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 "Timur and the Princely Vision," Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, 1989
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The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture 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 Ali Yazdi's Zafarnama 63
Khwandamir's Habib al-siyar l01
Synopsis of the House of Timur 237
Autobiography: From Within the Ruling House
Babur Mirza's Baburnama: A Visit to Herat.. 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-Muhammad'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 Divan .373
GLOSSARY OF TI1l.ES AND TERMS ...... •....•...... •...... 379
BIBLIOGRAPHy 389
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PERSIAN oQum ARAB IRAQ o IRAQ "p • Khurramabad oJ o o [urbadiqan o Isfahan • Warzana o oYazd A- J' 0 Qasr-i Zard N o Shiraz PERSIAN GULF F ARS viii • Uzjand KHURASAN & TRANSOXIANA 1'1( F • Ghijduvan "l II{ S Bukhara e o Samarqand s X 1 J\ NA ;..0.' RiVer ~W~ ~h~Kish' "'-.., Hisar Nasa Abiward (Saward) Iajartne e Merv Khabushan e • Radkan Sultan Maydan • o Chanaran Sabzawar e Nishapur e o Mashhad o Balkh BALKH • Sar-i Pu1 TOKHARlSTAN 'I- Turshiz • BAQLAN o o Kabul Tabas e • Qayin • lsfizar Chaznin • FARAH • Kerman • Bam ix The Descendants of Umar-Shaykh x The Descendants of [ahangir xi The Descendants of Miranshah xu xiii The Descendants ofShahrukh xiv I CI) -I Cl ClI CI) l: ::::i III l: >- ClI III :::l :I: t: s "5 II (f) - J -g a. a. :i: '" :§:: c Q) o Cl .~ >- l'il W Q) ";:: CD ~ C iii iii CD E E Cl DO II xv ------\,- 42a ----Alan -- Coa ------.I 1 I ,1 Bodanchar' , ~------~------,,37a Buqa , Mongol-Tlmurld Genealogy , I ' as given In Istanbul, TSM, H.2152 : Tutum MlIrUln : 'iii; ------t ------I Folios indicated by broken lines; :,1 Oaydu.Khan :• folio numbers in upper left corner. , Bay Sungghur I ~------1------, , 43b Tuminay . a.bu!Kh," I I BartanBaghatur Oachulay V.""';"'ha"" ~ Chlngglz Khan ~ 143'; ------I , Erdllmchi Barula , 1 [Jochi) 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 ' Toghrncha BOrkOI , ' MOngkll-TemOr I I ' oghlT Taraghay , I Oubulai I, ," Ozbeg Khan TamOr' '38b: - Togoh~I~~ha------i - -133b ----~:ltg~n--- ~------,, \ . , ArTgh-BOke , , OJ~I ~eghlT HOlegOKhan 'Khan \ l Z_~~_I qL I__ ~._ ,: 1 T-mur I II I '38a Shllkllr-Beg Ahmad :h • Jahanshah Jahangir Miranshah Umar-Shaykh Shahrukh, l- __~~~~z~ ~h~n :n_ -: ~ KOr~glln I 1_ : ,32a sevi~-Beg '32b ------r ------i , ShlIkllr-Beg Abaqa' [Khalil-Sultan) , I qTzT • Muhammad- Pir- at alii 1 ,I, ·, Sultan Muhammad 1, , Khalil-Sultan GlIykhatu ' at alii at alii at alii 1 , Sevin-Beg oghlT Khan • , , I , '------,------~ ------',32b Arghun 1 ,I Khan .• : Gh~zan [Olj~itO) : I Khan Kharbanda , , Khan 1 , J I , Bu-Sa'id Khan , : KharbandaoghlT : L ~ xvi Introduction 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 Anatolia and there appeared the incomparable Persian Syria in the west to the Indus and Turk- poet Hafiz of Shiraz. istan in the east, underwent many and The Barlas, the Chaghatay Turkic tribe varied political changes, shifts, conquests to which Timur belonged, had long been and reconquests. Timur's empire 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- Central Asia (Mughulistan) and the Is- tions fell to the Uzbeks. 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 Mongols. 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 Mongol empire 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 dynasties sids like Soyurghatmish Khan, his son conquered by Timur-the Jalayirids in Sultan-Mahmud Khan, and Toqtarmsh Baghdad and Azerbaijan, the Injus and Khan shows that for him legitimacy lay in Muzaffarids 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, Genghis Khan'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 dynasty to portray Timur as a on astronomy; Baysunghur 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 Iskandar-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 madrasas, 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 sultans, succor of the state, the this appeal to Islamicization, Babur 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 warlords 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 autobiography 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 war- 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'Ahmad Ibn Arabshah, which ridden that it is usually difficult to gauge was written totally without official patronage and the relative merits of the artists under is blatantly hostile to Timur. English translation discussion. by J. H. Sanders, Tamerlane or Timur, the Great Amir (London, 1936). IN1RODUCI10N 5 .. With no native tradition of theater, the in fact, does he mention Chinese painting Timurids nonetheless understood how to at all. Any attempt to connect Ghiyath- impress with court ceremony and reveled uddin with existing Timurid chinoiserie in spectacle and "ritualized theatricality." and Chinese-inspired painting, tempting Sharafuddin Ali Yazdi speaks of the for- though it may be, must remain as sheer eign ambassadors and others who "en- speculation. joyed the spectacular celebration and were The "imperial sumptuousness" charac- staggered by such magnificence" at the teristic of the age, reflected both in paint- gala qurultay outside of Samarqand in ings of court ceremony and in architec- 1404. In 1456 Sultan Abu-Sa'id Kuragan ture, was also manifested in the literary held a celebration in Herat "that was in no style of the day. Prior to the Timurids, the way defective in splendor," says Dawlat- historians of the Ilkhanid period had rev- shah.s Princely births, circumcisions and eled in the injection of the most recherche marriages were celebrated by impressive Arabicate vocabulary possible into a Per- public feasts, and deaths were commem- sian prose whose sentences wend their orated by public feedings on a vast scale. way through labyrinths of subordination During military campaigns and after bat- and parallelism.f Writers of the Timurid tles the "carpet of revelry and enjoyment period discarded this unwieldy, often in- was spread." Court historians take time comprehensible style in favor of a prose from their chronicles of battles, invasions that is fairly simple, straightforward Per- and court intrigue to notice novelties like sian. The simplicity of the vocabulary, a clock with moving figurines made for however, is overlaid-"studded," as the Mir Ali-Sher and a representation on practitioners of the style might have glass of various artisans made for Sultan said-with "jewels" of jingly rhyming Abu-Sa'id.> phrases and a liberal interspersion of po- Timurid emissaries to foreign courts etry, the latter serving either to highlight particularly noticed spectacle and novelty. or to repeat the prose, never to explicate Both Ghiyathuddin Naqqash on his mis- or continue the narrative. The overall ef- sion to China (pp. 279-97) and Abdul- fect is not dissimilar to the visual effect of Razzaq on his mission to south India (pp. a Timurid book illumination-arabesques 299-321) describe at great length the of elaborated simplicity, harmonious ele- spectacle of court entertainment, acrobats, gance and sumptuousness. jugglers, singers and dancers, as well as Rhyming epithets, the eupheuistic elaborate court ritual and the splendor of "gems" with which the prose is studded, throne rooms. are not merely common but seemingly A text like Ghiyathuddin Naqqash's indispensable. The Timurid army is never report on the legation to China, written by simply "the army": it is lashkar-i zafar- an artist, is revealing for the observations asar (the army that leaves footprints of made of a foreign environment. Ghiyath- triumph) or siptih-i ptidisluih-i muzaffar- uddin is predictably taken with the ritual /iva (the army of the padishah whose of the Ming court and makes many ob- banners are emblazoned with victory). servations about the carvings and statuary When the troops set off for battle, it is not of Buddhist temples. Nowhere, however, does he mention that he has illustrated his report with drawings or that he has made 6The quintessential writer of this style is Wassafu'l-Hadra, Shihabuddin Abdullah Shirazi, drawings of what he saw, and nowhere, whose history of the Mongol empire in Persia, Tajziyat al-amsar wa-tazjiyat al-a'sar (The break-up of metropolises and the passing of 4Dawlatshah, Tadhkira, p. 534. epochs), has been compassionately characterized 5Khwandamir, HS. IV, 84. as "turgid." 6 A CENnJRY OF PRINCES the soldiers who move out led by the Shart ast ki waqt-i bargrezdn, r prince but the rayat-i nusrat-ayat (ban- khunaba shawad zi barg rezdn. /I ners [inscribed] with Koranic verses of Khiin-l ki buwad duriin-i har shiikh I biriin chakad az masiimm-i surakh.9 divine assistance) that are unfurled and process in such-and-such a direction. A It is a condition of the time of leaf-shedding prince's court is not simply a court: it is a that ruddy sap pour from leaves: the blood that court at which the world takes refuge is inside every branch drips out through pores. (dargtih-i dlam-pandh). Historiographic prose was also imbued The reader will also note that the mixed with elaborate metaphor drawn from Per- metaphor, so deplored in English stylis- sian poetic style. In a typical passage, tics, is in Persian style not considered Khwandamir introduces autumn with the faulty; it is unabashedly used by some of following: t~e best stylists of fifteenth-century Per- SIan. In early fall, when the cold foe began to plun- The devices employed by writers of der and pillage around the fringes of the garden historiography serve, in addition to cre- and orchard, and, as the frigid winds of the ating an "artful" prose, to set the events at autumnal army began to blow, when the a remove and, to an extent, to mask what warmth of the summer air turned to retreat, the emperor entered the plains of Mazanderan,? must have been an unpleasant reality, in which almost constant war, devastation When they indulge in such metaphors and despotism played major roles, and historiographers draw upon the narrative transform that reality into a cool, stately technique of the classical Persian poets image of regality and control, the image most admired at the time. To establish a the Timurids were always careful to cul- mood, both Firdawsi in the heroic Shah- tivate. nama and Nizami in the romance Layli u Although Persian was the major lan- Majnun introduce episodes in the story guage of Timurid letters and historiogra- by means of metaphorical sketches of the phy, it was not the only language used. seasons of the year and the times of day. Persian had held the highest literary status For instance, Nizami writes in description ever since it re-emerged as a court lan- of dawn: guage in the tenth century, and the pres- tige of Persian literary culture was unas- Shabglr chu charkh-i liijawardi I sailable. However, the Timurids' native arast kabudi-i ba zardi /I tongue was not Persian but Chaghatay Khandidan-i qurs-i an gu/-i zard I 8 Turkish. Throughout the period various afaq ba rang-i surkh-i gu/ kard. attempts were made to turn this dialect of When the imprisoner of night tinged the Turkish into a literary vehicle. Early in the purple of the azure sphere with yellow, the period, under Timur and Shahrukh, laughing (blossoming) of the disc of the yel- Turkish scribes called bakhshis wrote low rose tinted the horizons a rosy scarlet documents in Turkish using the Uighur script of eastern Turkistan, in a vertically And in an autumnal metaphor introducing oriented variant of which Mongolian is a passage in which the death of one of the still written today. Although most of the major characters is to occur, Nizami examples of Chaghatay from Timur and writes: Shahrukh's time are decrees, writs of fief, etc., there were also some literary mani- 7Khwandamir, Habib al-siyar, III, 563. festations, including the anonymous (and 8Nizami Ganja'i, Layli u Majnun, in Ku/- now lost) Turkish versified history of liyyat-i khamsa (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1351), p. 518. 9Nizami, Layli u Majnun, p. 587. INTRODUCTION 7 Timur's campaigns and Turkish poetry When the ghazal singers of the divan of written by Haydar Khwarazmi for Iskan- eloquence hurl fire from the repository of dar-Sultan. Outstanding calligraphic ex- poetic nature into the tinder of distracted lovers' souls, they cannot string one fiery amples of Turkish in the Uighur script are ruby onto the cord of poetry if they do not the lavishly illustrated Bibliotheque Na- stud the introduction to their poetry with tionale Mi'rajnama and the Mongol- gems of praise for the Creator, who estab- Timurid genealogy in Istanbul (Topkapi lished the inamorati as the jewel in the Sarayi Miizesi, H.21S3, foIl. 32-43). By crown of all humanity through the nobility of their diamond tongues and the pearls of the middle of the century, the Uighur their graceful expression. script was abandoned in favor of the dominant Arabic script. With no native Equally Persianate in both vocabulary and literary tradition to speak of, Chaghatay tone is Sultan-Husayn Mirza's Chaghatay literature developed completely under the "Apologia" (pp. 373-78). influence of Persian, accepting wholesale In contrast to these, in a typical para- not only a massive amount of vocabulary graph of Babur Mirza's memoirs, a text but also the literary conventions of Per- in which the author makes practically no sian-rather as Middle English developed attempt to write artful prose, and which under the domination of French. can be assumed to be much closer to Several examples of truly ornate, artful Chaghatay Turkish as it was normally prose are also included. A good illustra- used by an educated speaker, the Persian tion of the extent to which Persianization vocabulary not only is of much less fre- in Chaghatay could be carried is Mir Ali- quency (roughly 20 percent) but is gen- Sher's preface to his first Chaghatay erally limited to specifically Persian ate divan (pp. 363-72). Divan prefaces of- terms like suhbat (convivial gathering), fered poets an opportunity to exercise sunih; (long-necked bottle), and Islamic their wits and prose skills to produce a terminology like nass-i qdti I (binding text that was as ornate, elaborate and re- text, absolute stipulation): plete with metaphor, allusion and quota- tion as possible. The preface to a divan A~ tartlldi, Bavujiid kim sub bat yok edi, a~ was called debacha, the same word used tartrladurgan yerda ~ira qoyup altun va kiimii~ to refer to the elaborate illuminations at surabtlamt ~ira ustiga qoydIlar. Burunlar biz- the beginning of costly and regal books. ning ata-aqa Cinggiz torasini garib ri'ayat qilurlar edi. Majlista va divanda, toy va asta, Debacha means "brocade," and not only olturmaqta va qoymaqta, xilaf-i tOra i~ qil- do the intricately intertwining patterns of maslar edi. Cinggiz Xannmg torasi nass-l an illumination resemble brocade designs, qati' emastur kim albatta kisi anmg bila but also the similarly intricate verbal pat- 'amal qIlgay. Hac kimdin yaxst qa'Ida qalgan terns of a divan preface are shot through bolsa, aning bila 'amal qilmaq kerak, Agar with multifarious rhetorical ornamenta- ata yaman i~ qilgan bolsa, yax~I i~ bila badal qilmaq kerak, A~tIn song atlanip W~kanycrga tion. As an illustration, the sample text keldim, Bizning ordu bila mtrzalarnmg or- from Mir Ali-Sher's debacha given be- dusrnmg arasr bir ~ar'i bolgay edi.l? low consists of approximately 70 percent Persian words (indicated by boldface): Food was served. Although it was not a convivial assembly, in the place where food Fasahat dtvanrnrng gazalsaraylarr tab' was being served trays were put, and gold and maxzanIdIn ~oridabal 'a~iqlar xirman-i silver vessels were set on the trays. In former janIga ot salgu dek, bir ata~in la'i nazm times our fathers and forefathers meticulously silkiga tarta alrnagaylar, agar soz debacasln observed the Genghisid Code. In assemblies 01 sanl' javahir-i hamdi bila m urassa' and court, at feasts and dinners, in seating and qrlmagaylar kim 'i~q ahlin almas·i lisan serving, they did nothing counter to the code. ~arafi va gawhar-i bayan lutfi bila sayir.i insannIng durratuttaJi qIldI. lOBabur, Baburnama. fol. 186b-187a. 8 A CENTURY OF PRINCES However, Genghis Khan's code is not a bind- Muhammad, Muhammad-Sultan, etc.). ing text according to which a person must act Fairly complete genealogical tables are absolutely. One must act in accordance with a given for reference (pp. x-xiv). good rule when someone leaves one behind; if, however, an ancestor has done a bad thing, It would have been desirable to indicate it should be replaced by a good one. After in the gealogical tables the marital rela- dining we mounted our horses and returned to tionships among the Timurids, but given where we were camped. Between our camp and the problems posed by multiple marriages the mirzas' camp was one league. of both sexes, and the limitation imposed by a sheet of paper with but four direc- Chaghatay literature had a brief flores- tions and two dimensions, it has proved cence in Herat at the end of the fifteenth impossible. Suffice it to say that by con- century, when Chaghatay letters were ac- stant intermarriage most of the House of tively patronized by Mir Ali-Sher Nawa'i Timur were at least double cousins to and Sultan-Husayn Mirza. The eventual each other by the third generation. Sultan- fall of Herat to the Safavids, however, Husayn Mirza's lineage (p. xv) illustrates ended Chaghatayid domination in the the point. area, and Chaghatay Turkish quickly dis- Personal names and terms of Arabo- appeared from the literary scene. Al- Persian origin are rendered as normally though the Safavids themselves were transliterated but without those encum- speakers of the closely related Turcoman brances, diacritical dots and macrons, dialect, and many of the royal family, in- meaningless to those who do not know cluding the founder Shah Isma oil I, com- the Arabic script. The e and 0 vowels that posed poetry in Turcoman, no serious at- in Iran later merged with i and u have tempt was ever made to make Turkish a been retained in order to reflect the fif- rival of Persian within the Iranian heart- teenth-century pronunciation (Ali-Sher, land. not Ali-Shir; Koh, not Kuh). Culturally Babur Mirza and his followers took important terms without English equiva- Chaghatay Turkish into the Indian sub- lents are fully transliterated and explained continent, and many of the Chaghatay in the Glossary of Titles and Terms (pp. elite composed Turkish poetry within the 379-87). first and second generation, but particu- Names and terms of Turkic origin are larly in India, where Persian had been the written with front-back vocalic opposi- sole language of administration and bu- tion indicated (iii, idu, 010, iila). The reaucracy since the eleventh century, the spelling of Turkic and Turco-Mongolian Persian ate tradition was much too domi- names and terms in Arabic script was far nant to challenge, and by Akbar's gen- from standardized during the Timurid pe- eration in the mid-sixteenth century riod. In order to avoid needless confusion Babur's memoirs had to be translated into a normalized spelling has been adopted Persian. throughout (e.g., Qutlugh, which is also often spelled Qutluq in the sources; and Toqtamish, also spelled Toghtamish and * Tokhtamish), The reader will undoubtedly find the Tamerlane's given name was Temtir array of Timurid princes, all of whom are ("iron"), but the Persianized form, Timur, styled Mirza (from amirzada, offspring from which the adjective Timurid is de- of the amir, Amir Timur), even more be- rived, has been adopted throughout. All wildering because of the frequent occur- others with this name have been spelled rence of princes who bear not only the as "Temiir." same name (Baysunghur, Pir Muham- mad) but also similar names (Sultan- INTRODUCTION 9 A hyphen distinguishes names com- pounded with elements like Sultan, Mir and Shah (e.g., Sultan-Ahmad, Mir-Ali, Shah-Husayn) from names in which those elements are titles (Sultan Abu- Sa'id, Mir Ali-Sher). Discounting the frequently occurring names in -uddin, the second of two consecutive given names is generally a patronymic, i.e., Shamsuddin Muhammad Ali is Shamsuddin Muham- mad son of Ali. Place names are given their generally accepted English spellings where one ex- ists (Herat, Kerman, Delhi). Note partic- ularly that, unless specifically stated as "Arab Iraq," throughout the text "Iraq" refers to "Persian Iraq," which is more or less equivalent to modern western Iran. "Arab Iraq" refers to Mesopotamia, and the two regions are often referred to to- gether as "the two Iraqs" (Iraqayn).