An Unknown Epistle of Idrīs-i Bidlīsī: Risāla dar ‘Ilm-i Qiyāfat

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Idrīs-i Bidlīsī, a historian and bureaucrat, lived at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, during a considerably tumultuous period that witnessed rivalries for supremacy in the Islamic world. He was born in Rayy, Iran, in 1457, where his Shiite-Nurbakhshī father, Husām al-Dīn ‘Ali Bidlīsī, was visiting the founder of the Nurbakhshī order, Sayyid Muhammad Nurbakhsh (d. 1465). After staying there for a short time, Bidlīsī’s family returned to Bidlīs, where they had family roots. After a short residence in Bidlīs, the family moved to Tabriz and settled there just before 1471-1472.