Architecture and narrative: The Khwaja Abu Nasr Parsa shrine. Part 1: Constructing the complex and its meaning, 1469-1696

Muqarnas

Volumn 18, Issue , 2001, Pages 94-119

  Mcchesney, R D ^a  

^a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 62949140313     PISSN: 07322992     EISSN: 09210326     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/22118993-90000018     Document Type: Review

References (34)

1. Lisa Golombek and Donald Wilber, The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), catalogue no. 59;
2. George Michell, ed., Architecture of the Islamic World: Its History and Social Meaning (New York: William Morrow, 1978), p. 263;
3. A. U. Pope, A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present (London and New York, 1938), pp.1136-37, pls. 422-24;
4. Jeannine Auboyer, The Art of Afghanistan (Prague, 1968), pls. 126-28.
5. For the most recent analysis and one that closely complements this study, see Bernard O'Kane, "The Uzbek Architecture of Afghanistan," in Cahiers d'Asie Centrale 8 (2000): 130-47.
6. A manuscript of the Matcombining dot belowla' al-sa'dayn owned by Eton College gives the form "Farīd" for Mazid (see note on p. 1230 of the Lahore edition). This would have been an easy orthographic error for a copyist. A. Mukhtarov, Pozdnesrednevekovyi Balkh (Dushanbe, 1980), p. 56, also gives the form Farīd, which he found in a manuscript of a later work, the sixteeenth-century Majma' al-gharā'ib.
7. See Shiro Ando, Timuridische Emire nach dem Mu'izz al-Ansāb: Untersuchung zur Stammesaristokratie Zentralasiens im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert (Berlin: K. Schwarz, 1992), pp. 173-77.
8. Barthold, Four Studies, 2: 157.
9. Barthold even raises the question whether Abu Sa'id was a genuine Timurid or not, but later historians seem to have more or less unanimously concluded that he was. See J. Aubin, "Abū Sa'īd" in EI, 2d ed., 1:147b-48b;
10. Peter J. Jackson and Lawrence Lockhart, eds., Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6, The Timurid and Safavid Periods (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 117.
11. Khwandamir, Hcombining dot belowabīb al-siyar, 4: 200.
12. Asam Urunbaev, Pis'ma-avtografy Abdarrakhmana Dzhami iz "Al'boma Navoi" (Tashkent: Fan, 1982), p. 80, facsimile no. 175.
13. For a recent fairly complete summary of his career, see Ando, Timuridische Emire, pp. 175-76.
14. Bartold, Four Studies, 3:29.
15. Asam Urunbaev, ed., Pis'ma-avtografy Abdarrakhmana Dzhami . 80 (facsimile no. 175).
16. A letter from Uzun Hasan to Sultan Bayazid reporting this battle and its outcome has been published in L. Fekete, Einfūhrung in die Persische Palāographie (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1977), no. 12, 145-149. Uzun Hasan names four of Abu Sa'id's leaders at the battle including "Mazid Arghun" (146, l. 14 of the document).
17. Fakhri Harawi, Tazcombining minus sign belowkirah-i rawżah-i salātcombining dot belowīn (henceforth Harawi) ed. Dr. 'A. Khayyampur (Tabriz: Mu'assasab-i tarikh wa farhang-i Iran, 1345/1966), p. 31.
18. For other mss. see C. A. Storey, Persian Literature: A Bio-bibliographical Survey (London: Luzac, 1958), II/1, pp. 135-37.
19. A.T. Tagirdzhanov, Opisanie tadzhikskikh i persidskikh rukopisei Vostochnogo Otdela LGU, vol. 1 (Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo Leningradskogo Universiteta, 1962), p. 395.
20. and one of the second edition from the collection of the Biruni Institute of Oriental Studies of Uzbekistan (A. A. Semenov, Sobranie vostochnykh rukopisei [Tashkent, 1952], p. 298, cat. no. 680, inv. no. 1494). Unfortunately, my notes are not sufficiently detailed to permit a useful comparison of the contents of the two editions on the subject of the Abu Nasr Parsa mausoleum. It is worth noting that most of the copies available, whether with the Pir Muhammad or 'Abd Allah dedications, were copied in the nineteenth century.
21. On the madrasa and her burial there in 1440-41, see Bernard O'Kane, Timurid Architecture in Khurasan (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda, 1987), p. 22.
22. Gunbaz, the most common contemporary term for the kind of building typified by the Abu Nasr Parsa mausoleum, signifies a polygonal structure supporting a drum supporting a dome. The use of the term is also generally restricted to mausolca. (See Golombek and Wilber, Timurid Architecture, 1: 467;
23. and Robert Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture: Form, Function, and Meaning [New York, 1994], p. 257).
24. O'Kane, "Uzbek Architecture," p. 132.
25. On "dynastic families" in the Central Asian context, see my Central Asia: Foundations of Change (Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1996), pp. 75 ff.
26. Mahmud b. Amir Wali, Bahcombining dot belowr al-asrār fī manāqib al-akhyār (henceforth Bahcombining dot belowr), London, India Office Library, ms. no. 575, fol. 286a.
27. Shiro Ando, "The Shaykh al-Islam as a Timurid Office: A Preliminary Study," Islamic Studies 33 (1994): 253-80.
28. Khwandimir, Hcombining dot belowabīb al-siyar, p. 295.
29. O'Kane, Timurid Architecture in Khurasan, pp. 21-26, 106
30. O'Kane, Timurid Architecture of Khurasan, p. 256, calls the building a dār al-hcombining dot belowufāzcombining dot below because of its similarity to Timurid structures by that name at Mashhad. But this is not a Timurid building. Mahmud b. Amir Wali says in his time (the 1630's) it was called the jāmi'-i āsitānah, i.e., the "Friday mosque of the shrine."
31. The excavations in the Balkh citadel carried out by A. Foucher and the Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan in the spring of 1924 revealed in the upper levels a "serai" which may correspond with the dawlatkhānah described by Mahmud b. Amir Wali (see A. Foucher, La Vieille Route de l'Inde de Bactres à Taxila ([Paris, 1942], 1: 102-10).
32. The endowment deed was published by A. D. Davydov, "Imeniia medrese Subkhankuli-khana v Balkhe (po vakfnoi gramote XVII v.)," Kratkie soobshcheniia Instituta Vostokovedeniia 37 (1960): 82-128.
33. For a recent discussion of the Mughal occupation, see Richard Foltz, "The Mughal Occupation of Balkh," Journal of Islamic Studies 7 (1996): 49-61.
34. See Jonathan Lee, The "Ancient Supremacy": Bukhara, Afghanistan, and the Battle for Balkh, 1731-1901 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), Appendix IV, vii.