An Analysis of Religious Texts in the Safavid Government Based on Hermeneutics

The purpose of the present study is to survey the main intention and objective of writing religious texts during the Safavid dynasty that can be applied as an educational method to understand other religious texts in historical eras. In this regard, Skinner’s intentionalist Hermeneutics was used to recognize different aspects of religious texts in the Safavid dynasty. In this research, the ideological background for writing religious texts was investigated, and furthermore, the process of changing the conventional norms was analyzed using those texts written along with the abovementioned change. The results of the study show that hermeneutics can be used to understand the intention behind writing religious texts in the Safavid dynasty. Writing the above texts was in line with changing conventional norms at that time and it was consistent with the process of compiling, stabilizing, and developing new norms, and in some cases, it has also been supported by power structure. On the one hand, religious texts were written with the intention of weakening previous norms like Sufism, other religions such as Christianity, and absolute monarchy derived from ancient ideologies. On the other hand, in addition to mentioning the negative points of the previous norms, they were being expanded in line with fostering and highlighting the positive points of the new norms.