings of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi. In addition to direct citations fromTusi in the Makhzan al-insh, Kashifi makes references to his ideas in other treatises,including his manual on ethics, Akhlq-i Mu˛sinı,87 as well as in his work on Prophetic

79. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 3a.

80. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 3a.

81. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 3b.

82. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 3b.

83. Sadan, “Nouveaux documents sur scribes et copistes,” 56. Specifically, see MuhammadNakhjuvani, Dastür al-ktib fı tafiyın al-martib, 2 vols. in 3, ed. A. A. Alizade (Moscow,1964–76), 1: 5–8, and Nizami, Mansha√ al-insh, 3–5.

84. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Akhlq-i Nßirı (Tehran, 1960), 210.

85. Tusi, Akhlq-i Nßirı, 209.

86. Richard Walzer, ed., Al-Farabi on the Perfect State: Abu Nasr al-Farabi’s Mabdi√ r√ahl al-madına al-f∂ila (Oxford, 1985), 359.

87. Kashifi, Akhlq-i Mu˛sinı (Lucknow, 1878), 4–5. See the article by Maria Subtelny inthis volume, 604ff.

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traditions, the Risla-i fiAliyya.88 Second, and more importantly, Kashifi divides societyin the same manner as Tusi, but on a tripartite basis: †abaqa-i afil (highest class),†abaqa-i ashraf (noble class), and †abaqa-i awßat (middle class). When we read howvazırs, munshıs, mustawfıs, and ktibs in general are ranked as belonging to the†abaqa-i afil, in the same general class as kings, sultans, and amirs, we find a deliber-ate attempt to place the bureaucratic class in the highest position possible. Kashifi jus-tifies this by stating, “If it were not for the tongue, there would be no men,” and herewe are reminded of the phrase used both by Farabi and Tusi (zü al-lisn) to describe“those who are involved in scholastics, elocution, rhetoric, poetry, and calligraphy.”For Farabi and Tusi, this group was ranked as the second highest class in the perfectcity,89 since “the faculty of discrimination and reason has not been created identical inall men, but graded in varying ranks.”90 A similarly high rank was accorded the rheto-ricians and eloquent ones by Kashifi’s counterpart, the Aq Quyunlu philosopher andpolitical theorist, Jalal al-Din al-Davvani.91 As Louise Marlow has remarked, Tusi andproponents of his political philosophy embraced a worldview whereby professionswere ranked in a hierarchy of excellence, and men were assigned to a “higher” or a“lower” occupation depending on their innate capacities.92 Tusi’s writings, however,have also been described as an independent ethical discourse which offered an alterna-tive for the Persian administrative authorities to balance and counter the claim of theclerical establishment as the bestower of legitimate rulership to the sultanate.93 Andthere is reason to believe that Kashifi might have been motivated by this and otherlarger objectives when assembling the Makhzan al-insh.

While other insh works of the Timurid period, like fiAbd al-Vasifi Nizami’s Man-sha√ al-insh, organize their letters and decrees loosely according to the principle ofrank, i.e., letters to and from rulers appearing at the beginning, still others organizetheir contents on an ad hoc basis, and hence the question of social hierarchy does notarise. A good example of the latter approach is the Sharaf-nmah of Marvarid. TheMakhzan al-insh, on the other hand, is completely without ambiguity in this regard: astate consists of people of varying ranks, and letters should be written accordingly. Wemay pose the question: how were people ranked in Kashifi’s schema and does thisranking tell us something about how a figure like Kashifi responded to the complexityand diversity of a Turco-Mongol empire such as that of the Timurids?

88. Kashifi, Risla al-fialiyya fi’l-a˛dıs al-nabawiyya, ed. Jalal al-Din Husayni Muhaddis(Tehran, 1965), 31.

89. Tusi, Akhlq-i Nßirı, 243; Walzer, Al-Farabi on the Perfect State, 437, n. 629.

90. Tusi, Akhlq-i Nßirı, 239.

91. Louise Marlow, Hierarchy and Egalitarianism in Islamic Thought (Cambridge, 1997),57.

92. Marlow, Hierarchy and Egalitarianism, 50.

93. Hamid Dabashi, “Khwajah Nasir al-Din al-Tusi: The Philosopher/Vizier and theIntellectual Climate of his Time,” in S. H. Nasr and O. Leaman, eds., History of IslamicPhilosophy (London, 1996), 1: 558. See also Bertrand Badie, “La philosophie politique del’Héllénisme musulman,” Revue française de science politique 28 (1977): 290–304.

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First and foremost, we should understand that the issue of social stratification andthe ranking of society according to different classes was not a fixed matter in thePerso-Islamic context. Since the ninth century, Muslim intellectuals had been strug-gling to find a compromise between the Islamic tenet of egalitarianism and those tradi-tions, notably ancient Persian and Greek, that advocated a hierarchically-structured andranked society.94 Moreover, those works which do champion a hierarchy differ as towhich group or class of people is to be ranked higher than others.95 However, Kashifiplaces the ahl al-qalam in the †abaqa-i afil, alongside kings, grandees, and othermembers of the privileged elite. In this classification, he is quite specific as to who isto be included in this most exalted of ranks: the parvnchı (decree writer), the munshı(stylist), the mustawfı (accountant), the ktib-daftar (registry clerk), those responsiblefor accounting and comptrol (ahl al-istıf√ wa’l-mu˛sibün), as well as the inspectorsof tax collection (mushrif-i fiumml al-amwl) and superintendents of pious endow-ments (fiumml al-waqf). To this list of Persian bureaucratic functionaries he adds avariety of general administrative military offices. The religious classes, however, arerelegated to the second class of society, or †abaqa-i ashraf. These religious classesappear to be divided into three broad groups, with the first including sayyids, naqıbs,shaykhs, q„zıs, and more generally religious scholars, or fiulam. The second, labeledas those who are experts in Islamic law, or sharıfia, include Qur’anic commentators,˛adıth specialists, faqıhs, muftıs, a variety of preachers, and teachers of Arabic. Thethird group, consisting of the mu˛tasib, the ßadr-i ˛if÷, the mu√azzin, and the ˛fi÷, arethose individuals who participated in and monitored daily religious observances.Kashifi also included physicians, astrologers, architects, poets, painters, calligraphers,and geomancers in the †abaqa-i ashraf, while also appending mystics (arbb al-fanawı), zviya-drn (ascetics), and faqırs. The last class, †abaqa-i awsa†, includesthe well-bred, village and tribal chiefs, and merchants.

In addition to the issue of consigning the religious elite to a lower class than theadministrative elite, there are other features of Kashifi’s schema, or more precisely, theabsence of certain features, that are worth commenting on. A thorough review revealsthe absence of many positions we know existed in the Timurid empire. Far into themanuscript, we find the first and only references to offices we would associate with theTurco-Mongol elite: the yasvul (a bailiff, or someone responsible for preserving orderamong the Turkish amirs) and the ılchı (originally meant as an envoy during the Mon-gol empire, but later understood as a formal ambassador).96 Moreover, these offices areconsigned to a tertiary list under the rubric s√ir al-mulzimın, “or other court ser-vants” (see fig. 2). Nowhere in this work is there a reference to the many court posi-tions that existed in Turco-Mongol political discourse: bukvul, yrghüchı, qüshbeg,akhtahbeg, süchı, brschı, or qürchı. Nor is there any mention of the position of ıchkı,which denoted those Turkic amirs who enjoyed a special proximity to the sultan; as

94. Marlow, Hierarchy and Egalitarianism, 141.

95. For some of these views, see Marlow, Hierarchy and Egalitanarianism, 135 and169–70.

96. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 66a.

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Mir fiAli-Shir explained: “I now belong in the [inner] circle of courtiers (ıchkıyn) andalthough I do not hold any office, I sit closer to the celestial throne than any of thegreat amirs.”97 More telling perhaps is the absence of the term tuvchı, a Turco-Mon-gol office of great importance in the Timurid empire. According to Shiro Ando, whoresearched the Mufiizz al-ansb, a prosopography of amirs in the Timurid empire, thedıvn-i tuvchı was a central institution in the Timurid court; according to Ando’sfindings, there was in fact an increase in the number of tuvchıs during the Timuridperiod from twenty-four in the time of Timur to forty-two during the reign of Sultan-Husayn Bayqara roughly a century later.98 Kashifi’s unwillingness to note this andother Turco-Mongol offices is only underscored when we read how both Khvandamirand Marvarid themselves make repeated references to the offices of tuvchı, yasvul,bukvul, qüshbeg, and akhtahbeg in their respective Timurid insh manuals.99

It is the contention here that Kashifi’s highlighting of the ahl al-qalam and theirimportance, juxtaposed with a notable lack of interest in various Turko-Mongoloffices, was intentional. In addition to incorporating the social stratification champi-oned in the Akhlq-i Nßirı, it would appear that Kashifi was influenced by yet anotherMongol-era source, the Dastür al-ktib fı tafiyın al-martib by Muhammad ibn Hindu-shah Nakhjuvani. This didactic epistolographic work was produced in the mid-four-teenth century, towards the end of Ilkhanid rule in Iran. This suggestion of influence isbased to some extent on the fact that Nakhjuvani organizes the Dastür al-ktib partlyon a formulaic basis, i.e., suggesting particular verses and phrases that a scribe couldselect and insert in an appropriate section of a letter.100 Moreover, Nakhjuvani’s sec-tions on titulature and blessings list many offices that appear in the Makhzan al-insh.More concrete evidence, however, becomes clear if we compare the dıbchahs ofKashifi and Nakhjuvani. Mindful of the fact that style (sabk) changes over time,Kashifi warns against emulating the prose writing of past eras: “And [regarding] thestyle of past munshıs, notwithstanding their exaltedness in the ranks of eloquence andtheir high station on the rungs of rhetorical style, the minds of [today’s] learned onesare not inclined to studying [such a] marvelous practice and graceful arrangement forthe reason that their phraseology is not of the time.”101 While it would appear that thecopying of great masters of Persian poetry like Anvari, Safidi, and Jami was acceptableto Kashifi, to do so in the case of past authors of epistolary prose was problematic.Ironically, however, this admonition against repetition itself appears to have been cop-ied from Nakhjuvani, who makes almost exactly the same statement in his own

97. Maria Eva Subtelny, “fiAlı Shır Nav√ı: Bakhshı and Beg,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies3–4 (1979–80), pt. 2: 805.

98. Shiro Ando, Timuridische Emire nach dem Mufiizz al-ansb: Untersuchung zurStammesaristokratie Zentralasiens im 14. um 15. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1992), 235–36.

99. Khvandamir, Nmah-i-nmı, fols. 20–21a; Roemer, Staatsschreiben der Timuridenzeit,155–56, 163–77.

100. Nakhjuvani, Dastür al-ktib, 1: 135–48.

101. Kashifi, Makhzan, fol. 4a.

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dıbchah.102 Like Kashifi, Nakhjuvani provides a lengthy list of the different officesand stations involved in correspondence; however his list is not necessarily presentedin terms of a strict social stratification. In contrast to Kashifi, Nakhjuvani enumerates avariety of Turco-Mongol offices and terms, including yrghüchıs, bakhshıs, bukvuls,yasvuls, yürtchıs, and bitikchıs.103 If we accept the contention that Kashifi had accessto and worked with the Dastür al-ktib, we are left to ponder why he chose to incorpo-rate some features and eschew others.

The Timurid period was not unlike other eras of medieval Persian history, inwhich tension and acrimony defined the interaction between nomadic Turkic cultureand its sedentary Persian counterpart. The Makhzan al-insh, and its presentation ofwhat Kashifi believed to be an orderly and successful society, reflects this Turkic-Tajikenmity at a certain level. One could conceivably argue that this societal tension hasframed much of what has been produced—poetry, political ethics, history—by medie-val Persian scholar-bureaucrats, and that a collective view of themselves and theirresponsibilities had emerged amongst the ahl al-qalam by the fifteenth century. Thissense of consciousness is alluded to by Andrew Morton who, in his analysis of themuch-debated question of Rashid al-Din’s correspondence, concluded that the letterswere fabricated, by a highly-placed Tajik Timurid littérateur for an “intended audience. . .of Tajik scribes, the bureaucratic administrators, the continuators of the tradition towhich, despite his Jewish origin and his exceptionally broad interests, Rashid al-Dindid come to belong.”104 The purpose of these letters, then, went beyond displaying lit-erary acumen and intricate rhetoric, and they were in fact meant to communicate andempathize with fellow Persian administrators. Appreciating that the text of the Makh-zan al-insh was bureaucratic in content, tone, and presentation, it seems extremelyunlikely that Kashifi meant for his work to be read and appreciated by anyone but Per-sian administrators. Knowing who his audience would be, Kashifi hailed the ahl al-qalam as confidants and quasi-peers of kings, and he admonished his colleagues toembrace this worldview by using his epistolographic system. In this vein, an over-arching purpose to the Makhzan al-insh was to cement and give voice to that con-sciousness that had been growing among medieval Persian chancellery officials for thelast several centuries. His emphases on a) social stratification and b) the importance ofthe administrative elite, found its philosophical roots in the writings of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, himself a champion of the Persian bureaucratic class. The Makhzan al-insh sur-faces then as yet another Persian bureaucratic response to the political supremacy ofnomadic groups such as the Mongols and the Turks.

The epistolographic intertextual evidence presented here suggests that the Makh-zan al-insh, which was written in Herat during the halcyon days of the Timuridempire, would find its way into chancelleries across the Islamic world. From Istanbulto Golconda, and from Isfahan to Bukhara, Husayn Vafiiz-i Kashifi’s reference work

102. Nakhjuvani, Dastür al-ktib, 1: 9.

103. Nakhjuvani, Dastür al-ktib, 1: 47–48.

104. A. H. Morton, “The Letters of Rashid al-Din: Ilkhanid Fact or Timurid Fiction?” in D.Morgan and R. Amitai-Preiss, eds., The Mongol Empire & its Legacy (Leiden, 2000), 199.

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appears to have been regularly consulted and used by chancellery officials in the six-teenth and early seventeenth centuries. Given that such pan-Islamic influences wereclearly at work in terms of the madrasa curriculum in the late medieval Islamic world,it stands to reason that a comparable corpus of bureaucratic manuals and didactic textsserved similar purposes in the dıvns of the gunpowder empires and their neighboringsatellite states.105 Acknowledging this, we must accept the assertion that existing ten-dencies towards codifying and systematizing in the rational (fiulüm-i fiaqliyya) and tra-ditional sciences (fiulüm-i naqliyya), as well as parallel trends taking place in courtpoetry and miniature painting, were adopted and employed in Perso-Islamic chancel-lery culture. The Makhzan al-insh, in many ways, was best suited to this standardiz-ing and homogenizing of Persian munsha√t, and its broad use by a number of differentdynasties—Sunni and Shifiite alike—reinforce recent historiographical trends whichsuggest that the flow and transmission of culture in the central Islamic lands was notovertly affected by the appearance in the sixteenth century of a Twelver Shifiite empirein Iran.106 In this sense, the influence of Kashifi suggests a level of success in terms ofpreserving and transmitting the Persian historico-cultural heritage to the larger Islamicworld. Moreover, by using epistolography as a vehicle to replicate and provide a newcontext for the work of medieval Persian poets such as Nizami, Khaqani, and Anvari,Kashifi was responsible for preserving and propagating Persian literary culture. Lastly,and perhaps most importantly, the Makhzan al-insh was designed by Kashifi to servein a multi-purpose capacity for its readers. On the one hand, it provided a standardizedarrangement of prose and verse to be used in an epistolary context; on the other hand,its schemata of Perso-Islamic society reinforced the primacy and agency of the Persianscholarly and bureaucratic tradition. In this way, the polymath Husayn Vafiiz-i Kashifiworked diligently to restore and protect his fellow “men of the pen,” the ahl al-qalam,by simplifying and literally charting the complex philosophical worldview of Tusi andFarabi. Although the observation is tentative at best, perhaps Kashifi played a role inthe resurgence of Persian bureaucratic consciousness that characterized the growth ofthe Islamic gunpowder empires in which men like Iskandar Beg Munshi, Abu’l-Fazl,and Mustafa fiAli played their respective roless in reducing the influence of tribal mili-tancy and nomadic identity in the Safavid, Mughal, and Ottoman empires.107

105. See Francis Robinson, “Ottomans-Safavids-Mughals: Shared Knowledge andConnective Systems,” Journal of Islamic Studies 8 (1997): 151–84; also Maria Eva Subtelny andAnas Khalidov, “The Curriculum of Islamic Higher Learning in Timurid Iran in the Light of theSunni Revival under Shh Rukh,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 115 (1995): 210–36.

106. R. D. McChesney, “‘Barrier of Heterodoxy’?: Rethinking the Ties Between Iran andCentral Asia in the Seventeenth Century,” in C. Melville, ed., Safavid Persia: The History andPolitics of an Islamic Society (London, 1996), 231–68.

107. Chancellery dynamics in the Ottoman empire can be examined in a number of studies:Josef Matuz, Das Kanzleiwesen des Sultan Sµleymans des Prächtigen (Wiesbaden, 1974);Cornell Fleischer, “Between the Lines: Realities of Scribal Life in the Sixteenth Century,” in C.Heywood and C. Imber, eds., Studies in Ottoman History in Honour of Professor V. L. Ménage(Istanbul, 1994), 45–62; Christine Woodhead, “From Scribe to Litterateur: The Career of aSixteenth-Century Ottoman Ktib,” British Society for Middle Eastern Studies 9 (1982): 55–74.

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Fig. 2. Husayn Vafiiz-i Kashifi, Makhzan al-insh, Ms., Paris,Biblioth™eque Nationale, ancien fonds persan 73, fol. 37a. Phrasesand verses to be used in addressing “other court servants” of thehighest rank (†abaqa-i afil).

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