The itineraries of Shāhrukh b. Timur 285

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE ITINERARIES OF SHĀHRUKH B. TIMUR (1405-47)

Charles Melville

At what point does a king who travels about to go to war, visit a sacred site, go hunting, meet foreign lega- tions, or spend Christmas with his family, become an itinerant king in the technical sense in which it is understood for Ottonian Germany?1 The purpose of this chapter is to look in some detail at the itineraries of Timur’s son and successor, Shāhrukh (r. 807-50/1405-47), to see to what extent he can be described as an itinerant monarch and therefore to address at least one of the topics of this volume, and perhaps also to begin to consider the role of the ‘capital’ and the familiarity of the ruler with city life—the other side of the coin. I have tried some similar analyses with the reigns of the Ilkhan Öljeitü and the Safavid Shah ʿAbbās,2 so this chapter contributes to filling in the gap between them, thereby demonstrating the continuation or attenuation (as the case may be) of one of the hallmarks of Mongol rule in Iran and Central Asia as the Chinggisids and their Chaghatay and Türkmen successors acculturated to Persian norms. As in these two other examples, the reign of Shāhrukh lends itself to this sort of analysis, partly due to the relative abundance of useful source material covering his lengthy reign, and partly because these sources document his movements in peacetime as well as on campaign, so that we are not simply witnessing movements associated with military expeditions. Shāhrukh’s reign is situated within a rather extended period of transition between the more overtly military and coercive preceding periods of state formation (e.g. up to Ghazan’s reign in the Ilkhanate, Shah Ṭahmāsp’s in the Safavid case, and the career of Timur here) and a period of consolidation that fol- lowed (under Abū Saʿīd in the Ilkhanate, Sultan Ḥusayn Bayqara in the Timurid case, and the second Safavid century after Shah ʿAbbās). In all

1 McKitterick 2008, 174. For Ottonian Germany, see more in Bernhardt 2013, and for Charlemagne, also McKitterick 2011. 2 Melville 1990; Melville 1993. 286 Charles Melville these instances, the level of itinerancy appears to have decreased in later reigns, although the matter has not yet received detailed attention. The main sources used for this survey of the reign are the Zubdat al-tawārīkh of Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū (to 830/1427) and ʿAbd al-Razzāq Samarqandī’s Maṭlaʿ-i saʿdayn (to 850/1447).3 These are both chronicles arranged in annals and relatively full in their accounts of the reign, especially with regard to the provision of dates, which are essential for recovering the ruler’s movements; in fact it is only the existence of these chronicles that makes our investigation possible. The contrast between the two works (a larger comparison of which is beyond our immediate purpose) is also interesting; the main difference here is that Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū provides far more detail of Shāhrukh’s movements (which he probably largely accompanied), so the question arises—and must at present remain unanswered—as to whether or not the relative lack of information about Shāhrukh’s move- ments in the last decade of the reign reflects the real situation, or merely the failure of ʿAbd al-Razzāq to record them. A comparable situation arose in connection with the itineraries of Shah ʿAbbās, with the very disparate level of information provided by the main chronicles of the reign, but particularly Iskandar Beg Munshī and Munajjim Yazdī.4 On the other hand, Samarqandī does occasionally have a piece of information not found in Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū—a date here, a place there, as well as a greater accent on Shāhrukh’s piety. Faṣīḥ Khwāfī, the other main annalist of the period, covering the reign to 845/1441, sometimes also has supplementary or alter- native details, and is especially prone to mention the movements of Shāhrukh’s son, Baysonqur (Bāysunqur) Mīrzā, in whose administration he served between 828/1425 and 836/1433.5 The later work of Khwāndamīr, Ḥabīb al-siyar, completed in 930/1524, can provide some helpful clarifica- tions.6

3 Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū, covering 807-30/1405-27; Samarqandī, covering 807-50/1405-47. For these authors, and especially Samarqandī, see Manz 2007, 51-2, 56-61. Also Woods 1987; Subtelny and Melville 2002. 4 Munajjim Yazdī provides a great wealth of data for the years to 1020/1611, whereas Iskandar Munshī, covering the whole reign, leaves Shah ʿAbbās apparently immobile for months at a time; see Melville 1993, 207. 5 Faṣīḥ Khwāfī seldom does more than abbreviate material in the two works mentioned above. For Faṣīḥ, see Manz 2007, 64-7, 97-9. 6 Covering the whole reign; see the convenient translation by Thackston (Khwāndamīr, trans. 307-61). The Ḥabīb al-siyar for this period is derived from Mīrkhwānd’s Rawḍat al-safā, in turn based largely on Samarqandī’s Maṭlaʿ-i saʿdayn, and for the most part merely repeats the data found there.