The Biography and Wisdom of Buzurgmihr in Qazvīnī’s Tārīkh-i Guzīdeh

The historiography and the advice literature of the Ilkhanid period exhibit strikingly close inter-connections. Like their predecessors in earlier periods, Ilkhanid mirrors for princes urged their royal recipients to heed the lessons of history, and works of historiography emphasised ethical themes. But in addition, mirrors for princes of the period often include discreet historical sections, and works of historiography quite frequently incorporate free-standing advisory texts. Strikingly, the advisory texts incorporated into, quoted from or referred to in Ilkhanid historiographical sources often evoke the pre-Islamic Iranian past. As an example of this trend, which finds a parallel in the display of poetic inscriptions from the Shāhnāmeh in the tile-work of Ilkhanid palaces, this paper will explore the treatment of Buzurgmihr, legendary sage, subject of many narrative accounts and pronouncer of numerous wise aphorisms, in the Tārīkh-i guzīdeh (1330) of Ḥamd Allāh Mustawfī Qazvīnī. Qazvīnī’s history, composed towards the end of the Ilkhanid period and dedicated to the ruler Abū Saʿīd, contains (among other relevant materials) the Pīrūzī-nāmeh associated with Buzurgmihr. The paper explores the meanings and functions of Qazvīnī’s Buzurgmihr, in the context of larger developments in Ilkhanid historiography.