Dastur al-Muluk

One of only three surviving administrative handbooks from early 18th-century Safavid Iran and important research tool for scholars in Iranology. The Persian manuscript was edited during the 1960s by the Iranian scholar Mohammad-Taqi Daneshpazhuh.

A Russian translation by Dr Vil'danova appeared in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in the 1990s. An annotated English translation (ISBN 983-9379-26-7), which contains also a facsimile of what was then thought among scholars to be the complete manuscript, was published for the first time by the German scholar Christoph Marcinkowski in 2002. A Persian translation of Marcinkowski's study by Ali Kordabadi and Mansur Sefatgol appeared in 1385 AH solar (2006 CE) in Tehran at Markaz-e Asnad va Tarikh-e Diplomasi (published by the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Subsequently, the Iranian scholar Iraj Afshar discovered and edited the remainder of the text. This part, too, was translated into English and discussed by Dr. Marcinkowski in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, the journal of the German Oriental Society (see below).

Variants: Dastur al-Moluk, Dastur ol-Moluk.

Further reading

• Christoph Marcinkowski (transl., ed.), Mirza Rafi‘a's Dastur al-Muluk: A Manual of Later Safavid Administration. Annotated English Translation, Comments on the Offices and Services, and Facsimile of the Unique Persian Manuscript (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 2002). ISBN 983-9379-26-7 [see also review by Professor Emeritus Clifford Edmund Bosworth, F.B.A., in Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae (Budapest, Hungary), vol. 58, no. 4 (2005), pp. 457–59].

• idem, "Mirza Rafi‘a's Dastur al-Muluk A Prime Source on Administration, Society and Culture in Late Safavid Iran," Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft (Germany), vol. 153, no. 2 (2003), pp. 281–310.

• idem, "Mirza Rafi‘a's Dastur al-Muluk Again. Recently Discovered Additions to the Persian Manuscript," Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft (Germany), vol. 157, no. 2 (2007), pp. 395–416.

• idem, "Dastur al-Moluk", Encyclopaedia Iranica, suppl. (New York NY, United States, Columbia University, ed. Ehsan Yarshater) (available online at http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/ot_grp9/ot_dastur_20051107.html^{[dead link]} and also forthcoming in print).

• Mirza Rafi‘a [Muhammad Rafi‘ Ansari], Dastur al-Muluk, Russian transl. A. B. Vil'danova (Tashkent: Izdatel'stvo Akademia Nauk Uzbekskoye SSR, 1991)

See also

• Iranology
• Safavids