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How to read my family trees

For laying out all of my detailed family trees, I use a hyperlink. I am still working on the methodology and will change it when something better comes along. For now just click on the hyperlink whenever you see an underline.

Scope

Of course I am not taking responsibility for the whole world. Everyone should do their own little piece, and link to the others. I only provide a sketch to highlight and cement our particular lines of descent, and then hyperlink to the full tree of that family if it exists.

Conventions

I try to use the method of notation that Eskandar has used and so starting with Fatali Shah being and Dowlatshah being his son (1) but one of many and for example Emad-ed doleh is the sixth son so his notation is 1.6. and Sarem Doleh the first son of is recognised as 1.6.1 and this I have regarded as third generation. His son Hassan Ali Mirza was one of many and his notation would be 1.6.1.2 and Emad-ed din Mirza will be 1.6.1.2.2 ( my grandfather from mother side). For the Dowlatshahi women, the daughters, I have put as extension 0 since they have never been given any recognition in any form and do not pass the family name, unless they marry a Dowlatshahi Shazdeh. (in more traditional shajarehnameh prepared historically, women are not normally mentioned unless by association to other men such as; daughter of this or wife of that)

FAQ - Why narrative style?

Family trees are interesting because they are many-dimensional structures, and I would argue that no one has been able to draw them properly before hypertext. Hypertext changes everything. Turning the jumps in the narrative Burke's Peerage format into hyperlinks finally makes the format easy to read and follow. And the Web delivers many more things, Hypertext also handles all those cross-references, multiple intermarriages, in-law interconnections, sources, etc. in a way that no other system can. It allows me publish immediately, making older parts (no living people) available publicly on the Web. It allows embedded scanned-in bitmaps.

Writing dates

Writing dates has been very hard for me as I do not know most of the dates and so please come forward with any information that you might have. The reason I don't get too uptight about dates of birth based on ages is because ages are so often wrong. Unless you have a document at the time of the birth itself, all dates based on later statements of age should be taken with a grain of salt anyway. Likewise, I list siblings in order of age, but in the absence of actual dates of birth the exact ordering should be regarded as still uncertain.

Remove me from your family tree!

I am very conscious of people's need for privacy. I publish no details whatsoever for any living people (except in the rare cases where they are already well-known public figures with published biographies - and even then I am sparing in what I publish). For living people, I publish only a bare skeleton tree, listing who married who and begat who - a simple list of names, with no dates, addresses, or even countries indicated. For an example, see how I handle my own family. For some I even publish their pages, link the pages.

I realise this may list people's mother's maiden names, which is an ID sometimes used by banks, etc. However, the alternative would be to not list the person at all, and stop the tree completely a generation or two back. This would make the tree largely incomprehensible to family members, since they would be unable to find anyone they knew on it. I'm open to discussion on this, but in fact I don't think the maiden name issue is a big problem, for the reason that all geographical details will have stopped a generation or two before, so a thief has no way of knowing even what country this person is supposed to be living in, let alone town or city. It could be anywhere in the world. So my current policy is by default to put up a skeleton of the living (or even the recently dead).

If this is too much, I am quite happy to remove you. Simply e-mail me and let me know you want to be removed from the tree. If you change your mind I can restore you later.

Could my entry on the tree please link to my homepage/email address?

Yes, please let me know and I will add it (provided it does not infringe any of your relatives' privacy).