Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1 A Century of Princes Cover Table of Contents Maps Charts and Introduction
1 A Century of Princes Cover Table of Contents Maps Charts and Introduction
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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
*
Published in Conjunction with the Exhibition
"Timur and the Princely Vision,"
Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, 1989
*
The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture
Cambridge, Massachusetts 1989
· - n
-_I ,I
MAPS vii
GENEALOGICAL CHARTS x
INTRODUCTION 1
THE ARTS
Artistic Production
Arzadasht 323
v
CONTENTS
BIBLIOGRAPHy 389
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The Descendants
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The Descendants
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The Descendants
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The Descendants
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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'<i Beg's sixteenth-century Qanun al-suwar;
sa'dayn (ca. 1470), Fasihi Khwafi's but these give no hint of an eesthetic for-
Mujmal, Hafiz-i Abru's works, and Mir- mulation for artists. Sultan-Ali Mashhadi,
khwand's Rawdat al-safa, were written Majnun Rafiqi and Mir-Ali Harawi all
either under the direct patronage of Shah- wrote treatises on calligraphy, but none
rukh and his house or by men who were gives the slightest indication of the res-
intimately connected with Shahrukh, and thetic criteria by which calligraphy should
therefore a Shahrukhid bias predominates be judged. The tantalizing vocabulary
in the histories. Given for a different per- Mirza Muhammad Dughlat uses (for cal-
spective-is a translation of a little-known ligraphers: "a swift hand:' "a forceful
synopsis of the House of Timur written hand:' etc.; for artists: "good articulation
in 1413 for Timur's grandson, Iskandar- and draftsmanship," etc., pp. 357-362)
Sultan, who ultimately lost out to his un- leaves the reader in doubt as to the precise
significance of his terminology because
there are so few parallel texts with which
2See John E. Woods, "The Rise of Tlmurid to make a comparison. The treatment of
Historiography," Journal of Near Eastern artists and calligraphers, even in later
Studies 46 (1987): 83-85.
tadhkiras, is so stereotypical and cliche-
3An interesting contrast to sponsored histories
is the account by 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
Khiin-l ki buwad duriin-i har shiikh I
ners [inscribed] with Koranic verses of
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 Turkish. Throughout the period various
afaq ba rang-i surkh-i gu/ kard.8
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
poetic nature into the tinder of distracted
dar-Sultan. Outstanding calligraphic ex-
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 (bindingI
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
ata yaman i~ qilgan bolsa, yax~I i~ bila badal
with multifarious rhetorical ornamenta- 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