¹ Reigned, respectively, 861–82/1457–78, 872–901/1468–96, and 855–73/1451–69.

² Petry, Carl F., Protectors or Praetorians? The Last Mamluk Sultans and Egypt's Waning as a Great Power (Albany, 1994), 46Google Scholar.

³ Such an interpretation is by no means necessary, as sending the severed head of a rival to one's overlord could as well be considered an act of submission. Upon his defeat of Jahanshah a year prior, Uzun Hasan had sent his head to his immediate Timurid overlord Sultan-Abu Sa‘id; with the Timurid power broken overlordship devolved upon the Mamluks—and with it the gift of the Sultan-Abu Sa‘id's head. So goes one version of the story; in another, Jahanshah's head was sent to Cairo and displayed on the Zuwayla Gate (Woods, John E., The Aqquyunlu: Clan, Confederation, Empire, revised ed. (Salt Lake City, 1999), 96–97Google Scholar). In 913/1507 Qansuh al-Ghawri (r. 906–22/1501–16) was pleased to receive a number of severed Safavid heads from the field, this versus his reaction to the Safavid embassy bringing the head of Özbeg Khan along with other gifts such as a Quran, a prayer rug and a crossbow; in anger al-Ghawri ordered the head to be buried and the crossbow broken (Rabie, Hassanein, “Political Relations Between the Safavids of Persia and the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria in the Early Sixteenth Century,” Egyptian Historical Review, 26 (1979): 39Google Scholar; for the accompanying letter from Shah Isma‘il I see Iyas, Ibn, Bada'i‘ al-Zuhur fi Waqa'i‘ al-Duhur, ed. Mustafa, Muhammad (Cairo, 1960–92), 4: 221–222Google Scholar; for al-Ghawri's reply to Isma‘il see Tulun, Ibn, Mufakahat al-Khillan fi Hawadith al-Zaman, ed. Mustafa, Muhammad (Cairo, 1962–64), 1: 357Google Scholar; and for a second abusive exchange, see Ibn Iyas, Bada'i‘ al-Zuhur, 4: 271); he also took Selim's gift in 921/1515 of the head of the Dulqadirid ruler ‘Ala’ al-Dawla Bozkurt (r. 884–921/1479–1515) as a threat, rightly sensing it to be a harbinger of the Mamluk downfall. In short, the same item sent at different times could communicate different, even opposite, messages. Muslu, Emire, “Ottoman–Mamluk Relations: Diplomacy and Perceptions” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2007), 187, 211)Google Scholar.

⁴ Scil., in Muharram 873/August 1468, Rajab 873/January 1469, Dhu l-Hijja 873/June 1469 (the embassy here under consideration), and Muharram 875/July 1470 (Har-El, Shai, Struggle for Domination in the Middle East (Leiden, 1995), 92n51Google Scholar; for contemporary reports see Taghribirdi, Ibn, al-Nujum al-Zahira fi Muluk Misr wa-l-Qahira, ed. Popper, William (Berkeley, 1909–29), 7: 675Google Scholar, 688, 712; ‘al-Sayrafi, Ali, Inba’ al-Hasr bi-Abna' al-‘Asr, ed. Habashi, Hasan (Cairo, 1970), 51–53Google Scholar, 74–77, 179–202; Ibn Iyas, Bada'i‘ al-Zuhur, 3: 19, 21, 27, 34, 52–53).

⁵ The present fathnama identifies Yadigar Muhammad as being responsible for the execution of Sultan-Abu Sa‘id, and describes his installation as governor of Khurasan and Transoxania; see n. 71 below.

⁶ Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 112–13. Jahanshah Qara Quyunlu's attempt to unite Iran had similarly failed; this project was to be finally realized by Uzun Hasan's grandson Shah Isma‘il Safavi (r. 907–930/1501–24).

⁷ Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 114.

⁸ A modest Aq Quyunlu contingent had previously entered the northern Syrian marches early in 875 (late 1470), close on the heels of Shahsavar's repeated military humiliation of the Mamluks; while this was a brazen act constituting an open challenge to Qaytbay, the latter had chosen to cautiously await further developments (Petry, Protectors, 43, 47).

⁹ Woods, The Aqquynlu, 116–17; Petry, Protectors, 47–48.

¹⁰ Petry, Protectors, 48.

¹¹ Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 121. After Uzun Hasan's death in 882/1478, his eldest son Sultan-Khalil held power for mere months before being killed by partisans of his fourteen-year-old brother Ya‘qub, sparking a brief third civil war. With stability fully reasserted by 886/1481, Ya‘qub Beg's twelve-year reign (883–96/1478–90) came to constitute an interlude of cultural efflorescence during which efforts were made, unsuccessfully, to centralize the state from its seat in Tabriz. After Ya‘qub Beg's death in 896/1490 the Aq Quyunlu state quickly became fragmented through internal power struggles, progressively disintegrating until it was subsumed by the Safavids in 907–8/1501–3.

¹² Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 114–15. Uzun Hasan's letter to Şarabdar Hamze Beg, described below (see n. 98), is a typical example of Uzun Hasanid propaganda.

¹³ Topkapı Sarayı E. 3128, dated 7 Jumada II 877/9 November 1472; the relevant section is translated and transcribed in Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 116, 264n126.

¹⁴ Petry, Protectors, 47; al-Sayrafi, Inba’ al-Hasr, 428; Ibn Iyas, Bada'i‘al-Zuhur, 3: 70.

¹⁵ Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 108. In the final analysis, his two-pronged approach combining military offensives and rhetorical attacks on the bases of opponents’ political and religious legitimacy was remarkably effective; under Uzun Hasan the Aq Quyunlu principality, originally limited to Amid and environs, became a formidable state incorporating Arab and Persian Iraq and Fars, with tributaries to the south, east and north (ibid., 111).

¹⁶ This tone is deference is further reinforced by certain formal markers in the letter's opening as footnoted in the translation below.

¹⁷ See e.g. Waldman's, Marilyn, Toward a Theory of Historical Narrative (Columbus, OH, 1980)Google Scholar, a study of Bayhaqi's Tarikh-i Mas‘udi; other scholars taking this more sophisticated approach include Jacob Lassner, Allin Luther, and Fred Donner. In the domain of Persian poetics, cf. a similar debate on the tarz-i taza or sabk-i hindi, long dismissed as a hopeless dead-end of artificiality, but now being reexamined with an eye toward its different and very considerable merits rooted in total formal virtuosity. See Losensky's, Paul, Welcoming Fighani: Imitation and Poetic Individuality in the Safavid-Mughal Ghazal (Costa Mesa, 1998)Google Scholar, a study of the poet Baba Fighani Shirazi (d. 925/1519); and Faruqi, Shamsur Rahman, “A Stranger in the City: The Poetics of Sabk-e Hindi,” Annual of Urdu Studies, 19 (2004): 1–93Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Allouche, Adel, “Tegüder's Ultimatum to Qalawun,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 22 (1990): 437–446CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ I concentrate here on the Persian insha' tradition as the fathnama in question is in that language, as presumably were Uzun Hasan's other letters to Cairo.

²⁰ It shows a heavy dependence, for example, on Kashifi's Makhzan al-Insha'; the Timurid model in turn hewed closely to the Seljuq model. See Mitchell, Colin P., “Safavid Imperial Tarassul and the Persian Insha' Tradition,” Studia Iranica, 26 (1997): 178CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a discussion of this “insha' continuum” wherein the internal structure of letters (i.e., the prescribed order in which its constituent features were to appear) and their external rhetoric remained essentially unchanged till the nineteenth century.

²¹ Mitchell, “Safavid Imperial Tarassul,” 189. The Dastur al-Katib was completed ca. 1365.

²² See Aubin, Jean, “Les relations diplomatiques entre les Aq-qoyunlu et les Bahmanides,” in Iran and Islam, ed. Bosworth, C. E. (Edinburgh, 1971), 11Google Scholar.

²³ Mitchell, “Safavid Imperial Tarassul,” 182–183.

²⁴ The mu‘amma was given its definitive formulation in the Hulal-i Mutarraz of Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi (d. 858/1454), the Timurid historian, litterateur and mathematician. It should be noted that Yazdi considers the genre part and parcel of his larger philosophico-scientific project, a unitive view of history heavily informed by lettrism (‘ilm al-huruf) and astrological symbolism; later in the ninth/fifteenth century, Jami (d. 898/1492) continued the mu‘amma tradition in his four (short) works on the subject but stripped it of Yazdi's theoretical trappings of which he strongly disapproved, thus reducing the genre to a kind of cultivated wordplay that would seem so repugnant to later critics. See Binbaş, Evrim, “Sharaf al-Dīn ‘Alī Yazdī (ca. 770s–858/ca. 1370s–1454): Prophecy, Politics, and Historiography in Late Medieval Islamic History” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2009), 46, 87–89Google Scholar.

²⁵ Of which it is partially derivative; it achieves its concision by omitting such lengthy components as those dealing with geography and the postal system.

²⁶ In the Nama-ha va Munsha'at-i Jami, ed. Urunbaev, Asom and Rahmanov, Asrar (Tehran, 1378 Sh./2000), nos. 386, 387, 414, and 425Google Scholar, he is identified only by the honorific Malik al-Tujjar, bestowed upon him by Humayun Shah Bahmani (r. 862–65/1458–61).

²⁷ Including Sultan-Abu Sa‘id, Bayqara, Sultan-Husayn, Mehmed II, Murad II, and (I assume) Qaytbay (Riyaz al-Insha’, ed. Husayn, Chand b. (Hyderabad, 1948), nos. 4, 5, 55, 56, 123, 134, 143, 144Google Scholar).

²⁸ E.g., Feridun Beg (Mecmu‘a-yı Münşe'at üs-Selatin, vol. 1 (Istanbul, 1264–65/1848–49, 1274/1858), 1: 258–62) records an exchange with Mehmed II. In addition, in the Manazir al-Insha’ Mahmud Gavan illustrates each genre with an idealized example of his own composition, rather than importing a variety of earlier historical examples as in the Subh al-A‘sha.

²⁹ Colin Mitchell relies on it frequently in his “Safavid Imperial Tarassul,” calling it “our best presentation of imperial tarassul,” given that, unlike many insha' works, it provides rigorous formal classifications (183).

³⁰ Subh al-A‘sha fi Sina‘at al-Insha’ (Cairo, 1964), 8: 274–281Google Scholar.

³¹ Abu l-Hasan ‘Ali Ibn Khalaf al-Katib (d. 455/1063?), one of the great kuttab under the Fatimids in Egypt.

³² Manazir al-Insha’, ed. Ma‘dankan, Ma‘suma (Tehran, 1381 Sh./2002), 193–194, 217–218Google Scholar.

³³ I.e., alluding to one's major theme in the opening lines of a composition.

³⁴ The Arabic dictum is by ‘Abd al-Hamid b. Yayha al-Katib (d. 132/750), secretary and head of chancery under the Umayyads and identified in the tradition as the founder of Arabic literary prose. Ma‘dankan's edition here mistakenly has mukhill ^an (?) for fahl ^an.

³⁵ Abu l-Qasim Haydar Ivaghli (Evoğli), K. Majmu‘at al-Murasalat az Sultan Alp Arslan ta Avakhir-i Salatin-i Safaviyya, University of Toronto microfilm (1660?), source ms. unknown; my source here is the transcription given in ‘Abd al-Husayn Nava'i's Asnad va Mukatabat-i Tarikhi-yi Iran: Az Timur ta Shah Isma‘il (Tehran, 1341 Sh./1962), 561–570.

³⁶ Transcribed and translated in Fekete, Lajos, Einführung in die persische Paläographie (Budapest, 1977), no. 11: 123–143Google Scholar; fascsimile, plates 30–39; and in Mehmet, Şefik Keçik, Briefe und Urkunden aus der Kanzlei Uzun Hasans (Freiburg, 1976), no. 18: 166–178, 227–245Google Scholar; facsimile, plates xl–lvii. There is apparently a third, rather carelessly made copy of this letter preserved as ms. Brit. Lib. Add. 7688 ff. 53b–55a, similarly missing the section on Hasan-‘Ali, among others (Keçik, Briefe und Urkunden, 88); by length alone ms. Ayasofya 3986 ff. 46b–47a may be assumed to represent a different letter. Other fathnamas from Uzun Hasan as preserved in the Ottoman archives include: to Mehmed II on the defeat of Rustam b. Tarkhan and Shukr-‘Ali; to Mehmed II on the conquest of Circassia (Fekete, Einführung, no. 7: 103–108); to prince Bayezid II on the defeat of Jahanshah Qara Quyunlu and Sultan-Abu Sa‘id (ibid., no. 12: 145–149); to Ishaq Pasha on the defeat of Jahanshah and Sultan-Abu Sa‘id (ibid., no. 13: 151–155); to prince Bayezid on the defeat of Hasan-‘Ali b. Jahanshah; to Bayezid II on the defeat of Muhammadi and Şükroğlu (for more on these documents see Keçik, Briefe und Urkunden, 127–128).

³⁷ By contrast, Hasan-‘Ali's first defeat (i.e., among the events in view here) merited a separate letter to prince Bayezid II (Keçik, Briefe und Urkunden, 128, nos. 9, 10) and his second defeat a letter to Mehmed II (Nava'i, Asnad va Mukatabat, 557–560); see Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 257 nn. 43, 49. It is conceivable, however, that the copyist simply edited out this section in the original.

³⁸ E. 10727 tends to be slightly more flowery and redundant in its expressions.

³⁹ Nava'i, Asnad va Mukatabat, 561–570.

⁴⁰ Q 30: 4b–5b, including the continuation of the famous predictive passage of Surat al-Rum that will be discussed below; see n. 36. Other fathnamas of the period use the device of opening with a quranic quotation, e.g., Mehmed II's letters to Cairo, including his fathnama on the conquest of Istanbul (Feridun Beg, Münşe'at, i, 209, 235); and Shahrukh's letter to Cairo on Qara Yusuf's defeat, which opens by quoting Q 30: 46 (Nava'i, Asnad va Mukatabat, 208–214).

⁴¹ This opening displays, as required by Mahmud Gavan's first shart (217), the rhetorical device of bara‘at-i istihlal, or alluding to one's major theme in the opening lines of a composition; most significantly, the quoted verse alludes to the linchpin of the letter occurring in the third paragraph and as such heralds its offensiveness. See also Manazir, 233; Subh al-A‘sha, 2: 73ff; and al-Jurjani, al-Sharif, K. al-Ta‘rifat (Beirut, 1969), 65Google Scholar.

⁴² Cf. Manazir, 227: opening an address with bi (as in bi hazrat or bi janab) is appropriate in a letter from an inferior to a superior or between equals, but not from a superior to an inferior.

⁴³ Cf. Manazir, 228: one is to avoid using the indelicate verbal nouns iblagh and irsal when writing to a superior, hence the more respectful passive forms here.

⁴⁴ Cf. Manazir, 228–229: in addressing a superior one substitutes for phrases of solidarity and affection phrases expressing one's sincere regard, prayers for the continuation of the addressee's rule, hope that one's sentiments will be accepted, and wishes for success. The emphasis here and at the letter's close is however on sentiments of solidarity and affection, suggesting peerage.

⁴⁵ Q 95: 4; i.e., God created man with a perfect form in his capacity as khalifa or vicegerent of creation, with the implication that the ruler who realizes this responsibility epitomizes human perfection in so doing.

⁴⁶ Q 48: 1.

⁴⁷ Q 61: 13.

⁴⁸ Q 30: 3–4, the famous predictive passage of Surat al-Rum.

⁴⁹ Q 48: 3.

⁵⁰ I.e., 872 1467, the year of Uzun Hasan's defeat of Jahanshah Qara Quyunlu at the Battle of Muş.

⁵¹ Q 7: 128.

⁵² Q 2: 247.

⁵³ Q 27:40.

⁵⁴ Cf. Q 14:7.

⁵⁵ E. 10727 spends an additional page and a half here detailing Hasan-‘Ali b. Jahanshah's follow-up attack on the Aq Quyunlu and his defeat at their hand.

⁵⁶ E. 10727 correctly identifies Nizam al-Din Murad Beg (d. 883/1478) as Uzun Hasan's nephew (baradar-zada), son of Uzun Hasan's brother Jahangir (r. 848–61/1444–57), although the term farzand is no doubt to be understood in the generic sense. Topkapı E. 3144, sent to prince Bayezid II, inexplicably has baradar-i a‘azz amjad Murad Beg (Fekete, Einführung, no. 12: 146, l. 9).

⁵⁷ Meaning the Muslim umma, the sura-initial letters ta-ha and ya-sin used metonymically for the Quran or the Islamic creed.

⁵⁸ Uzun Hasan used religious leaders as ambassadors on other occasions as well, e.g. the Sufi shaykh Ibrahim Gulshani (d. 940/1534), one of whose missions was to escort shaykh Dede ‘Umar Rawshani (d. 929/1523), a Khalvati Sufi, to Tabriz at the ruler's invitation (Behrens-Abouseif, Doris, “The Takiyyat Ibrahim al-Kulshani in Cairo,” Muqarnas, 5 (1988): 43CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

⁵⁹ See Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 98–99, 257 n. 44 (Sultan-Abu Sa‘id's yarligh to Uzun Hasan, dated 22 Rabi‘ I 873/10 October 1468, Topkapı E. 12307, facsimile in Tahsin Öz, Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Arşivi Kılavuzu (Istanbul, 1938–40), no. 20, and transcribed in Kurat, A. N., Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Arşivindeki Altın Ordu (Istanbul, 1940), no. 10: 119–134Google Scholar, facsimile, 195–200). The Turkish document is written in Uyghur script with interlinear Persian transcription: see Keçik, Briefe und Urkunden, 77.

⁶⁰ I.e., with such a proposition testing Uzun Hasan's loyalty to his Mamluk overlord.

⁶¹ The phrase is present in E. 10727.

⁶² More commonly Mughan or Muqan, the arid steppe region along the southern stretch of the Aras river in Azarbayjan and a favorite qishlaq for the Mongols and Turkmens; during the time of Temür it must have been included in the region of Qarabagh: Minorsky, V., “Mukan, Mughan,” Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.), 7: 497Google Scholar.

⁶³ The second hemistich of a line by Hajl b. Nadla al-Bahili, a notable in the pre-Islamic period; the verse in full: ja'a Shaqiq^un ‘arid^an rumha-hu / inna bani ‘ammi-ka fi-him rimah, “Shaqiq approaches flaunting his spear / —but your cousins also have spears.” This line is still quite popular as a proverb.

⁶⁴ Q 4: 78.

⁶⁵ Q 59: 2.

⁶⁶ Q 65: 3.

⁶⁷ Cf. Nahj al-Balagha, ed. Salih, Subhi (Beirut, 1982), 502,Google Scholar aphorism 188.

⁶⁸ The syntax of these two sentences is defective and has been clarified on the basis of E. 10727.

⁶⁹ Q 2: 250.

⁷⁰ According to Uzun Hasan's letter to the Ottoman grand vizier Ishaq Pasha (Topkapı E. 5684), Sultan-Abu Sa‘id reached this decision and was promptly captured on 15 Rajab 873/29 January 1469 (cf. Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 257 n. 47).

⁷¹ The long middle section on the events of the battle is here dropped, as it is significant only for its prolixity. In summary, in retreating Sultan-Abu Sa‘id was captured; at first he received honorable treatment, but was eventually handed over to Yadigar Muhammad Shahrukhi, who held a vendetta against him for his murder of Gawharshad Tarkhan, Yadigar Muhammad's great-grandmother and chief wife of Shahrukh, and was summarily executed by him on 22 Rajab/5 February (cf. Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 99).

⁷² A sound hadith qudsi found in, e.g., al-Bukhari, Sahih, Kitab al-Tawhid, bab 22, no. 7511; Muslim, Sahih, Kitab al-Tawba, bab 4, no. 7146; etc. E. 10727 drops the image of washing.

⁷³ Abu Da'ud, Adab, 4943; al-Tirmidhi, Birr, 2049.

⁷⁴ Reading E. 10727′s falak u malakut for mulk u malakut.

⁷⁵ E. 10727 adds: “So we overlooked our enemy's transgression, for revenge has not pardon's sweetness (dar ‘afu lazzati-st ki dar intiqam nist).”

⁷⁶ E. 10727 has astan-i falak for astan-i mulk.

⁷⁷ As Woods notes (The Aqquyunlu, 97), Yadigar Muhammad was also grandson to Jahanshah, born of the political marriage between Sultan-Muhammad b. Baysunghur and Jahanshah's daughter Tundi Biki. Manz, Beatrice, Power, Politics and Religion in Timurid Iran (Cambridge, 2007), 262CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Woods, John E., The Timurid Dynasty (Bloomington, IN, 1990), 45, 4.9.3.1Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ E. 107272 reads, “They were all given their share of the abundant spoils … and attached themselves to the service of … ‘Azud al-Dawla Yadigar Muhammad Mirza; and on the principle ‘everything to its proper place,’ we appointed…”

⁷⁹ Jarun, the original name of the island of Hurmuz off the coast of Kirman, as well as the name given to the modern-day Bandar-i ‘Abbas. E. 107272 drops this placename.

⁸⁰ Q 39: 74.

⁸¹ Q 28: 77.

⁸² Q 6: 88.

⁸³ Q 93: 11.

⁸⁴ Hadith of Imam Ja‘far al-Sadiq (al-Kulayni, al-Kafi, 6: 438, no. 2).

⁸⁵ E. 10727 adds here the phrase “and unity, just as it was sure between our fathers and grandfathers ….”

⁸⁶ As is typical in archival copies of correspondence, the name of the addressee is not given; I assume it was present in the original document. But cf. Gavan, Manazir al-Insha’, 227–228, which states that it is more seemly (awla) for an inferior writing to a superior not to mention his addressee's name (excepting Sufis, shaykhs, and religious leaders, who may do so); equals should however mention their addressee's name. If this copy accurately represents the original, then, the lack of Qaytbay's name here might be considered a sign of respect.

⁸⁷ Jamshid Beg (d. 896/1491) was the son of the famous Sufi Khalil Beg (d. 896/1491) of the Mawsillu, chief clan of the left wing of the Aq Quyunlu (Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 191–192). E. 10727, addressed to Mehmed II, closes instead: “From your longing friend (min al-muhibb al-mushtaq), preserved by the gracious King (al-mu‘tasim bi-l-malik al-mannan), Hasan b. ‘Ali b. ‘Uthman. This letter of friendship has been sent by the hand of that exemplary noble and most excellent officer Jahanshah on the seventh of the blessed month of Ramadan”—i.e., 21 March 1469, some six weeks after Sultan-Abu Sa‘id's execution. This Jahanshah delivered during the same visit a similar but much abbreviated (in view of its recipient's lower standing) letter to the Ottoman grand vizier Ishaq Pasha, preserved as Topkapı E. 5684 (5830?): Fekete, Einführung, no. 13: 151–155; for Jahanshah see Ahmed b. Lütf Allah Müneccim-Başı, Sehayif ül-Ahbar fi Vekayi‘ ül-Asar (Istanbul, 1285/1868), 3: 159.

⁸⁸ I.e., proclamation of the conquest to the world, and mention of the addressee's name with an injunction that he praise God at the news of victory.

⁸⁹ Some two printed pages in length as compared to the present fathnama's eight printed pages, or approximately ten ms. pages (cf. the facsimile of E. 10727 in Fekete, Einführung, plates 30–39; it lacks the beginning sections but has the added section on Hasan-‘Ali). Similar fathnamas, i.e., those addressed to peer rulers, appear to average 7–8 printed pages: e.g. Shahrukh's letter to Cairo on the defeat of Qara Yusuf (Nava'i, Asnad, 208–214), Mehmed II's letter to Jahanshah on the conquest of Istanbul (ibid., 512–520), while fathnamas addressed to a superior average 2–4 pages.

⁹⁰ This phrase being the classical locus of predictions derived from these verses.

⁹¹ The dynasty's original base was of course Amid (Diyarbakr), thus Rum in the sense of Anatolia.

⁹² This on the basis of a cryptic passage in the Andalusian traditionist and mystic Ibn Barrajan's (d. 536/1141) major and minor tafsirs (Tafsir Ibn Barrajan, aka K. al-Irshad, ms. Yusuf Ağa 4746, 108b–111a; K. Idah al-Hikma, ms. Mahmut Paşa 4, 52a–55a).

⁹³ Given the exceptional importance of this passage to strategies of dynastic legitimation, it may be useful to offer here a brief sketch, taken from an overview of the subject by N. M. El Cheikh (“Surat al-Rum: A Study of the Exegetical Literature,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 118/3 (1998): 356–364), of the special complexities these verses have offered to commentators and the general development in their interpretation that may be observed as taking place vis-à-vis the changing political context:

The exegetical treatment of the first five verses of this sura can be broadly divided into two phases based on changes of emphasis. Variants in vocalization attested by the earliest sources gave rise to a primary reading and a main variant as well as two exceptional readings of the passage, the four mutually exclusive in the function of each as defining a specific historical reality; this is complicated by the overtly political nature of the prediction, the only such in the Quran. Early commentaries mention only one reading, ghulibat-sayaghlibun, with the explicit historical referent being the Persian–Byzantine confrontation, the reason for the revelation of these verses being to hearten the Muslim community with an example of believers (the Byzantines, a people possessed of a scripture) eventually winning out over unbelievers (the idolatrous Persians)—i.e., the Persian–Byzantine wars as rehearsal for the Muslim–Qurayshi wars. As the commentary literature began to develop, the reading ghulibat-sayaghlibun continued to dominate but with the variant reading ghalabat-sayughlabun sometimes recorded. With Tabari (d. 310/923) comes a categorical dismissal of any but the reading ghulibat-sayaghlibun, a dismissal enshrining the consensus view of the first two and a half centuries of commentary.

The Byzantine revival, however, coupled with the beginning of the Crusades in 489/1096, marked a sharp change in exegetical emphasis, including the rehabilitation of the reading ghalabat-sayughlabun as applied to the Byzantine–Muslim confrontation: the believers’ rejoicing was now seen as being excited by an eventual Muslim victory over the Christians—a flat denial of the previous ideological affiliation between Islam and Byzantium. This victory achieved, in the wake of the Mongol conquests of the seventh/thirteenth century and with the increasingly tenuous nature of Islamic political legitimacy sights turned inward, away from the Christians and toward rival, insufficiently Muslim powers.

⁹⁴ The introduction to his Lavami‘ al-Ishraq fi Makarim al-Akhlaq, commonly known as the Akhlaq-i Jalali, contains one of the earliest references to it (Nuskha … Musamma bi Lavami‘ al-Ishraq va Ma‘ruf be Akhlaq-i Jalali (Lucknow, 1957), 10.

⁹⁵ Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 102. This usage was apparently unique to the Aq Quyunlu during this period; while the fathnamas issued by other powers infrequently use parts of the Surat al-Rum section, they do so without drawing on its explicitly prophetic aspect. In the Ottoman context, see e.g. Bayezid's fathnama to Ya‘qub (?) on his victory over the Aq Kirman (Feridun Beg, Münşe'at, i, 294–297), which uses only the phrase Q 30: 4c–5a, Wa-yawma'idhⁱⁿ yafrahu l-mu'minuna bi-nasri Llah (p. 297), as does Mehmed II's fathnama to Jahanshah on the conquest of Istanbul (ibid., 244–248, p. 247); by comparison, Mehmed II's two other fathnamas on this subject, to al-Ashraf Inal and the Meccan Sharif (ibid., 235–238, 240–243), use quranic quotes far more sparingly, certainly nothing from Surat al-Rum.

⁹⁶ Tarikh-i ‘Alam-ara-yi Amini, ed. Akbar, Muhammad, ‘Ashiq (Tehran, 1382 Sh./2003), 31–35Google Scholar.

⁹⁷ Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 103.

⁹⁸ This letter is preserved as Topkapı E. 11602 and 11440 and transcribed in Bekir Sıtkı Baykal, “Uzun Hasan’ın Osmanlılara Karşı Katî Mücadeleye Hazırlıkları ve Osmanlı-Akkoyunlu harbinin başlaması,” Belleten, 21/87 (1957): 274–278; the point in question is on p. 275 l. 14: “Firstly, the solicitude of the Creator—be He exalted!—with regard to the career of the padishah [Uzun Hasan] exceeds that shown to [Temür], as may be easily proved; various quranic verses and hadiths were revealed to precisely this effect, and leading scholars (akabir) [i.e., Davani et al.] have treated of this point, as I'm sure you are well aware.”

⁹⁹ Moreover, a separate theme develops in which Uzun Hasan is identified as the mujaddid of the ninth Islamic century. Khunji-Isfahani, interestingly enough, conflates Uzun Hasan with his son Ya‘qub for this purpose, referring to Ibn al-Athir's K. Jami‘ al-Usul to prove that mujaddid-hood need not be limited to one individual nor even a faqih, as the demands of each century are different; the genesis of their mission lies, of course, in the words bid‘ sinin (Tarikh-i Amini, 157). The Ottoman rebuttal to Uzun Hasan's grandiose claims is found in Idris Bidlisi's (d. 926/1520) Hasht Bihisht, a Persian history of the Ottomans in the ornate style of Khunji-Isfahani's Tarikh-i Amini—indeed, the two had worked together at the Aq Quyunlu divan-i insha’ under Sultan Ya‘qub, hence the intimate familiarity with the theme demonstrated by Bidlisi in his detailed counterargument: Hasht Bihisht, ms. Ankara, Milli Kütüphane, Tokat 60 Hk 9 ff. 243b–46a; ms. London, British Library, Add. 7647 ff. 107a–8b. His history as a whole was criticized as being too lenient on the Persians, however, and he did not receive payment for his work: V. L. Ménage, “Bidlisi, Idris,” EI ², 1: 1207.

¹⁰⁰ This stylistic device is a particularly noticeable feature in the prose of this period; cf. Sa'in al-Din Turka Isfahani's (d. 835/1432) habit of making points purely through verse quotation. See ‘Aql u ‘Ishq, ya Munazirat-i Khams, ed. Judi-Ni‘mati, (Tehran, 1375 Sh./1996), 18Google Scholar. For examples of this feature in contempory fathnamas see n. 28 above.

¹⁰¹ Respectively, emphasis upon a ruler's responsibility to care for his people by defending against oppressors and thwarting unbeliever's machinations, and mention of the hope and absolute confidence inspired by the padishah's steadfast determination to pursue conquest in the cause of jihad. The first element is moved to the end and replaces a triumphalistic declaration of conquest, and the second is moved to the beginning and identified with the quranic prophecy.

¹⁰² An observation supported by Allouche's analysis: Qalawun chides Tegüder precisely for his choice of quranic quotation (“Tegüder's Ultimatum to Qalawun,” 439).

¹⁰³ Cf. especially Uzun Hasan's 877/1472 letter to the governor of Behesni referred to above, in which the Mamluk state, entailing as it does the rule of slaves, is dismissed out of hand as an “outlandish innovation.”