A Comparative Study of the History of Pishdadian in the Jami’ al-tawarikh and the Majma’ al-tawarikh

Abstract

Among the numerous chronicles that have narrated the history of the Pishdadian during the Ilkhanid period, Rashid al-Din’s Jami‘ al-tawarikh has unique features that are not found in the works of his predecessors. A century after Rashid al-Din, Hafiz-i Abru, imitating him, compiled the Majma‘ al-tawarikh in a much larger volume. This paper seeks to identify the sources of Rashid al-Din and Hafiz-i Abru, as well as to analyze and compare the structure of this part of their book with each other, as well as earlier chronicles. To identify the sources used by them, in addition to the Shahnameh, the works of twelve historians from the tenth to the fourteenth century were examined. Although Rashid al-Din follows the model offered by Tabari, who narrates the history of kings during the stories of the prophets, he is the first historian to divide his book into four chapters based on the four classes of Persian kings. Hafiz-i Abru has chosen another model, in which the histories of the kings and prophets were narrated separately, but he combined it with the structure invented by Rashid al-Din, and thus his book has a more systematic structure. Compared with the earlier works, the structures of the Jami‘ al-tawarikh and the Majma‘ al-tawarikh are so that they emphasize the importance of kings over prophets.

Keywords

• pishdadian
• ilkhanid historiography
• tarikh-i tabari
• rashid al-din
• hafiz-i abru