The Importance and Necessity of Investigating the Ekhvani Documents in Understanding Historical Events of Safavid Era

Different types of documents as raw materials have influential and important role in describing and expanding historical events. Basically historical research with mere approach of chronicling historical events would bring, for readers and critics, uncertainty about careful and scientific understanding and recognition of events. In other words, it is likely that the mere concentration on historical texts may lead the researcher toward superficial and unscientific results in the process of describing and explaining an event. Although the framework of author’s claim in this research is of recognition type, it attempts to develop the belief that in addition to written texts, profound attention of researcher to the content of the historical documents in the mentioned process not only is a scientific necessity and inevitable but may lead the interpretation of historical events’ signifier and signified toward right historical and scientific understanding. In this case study, the documents known as Ekhvaniyat, friendly and informal letters, have significant citation value in Safavid studies. These types of written texts that are scattered among the references and literature have considered valuable issues, directly and indirectly, about political, social, and cultural society and economics in Safavid era; since their writers were free of political and bureaucratic dependence and could write without any concern. These issues are hardly found in the formal chronicling of events. The current study, with similar approach and only based on a few manuscripts of analects, represents an analysis of the importance of study of Ekhvaniat in Safavid era and states the mentioned sources' features in cognition missing history of Safavid.