Houshang Pourshariati Iranian Studies Book Award

Maria E. Subtelny

University of Toronto

2008 Winner

Maria E. Subtelny

Maria E. Subtelny

The committee for the 2008 Houshang Pourshariati Iranian Studies Book Award is pleased to award the prize to Maria Subtelny or her comprehensive study, Timurids in Transition: Turko-Persian Politics and Acculturation in Medieval Iran.  Brill includes the volume as part of its Inner Asian Library series.  Maria Subtelny, a professor of Persian and Islamic Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Toronto, skillfully analyses the ways in which a nomadic empire based on Turko-Mongol concepts of sociopolitical organization and an economy fueled by plunder adapted to the sedentary Iranian society it conquered and over which it ruled.  The book covers the dynastic empire established in Central and Western Asia by the post-Mongol warlord Timur (Tamerlane), whose descendants (known as the Timurids) made the transition from a sprawling nomadic polity to a vastly reduced state based on Perso-Islamic ideals and agrarian values.  Maria Subtelny focuses on the last Timurid ruler, Sultan-Husain Bayqara, a great-great-grandson of Timur.  Sultan-Husain Bayqara ruled from 1469 to 1506 over the large eastern Iranian province of Khorasan, a period that spanned a substantial portion of the Timurid dynasty.  Maria Subtelny bases her work on a rich array of primary and other sources, including those she derived from archival research in Uzbekistan and Iran.  The Houshang Pourshariati Iranian Studies Book Award acknowledges the sound scholarship and innovative analysis that Maria Subtelny offers.  Her book, Timurids in Transition, stands as an exemplary study valuable to a wide scholarly community with interests in this and related regions and historical periods.

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