Please join us on Monday, December 14, for a workshop with Golriz Farshi, titled “Charity and Conversion: the Endowed Charitable Complex of Rabʿ-i Rashīdī.” Farshi will be workshopping a chapter from her dissertation, and would like to hear your feedback! The workshop will take place on Zoom from 5:00-7:00 PM(EST).
Farshi’s Project reconstructs the lost physical space of two mausoleum-centered city-complexes (the Ghāzāniyya and the Rabʿ-i Rashīdī) from their extant endowment deeds to read the public performance of Mongol conversion and the crafting of a new body politic. The Mongol conversion to Islam was an act of piety, which came to symbolize features of an ideal Muslim city-cum-sovereign whose legacy was memorialized by subsequent rulers. Referred to as ‘gateways of charity’ or ʾabwāb al-birr, she argues that these building projects were the material representation of Mongol Islam that illuminated the confessional politics of shrine-centered kingship. The Ghāzāniyya and the Rabʿ-i Rashīdī were twin imperial projects that worked in unison to create a new imperial order and a cosmic city around which money, goods, and spiritual benefit flowed. This chapter focuses on the Rabʿ-i Rashīdī and explores the significance of conversion in the charitable act of constructing an endowed city-complex. It analyzes and places in historic context the donor’s impetus as claimed in the endowment deed.
Golriz Farshi is a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan Department of Middle East Studies, where she studies with Professor Kathryn Babayan. Her primary focus is endowments in medieval Iran, in particular how endowed city-complexes, first affected by the Ilkhans, informed and transformed the urban development of the city of Tabriz.
Please email Shahla Farghadani at (sfarghad@umich.edu) to receive a Zoom link and a copy of Golriz’s paper in advance.
Hope to see you all there!