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Sistan and Its Local Histories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

C. Edmund Bosworth
C. Edmund Bosworth*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Extract

Today Sistan is an impoverished region of the Afghan-Persian borderland, the condition of whose economy and populace appeared excessively forlorn to the few European travellers and officials who visited it or who worked there in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Thus the Indian Army officer, boundary delimitation commissioner, and consul C. E. Yate, writing of his experiences in the 1890s, stated, “What with their debts to the katkhudas who advanced the grain, the cultivators and people of Sistan generally were in a wretched state of poverty. I do not think I ever saw a more miserable-looking lot.“ Yet Sistan, until later medieval times at least, had enjoyed a much more glorious past.

“Sistan,” Middle Persian Sakastan “land of the Sakas,” whence Arabic Sijistan, is of course the more recent name in history for the Drangiana of the classical Greek geographers and historians.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 33 , Issue 1-2 , Spring Winter 2000 , pp. 31 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2000

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References

1. Yate, C. E., Khurasan and Sistan (Edinburgh and London, 1900), 83–84.Google Scholar

2. Göbl, R., Sasanian Numismatics (Brunswick, 1971), 83Google Scholar; Bosworth, C.E., The History of the Saffarids of Sistan and the Maliks of Nimruz (247/861 to 949/1542-3) (Costa Mesa, Calif, and New York, 1994), 30–33Google Scholar, cf. 38.

3. Marquart, J., Ērānšahr nach der Geographic des Ps. Moses Xorenacᶜi, in Abh. Königl. Akad. der Wiss. zu Göttingen, n.s. 3, no. 2 (Berlin, 1901), 47ff.Google Scholar; Christensen, A., L'Iran sous les Sassanides, 2nd ed. (Copenhagen, 1944), 105–7, 370Google Scholar; Lukonin, V. G., “Political, Social and Administrative Institutions: Taxes and Trade,” in The Cambridge History of Iran, henceforth CHIr) vol. 3. The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods, ed. Yarshater, E. (Cambridge, 1983), part 2: 701, 707, 729-30Google Scholar; Bosworth, The History of the Saffarids of Sistan, 33, 27.Google Scholar

4. Bosworth, Sīstān under the Arabs, from the Islamic Conquest to the Rise of the Saffārids (30-250/651-864) (Rome, 1968), 2–4;Google Scholar Yarshater, , “Iranian National History,” in CHIr, 3:154–57Google Scholar; Bosworth, The History of the Saffarids of Sistan, 34-37.

5. Garshāsb-nāma, ed. and trans. Huart, Cl., vol. 1, Le livre de Gerchâsp (Paris, 1926)Google Scholar, vol. 2, ed. and trans. H. Massé (Paris, 1951), esp. Massé's introduction to vol. 2.

6. Bosworth, Sīstān under the Arabs, pp. 2-4; idem, The History of the Saffarids of Sistan, 34-35.

7. Meisami, Julie S., Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century, (Edinburgh, 1999), 131–32, 133-34.Google Scholar

8. Tārīkh-i Sīstān, ed. Malik al-Shuᶜara Bahar (Tehran 1314/1935)Google Scholar, Russian trans. Smirnova, L. P., Istoriya Sistana (Moscow, 1972)Google Scholar, English trans. Gold, Milton, The Tārīkh-e Sistān (Rome, 1976).Google Scholar Cf. Storey, C. A., Persian Literature, a Bio-bibliographical Survey, vol. 1 (London, 1927-53), 364Google Scholar; Bregel, Yu., Persidskaya literatura bio-bibliograficheskii obzor (Moscow, 1972), vol. 2, 1078–79Google Scholar; Bosworth, The History of the Sqffarids of Sistan, 23-25.

9. Bahar, Sabk-shināsī yā tārīkh-i taṭawwur-i nar-i fārsī, 2nd ed. (Tehran, 1337/1958), vol. 2, 44–45Google Scholar; Lazard, G., La langue des plus anciens monuments de la prose persane (Paris, 1963), 74–75.Google Scholar

10. Bosworth, The History of the Saffarids of Sistan, 24-25; and see the introduction to the valuable but unfortunately unpublished doctoral thesis of Park Johnson, R., A Critical and Explanatory Translation of Portions of the Anonymous Ta˒rīkh-i- Sīstān (Princeton, 1941).Google Scholar

11. Tārīkh-i Sīstān, 4-6, trans. Gold, 2-4; Tusi, Asadi, Garshāsbnāmah, trans. Massé, H., vol. 2, 97–98.Google Scholar

12. Rempis, Chr., “Die ältesten Dichtungen in Neupersisch,” ZDMG 101 (1951): 220—40Google Scholar; Lazard, Les premiers poètes persans (IXᶜ-Xᶜ siècles) (Tehran and Paris, 1964), vol. 1, 11Google Scholar; Bosworth, Sīstān under the Arabs, 4-5; idem, The History of the Saffarids of Sistan, 35.

13. Tārīkh-i Sīstān, 13-14, 17, trans. Gold, 11, 13.

14. Bahar, Tārīkh-i Sīstān, introduction, wāw-zāy; Park Johnson, introduction. vi-vii.

15. Tārīkh-i Sīstān, 33-74, trans. Gold, 23-67.

16. Cf. Meisami, op. cit, 112-15.

17. Stern, S. M., “Yaᶜqūb the Coppersmith and Persian National Sentiment,” in Bosworth, C. E., ed., Iran and Islam. In Memory of the Late Vladimir Minorsky (Edinburgh, 1971), 535–55Google Scholar; Meisami, op. cit, 115ff.

18. Bosworth, Sīstān under the Arabs, 25-32; Miquel, La géographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu'au milieu du lie siècle, vol. 4 (Paris, 1988), 211–15Google Scholar; Bosworth, The History of the Saffarids of Sistan, 39-57.

19. The impingement of this last-named group on the affairs of Sistan is considered in Bosworth, “The Ismāᶜīlīs of Quhistān and the Maliks of Nīmrūz or Sīstān,” in Daftary, Farhad, ed., Medieval Ismāᶜīlī History and Thought (Cambridge, 1996), 221–29.Google Scholar Meisami, op. cit., 132-33, notes that the last (third?) author of the History shows a particular interest in heretics and sectaries; it is true that the Ismāᶜīlīs of nearby Quhistan were particularly active and aggressive at this time.

20. Tārīkh-i Sīstān, 408; trans. Gold, 333.

21. Iḥyā˒ al-mulūk, ed. Sotudeh, Manuchihr (Tehran, 1344/1965).Google Scholar Cf. Storey, 1: 364-65; Bregel, 2: 1079-81; Bosworth, The History of the Saffarids of Sistan, 27-29. A Russian translation was prepared by the late Prof. L. P. Smirnova, but has not so far—to the present writer's knowledge—been published. Biographical information on Malik Shah Husayn stems essentially from his own khātimah or epilogue to the history; see below, p. 42.

22. Iḥyā˒ al-mulūk, 4—22, and cf. Sotudeh's comparison of passages from the two histories depicted in parallel columns in his introduction, 23-27.

23. See the discussion of Malik Shah Husayn's sources in Sotudeh's introduction to the Iḥyā˒ al-mulūk.

24. Iḥyā˒ al-mulūk, 76-77.

25. The origin and significance of these bands, mentioned by Marco Polo as the Caraunas, was well brought out by the late Jean Aubin in his “L'ethnogénèse des Qaraunas,” Turcica 1 (1969): 65–94Google Scholar; cf. also Bosworth, The History of the Saffarids of Sistan, 420-24.

26. Ibid., 424, 438.

27. Ibid., 447ff.

28. Ibid., 463-66; cf. also Bosworth, C. E., “The Sarḥadd Region of Persian Baluchistan, from Mediaeval Islamic Times to the Mid-twentieth Century,” Studia Iranica 30/2 (2001).Google Scholar

29. Bosworth, The History of the Saffarids of Sistan, 464ff.

30. Ibid., 458-59.

31. Iḥyā˒ al-mulūk, 66-67; cf. Bosworth, The History of the Saffarids of Sistan, 335-36.

32. Iḥyā˒ al-mulūk, 19.