Historical Sciences Studies

Manners of Sitting and Standing in Royal Gatherings of the Safavid Court

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Ali Mashhadi Rafi

Department of Iranian Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22059/jhss.2025.380234.473734
Abstract
 The importance of the manners of sitting and standing of the courtiers and royal officials in most of the royal gatherings and the significance of the established patterns for the location of the officials in such meetings is one of the habitual elements in most of the Iranian courts, which can be found even in various records and non-textual evidences before and after the Safavid era. Nevertheless, one of the facts, for which one can find many proofs and textual evidences in the historiographies and travelogues' notes from the Safavid era is the order of sitting and standing of the courtiers and officials in royal gatherings of the Safavid court, which has been known as in most of the texts of this era as "Majlis-e Behesht Ayin". These manners has been mentioned frequently by many historiographers of the Safavid era, and this part of court culture can be clearly identified in the descriptive writings of travelers as well as the reports of foreign ambassadors to the Safavid court. Because many of them have faced this court etiquette and were required to strictly observe it in the meetings of the Safavid courtiers in the presence of the Shah. This article is aimed to identify the manners of sitting and standing in the court meetings, and furthermore is an attempt to extract the pattern of positions of the courtiers in the presence of the Safavid Shah based on the historical reports and the instructions mentioned in code of conduct of the Safavid era. In the final step, by examining the details of the findings of the prementioned manners of court culture in one of the frescos of the Chehelston Palace in Isfahan, an attempt is made to identify some details related to sitting and standing in the gatherings of the Safavid court.

Keywords

Safavids
Majles-e Behesht Ayin
court culture
Manners of sitting and standing
Chehelsotun Palace of Isfahan
Subjects
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