gems, history of gemology, gem trade, Persia, Central Asia, history of gem trade, Arabic mineralogy

A collection of studies devoted to the Safīna-yi Tabrīz (“Treasury of Tabriz”), an exceptionally well-preserved fourteenth-century Persian manuscript compiled and largely copied between 1321 and 1323. The manuscript contains 209 works in Persian and Arabic and provides an unusually broad picture of intellectual life in Il-Khanid Tabriz. The volume examines the manuscript, its compiler, and its cultural setting, with contributions covering history, Persian literature, philosophy, mysticism, astronomy and astrology, mathematics, medicine, music, geography, geomancy, and mineralogy. Collectively, the studies illuminate the range of learning available to an educated Persian scholar of the period and the importance of Tabriz as a major center of scholarship and literary culture.