Recognition of principles and characteristics of presenting cities in ancient texts (Case study: the Samanid city)

This paper attempts to introduce the principles and characteristics of existing cities with studying the content، style and presentation of the historic periods of ancient texts from Islamic period historians – specially the authors of the fourth century to the seventh century AH. In this regard،ten cities have been selected as a sample fromSamanid era of Islamic civilization (Jowzjan، Chouchanian، Katl or Katlan، Karazm، Gorjestan، Sistan، Bast and Gazneh، Kerman، Samarkand and Bukhara). Due to the structure of the project،reviewed works and sources are classified in five titles: Introducing cities، respectively، started from “Climate and City” and terminated to “City and Culture”. Due to the case study that includes Samanid era، thepaper’s subjects are trying to identifyTransoxania and introducing cities’ characteristics in this period. The main body of the paper includes identifying and examining five topics from introducing and analyzing cities. These features are as follows: 1. Geographical and climate features of cities 2. Kings’ qualification and a brief description of their behavioral characteristics 3. Introducing counties and townships of cities 4. Economic characteristics of cities 5. Cultural features Among the cities which studied in this paper، the first three featuresare used for presenting considered cities which authors choose that these cities have the largest and most complete introduction to cities as “Samarkand and Bukhara” and have discussed economic and cultural characteristics of these cities. The paper’s question and the assumption of “regularity introduced in the cities of ancient texts” were answered in the main body of the article and classified information has been analyzed. Also، the introduction of large cities has special and complete rule in away that the point of introducing the integrity of cities has not diminished. Study’s achievements demonstrated the following a. In all of the cases presented by historians; Issues such as climate and city، regional divisions، and describing princess’ circumstances has been discussed. b. The content ofhistorical and geographical contexts in Iran’sclassical era has high-capacity for variety of description. c. Review and classification of knowledge recorded in ancient texts is underlying principles of indigenous science in order that the scholars can be able to link these texts to “interdisciplinary topics”. d. With paying attention to the content of the resource،we can extract general rules and its details and organize elements and rules of historical research.