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Corporeality, Custodial Exile, and Coercion: Puppet Princes in Early Modern Irano-Islamic History

Vortrag von Colin Mitchell im Rahmen der Vortragsreihe "The Early Modern Middle East" im Sommersemester 2018

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The 11-12th c. atabeg system of the Seljuks, wherein young princes were installed as provincial governors under the control of a ranking military amir, encouraged the physical control and custodial care of royal bodies. The idea of “extended sovereignty”, i.e. the installation of royal family members to different provincial centres, continued after the disruption of the Mongols into the Timurid and Safavid periods. However, we also see how this culture of custody allowed for princes to be coerced and controlled by rival dynasties for their own purposes. This paper examines this phenomenon of such “puppet princes” in the 15th-16th centuries, with a particular focus on the case of the Timurid prince Muhammad Yadgar during the early years of the reign of Sultan-Husain Baiqara (r. 1470-1507).