Review Reviewed Work(s): The Cambridge History of Iran by Peter Jackson and Laurence Lockhart Review by: John E. Woods Source: Speculum, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Apr., 1989), pp. 395-396 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Medieval Academy of America Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2851956 Accessed: 01-11-2019 18:35 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms The University of Chicago Press, Medieval Academy of America are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Speculum This content downloaded from 205.208.116.24 on Fri, 01 Nov 2019 18:35:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Reviews 395 Brownlee's thesis has mo to put modern critical pe that certain philosophic c mind of the poet of Buen when he or some later ha Buen amor. If there is a f earlier views: one can alm scratch and to be free of th Men6ndez y Pelayo, Otis grow crustaceously aroun doubly difficult, or at lea Buen amor is the sort of the wildest and most idio It is a good sign when a s a work so plentiful that i Lamentably, there is only whole of medieval Spanish interpretation such as tha counteract the vacuous an over our field to the poin text's merit is considered literature has to do with f middling translations) or of fifteenth-century Spai substance and given us an nation with the work. BILLY BUSSELL THOMPSON, Hofstra University The Cambridge History of Iran, 6: The Timurid and Safavid Periods. Ed. Peter Jackson and Laurence Lockhart (t). Cambridge, Eng., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Pp. xxiii, 1087; 72 plates, 24 figures, 7 maps, 6 tables. $95. As originally conceived nearly three decades ago, The Cambridge History of Iran was to encompass in eight five-hundred-page volumes the history of political, social, economic, and cultural developments in Iran and the adjacent regions dependent upon it from prehistoric to modern times. In its realization, however, the project has expanded somewhat beyond the physical limits initially imposed upon it - six volumes in seven have appeared to date, and volume 6 alone is twice as large as planned. Volume 1 (1968) deals with the physical, demographic, and economic setting of the region; volumes 2 and 3, parts 1 and 2 (1985, 1983), are dedicated to the pre-Islamic periods; and volumes 4 through 7 focus on the Islamic eras. Of the last set, volume 4 (From the Arab Invasion to the Saljuqs, 1975), volume 5 (The Saljuq and Mongol Periods, 1968), and now volume 6 have been published, with volume 7 covering the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries still in progress. Volume 8 will contain sections on bibliography, the state of research, and folklore in addition to a general index to the whole series. The chronological scope of The Timurid and Safavid Periods ranges approximately from the first half of the fourteenth century to the first half of the eighteenth century. These four centuries, during which it could be argued the modern nation of Iran This content downloaded from 205.208.116.24 on Fri, 01 Nov 2019 18:35:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 396 Reviews was forged, saw the devo domination of the Timur rise of successive Turkme spheres under the Safavid subjects. The ideologies an marked in various ways b Islamic regional imperiali velopments occurred with shifting patterns of Eura China in the second half o at the end of the fifteen Indian Ocean in the early by major scientific and c endeavor. The first half of the volume is devoted to political, institutional, diplomatic, socia and economic history. The five chapters on political history are entirely the work o H. R. Roemer of the University of Freiburg. These are supplemented with chapter by R. M. Savory and Bert Fragner on aspects of internal administrative, economic and social developments. Iran's foreign affairs are studied in the essays by the lat Laurence Lockhart on Iran's diplomatic contacts with Europe and by Ronald Ferrie on its international commercial relations. The second half of The Timurid and Safav Periods consists of important contributions on science, religion, philosophy, theolog carpets, textiles, architecture, pictorial arts, and literature by such specialists as E. Kennedy, S. H. Nasr, Basil Gray, and Annemarie Schimmel. This material is especiall significant in view of often repeated judgments on the cultural barrenness of lat medieval Islamic history. The comprehensiveness with which much diverse inform tion not readily available elsewhere is integrated into a single volume constitu without doubt one of the greatest strengths of the work. Its weaknesses reside in the uneven nature of collective efforts generally and th circumstances of the publication of The Timurid and Safavid Periods specifically. In latter connection, Peter Jackson's preface details some of the problems encounter in the production of volume 6, including the deaths of its first two editors. T lengthy delays occasioned by these unfortunate events have seriously compromise the usefulness of some of the chapters - particularly those in the first half comple between 1976 and 1979 and not subsequently revised. These contributions not only omit the results of more than ten years of scholarship, as Jackson acknowledges, b the substance of many of them has already appeared elsewhere in the form of jour and encyclopedia articles. Happily, the extensive bibliographies of sources and lite ature for each chapter printed at the end of the work seem for the most part up date. Other chapters are too limited in their approach and heuristic - only Europe seems to have had diplomatic or commercial relations with the states of the Irani plateau. All in all, though The Timurid and Safavid Periods is likely to disappoint some specialists, it is nevertheless a welcome, albeit pricey, addition to the materials at the disposal of the student of late-medieval and early-modern Iran. JOHN E. WOODS, University of Chicago This content downloaded from 205.208.116.24 on Fri, 01 Nov 2019 18:35:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms