Narration of War in Safavid Historiography

Safavid chronicles are full of narratives of wars, and domestic and foreign military conflicts of the Safavid government. War finds a special place in the historiography of this period, so much so that if an event did not lead to a military conflict, historians would not consider it worthy of being recorded, and its emergence inside historical texts was improbable. Therefore, the narration of the war was of special importance and required an appropriate narrative structure to represent the event and convey the goals behind the narration to the audience. By adopting a descriptive-analytical method and constructing a model of theories related to narration, this research tries to illuminate war narration in Safavid historiography and the goals of historians in recording wars. The results show that, by selecting narrative elements, suppressing or highlighting some components of these elements, historians present a war narrative that aims to represent the Safavid territorial claims, the legitimacy of their rule and actions in war zones and disputed areas.