10 - Lessons from the Peripheries

Summary

Chapter Ten draws together the themes from the preceding chapters and presents the differences between Persian local histories and their Anatolian counterparts. It outlines the factors that may account for the notable differences in the literary strategies that Persian and Anatolian sources use to assert religious authority and legitimacy as an integral part of the Muslim umma. This chapter tackles the question of whether the literary tendencies and strategies for legitimation seen in Persian texts may be characteristic of writing on the peripheries of the contiguous Arab heartlands of the Islamic empire. This conclusion underscores how the findings and methodologies of this project are in conversation with scholars of the medieval Islamic world and medieval European Christianity. It emphasizes the strides to be made in scholarship on Persian and Islamic historiography, local history, sainthood, sanctification of place, semiotics, and material culture by harnessing innovative interdisciplinary ways of approaching local histories. It emphasizes how authors of local and regional histories in Persia embedded their communities into Islamic narratives rooted in the heartlands of Iraq, Syria, and Arabia through myriad literary strategies and themes that simultaneously challenged, accommodated and reflected dominant structures of authority and legitimacy.