Representation of the Officials' Social Status in Correspondences between The Safavid and The Mughal Courts at the Time of Shah Soleiman/Safi II (r. 1666-94)

Studying the relationship between the social status of the senders and recipients of correspondences between The Safavid and The Mughal at the time of Shah Suleiman (1105-1077 AH) and the content and superficial characteristics of letters.

Method and Research Design: 

Historical evidence in books, archival records and manuscript number 5032 of The Library, Museum, and Document Center of Iran Parliament were investigated using content analysis, and the relationship between the superficial characteristics of each letter and the social status of the senders and recipients was studied in a comparative way.

According to the study, there are strong evidences that there is a direct relationship between textual and non-textual content of the letters and the social status of their senders and recipients. Thus, textual elements such as words and phrases, preambles, titles and non-textual elements such as size and quality of the papers, script-styles, embellishments and the form of packaging represented the social status of both sender and recipients, and their positions, age and gender.