2 - Continuity and Transformation

Summary

This chapter first shows how the Timurid historiographical tradition survived into the early modern period. It then explores some of the formal conventional elements in a number of Persian histories. The chapter makes two overall points.First, the survival of conventional elements depends, to a very great extent, on whether or not a chronicler is modeling his history on an earlier work that contains a similar conventional element.Certain information appears in the sources due to established convention and because of the historiographical choices that the chronicler made. Second, such conventional elements appear in Persian chronicles across the Islamic empires.The specific historiographical elements that the chapter analyzes are benefits of history, bibliographies, genealogies, and dream narratives. The chapter demonstrates how the chroniclers, whether writing for the Ottomans, Safavids, or Mughals, tapped into a common earlier tradition, which they then modified and reshaped according to the political and dynastic expediencies of the time.