Comments on “The Qajar Uymaq in The Safavid Period, 1500–1722”

The study of Iranian history in the Safavid period is at a relatively rudimentary stage. Despite the wealth of chronicle, biographical, numismatic, documentary, and journalistic material available, few monographic studies of Safavid institutions have been produced. As Minorsky pointed out four decades ago, “not until all the available sources have been properly scrutinized and more material…discovered, shall we be able to get to the bedrock of social and economic conditions under the Safavids.”His admonition holds true for political institutions as well. Certain fundamental features of the political life of Safavid Iran are well known to its students. But aside from the state structure itself, as analyzed by Minorsky in his translation of and commentary on the Tadhkirat al-muluk and in articles by Roger Savory and Ann K. S. Lambton, other aspects of political life—for instance the Safaviyya and the persistence of Sufi loyalties in political, life, the character and evolution of the qizilbash as a political party, the political integration of local aristocrats (e.g., the maliks of Farah and Sistan and the divs of Mazandaran), and the organization and functioning of tribal uymaqs—remain largely unstudied.