Summary View

Country

France

City

Paris

Institution

Bibliothèque Nationale de France

Collection

Manuscrits Persan

Shelfmark

Supplément Persan 1314

Contents

Rāḥat al-şudūr wa-āyat al-surūr (Rāvandī, Muḥammad ibn ʻAlī, active 1202 )

Author

Rāvandī, Muḥammad ibn ʻAlī, active 1202

الراوندي، محمد بن علي

Show other names

Rāvandī, Muḥammad ibn ʻAlī, active 1202 (authorised)

Rāvandī, Muḥammad ibn ʻAlī, fl. 1202 (variant)

Rāwandī, Muḥammad ʻAlī, active 1202 (variant)

راوندى، محمد بن على (variant)

Biographical notes

We only know about the life of Rāvandī thanks to the information he provides in the Rāḥat al-şudūr wa-āyat al-surūr ( راحة الصدور وآية السرور), which is the only work written by him that has survived to our days. He mentions that he wrote at least another two works (a polemical work rejecting Shia Islam and a work on calligraphy) which are unfortunately lost. He was born in the small village of Rāvand (Iran), near the city of Kāshān (Iran) in a family of scholars. He spent at least ten years in the service of his maternal uncle in Hamadān (Iran), during which time he studied Hanafi law, calligraphy and book manufacturing. He managed to make a living by using his calligraphic skills, binding abilities and book gilding. (see (Browne, E.G.. "Account of a rare, if not unique, manuscript history of the Seljúqs." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 1902: 567-610; 849-87-567-610; 849-87., pp. 575)). His ability in the arts of the book brought him access to the court of the Seljuq Sultan of Iraq Ṭoghril III, Sultan of the Great Seljuqs after Rāvandī took part in a team that craftsmen that produce a Qur’an for the ruler. When the sultan was imprisoned, he came under the patronage of a certain Shihāb al-Dīn al-Kāshānī, شهاب الدین الکاشانی, who encouraged Rāvandī to begin writing the Rāḥat al-şudūr wa-āyat al-surūr (راحة الصدور وآية السرور). A fervent supporter of the Seljuq dynasty at a time when the Khwarzmshāh empire was expanding and the Seljuq sultanate in Iraq was collapsing, Rāvandī decided to dedicate his work to the rulers of Rūm, who he saw as the new champions of Sunnī Islam, and their capital, Konya (Turkey) as the centre for the continuation of Persian scholarly traditions. (see (Hillenbrand, Carole. "Rāwandī." Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. , [n.d.].)).

Title

Rāḥat al-şudūr wa-āyat al-surūr

راحة الصدور وآية السرور

Notes

Best known as a history of the Great Seljuqs from the beginning of the dynasty to the author's own time (418-594 [1027-1197 CE]), the work is in fact a collection of courtly advice, including, in addition to its historical sections, discussions of chess-playing, wine-drinking, calligraphy and hunting. The work relies extensively on the Saljūqʹnāmah ( سلجوقنامه of Ẓāhir al-Dīn Nīshāpūrī, d. -approximately 1184 or 1185 but it is an important source for the history of the last decades of the Great Seljuqs and in particular for the reign of Ṭoghril III, d. 1194, طغرل , for which the author provides an eye-witness account. It is unclear whether Rāvandī travelled to Konya (Turkey) in person to present the book to its dedicatee, Sultan Kaykhusraw I, d. 1211

Composed in 599 AH [1202-1203 CE]

Dedicated to Sultan Kaykhusraw I, d. 1211.

Main language of text

Persian

Bibliography

Editions

Rāvandī, Muḥammad ibn ʻAlī. Rāḥat al-ṣudūr. Edited by Iqbāl, Muḥammad. London: Luzac & Co., 1921.

Translations

Rāvandī, Muḥammad ibn ʻAlī. Râhat-üs-sudûr ve âyet-üs-sürûr: gönüllerin rahati ve sevinȩ alâmeti. Translated by Ateş, Ahmed. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1957-1960.

Rāvandī, Muḥammad ibn ʻAlī. Rāḥat al-ṣudūr wa-āyat al-surūr: fī tārīkh al-dawlah al-Saljūqīyah. Translated by Shawāribī, Ibrāhīm Amīn, ʻAbd al-Naʻīm Muḥammad Ḥasanayn and Fuʼād ʻAbd Muʻṭī Ṣayyād. Cairo: 1960.

Studies

Browne, E.G.. "Account of a rare, if not unique, manuscript history of the Seljúqs." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 1902: 567-610; 849-87-567-610; 849-87.

Hillenbrand, Carole. "Rāwandī." Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. , [n.d.].

Hillenbrand, Carole. "Ravandi, the Seljuq court at Konya and the Persianisation of Anatolian cities." Mesogeios (Mediterranean Studies). , no. 25-6 2005: 157-69.

Riedel, Dagmar. "Searching for the Islamic episteme: The status of historical information in medieval Middle-Eastern anthological writing." PhD dissertation, New York: Columbia University, 2004.

Scott Meisami, Julie. "Ravandi's Rahat al-sudur: History or Hybrid?" Edebiyat. , no. 5 1992: 181-215.

Scott Meisami, Julie. Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999, 237-56.

Yıldız, Sara Nur. "A nadim for the sultan: Rawandi and the Anatolian Seljuks." In The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East. Peacock, A.C.S. and Sara Nur Yıldız, ed. London: I.B. Tauris, 2013, 91-111.

Catalogue

Blochet, Edgar. Catalogue des manuscrits turcs. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1932-33, 267.

Physical Description

Number of folios

103 ff.

Dimensions of folio

width 13cm, height 17cm

Hand

Copyist:al-Ḥāfiz Ḥājjī Ilyās b. Abd Allāh al-Qūnawī, الحافظ حاجي الياس بن عبدلله القونوي

History

Place

Konya (Turkey)

Date of copy

13th. century