ABSTRACT

Khvandamir’s general history Habib al-Siyar (Beloved of Careers), one of the major historiographical narratives of the Persianate world, was composed for the founder of the Safavid dynasty in Iran, Shah Ismaʿil, in the 1520s. Some years later, the author ideologically reshaped his work at Babur’s Timurid-Mughal court in Agra. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the book was widely copied across the Islamic lands and, judging by the number of extant manuscripts (c. 600), the Habib al-Siyar might be called a premodern bestseller. Interestingly, several chapters dealing with the history of India (Hindustan) were apparently added by the author later on and have not been included in the printed editions. Based on the examination of widely scattered manuscripts, this article examines the textual transmission of these chapters. Furthermore, it explores the question of how Khvandamir integrated information about India into the main narrative and which sources he relied on in order to situate the region within an overarching narrative of Islamic history. This approach gives further insights into the precise quality and quantity of knowledge about the Indian subcontinent available in Iran around 1500, as well as into copying processes of texts in premodern times.

摘要

Khvandamir 的通史Habib al-Siyar（职业生涯的挚爱）是波斯世界的主要史学叙事之一，是 1520 年代为伊朗萨法维王朝的创始人 Shah Ismaʿil 创作的。几年后，作者在意识形态上重塑了他在阿格拉巴布尔的帖木儿-莫卧儿宫廷的作品。从 16 世纪到 19 世纪，这本书在整个伊斯兰国家被广泛复制，从现存手稿的数量（约 600 份）来看，Habib al-Siyar可能被称为前现代畅销书。有趣的是，有几章涉及印度的历史（印度斯坦) 显然是作者后来添加的，并未包含在印刷版中。本文基于对广泛分散的手稿的检查，考察了这些章节的文本传输。此外，它还探讨了 Khvandamir 如何将有关印度的信息整合到主要叙述中的问题，以及他依赖哪些来源以将该地区置于伊斯兰历史的总体叙述中。这种方法进一步深入了解了大约 1500 年在伊朗可用的关于印度次大陆的精确知识的质量和数量，以及前现代时期文本的复制过程。