著者

渡部 良子

出版者

公益財団法人 史学会

雑誌

史学雑誌

巻号頁・発行日

vol.111, no.7, pp.1-31,143-144, 2002

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Dastur al-Katib of Muhammad b. Hindushah Nakhchiwani, a collection of style sheets for official documents of the Jalayirids (the successor dynasty to the Ilkhanids, the Mongol dynasty in Iran during the 13th and 14th centuries), has been regarded as one of most famous Persian insha' literatures (works of prosaic art for letter writing). However, an important question has been ignored why such a voluminous insha' collection was compiled by the official order during the latter half of the Mongol period, when traditional Persian insha' was in decline. In this article, the author discussed peculiar ways of compiling Dastur different from other traditional Persian insha' collections and the influence of Mongol chancellery practices under the Ilkhanids on Persian insha' tradition. The compilation of Dastur was begun in the last years of the Ilkhanids by an official order of the last Ilkan, Abu Sa`id but before its completion the Ilkhanids collapsed, and after 25 years it was resumed and dedicated to the second ruler and real founder of the Jalayirids, Shaykh Uways. Dastur, which consists of 800 style sheets is chaptered in a rare manner compared to other insha' collections; that is, the traditional way of chaptering insha' collections is by categories of documents and letters, but in Dastur the style sheets are categorized by differences in ranks and titles to whom they should be addressed. Though the great volume and pecuriarity of Dastur made it necessary to compilean excerpt entitled al-Irshad fi al-Insha', in which only usual documents, excluding edicts regarding Mongol officials, are chaptered in the traditional way, Dastur was designed to be a complete collection of style sheets for the Jalayirids ; and the last chapter of Dastur, which contains directions on how to use the collection, insists that chapters and style sheets must not be modified or deleted, and if new formats for official documents become necessary, they must be composed in the same way as the other style sheets and added to the collection. There is a similar collection of style sheets in the Ilkhanids chancellery system in the collection of formats for official letters compiled after Ghazan Khan's reform. Ghazan Khan, who desired khan's own supervision over the chancellery system to be strengthened, compiled a collection of formats for all kinds of official letters accredited by him entitled Dastur a1-Umur, and ordered the chancellery to compose and issue all official documents according to its style sheets. Therefore, Dastur which was compiled soon after the establishment of Jalayirid rule under Shaykh Uways, can be said to have played the same role as the Ilkhanid Dastur al-Umur ; and as for the chancellery system that the Jalayirids took over from the Ilkhanids system, Dastur is amalgam of the Ilkhanid Mongol chancellery practices and the Persian insha' tradition.