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Sources on Timurid History and Art

Sources on Timurid History and Art

A Century of Princes Sources on Timurid History-and Art

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Selected and Translated by W. M. Thackston

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A CENTURY OF PRINCES "Bibi Khanim" Mosque, Samarqand. Peter M. Brenner © 1988. A Century of Prince~/

Sources on Timurid History and Art

Selected and Translated by w. M. Thackston

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Published in Conjunction with the Exhibition " and the Princely Vision," Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, 1989

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The Aga Program for Cambridge, Massachusetts 1989 · - n

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The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at HarvardUniversity and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Copyright © 1989 M.I.T. LIBRARIES ISBN 0-922673-11-X JUN 2 198~ RECEIVED as.=-- __ .\ Contents

MAPS vii

GENEALOGICAL CHARTS x

INTRODUCTION 1

HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY

History: Retrospective on the Timurid Years

Mir Dawlatshah Samarqandi's Tadhkirat al-shu'ara ll

Sharafuddin Yazdi's Zafarnama 63

Khwandamir's Habib al-siyar l01

Synopsis of the House of Timur 237

Autobiography: From Within the Ruling House

Babur 's : A Visit to .. 247

Observations of the Outside

Ghiyathuddin Naqqash's Report on a Timurid Mission to China 279

Kamaluddin Abdul-Razzaq Samarqandi's Mission to Calicut and Vijayanagar 299

THE ARTS

Artistic Production

Arzadasht 323

Miscellaneous Documents 329

Calligraphers and Artists

-\ Dost-'s Introduction to the Bahram Mirza Album 335

Malik Daylami's Introduction to the Amir Husayn Beg Album 351

v CONTENTS

Mir Sayyid-Ahmad's Introduction to the Amir Ghayb Beg Album 353

Mirza Muhammad-Haydar Dughlat's Tarikh-i Rashidi 357

Literary Conceits: Self-Images

Sultan-Husayn Mirza's "Apologia" 363

Mir Ali-Sher Nawa'i's Preface to His First .373

GLOSSARY OF TI1l.ES AND TERMS ...... •....•...... •...... 379

BIBLIOGRAPHy 389

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ix The Descendants of Umar-Shaykh

x The Descendants of [ahangir

xi The Descendants of Miranshah

xu xiii The Descendants ofShahrukh

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BartanBaghatur Oachulay V.""';"'ha"" ~ Chlngglz Khan ~ 143'; ------I , Erdllmchi Barula , 1 [) Chaghatai I' ,I Sughuchllchlln Barula , , Batu I' , Jochi-oghlT Ogedei Khan OaracharNoyan , :3"6b -- -1------j-----: : Toghan Batu-oghlT Echil , , MOngk~-Temor Tolui Khan I' : Toghan-oghlT Eillngir ' ~36;- - -/------,- - - - -1

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In the years between the death of the fined and lively literary and artistic pro- conqueror Amir Timur in 1405 to the duction. The artistic milieu that had been death of his great-great-grandson Sultan- created under the Ilkhans and their suc- Husayn Mirza in 1506 that comprised the cessors produced splendid examples of "century of princes," the vast territory the arts of the book, while in literature conquered by Timur, from and there appeared the incomparable Persian in the west to the Indus and - poet Hafiz of Shiraz. istan in the east, underwent many and The , the Chaghatay Turkic tribe varied political changes, shifts, conquests to which Timur belonged, had long been and reconquests. Timur's was Islamicized and had adopted Sufi shaykhs weakened by the disunity of his suc- in place of their former Buddhist sha- cessors, who fought constantly with each mans; but apparently religion rested fairly other, until gradually the western portions lightly on them. Ambiguously situated of the realm were lost to the Turcomans between the Mongolian culture of eastern and the eastern and Central Asian por- (Mughulistan) and the Is- tions fell to the . Ultimately central lamic culture of Persianized western Iran and the heart of the empire, Khura- Central Asia, the Chaghatayids nurtured san, fell to the Safavids, and the Timurids tribal memories of greatness under the lost power altogether. Throughout the . The the un-Islamicized Turks period, however, in the midst of the po- and Turco-Mongolians of Mughulistan, litical instability', the dominant Persian ate however, called them qaraunas, half- literary and artistic culture remained re- castes, for their adoption of non-Mon- markably stable, firmly ensconced, un- golian ways. Perhaps in compensation for challenged in its supremacy and unified in such denigration, when Timur sought to its development. legitimize his de facto rule over vast The Turco-Iranian synthesis of Persian newly conquered areas, he 'consciously cultural hegemony and Turco-Mongolian evoked the of Genghis political and military domination to which Khan. Never using a rank more preten- the Timurids fell heir had long been in the tious than "great commander" (amir making and had held sway throughout the kabir), Timur gloried in the Mongolian area of Iranian cultural influence since the title of "son-in-law" (karagan) he fourteenth-century successors to Genghis adopted when he married Saray Malik Khan and the Mongolian invasion of the Khanim, daughter of a Genghisid khan. previous century. The successors to the Timur's repeated patronage of Genghi- Mongolian Ilkhans, short-lived sids like Soyurghatmish Khan, his son conquered by Timur-the Jalayirids in Sultan-Mahmud Khan, and Toqtarmsh and , the Injus and Khan shows that for him legitimacy lay in in Shiraz, the Karts in investiture by a Genghisid, not through Herat-maintained and sponsored a re- appeal to the Islamic allegiances of Per-

1 2 A CENTURY OF PRINCES

sians, a race despised by steppe peoples crown him with the diadem of benefi- for being settled villagers and city- cence,"! dwellers yet ardently admired at the same Four of Shahrukh's sons well illustrate time for their cultural, literary and artistic the various paths open to Persianized superiority. For Timur, 's princes of the Timurid line. Ulughbeg tor« and yasa (codes) were of at least became the scholar-king, ruling in equal importance with the Islamic sha- Samarqand and not only patronizing but ri (a, for all the attempts by later historians actually contributing to a standard work of the to portray Timur as a on astronomy; became the model Muslim ruler. After Timur's death patron of the arts, sponsoring during his his youngest son Shahrukh eventually short lifetime the production of outstand- triumphed over his major rivals, Khalil- ing examples of the arts of the book; Sultan, who used his Genghisid descent Ibrahim-Sultan was the pious governor through his mother to gather support., who earned his livelihood by copying and -Sultan, another grandson Korans; and Muhammad-Juki, insofar as who claimed designation by Timur. he is known for anything, gained a repu- Later dynastic historians portrayed tation as a warrior athlete. And if Shah- Shahrukh as a fully Islamicized, Per- rukh succeeded in gaining the general sianized monarch who justified his claim support of the religious elements in Per- to legitimate rule by appealing to the reli- sian society, his son Ulughbeg and his gious elements in society and resting his grandson Sultan-Muhammad did not al- claims upon a show of good works, piety ways enjoy such cordial relationships and dispensation of justice. The differ- with the religious hierarchy, as several ence in emphasis is quite clear in the titles incidents in history show (pp. 167-68, on the tombstones of Timur and Shah- 161). Even Shahrukh was not beyond a rukh in Samarqand. On both the marble rebuff from the religious (p. 158). slab covering Timur's grave in the crypt By the end of the century a Timurid like of the Gur-i Mir and on the nephrite Sultan-Husayn Mirza could justify his cenotaph in the mausoleum Timur is claim to legitimacy entirely by appeal to called "great sultan and most noble kha- Islamic sentiment. In his "Apologia" (pp. qan," with no further titles and no spe- 373-78) Sultan-Husayn glories in his cifically Islamic epithets-instead, the in- eradication of heresies, his erection of scription gives the lineage the Timurids charitable institutions, his support of Is- claimed back to the Mongolian progeni- lamic learning through , his pa- trix Alanqoa and stresses the Barlas' tronage of Sufis through khanaqahs, his claim to collateral relationship with concern for the well-being of the peas- Genghis Khan. Shahrukh's tombstone, antry and his laborious administration of on the other hand, placed by his daughter the religious endowments, carefully em- Payanda Sultan, has typically Islamic phasizing that "others" had impiously phraseology. Beginning with the Muslim allowed heresies, ignored charitable insti- testament of faith, it continues: "This is a tutions, impoverished the learned classes, garden of paradise wherein rests His raped the peasantry and embezzled en- Majesty the pious sultan and emperor, dowments. It is interesting that, despite all sultan of , succor of the state, the this appeal to Islamicization, Mir- world and religion, Shahrukh Bahadur za's comments on the society of early Sultan, may God Most High cause him to dwell on the throne of His pleasure and ISee A. A. Semenov, "Nadpisi na nadgro- biyakh Timura i ego potomkov v Gur-i Emirc," Epigraftka Vostoka 2 (1948): 49-62; 3 (1949): 46-54. INlRODUCTION 3 sixteenth-century Herat reveal that social- the names of artists and calligraphers re- ly the Genghisid tora was still very much corded. The trend can be seen already in alive. Court etiquette and ritual were ob- the Ilkhanid period with the emergence of viously still functioning much according calligraphers as recognized artists in their to the tora, even if the legal foundation of own right who signed and dated their legitimacy was no longer based upon works. Painters emerge somewhat later. Genghisidism. By Babur's time the During the Jalayirid period in Baghdad Timurid hold on legitimacy had become and Azerbaijan painters became re- so strong that in Central Asia nowned for their individual labors and carried Timurid princes in their retinues to had works of art attributed to them. The legitimize their activities much as Timur result of this trend is seen in Herat, where had used Genghisid khans to the same artists, artisans and calligraphers are purpose. mentioned by name in royal histories and A significant trend manifested during tadhkiras (notices of members of a given the Timurid period is the emergence of class, region, profession, etc.). identifiable individuals. In literature the The first portraits of individuals as in- individual begins to emerge from the ty- dividuals also appear in the late Timurid pologized class to which he belongs. Of period. To be sure, before this time pic- course, Persian biographical works had tures purporting to be portraits of par- always given the relevant information of ticular individuals were painted, but they birth, death, and works, perhaps along were not true portraits but depictions of with some anecdotes for notables, but types-the prince, the scholar, the Sufi, over the course of the fifteenth century the warrior. Only with Bihzad and his something more is added, at first an al- contemporaries do portraits begin to cap- most imperceptible heightening of indi- ture the essence of an individual with vidual characteristics and traits, even of distinctive features. When looking at the psychological motivation, a development portraits of Sultan-Husayn and Mir Ali- that blossoms during the Safavid and Sher, the viewer feels that he might now Mughal period. Makarim al-akhlaq, recognize them if he ran across them in Khwandamir's panegyric on Mir Ali- life. In literature too the individual begins Sher Nawa'i, paved the way for such to emerge from the stereotypical class to full-fledged biographies as Nihawandi's which he belongs. Ma' athir-i Rahimi, a biography of the sixteenth-century Mughal grandee Abdul- Rahim Khankhanan. And Babur's auto- biographical memoirs, perhaps the first * true in all of Islamic liter- The readings in this volume were se- ature, and certainly the first royal auto- lected to accompany the exhibition, biography, was followed by his daughter "Timur and the Princely Vision" (Arthur Gulbadan Begim' s memoirs of her M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institu- brother, the Humayunnama, and his tion, Washington, D.C., and the Los An- great-grandson Jahangir's memoirs, the geles County Museum of Art in 1989). Tuzuk-i Jahangiri. Their aim is not to introduce the whole Even artists and artisans emerge from kaleidoscope of changing rulers and - the obscurity of centuries of anonymity ring princes, but to provide selections and are recorded by name-previously, from texts that are representative of the as in medieval Europe, artists and artisans period or tell something about it-history, were generally nameless and unnamed biography, foreign mission reports, auto- craftsmen, and only exceptionally were biography, miscellaneous documents and 4 A CENTURY OF PRINCES

petitions, short histories of calligraphy cle Shahrukh in his bid for control of the and painting, and artful prose. empire. Historical selections are taken from Mir Few texts dealing directly with artistic Dawlatshah Samarqandi's Tadhkirat al- production and/or methods have sur- shu'ara (1487), Sharafuddin Ali Yazdi's vived. Unique for the Timurid period is Zajarnama (1425), and Khwandamir's the arzadasht (report) translated on pages Habib al-siyar (1523-24). Most of the 323-28 and attributed to Baysunghur's histories contemporary with Timur have atelier, in which individual artists and ar- perished, although by and large their texts tisans are listed along with their current survive as they were incorporated into projects. Included here are translations of later histories.s One of the surviving his- several prefaces written in the sixteenth tories, Nizamuddin Ali Shami's Zafar- century for Safavid albums of calligraphy nama was utilized or incorporated into and painting. They contain a great deal of Sharafuddin Ali Yazdi's more literary information relevant to book production work of the same name produced for in the late fifteenth century, particularly Ibrahim-Sultan in Shiraz, and several ex- for master-pupil relationships among cal- tracts of this latter work are given here. ligraphers and painters. However, from As can be seen in Yazdi's introduction, in the Timurid period itself there are no texts which he outlines the methodology by like Dost-Muhammad's Preface or Mirza which the Zajarnama was composed (pp. Muhammad-Haydar's critical apprecia- 64-65), the histories and chronicles pro- tion of calligraphers and artists from his duced in Timur's time were generally pa- Tarikh-i Rashidi. tronized and controlled by Timur himself Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century writers and therefore, despite disclaimers, they on the arts seldom state their eesthetie cri- can be viewed as entirely self-serving and teria explicitly. There are manuals on the self-aggrandizing.I Most surviving his- production of tints and paints, such as tories of the early period, like Yazdi's Simi of Nishapur's treatise and Sadiqi Zafarnama, Abdul-Razzaq's Matla'