Author
Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Arak
Abstract
Most of the historical sources have often considered numbers and figures in their texts and the historiography sources of Safavid era are not exception. The present paper focuses on the statistical and the numerical characteristics of Safavid era sources from two positive and the negative perspectives that may seem paradoxical. However, this paper is not supposed to deal with this paradox, rather, from negative perspective. It is to find traditional pitfalls and weak points of these sources, following the past tradition. and from positive perspective, this paper is looking for some criteria as being used by the historian so that it brings about a kind of documentational historiography. Thus, two questions are raised here: first; what are the deficiencies of Safavid sources in providing numerical data? Second; what techniques are being used to show the numbers are real? In answering these questions, we have provided the typology of practical statistics as being used in the sources and tried to assess the effect of some traditional abnormalities such as frequent use of exaggeration in historiography and the lack of understanding of practical aspects of statistics. In addition, historians' efforts to actualize the numbers are presented in a general perspective.
Keywords
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