تاریخ اسلام (Oct 2016)
Analyzing the Quality of Monarchy Status Representation within the Discourse of Travel Book in Safavid Era
Abstract
The nature of monarchy in national, authoritative and ideological government was one of the significant issues attended by travel book foreign authors in Safavid era. Through the methodology of critical discourse analysis particularly the interpretation of Fan Liven from the concept of representation, the present research endeavors to represent an image presenting the discourse of travel book from the nature of monarchy in Safavid era. The findings of this research illustrates that in these travel books, the representation of Safavid king has been done from two dimensions: first, representation of monarchy as an issue observant on metaphysic and tradition, second, the representation of monarchy as a position and nature based on qualification. The image developed out of representation in these travel books includes a vast circle from the meaningfulness to the attribution of causes to effects. In this judgment, the status of monarchy in Safavid era has been illustrated with two material and non-material aspects. In this representation, king has been illustrated by five sources of this dynasty like Sufism, Shiism, and tradition of Iranshahri – Iranian ideal king, Iranian- Shiite interpretation from Islamic caliph as well as the early movements of lawfulness on the basis of qualification developed out of the new movement of western modernity. These authors have attempted to represent the quality of king’s relationship with the court, elites and classes and social states in addition to description of king. In their view, the relationship between the nature of monarchy and the other classes except Shiite scholars and jurisprudents has been generally linear and unidirectional.
