1The present study is the product of years of experience gained by the author working with Qajar šarī‘a documents (asnād-e šar‘ī) at the Sāzmān-e owqāf (Endowments Organization) in Tehran. It is divided into three parts, which are subdivided into smaller sections. In the first part, after defining what constitutes a šarī‘a document, the author provides a review of šarī‘a documents published in Iran before and after the Islamic revolution. This is followed by a codicological discussion of script, ink, paper and what one might expect to find on the recto (rūye) and verso (ẓahriyye) of a typical document from this period. The author pays particular attention to judicial endorsements (sejellāt/taṣdīqāt) and the reading of seals (saj‘yābī). The differences between an original document (aṣl) and its copy (savād/rūnevešt), the production of copies (savādī/savādgīrī) and the registration of documents in archives (daftarī kardan-e asnād/ṯabt-e asnād) are also considered.

2In the second part, the author briefly deals with the problem of siyāq (the old shorthand used to write numbers), weights and measures, currency, titles and ranks, names of tribes and geographical places appearing in the documents. He follows this with a survey of dating systems and provides a detailed explanation of how chronograms (ḥesāb-e jummal) were created by assigning numerical values to Arabic characters (abjad).

3The third part opens with a look at how the level of sophistication of language used is often an indicator of the religious learning of the ‘olamā’ involved in producing a document. After a brief historical overview of the main Shi‘i works of jurisprudence (feqh), the author presents a lexicon of twenty five frequently encountered technical legal terms and expressions. The last section of the book, which is also the longest, consists of thirty two fully transcribed šarī‘a documents (ṣadāq-nāme, bay‘-nāme, ejāre-nāme, vaqf-nāme, ṣolḥ-nāme, estešhād-nāme, ḥokm etc.). The presentation of each document begins with a summary of legal requirements for its validity. This is followed by a transcription of the document. The transcription is then reworked into a table which divides the document line by line into its constituent elements. After the table, the judicial endorsements of the document are transcribed. The presentation ends with a physical description of the document and a reference to its catalogued location. A photograph of the document is usually also included. With the publication of this book, Rezai has provided researchers with an exceptional reference tool; it is likely to become the definitive guide to the subject.