Description
The work is dedicated to the son of the Delhi Sultan Iltutmiš, Nāṣer-al-Din Abu’l-Moẓaffar Maḥmud-šāh (hence its name "The Nāṣerean Tables"). It was composed, it seems, during the author’s retirement, mainly in 657-58/1259-60. It comprises 23 ṭabaqāt, literally "layers,” beginning with Adam, the Biblical Patriarchs and Prophets, the forebears of the Prophet Moḥammad and his career (ṭabaqa 1), and after a consideration of the Patriarchal, Umayyad and ʿAbbasid caliphates (2-4), deals with the ancient kings of Persia, from Kayumarṯ and the Pishdadis to the Sasanians, and with Tobbaʿ kings of Yemen and the governors there up to the Islamic conquest (5-6). For these two sections, Jowzjāni cites as his source "histories of the Persians which Ferdowsi used in his Šāh-nāma,” but regards this information as dubious and problematic compared with what he will retail of history as known in the pure light of Islam (Jowzjāni, I, p. 131). The main body of the work deals with the ruling dynasties of the Iranian lands, first those actually of Persian origin, the Taherids, the Saffarids, the Samanids and the Buyids (ṭabaqāt 7-10), but then those Turkish incomers to the Persian lands, the Ghaznavids (11) and the Saljuqs and their Atabegs (the Great Saljuq sultans, up to and including Sanjar, the Saljuqs of Rum, the Ildegizid Atabegs of Azerbaijan, the Salghurid Atabegs of Fārs and the brief line of Moʾayyed-al-Din Ay Aba in Nishapur after Sanjar’s death; 12-13). There follow the Iranian Naṣrid maleks of Nimruz or Sistan (14) and the "Kurdish maleks of Syria,” i.e. the Ayyubids, presumably included because of the origin of their progenitor Zangi in the slave entourage of the Saljuq Sultan Malekšāh (15). With the Khwarazmshahs of Anuštegin’s line (16), Jowzjāni was approaching events of his own time, and with the Šansabānis or Ghurid dynasty (divided into the lines ruling in Ḡur, in Bāmiān and Ṭoḵārestān, and in Ḡazna) (17-19), and the Ghurid commanders in Northern India, out of whom arose the Slave Kings of Delhi and their provincial commanders (20-22), he was dealing with contemporary history. The final section (23) deals with "the disasters befalling Islam and the irruption of the infidels, may God cause them to perish,” i.e., the Mongols, up to the time of the Il-Khanid Hülegü and the Golden Horde Khan Berke.