From Isfahan to Ayutthaya Contacts Between Iran & Siam in the 17th Century [Paperback]

Ehsan Yarshater (Foreword), M. Ismail Marcinkowski (Primary Contributor)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Ibex Publishers (December 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9971774917
• ISBN-13: 978-9971774912
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,733,436 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Concise and comprehensive, May 1, 2006

By 

Chris Jones "Chris" (California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: From Isfahan to Ayutthaya Contacts Between Iran & Siam in the 17th Century (Paperback)

The royal capital of Ayutthaya was known among foreign Muslim mariners of the 17th-century in the Indian Ocean region under the Persian epithet of "Shahr-e Nav", "City of Boats and Canals". Non-Muslim travelers used the corruption "Sarnau".
Utilising parts of the Persian travel account "Ship of Sulayman", and other works by European explorers, the writer unfolds the circumstances, influences and impact resulting from contacts between the Safavid and Siamese kingdoms and the visible effects in present-day Thailand. Marcinkowski discusses the community of Iranian merchants in Siam, the role of Shi'ism in that kingdom, the mysterious "Shaykh Ahmad" (the ancestor of Thailand's still influential Bunnag family) and the creation of the post of "Shaykh al-Islam" or head of Thailand's Muslim community. Professor Ehsan Yarshater, one of the world's leading Iranologists and Director of Columbia University's Center for Iranian Studies, has contributed the foreword. "From Isfahan to Ayutthaya" presents for the first time in English and in book form the available findings. It is scholarly and at the same time readable and should be of interest to those working in Islamic, Southeast Asian and Iranian Studies. The work shows that Thailand's Muslim population (as well as that of the Kingdom in general) is ethnically much more diverse as is usually thought. I would like to second Professor Clifford Edmund Bosworth, Fellow of the British Academy, who considered in a recent review Dr Marcinkowski's work "meaty monograph on an intriguing topic. Dr Marcinkowski deserves praise for bringing it into the light of critical scholarship and presenting it to us in an atractive form (there are, e.g., several maps and plates, including of "Shaykh Ahmad's" tomb)". Other interesting works by Dr Marcinkowski available from amazon.com include "Religion and Politics in Iraq. Shi'ite Clerics Between Quietism and Resistance", and "Persian Historiography"