No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
A Hospital in Ilkhānid Iran: Toward a Socio-economic Reconstruction of the Rab‘-i Rashīdī
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
Abstract
In the first decade of the fourteenth century, Rashiīd al-Dīn Fazl Allāh penned a remarkable endowment deed in which he meticulously detailed his plans for the creation of a utopian community. He named it the Rab‘-i Rashīdī. In this document, he provides socio-economic data concerning the day-to-day operations of this settlement unparalleled in comparable texts. This article focuses on the hospital ward of the Rab‘-i Rashīdī, and provides a broader historical context for this medieval hospital and its personnel by examining the financial and monetary information in the endowment deed in order to piece together the inner workings of this community. In so doing, we are granted a rare opportunity to explore the daily lives of ordinary people whose endeavors, however significant, often went unnoticed.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2012
Footnotes
The author would like to thank Sean Anthony, Franklin D. Lewis, and Courtney Jacobson for their valuable comments on an earlier draft of this work.
References
1 Allāh, Rashīd al-Dīn Fazl, Waqf-nāmah-yi Rab‘-i Rashīdī (Tehran, 1978), 2;Google Scholar “The parable of those who spend their substance in the way of Allah is that of a grain of corn: it groweth seven ears, and each ear Hath a hundred grains. Allah giveth manifold increase to whom He pleaseth: And Allah careth for all and He knoweth all things.” Qur’ān, 2:261, trans. by Yusuf Ali.
2 Tansuqnāmah is a compilation of Chinese classical medical literature that Rashīd al-Dīn ordered to be translated into Persian. Although Chinese medicinal arts exerted influence on previous scholars such as Ibn Sīnā (370–428/980–1037), Rashīd al-Dīn was the first Islamic scholar who systematically promoted the spread of Chinese medical thought into Greco-Islamic medicine. For more detail on this subject see, Klein-Franke, F. and Ming, Zhu, “Rashid al-Din and the Tansuqnamah: The Earliest Translation of Chinese Medical Literature in the West,” Le Muséon, 111, no. 3 (1998): 427–45.Google Scholar
3 Rab‘-i Rashīdī has been under the protection of Mīrāth-i Farhangī and restoration efforts are ongoing.
4 The Waqf-nāmah has served as a major source for several scholarly attempts at examining various aspects of Ilkhānid Iran such as Afshār, Iraj, “The Autograph Copy of Rashīd al-Dīn's Vaqfnāmeh,” Central Asiatic Journal, 14 (1970): 5–13;Google Scholar Fragner, Bert, “Ein Autograph des Mongolenwesirs Rashid-ad-Din Fazlallah,” Festgabe deutscher-Iranisten zur 2500 Jahrfeir Irans (Stuttgart, 1971), 35–46;Google Scholar Kārang, ‘Abd al-‘alī, Āsār-i Bāstāni-yi Āzarbāyjān (Tehran, 1351), 162–70;Google Scholar Mashkūr, Javād, Tarīkh-i Tabrīz tā Pāyān-i qarn-i nuhum-i hijrī (Tehran, 1352);Google Scholar Blair, Sheila, “Ilkhānid Architecture and Society: An Analysis of the Endowment Deed of the Rab‘-i Rashīdī,” Iran, 22 (1984): 67–90;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “Patterns of Patronage and Production in Ilkhānid Iran: The Case of Rashid al-Din,” in The Court of the Il-khans 1290–1340, ed. by Julian Raby and Teresa Fitzherbert (Oxford, 1996); Hoffmann, Birgitt, “Rašīduddīn Fadlallāh as the Perfect Organizer: The Case of the Endowment Slaves and Gardens of the Rab‘-i Rašīdī,” in Proceedings of the Second European Conference of Iranian Studies held in Bamberg, 30th September to 4th October 1991 by the Societas Iranologica Europaea, ed. by Fragner, B. et al. (Rome, 1995), 287–96;Google Scholar idem, “The Gates of Piety and Charity: Rašīd al-Dīn Faddl Allāh as Founder of Pious endowments,” in L'Iran face à la domination mongole. Etudes réunies et prés, ed. by Aigle, D. (Tehran, 1997), 189–202;Google Scholar idem, Waqf im Mongolischen Iran: Rašīduddīns Sorge um Nachruhm und Seelenheil (Stuttgart, 2000).Google Scholar
5 As an artifact of the Ilkhānid era, the Waqf-nāmah-yi Rab‘-i Rashīdī is one of the oldest extant endowment charters of Iran, and has been preserved as an autograph manuscript, drafted in part by Rashīd al-Dīn in the year 1309. Anjuman-i Āthār-i Millī purchased the manuscript from the Sirāj-Mīr family in 1969, and M. Minovi and Iraj Afshār published the edited version of the text in 1978. What particularly sets this charter apart from other endowment deeds of its time, aside from its detailed approach to every subject, in contravention to the mainstream norms of the era, is that it is written in Persian as opposed to Arabic. The only comprehensive work on the Waqf-nāmah has been Birgitt Hoffmann's Waqf im Mongolischen Iran: Rašīduddīns Sorge um Nachruhm und Seelenheil, published a decade ago. Perhaps Iraj Afshār's hope long ago, “how nice it would be now that the Waqf-nāmah has been published [in 1978], a doctoral student shall make some of these issues the subject of his [her] final dissertation,” has at last materialized (Waqf-nāmah, 20).
6 The practice of the wāqif designating himself, and, later his male progeny as mutavallīs is quite common in the establishment of waqf.
7 Rashīd al-Dīn, Waqf-nāmah, 216, and see p. 43 on the administrators' living quarters.
8 Hoffmann, Waqf im Mongolischen Iran, 154–61.
9 Shams al-Dīn Āmulī in Nafā'is al-funūn puts this figure at 300,000 dinars. See Shams al-Dīn Muhammad ibn Mahmūd Āmulī, Nafā'is al-funūn fī gharā'ib al-‘uyūn, ed. by Abū al-Hasan Sha‘rānī (Tehran, 1958), 2: 257.
10 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Tārīkh-i Mubārak-i Ghāzānī, ed. by Jahn, Karl (London, 1940), 207–17.Google Scholar
11 Āmulī, Nafā'is al-funūn, 2: 257–58; on other aspects of this tomb complex, see Blair, Sheila, “The Mongol Capital of Sultāniyya, ‘The Imperial,’” Iran, 24 (1986): 131–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 Qazvīnī, Hamd Allāh, Nuzhat al-qulūb, ed. by Siyāqī, Muhammad Dabīr (Tehran, 1336), 89–91.Google Scholar
13 Maria Subtelny has shown that under the Timurids, the institutions of waqf (especially endowed shrine complexes) greatly facilitated the agricultural development of Khurasan. See her Timurids in Transition: Turko-Persian Politics and Acculturation in Medieval Iran (Leiden, 2007), 192–234. This is an interesting examination, and it remains to be seen if similar developments were influential on the agricultural growth in the early fourteenth century at the time of the establishment of the Rab‘-i Rashīdī. It appears that the general agricultural diminution of the Mongol era was quite extensive, to be reversed in a short period through the activities of endowed shrines, even with the socio-economic reforms of Rashīd al-Dīn.
14 For a brief history of medicine and hospitals in Iran, see articles in Encyclopaedia Iranica, and Encyclopaedia of Islam. For a more detailed discussion of the subject, see Ahmad ‘Īsā Bey, Tārīkh al-Bīmāristānāt fī’l-Islām (Damascus, 1939); Elgood, A Medical History of Persia (Cambridge, 1951); Hamarneh, Sami, “Development of Hospitals in Islam,” Journal of the History of Medicine, 17 (1962): 366–87;Google Scholar Dols, Michael M., “The Origins of the Islamic Hospital: Myth and Reality,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 61 (1987): 367–90;Google Scholar Rahman, Fazlur, Health and Medicine in the Islamic Tradition (New York, 1987).Google Scholar
15 Mention should be made of the Mukātabāt-i Rashīdī or the Rashīdī Letters, which is supposedly a collection of Rashīd al-Dīn's correspondences, of which letters 18, 21, 36, and 51 deal with the dār al-shifā’-i Rab‘-i Rashīdī to varying degrees. However, since its authenticity is in dispute, I have refrained from using it as a source. For more on this issue see Falina, A. I., “K voprosu o podlinnosti perepiska Rashid al-Dina,” Vestnik leningradskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta, 9 (1948): 124–30,Google Scholar and “On the History of the ‘Correspondences’ of Rashīd al-Dīn,” Central Asiatic Journal, 14 (1970): 118–24; Reuben Levy, “The Letters of Rashīd al-Dīn Fadl-Allāh,” Journal of Royal Asiatic Society (1946): 74–78; Morton, A. H., “The Letters of Rashīd al-Dīn: Īlkhanid Fact or Timurid Fiction?,” in The Mongol Empire and its Legacy, ed. by Morgan, D. and Amitai-Preiss, R. (Leiden, 1999), 155–99Google Scholar; Soudavar, Abolala, “In Defense of Rashīd-od-Din and His Letters,” Studia Iranica, 32, no. i (2003): 77–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16 M. Khadr and C. Cahen, “Deux actes de waqf d'un Qarakhanide d'Asie Centrale,” JA (1967): 318–19.
17 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 109.Google Scholar
18 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 145–46.Google Scholar
19 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 42, 145–47.Google Scholar
20 This figure takes into account the salaries of the teaching assistant and the three other medical trainees that Rashīd al-Dīn added six years later in the middle of Sha‘bān of the year 715 (November 1315).
21 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 234; and Tārīkh-i Mubārak-i Ghāzānī, 214.Google Scholar
22 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 146.Google Scholar
23 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 148.Google Scholar
24 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 182.Google Scholar
25 There has been a surge of interest in medieval Islamic medicine and practice in recent years. See, for instance, Pormann, Peter and Savage-Smith's, Emilie Medieval Islamic Medicine (Washington DC, 2007);Google Scholar Aida Tibi's English translation of Abū al-faraj ‘Alī ibn Hindū's Miftāh al-tibb titled, Key to Medicine and a Guide for Students: Miftah Al-tibb Wa-minhaj Al-tullab (Reading, 2010); and Morrow's, John Encyclopedia of Islamic Herbal Medicine (Jefferson, NC, 2010).Google Scholar
26 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 146.Google Scholar
27 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 146;Google Scholar Bīrūnī, Abulrayhān, Saydanah, ed. by Afshar, Iraj and Sutoodeh, Manuchehr (Tehran, 1358), 169.Google Scholar
28 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 146;Google Scholar Bīrūnī, Ṣaydanah, 322.
29 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 146;Google Scholar Hindū, Abulfaraj ‘alī bin al-Husayn bin, Miftāh al-tibb va Minhāj al-tullāb, ed. by al-Mansūrī, ‘Alī (Bairut, 2002), 187.Google Scholar
30 Rashīd al-Dīn, Waqf-nāmah, 146; Bīrūnī, Saydanah, 894.
31 Rashīd al-Dīn, Waqf-nāmah, 146. Some of the items listed in this section of the Waqf-nāmah are also found in books two and five of Ibn Sinā's al-Qānūn fī’l-tibb.
32 Perhaps the most significant work describing the teaching of Islamic medicine in the thirteenth century is Ibn Usaybi‘a, Abī's ‘Uyūn al-anbā’ ‘an tabaqāt al-atibbā’ (Alger, 1958).Google Scholar
33 Such masters of the traditional sciences (including medicine) as al-Kindī, Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rushd are cases in point.
34 Rahman, Fazlur, Health and Medicine in the Islamic Tradition (New York, 1987), 69.Google Scholar
35 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 145.Google Scholar
36 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 146.Google Scholar
37 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 146.Google Scholar
38 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 180–81.Google Scholar
39 The Waqf-nāmah states that “mahalah-yi sālahīyah is of the district of shahristān-i Rashīdī that is close to the Rab‘-i Rashīdī, and one of its passages passes by the grand avenue of the Rab‘-i Rashīdī, and the other, by the bāzār by way of the sarkhāb gate,” 172.
40 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 146.Google Scholar
41 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 147.Google Scholar
42 Bey, ‘Īsā, Tārīkh al-Bīmāristānāt fī’l-Islām, 151–52.Google Scholar
43 Rahman, Health and Medicine, 69–70.
44 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 146–48.Google Scholar
45 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 183.Google Scholar
46 Ibn Nafīs, upon his death in Cairo, bequeathed all his possessions, including his library, to the newly constructed Mansūrī hospital.
47 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 183–84.Google Scholar
48 A Persian proverb, meaning, “There is bread and water here; where shall I go that is better than here?”
49 There are seven types of bread mentioned in the Waqf-nāmah: nān-i tunuk, khūrish, sīyāvānī, sījānī, gardah, gandumīn (an unspecified type), and nāzuk, which could be the same as the nān-i tunuk.
50 Hinz, Walther, Islamische Maβe und Gewichte umgerechnet ins metrische System (Leiden, 1955), 18.Google Scholar
51 Hoffmann, Waqf im Mongolischen Iran, 154–56.
52 Hoffmann, Waqf im Mongolischen Iran, 219.
53 Hoffmann gives a slightly larger figure of 708 mann of daily bread ration on page 219, I have not been able to reconcile her calculations.
54 Hoffmann, Waqf im Mongolischen Iran, 155. Hoffmann considers in her calculations the baker's wages as well as price of firewood based on information found in a contemporaneous accounting treatise known as Risālah-yi Falākiyyah of Falak ‘Alā-ye Tabrīzī.
55 Ashtor, Eliyahu, “The Diet of Salaried Classes in the Medieval Near East,” Journal of Asian History, IV (1970): 9–24;Google Scholar see also his Histoire des prix et des salaires dans l'Orient médiéval (Paris, 1969), 401–02.Google Scholar
56 Hoffmann, Waqf im Mongolischen Iran, 220.
57 “Rašīduddīn versuchte unlautere Machenschaften und Schiebereien mit allen Mitteln zu unterbinden, mit denen er aufgrund seiner Tätigkeit als mutawallī der herrscherlichen Stiftungen vermutlich oft genug konfrontiert worden war” (p. 222).
58 Rashīd|al-Dīn, Waqf-nāmah, 156–62.Google Scholar
59 Maqāmāt are spiritual phases that are “earned” through the mystic's personal exertion in such practices as faqr (poverty), zuhd (self-denial), qanā‘a (contentment), and shukr (gratitude) which are necessary in order to gradually attain spiritual illumination.
60 In the middle of Sha‘bān of the year 715 (November of 1315) Rashīd al-Dīn made provisions for five more Sufis to join the khānqāh and allocated to them the same benefits as the previous group. He also doubled the salary of the shaykh to 300 dinars (p. 138).
61 This is in addition to the one hundred indigent people who were fed daily in the dār al-masākīn.
62 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 183–84.Google Scholar
63 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 160–64.Google Scholar
64 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 143–62.Google Scholar
65 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 162.Google Scholar
66 319,986 mann bread = 266,655 mann of flour. Bakers' wages for 100 mann of flour, which yields 120 mann of bread = 8 tasu, that of 266,655 mann of flour = 21,332.4 tasu, which is equal to 879.9615 dinars per year. See also Hoffmann's calculations on pp. 154–56 based on Risālah-yi Falākiyyah to which I did not have access.
67 In later centuries, commercial “bread ovens” were highly regulated by the central authority (e.g. in the Ottoman Empire), but there is no evidence as yet to suggest that the Ilkhānids attempted such measures.
68 Hoffmann, Waqf im Mongolischen Iran, 160.
69 Ashtor, “The Diet of Salaried Classes”.
70 Hoffmann, Waqf im Mongolischen Iran, 147, 180–82.
71 Hoffmann, Waqf im Mongolischen Iran, 144–45.
72 Hoffmann, Waqf im Mongolischen Iran, 160.
73 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 182.Google Scholar
74 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 148–49 and 182–83.Google Scholar
75 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 181–82.Google Scholar
76 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 184.Google Scholar
77 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 180–82.Google Scholar
78 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 181.Google Scholar
79 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 181.Google Scholar
80 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 147.Google Scholar
81 al-Dīn, Rashīd, Waqf-nāmah, 188.Google Scholar
82 There have been numerous studies on Mamluk and Ottoman societies employing waqf documents. See, for instance, Christie, Niall, “Reconstructing Life in Medieval Alexandria from an Eighth/Fourteenth Century Waqf Document,” Mamluk Studies Review, 8, no. 2 (2004): 163–90;Google Scholar Petry, C. F., “A Geniza for Mamluk Studies? Charitable Trust (waqf) Documents as a Source for Economic and Social History,” Mamluk Studies Review, 2, no. 2 (1988): 51–60;Google Scholar idem, “Medieval Waqf Documents in Cairo: Their Role as Historical Sources,” American Research Center in Egypt Newsletter, 118 (1982): 28–33;Google Scholar Orlin, Bev, “Ottoman Waqf and Muslim Education in Rumeli: Theory, Tradition, Practice,” Études Balkaniques, 34, no. 3–4 (1998): 130–45;Google Scholar Schoem, R., “Waqf Documents as a Socio-economic Source for Ottoman History,” Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi (1994): 35–41.Google Scholar
83 In addition to the 220 slaves and an equal number of wives, there were more than one hundred salaried employees in the Rab‘-i Rashīdī. Waqf-nāmah, 150, and passim.
84 Said Farhād to Mir-valī
Let's rebuild the Rab‘-i Rashīdī
For its foundation
Let's give gold to Tabrizis for bricks and stones
Khujandī, Kamāl al-Dīn Mas‘ūd, Dīvān-i Kamāl al-Dīn Mas‘ūd Khujandī, ed. by Shidfar, K. (Moscow, 1975), 2: 1013–14;Google Scholar Brown, E. G. first alluded to this poem in his A Literary History of Persia (Cambridge, 1956), 3: 328.Google Scholar