Off-campus UMass Amherst users: To download campus access dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your UMass Amherst user name and password.
Non-UMass Amherst users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this dissertation through interlibrary loan.
Dissertations that have an embargo placed on them will not be available to anyone until the embargo expires.
ORCID
https://orcid.org/0009-0004-8264-788
Access Type
Campus-Only Access for One (1) Year
Document Type
thesis
Degree Program
History
Degree Type
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Year Degree Awarded
2023
Month Degree Awarded
May
Abstract
This thesis follows Quṭb al‐Dīn al‐Shīrāzī (d. 1311), a brilliant and influential polymath, through the eighty years of his long life and focuses on him navigating changing environments in the Persianate Mongol world (i.e., the second half of the thirteenth century to the early decades of the fourteenth century). In order to retrace his life, this study draws extensively on contemporary chronicles, biographical dictionaries, autobiographies, hagiographies, and some of his own manuscripts to illuminate parts of his life unknown before. Through that, this thesis illustrates Quṭb al‐Dīn al‐Shīrāzī’s intellectual, political, and religious networks, with special attention to his patrons. Moreover, even though his fame in the modern world is primarily due to his astronomical treatises as part of the Maragha school, my thesis demonstrates his investment in medicine, Sufism, and religious sciences, including jurisprudence, Qurʼān interpretations, and ḥadīth studies.
Hence, Quṭb al-Dīn is an example of an intellectual in the Ilkhanid realm who developed informal networks transcending political, linguistic, and genre boundaries, that spanned an area from the western fringes of Anatolia to Khorasan, through bustling late medieval metropolises such as Shiraz, Sivas, Konya, Baghdad, Cairo, Tabriz, and Maragha.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/35667322
First Advisor
Anne F. Broadbridge
Second Advisor
Hadi Jorati
Third Advisor
Brian W. Ogilvie
Recommended Citation
Dreyer, Carina, "Quṭb al‐Dīn al‐Shīrāzī and His Political, Religious, and Intellectual Networks" (2023). Masters Theses. 1316.
https://doi.org/10.7275/35667322
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2/1316