of the sun.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Pari Khan Khanoom lived from 1548 to 1578. Several contemporary court historians suspected her of poisoning her half brother, Isma‘il Shah, although other theories proposed that he overdosed on drugs or was poisoned by a group of nobles who were disaffected with his rule. A few months after he died, Pari was assassinated by order of her half brother Mohammad Shah and his wife, Mahd-e-Olya.
After Pari’s death, Mahd-e-Olya was the de facto ruler of Iran for about a year and a half, until the qizilbash nobles tired of her command and assassinated her. The grand vizier Mirza Salman, ever adept at judging shifts in the wind, changed allegiance just before the nobles decided to remove her. A few years later, he was assassinated in his turn by the qizilbash, who resented his power. Strife raged for years to come as tribal groups struggled to dominate one another.
During Pari’s short life, one of the most powerful empires on earth was that of the Ottomans. Under Suleyman the Magnificent, the Ottomans had conquered territory all the way west to Hungary and had fought frequent battles with Iran and other neighbors on their eastern borders. In 1555, Pari’s father, Tahmasb Shah, brokered the Peace of Amasya, a treaty in which the two powers divided up disputed territories and the Ottomans recognized Safavi Iran for the first time. My novel posits that Pari would have worked tirelessly to maintain this treaty, although I found no specific evidence for this in the sources I used. Not long after Pari’s death, the Ottomans invaded Iran and hostilities resumed again, with devastating consequences including loss of Iranian territory.
The Safavi dynasty ruled from 1501–1722. The founder of the dynasty, Isma‘il I, declared Shi’a Islam the official religion of Iran, with the result that Iran is now the largest Shi’a country in the world. Despite much political turmoil, the Safavi dynasty was stable and wealthy enough, particularly during its first half, to fund the creation of many of the masterpieces of Iranian architecture, weaving, painting, pottery, and other crafts. Among these is an illustrated Shahnameh commissioned by Tahmasb Shah that is regarded as one of the finest examples of bookmaking in the world. Tahmasb gave the book to the Ottoman Empire in 1567, along with other rich gifts loaded on the backs of dozens of camels, an inestimable loss to future generations of Iranians.
After years of internal and external power struggles following Tahmasb’s death, an able ruler finally took charge of Iran. The greatest leader of the Safavis would turn out to be Abbas—the second son of Mohammad Shah and his wife, Mahd-e-Olya—who was crowned in a palace coup in 1587 at the age of sixteen and ruled for more than forty years. Shah Abbas finally quashed the fractious qizilbash by uprooting old power structures and elevating new groups, especially converted Georgians, Circassians, and Armenians, who owed their loyalty only to him. Perhaps his greatest legacy, however, is the city of Isfahan, which he declared his capital in 1598 and refashioned with the help of master architects, engineers, calligraphers, and tile makers. The central square that dominates the town and the bridges that traverse its river are among the true crown jewels of his rule.
The key members of the royal family mentioned in this book were real people. On occasion I made up first names for women whose names were never recorded. The servants of the palace harem, including Javaher, Khadijeh, Balamani, and Maryam, are invented characters.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In recent years, several scholars have mined original sources and generated new thinking about the political sophistication of premodern Muslim women like Pari Khan Khanoom. Their work has been invaluable in allowing me to imagine the decisions Pari might have made and the life that she might have lived. In particular, Shohreh Gholsorkhi has written an insightful article about Pari’s role in the politics of her day, and Maria Szuppe has written in detail about the extent of the education, wealth, and power enjoyed by some Safavi court women. Szuppe’s work suggested to me the complicated relationships that Pari might have had with her uncle Shamkhal Cherkes and the grand vizier Mirza Salman, and brought to my attention the conflict that occurred over control of the treasury in Qazveen. In addition, Leslie Peirce’s work on premodern Ottoman women has been extremely helpful in illuminating the organizational structure of a royal harem and the tasks fulfilled by the women residing within it. Despite being sequestered, some Muslim court women had much