Cover -- Contents -- Note on Transliteration -- Acknowledgements -- INTRODUCTION -- Cycles of Persian Mytho-history and Abrahamic Prophecy: Locating "Formational" Safavid Iran -- Working with Rhetoric and Letter-writing in Perso-Islamic History -- Inshā and Munshīs: A Discursive Forum -- The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran: Structure and Scope -- 1. IMPERIALIZING THE APOCALYPSE 1501-32 -- The Parousia (zuhūr) of Ismā ̀īl,1494-1514 -- Heralding Noah's Flood: Messianic and Mystical Innovations in the Safavid Chancellery -- Recovery of Persian Bureaucratic Culture and the Imperializing of Epistolary Rhetoric, 1515-24 -- Early Years of Shāh Tahmāsp and the Persian-Turk Paradigm, 1524-32 -- 2. COMPETING COSMOLOGIES, 1532-55 -- Invective Rhetoric: al-Karakī and Models of Shi'ite Apologetic Discourse -- Qādī-yi Jahān Qazvīnī and the "Men of the Pen" -- Mystical Impulses and the Safavid Inshā Tradition -- 3. SECOND REPENTANCE, 1556-76 -- Reorientation to Qazvīn and the East -- Solomonic Tropes -- Polychromatic Impulses: Abdī beg Shīrāzī and the Chancellery -- 4. REX REDUX 1576-98 -- Shāh Ismā'īl II's Challenge to the Hierocrats -- The Emergence of a New Esprit de Corps under Khudādandah -- Narrating and Mapping a New Safavid Dominion, 1588-98 -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.