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The Ottoman biographer, historian and former career military officer Kātib Çelebi (d. 1067/1657), better known as Ḥājjī Khalīfa, completed his Taqwīm al-tawārīkh in Istanbul in 1058/1648. Begun as an excerpt of his earlier history Fadhlakat aqwāl al-akhyār , he expanded it to cover personalities and events up to the days in which it was written. Composed in a mixture of Ottoman Turkish and Persian, it became a popular 'desk reference' that received various upgrades by different eighteenth-century authors. The work was printed for the first time in Istanbul by İbrahim Müteferriqa in 1146/1733. The Taqwīm al-tawārīkh was translated into Latin, Italian and French, besides the anonymous Persian translation contained in this volume, completed in 1075/1664, well before any of the other translations. It is one of the rare historical works in Persian to have the form of a chronology, most of them being histories of dynasties or general histories

Rashīd al-Dīn Hamadānī's (d. 718/1319) Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh has been described by many as the first world history ever. Composed in Persian for the Mongol Il-khans Ghāzān (r. 1295-1304) and Öljeitü (Uljāytu, r. 1304-16), its aim was to set out the history and condition of the Mongol people, conquerors of the world (part one), followed by a description of the other peoples and nations of the world and their histories (part two). Given its unprecedented scope, Rashīd, vizier to both rulers, mobilized a whole team of specialists, informants, and collaborators to assist him in his task. Making use of written and oral sources, the part on the Mongols is a key source on the emergence and organisation of the Mongol empire, while the second part constitutes the first attempt ever at writing a history of the world. The four volumes published here contain the history of the Mongols up until Ghāzān. Section: Mongols; 4 vols; volume. 4

To know a culture, is to know its written tradition. Before the coming of the printing press, books were transmitted in manuscript form. When texts started to get printed rather than copied, earlier works that until then had only existed in manuscript, came to be printed too. Until the early nineteenth century, a fair copy of a handwritten text would be all that was needed to turn an older work into a printed book. Today, all this has changed and most ancient texts are now published on the basis of a commonly accepted methodology. In the Islamic world, where we have thousands of works in manuscript that still await a proper edition, these modern methods are not always accessible to local scholars and uncritical editions still abound. This Persian guide to the publication of manuscripts is meant to change that situation. As such, it is an important statement on the advances in scholarship in Iran

Since times immemorial man has been fascinated by his dreams. This is true of western civilization as it is true of any other civilization, including Islam. In the Qurʾān and the traditions, dreams and visions are frequently mentioned as instruments of divine guidance and instruction. This sanctification of the pre-existing oral tradition around dreams and their interpretation created room for this tradition to further develop, both in a religious and in a secular context. Dream interpretation remained unsystematized and mostly oral until Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq's (d. 260/873) Arabic translation of Artemidorus' (2nd cent. CE) Oneirocritica and Dīnawarī's al-Qādirī fi 'l-taʿbīr (commissioned in 397/1006) that it inspired. From then onwards, a vast literature developed. The work published here is an important early text from the Persianate world, based on more than fifteen declared and other sources, most of which are lost. It is a compilatory work, with an introduction followed by an alphabetical inventory of themes. 2 vols; volume 1

"Until recent times, Iran regularly had to cope with local or national famines. The various governments, until the second decade of the twentieth century, had neither a policy nor institutional arrangements to deal with grain shortages, artificial or not, and the resulting famines. In severe cases of famine governments might have temporarily intervened in the market, but usually they left care for the hungry to private philanthropy. Invariably, this private effort was inadequate when compared to needs. Although there were earlier incidental efforts, it was only as of 1918 that a beginning was made for more permanent and structural pro-active measures to prevent rather than to combat famine. The creation of the Edareh-ye arzaq or Alimentation Service in Tehran and Tabriz to ensure food security saved thousands of lives in the years that followed. Despite this result, its work is almost totally ignored; there is not even an encyclopedia article about its activities. In this study, Willem Floor discusses the early efforts to combat famine as well as the beginning of a more targeted and structural approach developed by Lambert Molitor in Tabriz during 1917-18 as well as its application in Tehran as of 1918. Whereas in Tabriz, after 1918, the approach was reactive, in Tehran a pro-active program was developed, which as of 1922 became part of the tasks of the Millspaugh mission. During 1926-27 there was even a quasi-national food security program. After Millspaugh's departure in 1927 the food security of Tehran became an entirely Iranian affair, which as of 1935 was transferred from the Alimentation Service to a State company that had a national food security responsibility." --