The Empires of the Near East and India: Source Studies of the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal Literate Communities

THE I‘TIRAFNAMA OF ABKAR (ʿALI AKBAR) ARMANI

RUDI MATTHEE

The past decade or so has seen a surge in scholarly interest in the topic of conversion in early modern Middle Eastern and Islamic history. The Ottoman Empire has received most of the attention in this expanding field.¹ To the extent that modern scholarship has addressed religious conversion in Iran, it has focused on the early Islamic period, the first centuries following the seventh-century Arab invasion and occupation, with a specific emphasis on the question of the poorly documented conditions under which, over time, the local population turned to the Muslim faith.² For the subsequent period, the eight centuries between the reign of the Seljuqs and the late Qajar dynasty, virtually no scholarship exists on the issue.³ As a result, we are largely in the dark about the process of Islamization in Iran following the decline of the Seljuqs.

The period of the Safavids, the dynasty that ruled Iran from 1501 until 1722, is no exception to this state of affairs. We are well informed about the actual efforts by the Safavid elite to become acquainted with the formal tenets of Twelver-Shiʿism, and we have multiple sources for contemporary debates between the representatives of the various religions that made up Iran at the time. But we know little about the actual process by which a majority Sunni population turned to one adhering to the Shiʿi variant of Islam other than that it was accompanied by a great deal of pressure and violence. It was a gradual process that remained incomplete, and even in the late Safavid period a large Sunni minority continued to exist on the periphery.⁴

The situation is somewhat better in the case of non-Muslims, especially Christians, who converted to Islam in Safavid times. Here we have to distinguish between large-scale conversion, which was often forced and instrumental in nature, and individual cases of those who saw the light and submitted to Allah.

The case of the Christian Caucasus clearly falls into the first category. With the subjugation of large parts of the southern Caucasus, comprising Shirvan, Armenia, and Georgia, in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Safavids added significant numbers of Christians to their subject population. Under Shah Tahmasb (r. 1524–1576) 30,000 Georgians are said to have been moved to Iran, and Iskandar Beg Munshi speaks of the settlement of 130,000 Georgians into Safavid territory in the wake of Shah ʿAbbas I’s 1616 expedition into the Caucasus.5 Toward the end of that ruler’s reign (1587–1629), more than 30,000 Georgian soldiers are said to have served in the Safavid army. At the same time, allegedly “not a household in the entire Persian Empire” was without Georgian slaves, men and women.⁶ By the 1680s, 20,000 Georgians—including Daghestanis and Circassians—were said to be living in Isfahan alone.⁷

As for Armenians, their numbers in Isfahan increased significantly when Shah ʿAbbas I deported thousands from the town of Julfa on the Aras River in Armenia to his new capital in 1604–1605. New Julfa, the suburb that the shah had constructed for them, by the mid-seventeenth century housed perhaps 30,000 Armenians, a substantial minority in an urban area totaling up to 500,000 people.⁸

Called gulaman-i sarkar-i khassa (slaves of the royal household), the Georgians and Armenians brought from their ancestral homelands to the Safavid metropole were made to convert to Islam as part of their recruitment, as a service nobility loyal to the shah, before they could assimilate into the Safavid society as army personnel and administrators. Such transformations thus were largely instrumental and situational, and the Georgians especially seemed to have worn their Islam rather lightly.⁹ With exceptions, the actual act of conversion remains anonymous and thus is beyond our ken.¹⁰

We are slightly better informed about non-ghulam conversions, and we even have some details about individual cases from seventeenth-century Iran. Most concern European Christians—merchants marrying Muslim women, prisoners of war, or renegades lured by money or sex—converting to Islam.11 One high-profile case is that of the Georgian princess Ketevan. She agreed to become Shah ʿAbbas’s hostage to safeguard her country from Safavid attack. Informed that her son Taymuraz had rebelled, ʿAbbas, seeking revenge, forced her to convert. When she refused, she was tortured and executed at the shah’s orders, gaining her martyrdom in the Christian faith.¹² Another tragic case occurred in Isfahan in 1637 and involved a protestant Swiss clockmaker by the name of Johann Rudolf Stadler. He shot a man who had broken into his house, received the death penalty, but was offered a royal pardon if he agreed to adopt Islam. He rejected the offer and paid for his unwavering faith with his life.¹³ There is also the dramatic defection of two Portuguese Augustinian friars residing in Isfahan in the late seventeenth century, Manuel de S. Maria and António de Jesus. The first became Muslim “because of a woman”; the second converted after a quarrel with a Portuguese ambassador. Henceforth known as ʿAli Quli Bayg “jadid al-Islam” (new convert to Islam), António de Jesus entered Safavid state service, became a royal interpreter, and turned into a fierce anti-Christian polemicist.¹⁴

Information about reverse cases, involving the conversion of Muslims to Christianity, is sparse and fragmentary. In keeping with the experience elsewhere in the Islamic world, the number of Muslims the missionaries managed to convert in Safavid Iran was infinitesimal. The few who did convert exposed themselves to the resentment of the community they had left and, as we will see shortly, might incur the wrath of the authorities.¹⁵

The most famous case of Muslim conversion to Christianity took place outside Iran and is that of Uruch Beg, and his companions, who traveled to Spain as the head of a delegation sent by Shah ʿAbbas I in 1600 and chose to stay and convert to the Christian faith once they arrived in Valladolid. After being baptized and rechristened Don Juan of Persia, Uruch Beg and his fellow envoys became known in Spain as the “Persian Gentlemen.”¹⁶ A few decades later we hear of four visitors from Iran who adopted the Christian faith after arriving in Rome. Three chose to stay. One, named Pietro Cesi Persiano, studied at the Collegio Urbano and requested permission from the pope to return to the East to assist the Christian mission in his native Kurdistan.¹⁷

None of these cases generated self-narratives. Don Juan might seem the exception, but his is a travelogue rather than a confession account. This leaves us with the I‘tirafnama, the “Book of Confession,” the subject of this chapter. Written by an Armenian from Isfahan by the name of Abkar who took the name ʿAli Akbar following his conversion, the I‘tirafnama is the only ego-document involving the conversion of an individual Christian in the Safavid period that has thus far come to light.¹⁸ His case, like that of António de Jesus, is clearly of the “sudden,” “road to Damascus” variant on the process of turning to another faith.

Before we proceed with a summary of the contents, followed by the translation of the first twelve pages of the narrative, it is important to put this conversion into its proper historical context, with a focus on the Armenians as subjects and the period of the reign of Shah Sulayman (1666–1694).

CONVERSION IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY IRAN

The record of the position of non- Shiʿi minorities, and particularly of Armenians in Safavid Iran, is mixed and replete with paradox. According to the rules of Shiʿism, which precluded a lack of direct contact between Shiʿis and non- Shiʿis, kuffar were formally all najis (ritually impure). Yet the rules of najasat were all but ignored by the Safavid political elite, and Shah ʿAbbas I’s reign especially shows a clear pattern of tolerance consonant with that ruler’s secular will to power as well as his presumed open-mindedness as expressed in his overall demeanor vis-à-vis his Christian subjects—which reportedly went so far as to allow former Christians who had converted to Islam to return to their faith.19

This toleration was both instrumental and conditional. Curious by nature, Shah ʿAbbas had a manifest interest in Christianity, its rituals, and iconography, but his stance vis-à-vis his Christian subjects and the Catholic missionaries that he allowed to operate in his realm was ultimately politically motivated and above all informed by a desire to maintain good relations with the Christian powers of Europe as potential allies against the Ottoman Turks. That examples of royal toleration and benevolence are interspersed with well-documented instances of repression of non- Shiʿis, including forced conversion and the execution of converts, in this period is thus hardly surprising. Like all early modern Iranian rulers, the shah faced pressure from clerical forces averse to “ritually polluted” non- Shiʿis and wary of the influx of Caucasian ghulams into the Safavid realm. A decision to mollify the ʿulamaʾ may have been the basis of the decree that ʿAbbas issued not long before his death, giving any dhimmi apostate the right to inherit the “possession of the property of all his relatives, up to the seventh generation.”²⁰

But Shah ʿAbbas clearly knew how to keep the ʿulamaʾ at bay and never just bowed to their demands. His real motivation for the instances of forced conversion appears to have been a growing frustration with Europe’s lack of seriousness in fighting the Ottomans, anger at missionary attempts to convert the Julfan Armenians (almost of all of whom adhered to the Gregorian branch) to the Catholic faith and thus bring them under papal jurisdiction, and suspicion about their loyalty to the Safavid house.²¹ All this became urgent in the period from 1618 to 1622, a time when the shah’s relations with Portugal rapidly deteriorated, when he had given up on the Europeans as partners in the anti-Ottoman struggle, and when he began to see the European men of the cloth and his own Armenians as potentially a “fifth column,” a vanguard of the Portuguese or any other Christian power. In 1621, fed up with empty European promises with regard to military assistance against the Ottomans and frustrated with the arrogant behavior of the Portuguese in the Gulf, ʿAbbas turned against Iran’s Christian population. He launched a campaign to convert the Armenians in and around Isfahan other than the economically useful Julfans. The few Muslims who were known to have converted to Christianity bore the brunt of his displeasure. A group of five apostates were captured while trying to reach the Portuguese-controlled isle of Hormuz, to be put to death in gruesome ways at the shah’s orders, by impalement, disembowlment or stoning. A year later the crisis in Luso-Iranian relations would culminate in a combined Anglo-Iranian operation to oust the Portuguese from Hormuz.²²

Shah ʿAbbas’s grandson and heir, Shah Safi I (r. 1629–1642), continued his predecessor’s general policy of toleration vis-à-vis Iran’s Christians. In 1633 he forbade all state officials to oppress Armenian merchants, admonishing them not to obstruct their movements in the country and to lend them assistance without unduly taxing them.23 Six years later, the conclusion of the Peace of Zuhab (Qasr-i Shirin) with the Ottomans definitively obviated any need to accommodate Western powers and their agents, the Catholic missionaries. This made the Safavid less interested in courting the latter, yet the altered conditions are not reflected in any marked upswing in pressure on domestic Christians.

The reign of Safi’s successor, Shah ʿAbbas II (1642–1666), offers a mixed picture with regard to official attitudes vis-à-vis religious minorities, similar to conditions under his great-grandfather. By all accounts, the shah was personally no less tolerant than his two forebears and not inclined to restrict the religious freedoms of the People of the Book, including their freedom of conscience.²⁴ Like them, he also resisted pressure from the clerics. As the French merchant-traveler Jean Chardin put it, but for the shah and his secular entourage, the ʿulamaʾ long ago would have forced all of Iran’s Christians and Jews to convert to Islam.²⁵ Yet especially in his later years, Shah ʿAbbas II was either unwilling or unable to prevent the issuance of restrictions on non- Shiʿi Muslims. The restrictions that were issued mostly appear to have been composed at the initiative of hardline grand viziers. Some of these may have acted out of conviction in their antiminority policies; other perhaps sought to establish their credentials as representatives of a religiously inspired state; all were beholden to clerical factions in the ruling order. The first, Mirza Muhammad “Saru” Taqi (in office 1634–1645), constantly urged (albeit unsuccessfully) the two shahs he served to enact measures against Christians. Muhammad Taqi’s successor, Khalifa Sultan (Sultan al-ʿUlama, in office 1645–1654), a cleric who combined an aversion to Christians with a fascination with the tenets of their faith, had Armenian artisans and manufacturers in Isfahan evicted to make room for Muslims, and suggested that Christians and Jews wear distinctive clothing.²⁶ Conditions hardly improved under the vizierate of Muhammad Beg (1654–1661).²⁷ In 1657, in a measure reportedly instigated by mullahs concerned about ritual impurity, Isfahan’s Armenians were forced to decamp to New Julfa, across the river.²⁸ The same period saw a reaffirmation of the inheritance law.²⁹ In the Safavid-controlled Caucasus and especially in Nakhjavan, this is said to have resulted in much harassment of Armenians, including mounting pressure to convert.³⁰

The financial wherewithal of the Armenians, or at least that of the community of New Julfa, enabled them to disburse enough money to prevent implementation of several of the above measures and proposals. Besides, the Julfans could fall back on influential support in the person of the queen mother, who served as the patron of New Julfa and enjoyed parts of its income. In short, “the Armenian Christian communities held enough political bargaining power and economic resources for safety and welfare to prevent massive defections from their ranks.”³¹ Iran’s Jews, totaling perhaps 100,000, had no such institutional backing.³² Scattered all over Iran—from Tabriz and Isfahan to Lar, and from Hamadan to Kong—they were given a choice between conversion and expulsion in this period. In response, they, too, spent money to avert the worst, but being less resourceful than the Armenians, many turned anusim, pretending to convert, and hundreds were reportedly killed as well.³³

During the reigns of Shah Sulayman (1666–1694) and Shah Sultan Husayn (1694–1722), the position of Iran’s Armenians—indeed for all non- Shiʿi Muslims—markedly deteriorated. This was mostly a function of weaker rulers who were less able (or willing) to stand up to the voices of intolerance in their entourage, either from hardline clerics or from zealous and opportunistic administrators. As before, only in intensified form, growing impecuniousness on the part of the state played a role as well in the form of growing fiscal pressure on vulnerable “minorities.”

The sources offer various examples of Armenian conversion under Shah Sulayman. Chardin relates the story of how in September 1666 the kalantar (mayor) of New Julfa apostatized. The nazir (superintendent of the royal household) attended the circumcision ceremony with a brother and a confidant of the shah, after which the fresh convert was given a new name, Muhammad Piri. Following the performance of this ritual, a dinner was organized in his honor. Yet the food was brought from the home of Agha Zaman, the supervisor of the queen mother’s household, because the family at large had not converted, rendering their home ritually unclean. One month later the same Agha Zaman gave Muhammad Piri his daughter in marriage.34

Five years later, in 1671, Shah Sulayman is said to have persuaded Khaja Alapiri, who at that point served as kalantar of New Julfa, to convert. He apostatized in front of the shah, the grand vizier, Shaykh ʿAli Khan, and the Shaykh al-Islam of Isfahan, Muhammad Baqir Sabzavari, and in return received a rich robe of honor from the ruler.³⁵ Another high-profile apostasy took place in May of the same year following a dispute between an Armenian priest from the village of Peria near Isfahan, named Yovhan, who had gone to Istanbul to be consecrated bishop without the permission of Bishop Stepanos Julayeci of Peria. Upon his return to the Safavid capital, Yovhan escaped punishment by seeking refuge with the Shaykh al-Islam. He next apostatized with fifteen coreligionists who were triumphantly paraded through town by the Muslims of Isfahan. He next brought charges against the Armenian Church and its clergy. The result was the imprisonment of the bishop of New Julfa, the destruction of the newly built monastery of Hazar Jarib, and the imposition of a heavy tax on New Julfa’s churches.³⁶

Later years saw more examples of such pressure. In 1678 the ʿulamaʾ of Isfahan declared the Armenians and Jews responsible for the terrible drought that afflicted large parts of Iran that year. Several rabbis had their bellies slit, and the Jews of Isfahan at large only avoided a similar fate by paying 600 tumans. The first report about the enforcement of the rules of najasat was in 1683. Early that year, Aslams Beg, the nephew of Mansur Khan, the qullar-aqasi (head of the slave regiments), and a Georgian ghulam, was appointed darugha, mayor of Isfahan. Known as an enemy of the Armenians, he issued a ban on non-Muslims leaving their houses and appearing in public at times of rain lest they pollute believers. The ban was rescinded after the wealthy merchants of New Julfa sent a delegation to the queen mother.³⁷ Such bans would be reissued several more times in later years, especially under Shah Sultan Husayn.

CONVERSION: MOTIVATIONS, ADVANTAGES, AND DRAWBACKS

Vera Moreen, discussing the issue of Jewish conversion in the late Safavid period, usefully distinguishes three possible motives for the decision to switch faiths on the part of individuals or groups: (1) a conviction in the truth of another revelation; (2) an attraction to the material benefits conversions might provide; and (3) a fear of actual or threatened persecution.38 As Noel Malcolm puts it talking about the sixteenth-century Christian-Muslim encounter in the Mediterranean, “ to modern minds, the term ‘conversion’ suggests a strenuous process of changing one’s theological beliefs, which may not be applicable in many of these cases.”³⁹ Most of the examples given in the above outline suggest that in late Safavid Iran conviction was not the primary motive for those who adopted Islam. Indeed, the great majority of conversions seem to have been less than voluntary, caused by intimidation and fear or motivated by opportunism or venality.

Many Christians, in Safavid Iran as elsewhere in Muslim-ruled environments, over time converted to evade the jiz’ya, the poll tax levied on dhimmis. Conversion served as protection against other forms of (mis)appropriation as well. In many cases, Christians are said to have adopted Islam because their daughters had been taken to the shah’s harem and married off to lower court officials who then claimed the property of the fathers for being the only legitimate heirs.⁴⁰ The acrimonious disputes arising from the split within the Armenian community between Gregorians and Catholics were often the cause of friction that might lead to conversion as a way of seeking protection against punishment from the Muslim authorities. An example is the kalantar of New Julfa in the 1680s, a Gregorian Armenian who worked against the wealthy Armenian-Catholic Shahrimanean brothers and who helped carry off Armenian girls to the shah’s harem.⁴¹ At times, apostasy also served as a shield against utter destitution. Nicolas Sanson, a French Capuchin missionary who resided in Iran during the reign of Shah Sulayman, recounts how the shah allowed a group of Armenians, who had converted out of financial hardship to escape the burden of the jiz’ya, to return to their original faith, forgiving them their debt.⁴² The French Jesuit Jean-Baptiste de la Maze, traveling through Qazvin in late 1698, tells us that the town was home to some thirty Armenian families who eked out a living. During de la Maze’s stay, six Armenian cobblers apostatized because of a ban the shah had issued against Muslims doing business with Christian artisans.⁴³

Money was at stake in the vast majority of conversion cases. Several observers note how Armenians would dodge the inheritance laws by selling their property to a Muslim, either maintaining ownership or with the understanding the latter would resell it to their sons.44 The archbishop of Nakhjavan in 1638 mentioned the lure of money as a major reason for the high rate of conversions among the local Armenian population.⁴⁵ Often, darker motives involving greed and revenge were at work. In 1621, the Shaykh al-Islam of Isfahan, Baha’ al-Din ʿAmili, issued a fatwa stipulating that a convert to Islam should inherit the property of all of his relatives up to the seventh degree.⁴⁶ Shah ʿAbbas I confirmed this ordinance in 1628, shortly before his death. Some twenty-five years later it was estimated that about 50,000 Christians had abandoned their faith and adopted Islam to lay their hands on their relatives’ wealth.⁴⁷ In 1664 the French king, Louis XIV, wrote a letter to Shah ʿAbbas II in which he sought to have the decree revoked, but this request was not successful.⁴⁸ Engelbert Kaempfer, writing in the mid-1680s, drew attention to what he considered the shameful habit of Armenians to convert to Shiʿi Islam in order to appropriate not only their fathers’ inheritance but the property of the entire extended family. This practice, Kaempfer claimed, gave rise to endless legal battles. These were, however, mostly fruitless because the plaintiff was legally held to have his family relationship confirmed by fifty witnesses who had never been found to lie. This proved to be nearly impossible, and the Safavid courts invariably rejected such cases.⁴⁹

The Armenian chronicler Arakel of Tabriz similarly refers to Armenian apostates who “give bribes to the Muslims and use them as witnesses against other Christians, dragging them in front of Muslim judges and demanding anything they can imagine.” These judges tended to side with the apostates, allowing the latter to extract money and property from their former coreligionists.⁵⁰ Chardin confirms such bias with his story about Muhammad Quli Khan, the divanbegi (chief justice) in the late reign of ʿAbbas II. Claiming that this magistrate would have exterminated all Armenians were it not for the shah’s protection, Chardin insists that he condemned practically all Armenians brought before his bench while hardly listening to their case, saying that it was enough for an Armenian to be brought before the court for his head to be smashed. One understands the relief the Christians of Isfahan experienced when he died in 1666 and his successor proved to be radically different.⁵¹ Yet conditions did not improve under Shah Sulayman.

ABKAR’S CONVERSION

The I‘tirafnama is not a scholarly work. Abkar was a merchant, and Persian was most likely not his native language. The text is rather basic, factual, and replete with spelling mistakes, suggesting little formal education. In the words of Alberto Tiburcio, it reads more like a picaresque novella than a full-fledged autobiography.⁵²

In probing ʿAli Akbar’s narrative as a conversion story, we may cite David Wasserstein’s observation that autobiographical accounts by converts “tend to be self-serving, and, like many texts of interreligious polemic, have more the character of set-piece literary constructs than of genuine spiritual journeying.”⁵³

The text as it appears to us seems straightforward enough. ʿAli Akbar sets the tone for his conversion with a graphic reference to the Gospels that in its initially scathing tone is worthy of a religious man turned atheist: “He went to the church and the priest quoting the Gospel told him that God saw that I was hungry and He fed me; I was naked, and He clothed me; I was sick, and He cured me; I was in prison, and He set me free. Yet, no one feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, comes to assistance of the sick and cures them; and no one sets those in prison free.”

ʿAli Akbar’s narrative also hews to the conversion model by being filled with dozens of dreams.54 Dreams, of course, are as ubiquitous as they are esteemed in Islam. Dreams as conduits to the divine existed in ancient Egypt, the classical Greek world, as well as in early Christianity. But only in Islam did they become separated from divination and acquire a sacral meaning, probably due to being so closely associated with the experience of the Prophet himself, who is said to have been in a dreamlike state for six months prior to receiving his first revelation.⁵⁵ Dreams in Islam indeed may be seen as a continuation of revelation in the absence of prophetic revelation. In the words of Rainer Brunner, they are an “acknowledged partial substitute for prophecy, enabling the dreamer to partake in divine inspiration and making sure that this illumination…continues to find its way into the world after the disappearance of the seal of the prophets.”⁵⁶ As Annemarie Schimmel puts it: “the greatest boon that one can hope for in this life [is] the vision of the Prophet in a dream. Such dreams play an extraordinary rôle in Islamic piety to this day. They are always true, for Satan can never assume the Prophet’s form.”⁵⁷

Shiʿism knows a particularly rich oneiric tradition whose relevance remains virtually unbroken until today.⁵⁸ At no time was this relevance greater than in the Safavid period. Indeed, among the Safavids, dreams in which either the Prophet or Imam ʿAli appears played an important role, beginning with the founder of the Sufi order, Shaykh Safi al-Din, whose dreams are said to have foretold the glorious future of his family. Safavid shahs, most notably Ismaʿil (r. 1501–1524) and Tahmasb (r. 1524–1576) continued to have dreams either presaging their preordained role as the representative of the Imam, his protection, victory in battle, or explaining away defeat and justifying the execution of family members.⁵⁹ We have a few examples of Safavid dreams that, like those of ʿAli Akbar, involve conversion. One is the case of Luarsab, brother of Gurgin Mirza, who in 1688 converted to Islam on his way to Kirman after seeing Imam ʿAli in a dream.⁶⁰

Notwithstanding the outward piety, it is impossible to gauge the true motivation and intent of Abkar’s conversion from his text, which does not provide any clues as to whether his decision to adopt Islam was a sincere one or one of convenience. By the same token, it remains unclear what Abkar’s motive was in writing his narrative (in Persian) and who his intended readers were.

There are no indications that Abkar converted for monetary gain. Nor does mere convenience seem to have been at play. On the contrary, by converting, Abkar alienated himself from his original community, incurring the wrath and resentment of its members. The New Julfan trading community, in particular, which conducted its international trade on the basis of religiously underpinned trust, would have ostracized him. His relatives in Venice indeed spurned Abkar, denying him lodging when they learned of his conversion. He was also arrested in retaliation for the reported abuse of Christians in the Safavid realm. Freed from prison through his brother’s intercession, he fled to Istanbul, but there he got into trouble as well. The Ottoman Janissaries suspected him of being a rafidi (heretic), that is, a Shiʿi. He thus returned to Iran.

In the absence of any contrary information, we should therefore assume that ʿAli Akbar adopted Islam out of conviction. We may get a little closer to the origins of the event by situating it in its proper context, which is that of the above-mentioned growing pressure on non-Muslims to convert. As he himself indicates, Abkar converted during the reign of Shah Sulayman. From his reference to that ruler as “maghfur” (deceased), it is equally clear that he wrote his work under Sulayman’s successor, Shah Sultan Husayn.61

The year in which Abkar became a Muslim remains unstated, but it can be pinpointed with some precision from various references in the text. One is a lapse of fourteen to fifteen months between his conversion and the arrival of the news of the conversion of the above-mentioned Aqa Piri at the time when Abkar—now ʿAli Akbar—resided in Izmir. As stated, the conversion of this magistrate had taken place in 1673, clearly after Abkar’s conversion. Given a traveling time from Isfahan to Izmir of some two months, the news probably reached the Armenian community in the latter city in the same year. Since Abkar headed for the Ottoman Empire shortly after he became a Muslim, it is reasonable to assume that his own conversion took place in 1672 as well.⁶²

This supposition, in addition to the occurrence of a few additional dates in the I‘tirafnama, allows us to further follow the trajectory. ʿAli Akbar states that he stayed in Izmir for nine months, and subsequently set sail for Venice, where he arrived four months later—with no explanation for the long duration of the voyage. This would take us to c. 1675. He then reports how he remained in Venice and the lands of Christianity for seven to eight years, bringing us to c. 1683–84. Such a time frame is confirmed in the two instances where he states that eleven years had gone by since his conversion.⁶³

Just as in the case of the above-mentioned kalantar, or perhaps as part of the same event, Abkar’s conversion became an official affair. When it came to the attention of the shah, the latter ordered the quarter of ʿAbbasabad to be illuminated for forty days. After the forty days had passed, no one was allowed to mount a horse in the quarter. Only the newly converted Armenian jadid al-Islam was put on a horse and brought to the ʿAli Qapu.

TRANSLATION

The I‘tirafnama of Abkar (‘Ali Akbar) Armani

I swear that if I lie God should curse me; and let those who are hypocrites and heretics be the object of God’s wrath and the execration of the prophet if they lie. I went to the church. The priest told me that the Gospels tell us that God said: I was hungry and he fed me; I was naked, and he clothed me; I was sick, and he came to visit me; I was imprisoned; and he comforted me.

And he said that I am not talking about myself, but about a group that is hungry and no one fed them; and they were naked, and no one clothed them; and they were sick, and no one came to visit them; they were imprisoned, and no one comforted them. And he says that he who clothed a naked person clothed me, and he who fed a hungry person fed me, and he who went to see a sick person, went to see me; and he who comforted someone gave me comfort; and he who has done all these things will find reward with me.

When I heard these words, my grandfather was still alive. It was his habit and principle to lock the door behind which foodstuff and such were stored, and I went and opened the door and took out as much bread and other food as I could and gave it to the poor. My grandfather, my grandmother, and my parents scolded me saying that I should not do such a thing; I responded by saying that God had ordered this and that I gave this in the name of God; you will forgive me for this.

While I was still an unbeliever, I heard from my grandmother and my relatives that at the time when my mother was pregnant with me, she would go up on the roof to sleep. She then saw something and fainted. She called my father, my grandmother, and other relatives and when they came upstairs, she was unconscious. They brought her back to consciousness and asked her what had happened. She responded by saying that she had gone to sleep and saw how a light hanging from the sky by a hair descended, struck her belly, and went up again. She had fainted from dread. When I heard these words from my relatives, I asked my mother personally. She said that they spoke the truth, that this happened while she was pregnant with me.

When I was about twelve years old, my maternal grandmother who was 115 years of age one day fell from a high spot, and for twenty-seven days she did not say a word or eat anything, causing people to write her off. On day twenty-seven she called me, took my hand, and told me: “Abkar, you will become Muslim,” and after uttering these words she expired. My mother and my aunt cursed her for not having died sooner.

At the time when I was still an unbeliever, I used to complain to God, asking him not to send me to hell. While my people always engaged in gambling and similar activities, I never followed them in this, and my thoughts were always with God and the fires of hell. At that time, when they brought the news that my father had died in India and our household was in mourning, I had a dream on Thursday night in which a thunderous voice came down from heaven. I got up to see where the sound was coming from. But I could neither move forward nor backward. I looked and saw a lit candle suspended from the sky with oil inside of it. Once again I heard a thunderous sound coming from the heavens. I looked and saw the sky splitting open. A horse made of light descended from the sky; it went around the house once, and when it reached the candle I was so overcome that I started trembling. The horse next brought out its tongue and lit the candle and from the rays of that horse the door and the walls and the trees were illuminated and from the candle something fell on my head, and try as I might, I could not move my head in any direction.

An hour later another sound, even more thunderous than the last one, came from the sky. I looked and saw how a person made of light descended from the sky and mounted the horse, which lit the world with its rays in such a way that aside from this light I wasn’t able to make out anything. When the person came near me, he told me to give him my hand. While I was frightened, he took my hand, and while being bent over he put me on his back. I implored him to tell me who he was that he had taken my hand. He replied that he was a light coming from God who has created the world and that he had given me a place on his back so no harm should come to me. As soon as he said this I awoke from my sleep. I went to tell the story to my grandmother, and she went to tell my grandfather the dream that Abkar had seen.

One week later on Thursday night I again had a dream. I was sleeping in a courtyard with my head facing the qibla, and I looked at the sky. I heard a strange sound coming from the sky, and I grabbed the back of my head with both my hands, and however much I tried, I was unable to lift them up and put them somewhere else. A great fear and trembling engulfed me. I looked and saw how an infinite multitude of angels had lined up all the way to the sky on both sides, all of them lifting up their heads in the direction of the sky.

And once again, a sound louder than before rose up. My fear intensified again. I saw how the sky was torn asunder and how a throne of light appeared and how on the throne was seated a person whose light illuminated the world, and the king, a piece of timber in his hand, got up from the throne and came to me, and I wailed and I clamored, and he touched my belly three times with the wood, and I woke up. I went to see my grandmother to tell her, and she told my grandfather, who was surprised. He said that it was a good sign. That same hour he sent for and brought out a horned billy goat, took it to the church, and slaughtered it. They then brought the blood and smeared it on the door of the house.

When I was seventeen or eighteen I had a dream in which I went to the church that my grandfather had built and wished to go through a door when I came near the courtyard where my grandfather was buried, and saw that the stone that had been placed on his tomb had broken into two pieces. I angrily asked myself who could have broken my grandfather’s epitaph. When I came closer, I saw my grandfather, with closed eyes, asleep, dressed in Islamic garb and with a white new turban on his head, his two hands folded on his chest, in the one a wooden stick and in the other a book. I asked myself why my grandfather was dressed in Muslim clothes. When he heard me, he opened his eyes and looked at me. He told me, “Son, come closer.” I told him, “You died; you want to take me with you too?” He said, “No, don’t be afraid,” and he got up and took my hand and put his own hand on my shoulder, and said, “By the right of the creator who has created 17,000 worlds, among all my children you will be the only one who will go to heaven. You will go to heaven and no one else will.” I woke up scared. Three months after I had seen this dream, I entered the circle of Islam.

My conversion to Islam unfolded in this fashion. One day a shaykh by the name of Mu’min sent one of his disciples who had risen to a high spiritual rank [to have merited the status of khalifa] and invited me to the house of the governor of the district of ʿAbbas Abad. He [the disciple] then began to missionize. I answered him rhetorically, “It is quite enough that you have become a Muslim, you now want to convert me to Islam?” After this exchange Shaykh Mu’min said that if there is any place in the Gospels where this faith is called the truthful faith, you should become Muslim. I answered by saying that if the Gospels maintain that Islam is the truth, I will become Muslim. And I will not return home. Shaykh Mu’min got up and brought out a copy of the Gospels, opened it and gave it to me, telling me to read what was written.

I read how it was written in the Gospels that the twelve apostles decided to go to the lake to fish. They brought a net with them to do so. When they reached the bank of the lake, while sitting in their boat, they threw their net to the left. They did not catch any fish. Suddenly a voice rose saying, “Oh Peter, throw your net to the right.” And this Peter, whose rank was higher than that of the other eleven apostles, looked up and saw the Lord Jesus in the middle of the lake, and threw himself in the water. The Lord Jesus shouted at them that he should not throw himself in the water since he would drown. But he had already jumped, so that the Lord Jesus came near him, took his hand, and pulled him out of the water and got him back to the boat.

And John the author of the Gospel sat at the feet of the Lord Jesus bareheaded, and the Lord put his hand on his head and John began to cry. The Lord Jesus asked him why he was crying. John said, “Because you will be going to heaven soon and did not ask me for anything with regard to prayer and veneration.” The Lord Jesus said that in prayer one should recite the fatiha (the first chapter of the Qurʾan) three times, and John began to weep again. And the Lord Jesus asked him, “Why do you weep?” He replied, “Please stay here for a while longer.”

The Lord said that, “until I go God Almighty will not send Makhitarist, which in Arabic means the Paraclete (Holy Spirit) and the Paraclete is the blessed name of Mohammad.” When I saw this passage in the Gospel, I said that I wouldn’t go home and that I would become Muslim here and now, and I remained at the home of the mayor of ʿAbbas Abad.64

The mayor made a request to (the since deceased) Shah Sulayman, and that just ruler ordered that ʿAbbas Abad should be illuminated for a period of forty days and that afterward other than the new convert to Islam no one should be allowed to mount a horse. When the forty days had passed, I was put on a horse and taken to the Ali Qapu, where the fatiha was read. Afterward I was taken to the mosque and there, too, the fatiha was read, and from there I went to the house of Mirza ʿAli Riza—may God have mercy on him—and once again he administered upon me the twofold declaration of the Islamic faith.⁶⁵ I then returned to ʿAbbas Abad.

The Reaction of the Armenians of Julfa to Abkar’s Conversion

The priests and magistrates of Julfa came and mumbled to find out how come I had forsaken the Lord Jesus and gone off into a futile direction. I responded by saying that this was not a path of futility because I had read in the Gospel that this faith is based on the truth and that I therefore had adopted it. They said that what the Lord Jesus had said concerned the Holy Spirit; but I said that the first meaning was the Paraclete, and only later the Holy Spirit had been introduced. Still, I came to doubt whether the faith of the Lord Jesus wasn’t better after all; and I cried secretly day and night about why I had chosen Islam. I prayed to the Mother Mary, and I cried.

One night I had a dream that I was at home standing in the direction of the sun, with no one around, and I looked up at the sky facing the sun and all of a sudden a voice came down from the sky. I was filled with tremendous fear. I tried to escape but was unable to move. I screamed. I saw how my little aunt appeared. She said, “Why do you scream?” I said, “However much I try to leave, I am caught and cannot move.” She then faded from my sight.

As soon as she had left the sky split open. And a nebulous shade of light became visible and a bunch of angels were holding the edges of the cloud, with one hand the cloud and with one hand a lit candle whose light illuminated the world, and in melodious voices they sang something in the Arabic language that made me dissolve. In the middle of the cloud Lady Mary appeared from head to chest with a crown made of light on her head; and the angels brought down the cloud and placed it on top of the wall of the house. An immense fear engulfed me. I wanted to flee but could not move. I saw that there was no way out. I began to wail. I saw how from the midst of that cloud and angels, candle in hand, she came toward me, telling me to take the candle. I was afraid and told her not to come near because I was afraid. She told me not to be afraid and gave me the candle, and I asked her who this light-adorned lady was. She said, “Lady Mary.” She said, “This faith is based on the truth and that you should not be sad.” I then awoke from my sleep.

I told my relatives who came to see me about this dream. In response they said that a dream doesn’t mean anything, that it is the work of the devil, and that I shouldn’t give it any credence. They threw my heart into doubt and, distraught, I cried day and night, wishing I would not go to hell. All this happened in the house of Shaykh Mahdi in the Bagh-i Jannat.

I spent three months in this state of distress. The doctor prescribed a phlebotomy. My mother came to me just at the time when the doctor had cut my veins in seven places because no blood had emerged and I had just fainted. When my mother saw this, she started tearing at her face and left, and when Shaykh Mahdi saw this, he began to cry and went and brought the Qurʾan, and he made me face the qibla and put my head on his knee and over my head started reciting the Qurʾan.

While existing in the world of the unconscious, I found myself in the house of Khaja Piri, on the upper floor, without anyone else being around. I was afraid and wanted to come down via the ladder. Having come halfway, I saw a luminous person in white clothes who said to me, “Son, come near me.” I asked him who he was. He said, “Come and I will tell you who I am.” When I came down, he told me, “I am Muhammad in whom you have put your faith,” and he put his blessed hand on my forehead, and blew on it and told me, “I will heal you. Get immersed in the faith of Islam that you have adopted.” And I found healing and came to, and at that moment they brought out my mother and she was happy to see me in my state.

The Voyage of ʿAli Akbar to Venice and Other Lands of the Franks

After two months I went back home and my relatives urged me to go to Izmir on a business trip to visit my great uncle. I accepted and departed, and when I arrived in Izmir fourteen or fifteen months had lapsed since the day I had seen the Lord Mohammad in my dreams and a messenger from Julfa arrived in those parts. He brought the news that Khaja Piri had converted to Islam, and when I heard this, I said to myself that the fact that I had seen the Prophet in my dreams was the reason why Khaja Piri had turned Muslim as well.

I stayed in Izmir for a period of nine months. One day my grand uncle told me that he would send me to Venice. I had heard people talk about Venice. I accepted and set out by ship. I reached Venice after a period of four months and stayed and traveled there and in other corners of the Frankish world for seven or eight years, learning various skills from them. And when I had perfected the skills I had learned, I wished to go home.

My relatives and the magistrates of New Julfa has written to their agents in the West that if ʿAli Akbar intends to return to these lands, he will be slandered and should be either killed or imprisoned, so he can’t come. Someone by the name of Aqa Mal, the agent of one of the magistrates of Julfa, and one, the agent of Avadik Javahiri whose name was Aswazadar, and a person named Safar Jadri; these three wrote to the Doge of Venice that a resident of Julfa from the realm of the Iranian ruler was staying here, someone who on several occasions had called Jesus unworthy and who had killed several Christians and was a thief. The ruler had ordered my arrest while I, unaware of all this, was watching a spectacle in the square during one of their holidays.

It is their custom that they bring a black cloth for someone who is condemned to death and put it over his head, after which they grab his arms and feet and turn him upside down. So sixty judicial officers snuck up on me and threw a black cloth over my head and carried me away like that, and incarcerated me in a prison for those who are condemned to death. The prison has seven levels and each one has an iron door, and they threw me in the lower level. I didn’t have anything to eat for seven days, and cried. There was a hole in the prison through which they finally handed me something after which they closed the hole again.

I spent thirty-seven days without knowing if it was day or night; that’s how dark it was. It is the custom of the unbelievers to keep their prisoners locked up for up to forty days; and if they die, so be it; and if they don’t, they are brought out to be executed. I got my news from the ones who brought me food to eat; they told me it had been thirty-seven days.

And at the same time that I didn’t know if it was day or night I had a dream in which I saw the Prophet of God in the same way as I had seen him in the house of Khaja Piri. He came to me and called me twice, “ ‘Ali Akbar.” In the midst of the dream, I opened my eyes in the middle of the prison and saw His Lordship [Muhammad] who said, “Don’t be afraid, by God Almighty, after one-hundred days, I will free you from these infidels….”

On the fortieth day I saw how they opened the door to the prison. I was taken out and brought before a tribunal. When the eyes of the magistrate fell on me, he excused himself and asked for forgiveness that they had imprisoned me, an innocent man, and that I had almost been executed. The verdict was that the group that had imprisoned me would be arrested, but they had fled. Now that the suspicion was gone, I chose a house in which to reside.

It is the custom in these parts to erect buildings of more than one level. I took a room on the upper level to see if I would be able to apply the skills I had learned. The owner of the house was a servant of the ruler, and his wife and daughter were with me so that I didn’t have to be alone.

The city of Venice has deep canals running through its alleyways so that they make deliveries by boat rather than with mules; and the canals have sidewalks on both sides so the people can move by walking. Mules are hardly seen on these sidewalks, and of Muslims there is not a trace.

The wife of the house owner left her daughter with me and went out. And I sat there and worked while the girl did her needle work. I was working holding a pen in my hand when I heard a sweet voice coming down from the heavens. I threw the pen down and listened to what was the call to prayer. I wondered where this voice was coming from since there were no Muslims around. I stood up and opened the door that opened toward the sea.

By the Oneness of God and the message of Muhammad the Prophet of Allah and by the truth of the immaculate Imams I swear that I opened that door and heard that sound coming from the heavens belonging to a person who recited the call to prayer from beginning to end. I was stunned, fell down, and fainted. The girl started screaming and the neighbors came around and her mother arrived as well. They brought me back to consciousness; the wife of the owner of the house asked what had happened, and the girl confirmed that she, too, had heard the voice and how I had gotten up and opened the door, had looked around, and had fallen and fainted, and how upon her screams people had gathered; and I recounted the good tidings of Islam in front of the woman.

NOTES

1. Book-length studies include Marc David Baer, Honored by the Glory of Islam. Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Tijana Krstíc, Contested Conversions to Islam. Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011); Selim Deringil, Conversion and Apostasy in the Late Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); and Sarah Bowen Savant, The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran: Tradition, Memory, and Conversion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Also see the essays in Mercedes Garcia-Arena, ed., Conversions Islamiques: Identités religieuses en Islam méditerranéens/Islamic Conversions. Religious Identities in Mediterranean Islam (Paris: Maisonneuve, 2002).

2. See Richard Bulliet’s pioneering Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press 1979); Michael Morony, “The Age of Conversions: A Reassessment,” in Conversion and Continuity. Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands, Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries, ed. M. Gervers and J. Bikhazi (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1990), 135–50; and Andrew D. Magnusson, “Zoroastrian Fire Temples and the Islamisation of Sacred Space in Early Islamic Iran,” in Islamisation: Comparative Perspectives from History, ed. A. C. S. Peacock (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), 102–17.

3. Mehrdad Amanat, Jewish Identities in Iran: Resistance and Conversion to Islam and the Baha’i Faith (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011). For the Safavid period, see Kathryn Babaian, Mystics, Monarchs, and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 428–29, 439–73.

4. For the evolving relationship between power and religion in Safavid Iran, see Rula Abisaab, Converting Persia: Religion and Power in the Safavid Empire (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004). The Ottoman ambassador Ahmad Dürri Efendi, who visited Iran in 1721, shortly before the fall of Isfahan to the Afghans, famously claimed that one third of Iran’s population still adhered to the Sunni faith. See Ahmad Dourry Efendy, Relation de Dourry Efendy, ambassadeur de la Porthe Otomane auprès du roy de Perse, ed. L. Langlès, trans. M. de Fiennes, (Paris: B. J. Sajou, 1810), 54.

5. Hasan Bik Rumlu, Ahsan al-tavarikh, ed. ʿAbbas al-Husayn Nava’i (Tehran: Intisharat-i Zarin, 1357/1976), 492; Eskandar Beg Monshi, History of Shah ʿAbbas the Great, ed. and trans. Roger Savory, 2 vols. paginated as one (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1978), 1116.

6. Pietro della Valle, “Informatione della Georgia data alla Santita di nostro Signore Papa Urbano VIII,” in J. Thévenot, Relations de divers voyages curieux qui n’ont point esté’ publiées…, vol. 1 (Paris: Jacques Langlois, 1663), 8.

7. Engelbert Kaempfer, Exotic Attractions in Persia, 1684-1688. Travels & Observations, trans. and ed. Willem Floor and Colette Ouahes (Washington D.C.: Mage, 2018), 144.

8. Edmund Herzig, “The Armenian Merchants of New Jolfa, Isfahan: A Study in Pre-Modern Asian Trade” (PhD diss., University of Oxford, 1991), 80–81. Whatever the true number, it pales before the number of Christians in Ottoman urban centers, beginning with the capital, Istanbul. The seventeenth-century traveler Evliya Celebi famously gave Galata, the “non-Muslim” part of Istanbul, a population of 200,000 “infidels” as opposed to 60,000 Muslims.

9. Vladimir Minorsky, “Introduction,” in Tadhkirat al-Muluk, A Safavid Administrative Manual (1940; repr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 19.

10. For individual cases of ghulams converting to Islam (and occasionally reverting to their original faith), see Giorgio Rota, “Conversion to Islam (and Sometimes a Return to Christianity) in Safavid Persia in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Conversion and Islam in the Early Modern Mediterranean: the Lure of the Other, ed. Claire Norton (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2017), 50–76.

11. Rota, “Conversion to Islam,” 51, 57–59.

12. See John Flannery, The Mission of the Portuguese Augustinians to Persia and Beyond (1602–1747) (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 197–238.

13. Adam Olearius, Vermehrte Newe Beschreibung der Muscowitischen und Persischen Reyse (Schleswig: Johan Holwein, 1656; repr., Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1971), 520–22.

14. Rota, “Conversion to Islam,” 59; Francis Richard, “Un augustin portugais renégat apologiste de l’Islam chiite au début du XVIIIe siècle,” Moyen Orient et Océan Indien 1 (1984), 73–85; Alberto Tiburcio Urquiola, “Convert Literature, Interreligious Polemics, and the ‘Signs of Prophethood’ Genre in Late Safavid Iran (1694–1722): The Work of ‘Ali Quli Jadid al-Islam (d. circa 1722)” (PhD diss., McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, 2014); and Alberto Tiburcio Urquiola, “Muslim-Christian Polemics and Scriptural Translation in Safavid Iran: ‘Ali-Qoli Jadid al-Eslam and His Interlocutors,” Iranian Studies 50 (2017): 247–69. For the eighteenth century, there is the example of Isma‘il Qazvini, who converted from Judaism to Christianity. See Dennis Halft, “Isma‘il Qazvini: A Twelfth/Eighteenth-Century Jewish Convert to Imami Si‘ism and His Critique of Ibn Ezra’s Commentary on the Four Kingdoms (Daniel 2:31–45),” in Senses of Scripture, Treasures of Tradition: The Bible in Arabic among Jews, Christians and Muslims, ed. M. L. Hjalm (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 280–304.

15. H. Chick, ed. and trans., A Chronicle of the Carmelites in Persia: The Safavids and the Papal Mission of the 17th and 18th Centuries, 2 vols. paginated as one (London: Spottiswood, 1939; London: I. B. Tauris, 2012), 259–60.

16. See G. Le Strange, Don Juan of Persia. A Shiʿah Catholic (1926; repr., London: Routledge, 2005). For modern studies, see Enrique García Hernán, “The Persian Gentlemen at the Spanish Court in the Early Seventeenth Century,” in Portugal the Persian Gulf and Safavid Persia, ed. Rudi Matthee and Jorge Flores (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 283–300; Enrique García Hernán, “Persian Knights in Spain: Embassies and Conversion Processes,” in The Spanish Monarchy and Safavid Persia in the Early Modern Period: Politics, War and Religion, ed. Enrique García Hernán, Jose Cutillas Ferrer, and Rudi Matthee (Madrid: Albatros, 2016), 63–98; and Beatriz Alonso Acero, “Being So Thoroughly Spanish, the Persians: Conversion and Integration During the Monarchy of Philip III,” in Hernán, Ferrer, and Matthee, The Spanish Monarchy, 99–126.

17. Angelo Michele Piemontese, Persica Vaticana. Roma e Persia tra codici e testi (Vatican City: Vatican Library, 2017), 326–29.

18. Iʿtirafnama. Ruznama-yi khatirat-i Abkar (ʿAli Akbar) Armani az jadid al-Islaman-i ʿahd-i Shah Sulayman va Shah Sultan Husayn, ed. Mansur Sifatgul (1388; Tehran: Kitabkhana, muza va markaz-i asnad-i Majlis-i Shura-yi Islami, 2009).

19. Michele Brunelli, “Sei giorni con lo Shah. Commenti sulla lettera di un viaggiatore veneziano alla corte di Abbas il Grande,” Storia Urbana 46 (2015): 134.

20. Chick, ed. and trans., A Chronicle of the Carmelites in Persia, 288. This refers to a provision in Shiʿi law according to which, in any Christian family with one single Muslim heir the latter would inherit all of the property of his relatives. This goes back to a verse in the Qurʾan (33:27), “and you inherit their lands (apostates), their homes and their property.”

21. A. Hartmann, “William of Augustine and His Times,” Analecta Augustiniana (1970): 222.

22. Monshi, History of Shah ‘Abbas, 1181–82, who claims that all converts returned to Islam, some voluntarily, others under pressure; and Chick, ed. and trans., A Chronicle of the Carmelites in Persia, 259–66, which spells out the executions in great detail. More than half a century later, the memory of this case and its violent outcome was still alive. Engelbert Kaempfer, who resided in Iran in 1684–85, claimed that sixty years earlier, several Muslims who had adopted Christianity at the instigation of the Carmelites had been executed by stoning and burning respectively impalement at the orders of Shah ʿAbbas. See Kaempfer, Exotic Attractions in Persia, 144.

23. V. A. Baiburt’ian, Armyanskaia kolonia Novoi Dzhul’fy v XVII veke (Erevan: Akademiia Nauk Armianskoi SSR, 1969), 64.

24. Jean Chardin, Voyages du Chevalier Chardin en Perse, ed. L. Langlès (Paris: Le Normant, 1810–11), 9: 514.

25. Chardin, Voyages, 6: 73–74.

26. See Rudi Matthee, “Christians in Safavid Iran,” Studies on Persianate Societies 3 (2005): 26–27; and Rudi Matthee, Persia in Crisis: The Decline of the Safavids and the Fall of Isfahan (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 185–86.

27. Chick, ed. and trans., A Chronicle of the Carmelites, 364–65; Francis Richard, Raphaël du Mans missionnnaire en Perse au XVIIe s., 2 vols. (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1995), 2: 236ff.

28. Netherlands National Archives, The Hague, VOC 1215, Willemsz., Gamron to Batavia, March 30, 1657, folder 864; Richard, ed., Raphael du Mans, 1:143.

29. Haus-Hof und Staats Archiv (Vienna), Persien 1552–1798, Karton 1.

30. Chick, ed. and trans., A Chronicle of the Carmelites, 411–12.

31. Tiburcio, “Convert Literature,” 29.

32. Chick, ed. and trans., A Chronicle of the Carmelites, 364.

33. Yusuf Sharifi, Dard-i dil-i zimma. Nigarish bar zindigani-yi ijtimaʿi-yi aqaliyatha-yi mazhabi dar avakhir-i ʿasr-i Safavi (Los Angeles: Ketab Corp., 2009), 38–39; and Vera Moreen, Iranian Jewry’s Hour of Peril and Heroism: A Study of Babai Ibn Lutf’s Chronicle (1616–1662) (New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1987), 94ff.

34. Chardin, Voyages, 3: 165–66.

35. Vazken S. Ghougassian, The Emergence of the Armenian Diocese of New Julfa in the Seventeenth Century (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 158–59.

36. Chardin, Voyages, 3: 165–66; Richard, Raphaël du Mans, 1: 82–83; Ghougassian, Emergence of the Armenian Diocese, 108–09, 158–59.

37. Netherlands National Archives, VOC 1373, Van Heuvel, Gamron to Batavia, April 19, 1683, folder 883v.

38. Vera B. Moreen, “The Problems of Conversion among Iranian Jews in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Iranian Studies 19 (1986): 216.

39. Noel Malcolm, Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits and Spies in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 58. Richard Eaton calls this the “modern Protestant model” of conversion, arguing that it cannot be applied to the growth of Islam in the Indian Subcontinent. See Richard M. Eaton, “Reconsidering ‘Conversion to Islam’ in Indian History,” in Islamisation: Comparative Perspectives from History, ed. A. C. S. Peacock (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), 379.

40. Chick, ed. and trans., A Chronicle of the Carmelites, 409–10.

41. Chick, ed. and trans., A Chronicle of the Carmelites, 457.

42. Nicolas Sanson, Estat présent du royaume de Perse (Paris: La veuve de Jacques Langlois), 10–12.

43. Jean-Baptiste de la Maze, “Journal du voyage du Père de la Maze, de Chamakié à Ispahan, par la province du Guilan,” in Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, écrites des missions étrangères, ed. P. Fleuriau (Toulouse: Noel-Etienne Sens, 1811), 4:74.

44. Kaempfer, Exotic Attractions in Persia, 126; and Sr. Poullet, Nouvelles relations du Levant…Avec une exacte description…du royaume de Perse (Paris, Chez Louys Billaine, 1668), 2:284–85. To this day there are people living in Islamic environments who convert to Islam for monetary advantage. See Aaron Magid, “Looking for a Better Divorce Settlement, Jordanian Christian Men Convert to Islam,” Al-Monitor December 21, 2015, http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/12/jordan-law-christians-convert-muslims-women-divorce.html.

45. Archivio Storico di Propaganda Fide, Rome, SOCG, Fr. Augustino arcivescovo di Naxivan, May 15, 1638, folders 165–66.

46. Ghougassian, The Emergence of the Armenian Diocese of New Julfa, 211–13.

47. Chick, ed. and trans., A Chronicle of the Carmelites, 288.

48. See Raphael du Mans, Estat de la Perse en 1660, ed. Ch. Schefer (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1890), 288–89; Richard, ed., Raphaël du Mans, 1:158n59; and Chick, ed. and trans., A Chronicle of the Carmelites, 412.

49. Kaempfer, Exotic Attractions in Persia, 126.

50. George A. Bournoutian, ed., The History of Vadapet Arak‘el of Tabriz (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 2005), 56.

51. Chardin, Voyages, 9: 572–73.

52. Tiburcio, “Convert Literature,” 5.

53. David J. Wasserstein, “Conversion and the Ahl al-dhimma,” in The New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 4, Islamic Cultures and Societies to the End of the Eighteenth Century, ed. Robert Irwin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 185.

54. Nozhat Ahmadi, “The Role of Dreams in the Political Affairs of the Safavid Dynasty,” Journal of Shiʿa Islamic Studies 6, no. 2 (2013): 177–98.

55. Elizabeth Sirriyeh, Dreams & Visions in the World of Islam: A History of Muslim Dreaming and Foreknowing (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015), 31.

56. Rainer Brunner, “Sleeping Mullahs. Dreams and Charisma in Shiite Islam,” in Daniela Boccassini, ed., Sogni e visioni nel mondo indo-mediterraneo/Dreams and Visions in the Indian-Mediterranean World, Quaderni di Studi Indo-Mediterranei 2 (2009): 288-89.

57. Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 79.

58. Brunner, “Sleeping Mullahs,” 300.

59. Nuzhat Ahmadi, Ru’ya va siyasat dar ʿasr-i Safavi (1388; Tehran: Nashr-i tarikh-i Iran, 2009).

60. Ahmadi, Ru’ya va siyasat dar ʿasr-i Safavi; and Mir Muhammad Saʿid Mashizi (Bardsiri), Tazkira-yi Safaviya-yi Kirman, ed. Muhammad Ibrahim Bastani-Parizi (1369; Tehran: Nashr-i ‘ilm, 1990), 541.

61. Iʿtirafnama, 41.

62. Iʿtirafnama, 66.

63. Iʿtirafnama, 66, 70, 75.

64. The Paraclete, from Greek, Parakletos, literally meaning comforter or counselor, appears in the Gospel of John, 14:15–27. The early church interpreted this mysterious figure as the Holy Spirit. Modern scholars have generally seen him as a substitute Jesus, the figure who took Jesus’s place after the latter’s ascension to the heavens. In a tradition going back to Ibn Ishaq (d. 767), the author of the earliest “biography” of the Prophet, Muslims see the reference to the Paraclete as a sign, indeed as proof, of the arrival of Mohammad, or even equate the Paraclete with the Prophet of Islam. See Sean H. Anthony, “Muhammad, Menahem, and the Paraclete: New Light on Ibn Ishāq’s (d. 150/767) Arabic Version of John 15:23–16:1,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 79:2 (2016): 255–78.

65. The Islamic statement of faith declares the oneness of God (tawhid) and the acceptance of Muhammad as God’s prophet. Hence the twofold declaration.