Information about the author of the book "Persia", available below, is provided here. This may help readers to better evaluate the contents of the book.
"Brigadier-General Sir Percy Molesworth Sykes, KCIE, CB, CMG, FRGS (28 February 1867 – 11 June 1945) was a soldier, diplomat, and scholar with a considerable literary output. He wrote historical, geographical, and biographical works, as well as describing his travels in Persia and Central Asia."
(from Wikipedia)
Description of a book titled "Persian Documents - Social history of Iran and Turan in the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries":
"After the Mongol period, Persian was the official written language in Iran, Central Asia and India. A vast amount of documents relating to administration and social life were produced and yet, unlike Ottoman and Arabic documents, Persian historical resources have received very little critical attention.
This book is the first to use Persian documents as the sources of social history in Early Modern Iran and Central Asia. The contributors examine four distinct elements of the documents:
. the formal aspects of the sources are initially inspected
. the second part focuses on newly discovered sources
. the most abundant documents of the period – waqf deeds – are individually studied
In this way the reader is led to realize the importance of Persian documents in gaining an understanding of past urban and rural societies in the Middle East. Up until now our understanding of historical Islamic and Middle Eastern societies has been based mainly on Arab and Ottoman documents. In contrast, this book foregrounds other historical “Islamic” societies that employed different systems and practices. By using a wide range of sources, including sale deeds, waqf endowment deeds, tax registers and sufi documents, the contributors highlight the rewards of researching hitherto neglected material."
Persian Documents - Social history of Iran and Turan in the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries