Sociology of Religion: Overview and Analysis of Contemporary Religion
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Abstract
observations of other historians. To paraphrase Charles Melville, writers of history were patronized by rulers but read by other chroniclers (Melville 2012b, 205–207). The resulting works are rather, to use his term, self-referential. But the courtly environs seem a rather narrow audience for the grandiose ideological claims Kamola finds in Rashid al-Din’s works. If Oljeitu really was a universal sovereign, why would he need to be told that? If he were merely pretending to universal sovereignty, then how would the arcana of Mongol genealogy, however magnificently presented, really help him? What social action was Rashid alDin or any other writer of history engaged in? Kamola’s comparison of Ilkhanid patronage of writing and of architecture is a case in point (103–109). Monumental architecture is often publicly (in a loose sense) imposing – its reshaping of the environment provides a surface on which to display ideological discourse and symbolism. But works of history or theology (Rashid al-Din wrote both) seem to have seldom had such vividly public lives. Even though Rashid al-Din paid to ensure the reproduction of his work, we still only have so many copies of it; we hear even less of its being read aloud, as other texts were (see, e.g., Hirschler 2012). So where did its ideological claims function? Kamola’s work lays a foundation for better understanding the social (and religious) significance of both the Jami‘ al-tawarikh and history writing in premodern Islamicate societies.