1st Edition
The Chobanids of Kastamonu Politics, Patronage and Religion in Thirteenth-Century Anatolia
This book provides a novel approach to the history of medieval Anatolia by analysing political, religious and cultural developments in the region of Kastamonu during the reign of the Chobanid dynasty (c. 1211–1309).
During the 13th century, the Chobanids consolidated a local dynasty in western Anatolia – a borderland between Islam and Christianity – becoming cultural actors patronising the production of religious, scientific and administrative works in the Persian language. These works, though surviving today in manuscript form, have received little attention in modern historiography. The book therefore attends to this gap in the research, incorporating a detailed study of texts by little-known authors from the time. The book explores the relationship between Islam and the Chobanid dynasty in the context of the wider process of Islamisation in medieval Anatolia, hypothesising that Turkmen dynasties played a fundamental role in this process of Islamisation and acculturation. The Chobanids of Kastamonu, then, offers an in-depth study of a Turkmen local dynasty that achieved political autonomy, financial independence and cultural patronage in medieval Anatolia vis-à-vis the main political powers of the time.
Attentive to religious diversity, state formation and processes of transculturation in medieval Anatolia, the book is key reading for scholars of Middle Eastern history and Islamic studies.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license.
Introduction 1. A Territory in Transformation: The Political and Intellectual Context of Anatolia in the 13th Century 2. A Political History of the Chobanid Dynasty 3. Literary and Architectural Patronage under the Chobanids 4. A Mirror for Princes for the Chobanids: Re-Interpreting the Siyar al-muluk 5. Islam under the Chobanids: Between Heresy and the Ulama 6. Socio-Political Aspects of North-Western Anatolia in the 13th Century 7. Epilogue: A 'Proto-Beylik' in 13th-Century Kastamonu
Biography
Bruno De Nicola is Research Associate at the Institute of Iranian Studies in the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Vienna). His main areas of research are the cultural history of medieval and early modern Eurasia, the Mongol Empire and the study of Islamic manuscripts.
"This book sheds new light on an important but neglected aspect of Anatolian history in the Mongol period. By focussing on literary production in a dedicated region, northwest Anatolia, this book makes a significant contribution both to medieval Anatolian and to Persian literary cultural studies, bringing to light sources neglected by existing scholarship and showing the value of focused regional research both for literary and political history more broadly."
Andrew Peacock, University of St Andrews, Scotland
