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Local Politics in Eastern Iran under the Ghaznavids and Seljuks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Richard W. Bulliet*
Affiliation:
Columbia University

Extract

The political history of the Ghaznavid and Seljuk dynasties, which ruled much of Iran throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries, is now fairly well known and recently has been drawn together in the excellent narrative of Professor Bosworth in the Cambridge History of Iran. It is still quite imperfectly understood, however, and will probably remain so for a good while yet to come. The old and serviceable schematization of the period based on the notion of a Sunni revival, keyed to the development of madrasa education and to the personality of Nizam al-Mulk, is still current despite increasing awkwardness in fitting the facts to it. It would be premature to attempt at this time an alternative schematization, and, indeed, such a schematization, when it eventually appears, may well be not so much an alternative to the old one as an expansion in which the main features of the old one have a prominent place.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1978

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References

Notes

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