La Vita e i Tempi di Rostam Khan

In the second half of the 16th century the Safavid dynasty of Persia (1501-1736) began to import large numbers of Caucasians, and Georgians in particular, into Persia where they were converted to Islam and deployed in the army and as administration officials. La Vita e i Tempi di Rostam Khan is the Italian translation and the text edition of a Persian manuscript completed in 1692, the only known copy of which is currently preserved at the British Library: it is a biography of one of those men, Rostam Khan Saak´adze "the Elder" (d. 1643) as well as a history of Persia during his lifetime. At the same time, and quite unusually for Persian historical works, it is also in a way a literary monument to family glory, since it was commissioned by his grandson and namesake, Rostam Khan "the Younger". La Vita e i Tempi di Rostam Khan begins by describing the circumstances which led Rostam Khan Saak´adze "the Elder" and his family to enter the Safavid service in the second half of the 16th century, and goes on to narrate the career of the Khan until his eventual execution. Two factors make the Vita particularly remarkable: firstly, its author, Bijan, was most probably also of Georgian origin and he is one of the few historians of the period of whom other works are known, and secondly it includes excerpts from a hitherto unknown source written by Mirza Hatem Beyg Darjazini, whose father had been in the service of Rostam Khan "the Elder". Although La Vita e i Tempi di Rostam Khan and its importance have been known to scholars for about two centuries, the present edition-translation makes it available to the international scholarly community for the first time. The Italian translation is supplemented with an extensive introduction and hundreds of footnotes which provide a detailed commentary on the events narrated and on the genesis of the text.