Abu al-Qasim Kashani explained
Abu al-Qasim Kashani (Persian: ابوالقاسم کاشانی; died after 1324) was a Persian historian from the Abu Tahir family, who was active during the late Ilkhanate era. He is notable for claiming that the vizier of the Ilkhanate, Rashid al-Din Hamadani, had stolen credit for the historical work Jami' al-tawarikh. Although modern scholarship regard Rashid al-Din as the overall author of the work, he is generally considered to have been aided by several assistants, including Kashani.
Kashani's major work is Tarikh-e Oljaytu (History of Öljaitü), covering Öljaitü's reign until his death in 1316. It is there that Kashani makes his allegations against Rashid al-Din. Since Rashid al-Din's account of this ruler in Jami' al-tawarikh is missing, whereas Kashani's work is complete, this gives some credibility to Kashani's claims.
List of works
- Zobdat al-tawārīḵ ('The Quintessence of History'), 1303, dedicated to the Il-khan, a history of the Islamic world down to the siege of Baghdad; mostly unpublished.
- Tārīḵ-e Olǰāytū, 1325, an account of the Il-khan's reign.
- ʿArāʾes al-ǰawāher wa nafāʾes al-aṭāʾeb, a work on mineralogy, gemmology and perfumery, to which is appended a short treatise on ceramics.
Editions
Sources
- Book: Afshar, Iraj . Culture and Learning in Islam . UNESCO Publishing . 2003 . 978-92-3-103909-6 . İhsanoğlu . Ekmeleddin . The Different Aspects of Islamic Culture 5 . 514 . Persian Historiography from the Īlkhānid Period to the Vigilance and Renaissance Eras.
- Book: Jackson, Peter . The Mongols and the Islamic World: From Conquest to Conversion . 2017 . Yale University Press . 1–448 . 9780300227284 . 10.3366/j.ctt1n2tvq0 .
- Jones. Tobias . The Objects of Loyalty in the Early Mongol Empire (Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries) . Iran . 2021 . 61. 2. 196–220. 10.1080/05786967.2021.1915701 . free. 1887/3731983. free.
- Book: Hope, Michael . Power, Politics, and Tradition in the Mongol Empire and the Īlkhānate of Iran . 2016 . Oxford University Press . 978-0198768593 .
