Iskandar Beg Munshi (
Persian: اسکندر بیگ منشی; 1561/62 – 1633/34) was an Iranian court scribe and chronicler, who is principally known for his historical book of Tarikh-e Alam-ara-ye Abbasi ("The world-adorning history of Abbas"), which focuses on early
Safavid history, especially the reign of
Shah Abbas I (
r. 1588–1629).[1]
Life
Iskandar Beg was born in 1561 or 1562.[1] He was a native speaker of
Azerbaijani Turkish[2] and belonged to a
Turkoman clan which was part of the
Qizilbash, a militant
Shia group that had helped the Safavids establish their rule. Even though Iskandar Beg came from a Qizilbash family and was affiliated with the military elite of the Safavids, both he and his elder brother Faraj (Farrukh?) Beg joined the bureaucracy instead. Iskandar Beg served as
Mirza Ata-Allah Isfahani's pupil scribe during the later rule of
Shah Tahmasp I (
r. 1524–1576).[1]
Iskandar Beg's Tarikh-e Alam-ara-ye Abbasi (abbreviated as TAAA[3]) is considered the most significant piece of Iranian historiography written about Safavid Iran.[4][5] The book was influenced by the
Mughal chronicle Akbarnama of
Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak (died 1602).[6]
Sadan, A. (2022). "The Nature of Legitimacy: Representations of the Natural World in Iskandar Beg Munshi's Tārīkh-e ʿĀlam-ārā-ye ʿAbbāsī". Iranian Studies. 54 (1–2). Cambridge University Press: 41–65.
doi:
10.1080/00210862.2019.1647095.
S2CID211677412.
Ashraf, Assef (2021). "Safavid Nostalgia in Early Qajar Chronicles". In Melville, Charles Melville (ed.). The Contest for Rule in Eighteenth-Century Iran: Idea of Iran Vol. 11. I.B.Tauris. pp. 81–102.
ISBN978-0755645992.