This book talk is organized by the Institute of Iranian Studies and the Institute of Habsburg and Balkan Studies.

About the Book
Three Empires and Persian Historiography: The Thought of Muṣliḥ al-Dīn Lārī examines the historical vision of a sixteenth-century scholar whose intellectual life spanned the Safavid, Timurid, and Ottoman worlds. Centered on his universal chronicle, Mirʾātu’l-Advār wa Mirḳātu’l-Aḫbār (The Mirror of Epochs and the Staircase of Historical Reports), the book shows how Lārī used historiography to navigate shifting imperial landscapes.
Written in Persian and completed upon the accession of Sultan Selīm II, the chronicle offers a critical view of the Safavids, a reverent account of the Timurid legacy, and a carefully constructed narrative of Ottoman rule. Through close textual analysis, the study demonstrates how Lārī positioned himself as both cultural mediator and political commentator, using universal history to engage debates about legitimacy, identity, and intellectual authority in the early modern Islamic world.

About the Author
Nilab Saeedi is Research Associate at the Institute of Habsburg and Balkan Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences. She received her PhD in History in 2025 from Ibn Haldun University (Istanbul), where her dissertation was awarded “Best Doctoral Thesis of the Year.”
She holds an MA in Turkish Literature and a BA in Linguistics. Her research focuses on early modern Ottoman history, Persian historiography, and Islamic intellectual history. She also serves as a contributing editor at the Journal of the History of Ideas.

Programme