Dastūr al-Mulūk (
Persian: دستور الملوک)[1] by Moḥammad Rafiʿ Anṣāri known as Mirzā Rafiʿā,[2] is one of only three surviving
administrative handbooks from early 18th-century
SafavidIran and an important research tool for scholars in
Iranology. The Persian manuscript was edited during the 1960s by the Iranian scholar
Mohammad Taqi Danesh Pajouh.
A Russian translation by Dr Vil'danova appeared in
Tashkent,
Uzbekistan, in the 1990s. In 2002, an annotated English translation (
ISBN983-9379-26-7), which contains also a facsimile of what was then thought among scholars to be the complete manuscript, was published and translated into English for the first time by the German scholar
Christoph Marcinkowski, based on his dissertation. Already in 2000, this dissertation was awarded by then Iranian President
Mohammad Khatami the First Prize for Best Research on Iranian Culture Award for the Year 2000 (International Category) by the Iranian Ministry of Culture. A Persian translation of Marcinkowski's 2002 study by Ali Kordabadi and Mansur Sefatgol appeared in 1385 AH solar (2006 CE) in Tehran at Markaz-e Asnad va Tarikh-e Diplomasi (published by the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
Christoph Marcinkowski (transl., ed.), Mirza Rafi‘a's Dastur al-Muluk: A Manual of Later Safavid Administration. Annotated English Translation, Comments on the Offices and Services, and Facsimile of the Unique Persian Manuscript (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 2002).
ISBN983-9379-26-7 [see also review by the late Professor
Clifford Edmund Bosworth, F.B.A., in Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae (Budapest, Hungary), vol. 58, no. 4 (2005), pp. 457–59.
idem, "Mirza Rafi‘a's Dastur al-Muluk. A Prime Source on Administration, Society and Culture in Late
SafavidIran," Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft (Germany), vol. 153, no. 2 (2003), pp. 281–310.
idem, "Mirza Rafi‘a's Dastur al-Muluk Again. Recently Discovered Additions to the Persian Manuscript," Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft (Germany), vol. 157, no. 2 (2007), pp. 395–416.
Mirza Rafi‘a [Muhammad Rafi‘ Ansari], Dastur al-Muluk, Russian transl. A. B. Vil'danova (Tashkent: Izdatel'stvo Akademia Nauk Uzbekskoye SSR, 1991)
idem, Dastur al-moluk, microfilm in the Central Library of Tehran University, Pers. MS no. 1,357 (Sar-Yazdi-Library, ʿAbd-al-Raḥim Khan Madrasa, Yazd, Iran).