Beatrice Manz

Temür and the Problem of a Conqueror's LegacyAuthor(s): Beatrice Forbes ManzSource: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Apr., 1998), pp. 21-41Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain andIrelandStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25183464 .Accessed: 28/09/2011 05:21

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Temtir and the problem of a conqueror's legacy

BEATRICE FORBES MANZ

Editorial note: This article, like Professor Dale's which follows it, is based on a paper given at the

colloquium on "The Legacy of the Timurids", convened by the Royal Asiatic Society and held at

the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 1991.

Temiir has been many things to many people. He was nomad and city-builder, Turk and

promoter of Persian culture, restorer of the Mongol order and warrior for the spread of

Islam. One thing he was to all: a conqueror of unequalled scope, able to subdue both the

vast areas of nomad power to the north and the centres of agrarian Islamic culture to the

south. The history of his successors was one of increasing political fragmentation and

economic stress. Yet they too won fame, as patrons over a period of brilliant cultural

achievement in Persian and Turkic. Temiir's career raises a number of questions. Why did

he find it necessary to pile conquest upon conquest, each more ambitious than the last?

Having conceived dreams of dominion, where did he get the power and money to fulfill

them? When he died, what legacy did Temiir leave to his successors and to the world

which they tried to control? Finally, what was this world of Turk and Persian, and where

did Temiir and the Timurids belong within it?

There is an array of possible answers to these questions, and a host of choices and pitfalls

facing the historian considering them. We have to confront the difficulty of assessing the

career and legacy of any conqueror, since the activity of conquest obscures our under

standing of what happened beyond the battlefield. We have to consider also the

complicated relationship between the Mongol and the Islamic traditions within which the

Timurids and their subjects operated. In this essay I shall give my own set of answers to the

question of Temiir's legacy and indulge in some ruminations on the problems involved in

making my choices.

The late Mongol world

Temiir and his successors lived in a world shaped by two extraordinary institutions: the

Islamic caliphate and the world empire of the Mongols. These systems of rule shared much

of Eurasia, each claiming universal validity. The Mongol Empire was in decline as a

political unit, without a centre, its lands disunited and often at war. Despite its fragmenta tion, the empire remained ideologically vigorous. The charisma of Chinggis Khan was still

so strong that only those descended from him could legally use the sovereign tides which

JRAS, Series 3, 8, 1 (1998), pp. 21-41

22 Temur and the problem of a

conqueror's legacy

bore his imprint -

"khan" and "khaghan". The descendants of his sons, Jochi, Chaghadai,

Ogedei, and Tolui, still kept themselves separate, disputing territories and power in the

name of his testament. From the Russian Steppe to the T'ien Shan mountains nomads

formed the ruling class, believing firmly in their superiority. They remained intensely loyal to the customs and traditions of the Mongol empire, to Mongol dynastic custom, the "yasa

of Chinggis Khan", to their military lifestyle. Temur was a product of Mongol tradition but he belonged equally to the world of

Islam. Like the Mongol empire, the Dar al-Islam had lost its central office, but remained

vigorous and expansive. The central Islamic lands extended from Eastern Turkestan down

to Northern India and across to Anatolia and North Africa, and substantial Muslim

populations existed well beyond. Despite the shadowy nature of the Mamluk caliphate, it

held residual prestige, and Islam remained a crucial element in political legitimation.

The Islamic and Mongolian systems competed in their claims to universal validity and

promoted conflicting systems of law, legitimation and political order. Nonetheless they

combined to create a vigorous and complex society. The Islamic and the Mongol empires

each retained the vision of an intact state and of a continuing history involving all

components parts, but at the end of the fourteenth century they shared a world deeply

changed from that of the caliphate and of the Mongol conquest. The whole of the western

part of the Mongol empire had converted to Islam. Just as Mongols accepted Islamic

norms, the settled Islamic lands received a strong Mongol imprint. Even regions which had

not been within the Mongol empire were engaged with the Mongol legacy. The Delhi

Sultans, the Ottomans, the Mamluks, and the Turkmen dynasties of western Iran were

conscious of their origins in the steppe and formulated their genealogical and political

claims with an eye to Mongol traditions.1 The influence of the steppe in the Middle East

was not Hmited to the abstract. Miniatures and album illustrations show nomads living in

the felt yurts of the steppe and wearing a wide variety of clothing and headgear. Along with

the turban and the robe, we find feathers, felt and skins. If we look at these pictures

imagining the tailoring less tidy and adding the element of smell, we can recreate something

of the presence of Turco-Mongolian nomads within Middle Eastern society.

The steppe nomads and their settled subjects had coexisted for over a century, and lived

less in opposition than in symbiosis. What is striking about the late Mongol world is the vast

extent of territory over which people understood the same languages, both actual and

symbolic. Throughout the Middle East and the western steppe Turkic was the language of

the military elite, Arabic and Persian the languages of literature and scholarship. Although the Islamic and Turco-Mongolian traditions retained ideas of separation and incompat

ibility, rulers invoked both; Persian bureaucratic practice combined with Turco-Mongolian

structures. A huge territory shared a past as part of the Mongol Empire, recorded in Arabic,

Persian, Chinese, Mongolian. There have been few times in history when the world has

been so closely interconnected -

not only economically, but also in culture and tradition.

1 D. Ayalon, "The great Yasa of Chingiz Khan. A reexamination", Studia Islamica, XXXIII (1971), rjp. 97-140,

vol. 34 (1971), 151-80, vol. 36 (1972), 113-58, vol. 38 (1973), 107-56; U. Haarmann, "Altun Han and Cingiz Han

bei den agyptischen Mamluken", Der Islam, LI, pp. 1?36; J. E. Woods, The Aqquyunlu, Clan, Confederation, Empire

(Minneapolis and Chicago, 1976), pp. 4-16; Carl W. Ernst, Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History and Politics at a South

Asian Sufi Center (Albany, 1992), pp. 38-59.

Beatrice Forbes Manz 23

The logic of Temiir's campaigns

To understand Temiir's career, we must see him operating within two interconnected

worlds, using the resources of both, and driven by the challenges that each presented. He

achieved his spectacular successes through his ability to exploit both settled and nomad

populations and he was pushed to ever greater efforts by the need to dominate both of the

worlds he sprang from. By birth and geographical origin, Temiir was placed in the middle

of these systems. He rose to power in Transoxiana, at the border of the settled and steppe

worlds, and central to both. This had been part of the Chaghatayid khanate, the portion of

Chinggis Khan's second son Chaghadai, but as a settled region, it had been ruled by agents

of all four Chinggisid houses. In the 1330s, the Chaghatayid khanate divided into two

parts. Eastern Turkestan and the Hi region became known as Moghulistan, or the eastern

Chaghatayid khanate, and remained under Chaghatay khans, while the more agricultural

regions of Transoxiana and what is now eastern Afghanistan formed the Ulus Chaghatay.

Here in 1347 tribal leaders deposed the khan and took power themselves, legitimating their

rule through a puppet khan.

Temiir was a member of the active and ambitious tribal aristocracy connected to the

Chinggisid dynasty by historical ties of service. His tribe was the Barlas; this was not the

strongest tribe within the Ulus Chaghatay, nor was Temiir its chief He achieved his

eventual position by constant effort and political acuity through ten years of manoeuvre

within a fluid political situation. In 1370, Temiir gathered the tribal aristocracy behind

him, unseated the leader of the Ulus Chaghatay, and took power. Like his predecessors he

appointed a puppet khan from the Chinggisid house, using for himself simply the title

commander, amir. At the same time, he married a woman from the Chaghatay dynasty and

took the title giiregen or royal son-in-law, which he displayed prominendy in coinage and

correspondence.2 The khan Temiir appointed was not Chaghatayid, but Ogedeyid. This

choice may have been a deliberate one. The Ogedeyids had originally been the Great

Khans and had been allied with the Chaghatayids in several power struggles within the

Mongol Empire. Thus an Ogedeyid khan was not totally unconnected to Transoxiana, but

at the same time could justify more universal claims.

Temiir's assumption of sovereignty does not mark his achievement of a secure position

over the Ulus Chaghatay. He soon began a series of campaigns which he used gradually to

eliminate his rivals and impose full control over the Ulus. These also demonstrated his

rising ambition within the Mongol world -

first to subdue the Mongol powers closest to

him and then to dominate the whole of the empire. The murder of the eastern Chaghatayid

khan, Ilyas Khwaja, and the seizure of power by tribal amirs allowed Temiir to campaign in

Moghulistan without trespassing against Chinggisid prerogatives. A litde later he attacked

Khorezm, previously part of the Golden Horde, but now largely independent under the

Kungrat Sufi dynasty.3 His justification here was Mongol - the cities of Kat and Khiva, he

claimed, belonged within the Chaghatayid realm.

2 G. Herrmann, "Zur Intitulatio timuridischer Urkunden", Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlandischen Gesellschaft,

Supplement II (1974), XVIII deutscher Orientalistentag, 19.72, p. 518; Linda Komaroff, "The epigraphy of Timurid

coinage: some preliminary remarks", American Numismatic Society, Museum Notes, XXXI (1986), pp. 212?15. 3 The dates of Temur's early campaigns are given variably in the contemporary histories, due, apparently, to

24 Temur and the problem of a

conqueror's legacy

In 777/1376 troubles in the Jochid Blue Horde, north of the Jaxartes, brought Temur a

golden opportunity to increase his prestige. The defeated claimant to the throne,

Tokhtamish, appealed to him for help. Temiir was glad to oblige, and in 778/1377

successfully installed Tokhtamish as khan in Sighnaq. In addition to his Ogedeyid puppet

khan, Temiir now had a protege from the senior Chinggisid house. Unfortunately for him, Tokhtamish did not stop here but took over the throne of the Golden Horde in 1380, thus

becoming the most prestigious figure in the Mongol world.

While Tokhtamish was reunifying the Ulus Jochi in the early 1380s, Temiir was engaged in conquering Iran. Here he was both subjugating the local Iranian dynasties and staking his

claim to another Mongol territory, the Ilkhanid state. We find his pretensions mirrored in

both actions and rhetoric. After reducing the dynasties of Khorasan to obedience, in

November and December 1384 he took Mazandaran and reinstalled as its governor a

pretender to the Ilkhanid throne, Lughman b. Taghay Temiir, who was permitted to retain

the Ilkhanid tide Padshah4 Temur's army then took the Mongol city of Sultaniyya, which

held strong symbolic importance as the site of burial and enthronement for the later

Ilkhans. Now Tokhtamish in the north and Temiir in the south faced each other as two

great conquerors and restorers of the Mongol empire. One was by birth a Chinggisid, by tide Khan of the senior Chinggisid Ulus. The other was from the minor aristocracy, but

with full use of the resources of a rich agricultural and urban economy.5

Tokhtamish reacted to Temur's Iranian campaign by reverting to the old enmity of the

Golden Horde against the Ilkhans. In 786/1385 he sent an emissary to the Mamluks, the

traditional allies of the Golden Horde, and the following winter he attacked Tabriz, which

the Ulus Jochi had often claimed. When Tokhtamish again attacked through the Caucasus

in early 789/1387, Temiir repulsed him. At this Tokhtamish turned east and raided

Transoxiana. Temiir returned, re-established his hold over Khorezm and Ferghana, whose

leaders had aided Tokhtamish, and in the late autumn of 792?3/1390 set off against

Tokhtamish, taking with him in his army several defectors from the Golden Horde.

This campaign caused considerable hardship to Temur's army, but when the armies met

on the Kundurcha River near Samara, Tokhtamish was badly defeated, in part because of

further desertions from his army. Temiir celebrated his victory in the capital of the Golden

Horde and then returned to Samarqand. By 1393 Tokhtamish had retaken most of the

Ulus Jochi, and in 1394 he once more raided Azarbaijan. In Jumadi I, 797/February 1395

Temiir headed against him through the Caucasus. Tokhtamish's amirs again deserted him

at the critical moment, and he suffered a severe defeat on the Terek river. This time Temiir

difficulties in interpreting the animal cycle. See B. F. Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane (Cambridge, 1989),

p. 181, note 76. 4 Sharaf al-Din cAli Yazdi, Zafarnama, ed. Muhammad 'Abbasi (Tehran, 1336/1957) (hereafter ZNY); i,

pp. 282?3; Nizam al-Din Shami, ed., F. Tauer, Histoire des conquetes de Tamerlan intitulee Zafarnama, par NizamuddTn

Sami (Prague, i, 1937, ii (consisting of additions made by Hafiz-i Abru), 1956), (hereafter ZNS) i, pp. 96?7.

Lughman's father Taghay Temiir, though descended from Chinggis Khan's brother, was accepted as one of the

most legitimate of the Ilkhanid successors, since the house of Hiilegii was largely exhausted. Hafiz-i Abru, ed.

F. Tauer, Cinq opuscules de Hafiz-i Abru concemant I'histoire de I'Iran au temps de Tamerlan (Prague, 1959), p. 5. 5 The duel fought out between Tokhtarnish and Temiir from 1385 to 1396 is relatively poorly chronicled in the

histories of Temiir's reign, written by Persian authors. This historiographical tradition may have skewed our

perception; it is interesting to compare the court histories to the short account of Temiir's reign written for his

grandson Iskandar Sultan, in which his rivalry with Tokhtam'ish holds a central place "Synoptic Account of the House of Timur", in Wheeler M.Thackston, ed. and trans., A Century of Princes (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), pp. 237-9.


was not content simply to defeat his rival. He enthroned his own Jochid candidate in Sarai

and then systematically pillaged both the nomad centres and the major trading cities of the

Horde -

Akkarman, Astrakhan, Sarai, Hajji Tarkhan and others. Tokhtamish retired to

Siberia where he died in 1406-7.6

Temiir's decisive victory over the Golden Horde did not satisfy his Mongol ambitions.

Shortly after this, in 800/1398, he was apparendy already planning his campaign against the

Chinese emperor, waiting only until he had dealt with the enemies closer to hand.7 On his

way to India that year he welcomed a pretender from the dynasty of the Northern Yuan,

and gave him an honourable place in his following, thus adding a Toluid client to his

collection of Chinggisids.8 In his formal correspondence Temiir continued throughout his

life to present himself as the restorer of Chinggisid rights. He even justified his Iranian, Mamluk and Ottoman campaigns as a reimposition of legitimate Mongol control over

lands taken by usurpers and as the reassertion of the rights of the house of Chinggis Khan's

son Chaghadai. He further espoused the cause of the Ogedeyid house, thus laying claim

potentially to the whole of the former Mongol empire.9 Temiir's crushing defeat of Tokhtamish in 1396 destroyed his most serious rival within

the Turco-Mongolian world but within his other world, the Dar al-Islam, the situation was

less satisfactory. Temiir had by now established himself solidly as ruler of Iran and, less

securely, as ruler over Iraq. A campaign against the Christian Georgians in 788/1386

established him as a warrior for the faith. In preparing and justifying his campaigns Temiir

positioned himself as restorer and protector of the Islamic world just as he did for the

Mongol one, justifying his campaigns in the name of the sharVa and of social order.10

Nonetheless he shared the stage with three major powers, each of them also ruled by a

Turkic military elite, and claiming Islamic legitimation. The Delhi sultanate, closest to him geographically, and a traditional goal of Chaghatay

campaigns, he pillaged and brought to submission in 800-1/1398-9. The other two powers

posed a greater threat to his interests. Like Temiir, the Mamluks and the Ottomans used

their furtherance of Islam to legitimate their rule, and they could do so with better

justification. The Mamluks had from their inception posed as defenders of Islam against

Turco-Mongolian infidels. Where Temiir kept a puppet khan, the Mamluks supported a

shadow caliph. The fact that Temiir was a practising Muslim did not prevent them from

having their ulema declare him an infidel.11 Temiir's relations with the Ottoman sultans

were more complex. In 1395 Temiir had approached Yildirim Bayazid as a possible ally

against Tokhtamish, but two years later Bayazid turned his military energies towards

Eastern Anatolia, by then under Temiir's influence. The correspondence which followed

6 V. V. Bartol'd, "Tokhtamish", Encyclopaedia of Islam, ist ed.; M. G. Safargaliev, Raspad ZolotoiOrdy (Saransk,

i960), pp. 171-82. 7

ZNS, i, p. 170. 8

ZNY, ii, pp. 33, 423, Khwandamir, trans., Wheeler M. Thackston, Habibu's-siyar, Tome Three, Sources of Oriental Languages and Literatures, No. 24 (Cambridge, Mass.), 1994, i, p. 42.

9 A. Z. V. Togan, "Timurs Osteuropapolitik", Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlandisehen Gesellschaft, CVIII (1958),

pp. 295-6; B. A. F. Manz, "Tamerlane and the symbolism of sovereignty", Iranian Studies, XXI/1-2 (1988), pp. 109?14; J. E. Woods, "Timur's genealogy", in M. M. Mazzaoui and V. B. Moreen, eds., Intellectual Studies on

Islam, Essays written in Honor of Martin B. Dickson (Salt Lake City, 1990), pp. 100-04. 10

ZNS, pp. 128, 176, 247, 286; 'Abd al-Husayn Nawa'I, Asnad wa makatibat-i tarikhi-i Iran (Tehran, 1977), pp.20, 70, 75, 77

11 Ahmad Ibn 'Arabshah, trans., J. H. Sanders, Tamerlane or Timur the Great Amir (London, 1936), p. 299.

26 Temiir and the problem of a conqueror's legacy

was full of recrimination. While Temiir claimed tide to this region as heir to the Mongols

the Ottomans claimed it as representatives of the earlier Seljukids.12 To Bayazid's charge

that Temur's army was full of non-Muslims, Temiir answered with exacdy the same

reproach.13 However many Christians there may have been in Bayazid's army, his claims to

the merit of ghazawat were indubitably stronger than Temur's, and his armies closer to

Anatolia. Some exemplary chastisement was necessary. In the winter of 1401-2 Temiir set

out against his western rivals. He first attacked Mamluk Syria, taking Aleppo, Hims and

Damascus. After this he proceeded against Yildirim Bayazid whom he defeated decisively near Ankara in the summer of 1402. Thus Temiir established himself as the supreme

military power within the Islamic world as well as the Mongol one.

In 1404, at the end of his seven-year campaign, Temiir returned in triumph to

Samarqand where he staged a convocation, or quriltay, designed to underline his past

successes and to prepare for his forthcoming campaign against China. China had expelled

its Mongol rulers, and the emperor had dared to refer to Temur as his vassal. Temur

arranged elaborate entertainments, showing off elephants imported from India, the booty

brought back from his Ottoman campaign, and the variety of his bazaars. Most impressive

of all was the size of his army, organized in a magnificent tent city. The ambassadors from

Castile, Egypt, the Golden Horde, Moghulistan and China were treated to this spectacle

and then all were sent back home to report Temur's strength -

except the Chinese who

were detained in disgrace.

In the midst of all this sat Temiir himself, too old and ill to hold his eyes fully open, but

still able to make much of the world revolve around him.14 In the beginning of winter he

set out to conquer China but while wintering north of the Jaxartes in Otrar he died, on the

eve of February 18, 1405.

The logic of Temur's realm

The extent of Temur's campaigns may seem excessive to a modern sensibility, but fitted his

ambition within the two worlds he lived in, the Islamic and the Mongolian. The size of his

realm was much more modest and was determined by a different consideration -

the

efficient exploitation of settled and nomad societies. In considering the balance Temiir

constructed, we must keep in mind that the boundaries and contrasts between nomad and

setded were not co-terminous with those between Mongol and Islamic. The Mongol

legacy was strong within all the territories which had belonged to the empire, including

Iran, Transoxiana and part of Afghanistan, where most of the population was settled. On

the other hand there were significant regions of primarily nomad population outside the

Mongol world, most notably in the Turkmen regions of Azarbaijan and neighbouring

provinces. Finally, while we often consider the Jochids and Eastern Chaghatayids as

representing a tradition stronger in nomadism and weaker in high setded culture, their

khanates included important regions of irrigated agriculture, most notably the Ferghana

12 H. Inalcik, "Bayazid I", in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. 13

Togan, "Timurs Osteuropapolitik", passim; Nava'i, Asnad, pp. 94, 99. 14

Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, trans., G. Le Strange, Narrative of the Spanish Embassy to the Court of Timur at

Samarkand in the years 1403-1406 (London, 1928), p. 221.


valley and Khorezm. The boundary between steppe and sown is thus not the same as that

between Mongol and non-Mongol, or between one Mongol house and another.

While Temiir dominated the world as a Muslim and a Mongol, he organized his army and his realm as a nomad familiar with settled society. What allowed him his success was his

ability to mobilize the resources of both nomad and settled peoples. The territories in

which he installed a regular administration and garrison armies were areas where nomads

could find pasture but where the bulk of the population was settled and in many cases

largely Persian. Khorezm, the Ferghana Valley with Kashghar and the northern banks of

the Jaxartes River were incorporated, along with southern, eastern and central Iran, and

less successfully, Azarbaijan and Iraq.

If we look at the army Temiir led, we understand the logic of his policy. The army

altogether was enormous; estimates range from two hundred to a less believable eight

hundred thousand.15 The Chaghatay were the most constant and trusted of Temiir's

soldiers. These were largely nomads, but they were not a horde of tribesmen supported by

booty. This was an army registered, ordered in decimal units, and in part paid, in short an

army requiring a settled tax base.16 Added to the central army were prisoners of war from

campaigns outside the Middle East and contingents from rulers who had submitted. Temiir

had available to him foot and horse, nomads, mountaineers, and siege engineers.17 As he

passed through his dominions on the way to a new campaign he collected troops,

particularly in areas close to the region he intended to attack. This was a rolling army, in

which the soldiers changed according to the needs of each campaign.

To support his troops Temiir used not only booty but also an expanding tax base of rich

agricultural land. He and his followers had grown up in a nomad society which was close

to the sedentary population and made full use of its resources. The tribal chiefs of the Ulus

Chaghatay had collected taxes direcdy from their settled subjects, had used fortified cities as

protection against attack, and had probably owned some agricultural land.18 Because he

and his commanders were familiar with settled ways they were able quickly to install an

administrative structure over new territories and to collect many taxes with their own

Chaghatay personnel.19 At the same time because Temiir neither respected the settled

peoples nor required their full loyalty, he had no reason to treat them gently. On the

conquest of a new city his men collected an often ruinous ransom and they were not shy

about using torture to extract money. A number of cities rebelled but uprisings of the

setded population caused no harm to Temiir's prestige and indeed provided a useful

justification for punitive campaigns and further extortions. Once he had his ransom,

Temiir often left part of his army behind in charge of the restoration of agriculture.20 For

this reason the ravages of his army campaigning repeatedly in the same area did not destroy

his tax base.

lD Ibn 'Arabshah, p. 125; Mirza Muhammad Haydar Dughlat, A History of the Moghuls of Central Asia, being the

Tarikh-i Rashidi of Mirza Muhammad Haydar, Dughlat, trans., E. Denison Ross, ed., N. Elias (London and New

York, 1898), p. 53, ZNY, ii, p. 450. 16

Ibn 'Arabshah, p. 125. Some accounts of the period after Temur's death point to regular pay: Hafiz-i Abru,

Majma1 al-tawarlkh, ms. Istanbul, Fatih 4371/1 (hereafter Majma*), ff. 3720-733, 419a. 17 Ibn 'Arabshah, pp. 117-18; Manz, Rise and Rule, pp. 90-106. 18

Manz, Rise and Rule, pp. 37-8. 19

Manz, Rise and Rule, pp. 109-18, 167-75. 20

Manz, Rise and Rule, p. 116.


It was the agricultural regions which provided Temiir with the economic base he

needed and furthermore he could control them with relative ease. The more fully nomad

lands were less profitable. His campaigns in Eastern Turkestan and the Qipchaq steppe covered vast and difficult territories and caused hardship to his armies; the booty he

gathered may not have done much more than make up his losses in livestock. The enemy

was difficult to attack and local allies were unreliable. Tokhtamish had lost to Temiir in

part because his armies deserted him, and for Temiir too the men of Ulus Jochi proved

inconstant allies. The people who had joined him from Tokhtamish's army, when given

permission to gather their people to move them to Temur's territories, deserted him and

pursued their own ambitions. One of them, Temiir Quduq, had himself declared khan in

Sarai after Temur's first defeat of Tokhtamish, and after Temur's final victory, pushed out

the khan he had installed.21 Such inconstancy was not conducive to the establishment of

permanent control. Furthermore the steppe territories offered less wealth than the

agricultural ones, with which Temur and his followers were already familiar. Temur's

victory over Tokhtamish, so much his superior in acreage and prestige, shows the

advantage of a settled base for a nomad army.

It is not clear when Temiir began to define his territorial goals since he rarely appointed

governors during his first campaign in a new region. Nonetheless, when he began to

consolidate his gains in the middle of his career, we find a clear differentiation in his

policies towards the lands he chose to incorporate and those he wished simply to chastise.

In the north and east the regions of greatest interest to Temiir were the rich Ferghana

valley and Kashghar, on the eastern trade route, and these he had incorporated early in his

career. He installed his son cUmar Shaykh as governor first in Andijan about 777/1375, and

then in Kashghar in 779/1377-8.22 Later, when he strengthened his hold over Iran in his

campaign of 794-6/1392-4, he appointed sons and grandsons as governors. He now had

provincial administrations under family members or powerful amirs in Andijan, Khorezm,

Khorasan, Fars, central to western Iran and Ghazna, and he had begun to repair the ravages

of his years of campaigning.23 Right after this he reconquered the Golden Horde and

asserted his power over its central areas. Had he intended to keep it he would have set up

an administration; instead he left the region in ruins, and provided no support for the

protege he put on the throne. This almost certainly indicated a conscious decision not to

consolidate his hold over the region.

What Temiir did was not to unite the steppe and setded regions, but to push out the

frontier of the Ulus Chaghatay just beyond the edge of setded lands, taking Khorezm,

Ferghana and the Jaxartes region from the Jochids and Chaghatayids. His new frontier was

not a secure one, as we can see by the defection of Khorezm to the Golden Horde and the

attacks levelled at Andijan, and as time went on Temiir built a number of forts north of the

major cities of the Jaxartes and Ferghana -

at Yangi and Ashpara, then again at ten days

journey north of Ashpara, and as far east as the Issyk Kul. He manned these forts with

populations transported from his conquered territories, particularly those distant from the

21 Safargaliev, Raspad, pp. 144-58; ZNY, i, pp. 392-6.

22 ZNY, i, p. 196; ZNS, ii, p. 39.

23 ZNY, i, p. 472; ZNS, ii, p. 170; also see Manz, Rise and Rule, p. 116 and note 48, p. 195.


steppe.24 The Issyk Kul region was theoretically assigned to princely governors, but in

practice Andijan and Kashghar seem to have marked the eastern edge of Timurid

administration.

Temiir had set out to revive the image of the Mongol empire with himself at the centre,

not as khan, since he was not a Chinggisid, but as the patron and protector of khans, the

paramount figure in actual strength. He achieved -

spectacularly - a supreme position

within the Mongol world, but did not incorporate all of its territories into his realm.

Within the Islamic world likewise, Temiir established himself as the greatest ruler of the

age, conquering far beyond the territories he chose to keep, humbling rulers whose

territories had never fallen within Mongol power. Temiir thus lived and died a supremely successful man, able to collect and maintain the largest army of his day, to assert his

superiority over all rivals within the world he cared about, and to put together a large

dominion and a rich treasury.

The problem of succession to Temiir

The death of a ruler was always a danger. Temiir, who had transformed the world he lived

in, left a terrifying void. The histories chronicling the events at his death give a vivid

picture of the grief and confusion which overwhelmed his family and followers. Even

outside the ruling circle his death caused terror, and here the Sufi literature has preserved a

telling vignette for us. At this time the Naqshbandi Khwaja Ahrar had just turned one year old. His family were preparing a feast to celebrate the shaving of his head, but on hearing

the news of Temiir's death they emptied the cauldrons and fled to hide in the mountains.23

Whereas in looking at Temiir's life and career we address the question of where he got

his will, his power and his wealth, for the history of his successors the most obvious

question is where all Temiir's achievements went. What Temiir's descendants inherited

from him was not rulership but a set of expectations, ideas and possibilities. Temiir had

nominated his grandson Pir Muhammad b. Jahangir as successor but he chose him for

birth, not character, and appointed him just before he died. This was not a person who

could fill Temiir's place, and his appointment created a dilemma for Temiir's heirs. In the

chaotic weeks following Temiir's death the people closest to him struggled first to uphold his testament, then to hold the realm together against all odds. After a little while they tried

simply to make the best possible deal for themselves. Disagreements deepened into a bitter

and complex set of succession struggles, while the Timurid princes fought among

themselves both for regional hegemony and for supreme authority.

In the next hundred years Temiir's dynasty ruled over a realm gradually declining from a

world power into a local one, while in the cultural sphere they presided over an equally

striking upsurge. Scholars have attributed this in part to the character of Temiir's successors,

to their conscious choice to turn to Persian cultural patronage and adapt to settled society.

It is time I think to re-examine both the character of this change and its primary causes.

24 V. V. Bartol'd, Ulugbek i ego vremia, in Sochineniia, ii/2, p. 70; ZNY, ii, p. 451; Ibn 'Arabshah, pp. 47, 212-13,

224-5. 23 Fakhr al-Din 'All b. Husayn al-Wa'iz al-Kashifi, Rashahat cayn al-hayat, ed. cAlI Ashgar Mu'iniyan (Tehran,

2536), p. 39i


The career of a charismatic conqueror like Temiir presents difficulties to the men who

succeed him, and also to modern historians trying to understand that succession. It is useful

to step back and examine some of the pitfalls presented by the conventions of the medieval

historians on whom we depend, and also by our own modern understanding of what

constitutes central authority and of the changes involved in succession.

The most basic problem in assessing the transition from a period of conquest to one of

more static rule comes from our own expectations of government. The definition of a

government as the possessor of a monopoly of force is a modern and demanding one. As

Patricia Crone has reminded us, this was well beyond the reach of pre-industrial states. A

government had not to possess but to balance various centres of force, at least enough to

collect taxes and provide protection from outside threats.26 A career of conquest provided

perhaps the one exception. While separate armies continued to exist, their constant

mobilization in the interests of the conqueror could indeed concentrate around him the

major implements of coercion. The army he controlled might contain elements not fully

within his power, but no one of these had the strength to withstand the collective might of the whole. If, however unconsciously, we expect government to monopolise force,

then the active army of conquest may be the only type of government which fits our

ideal.

On the other hand, we may be in danger of overestimating the level of control that even

military activity provides. The action of conquest and incorporation provides us with a

drama centred on what the ruler could most successfully control ?

military expansion and

high-level administrative appointments. The conventions of medieval historiography contribute to this. The histories of Temiir's career present a wealth of events but when we

try to go beyond the story of his campaigns we recognize the paucity of the information

offered us. This is a story with a plot and a moral, into which some events fit and others do

not. There is space for the exemplary destruction of cities, illustrating the might of the

conqueror, and for the perfidy of subordinate rulers which called forth their punishment.

There is much less room for quarrels, rebellions or desertions within dynasty or army. Such

events are glossed over and we know of them only through hints, often in outside or non

narrative sources.27 There is also little inclination to describe the normal functioning of

society. The power centres which are more difficult for the ruler to manipulate direcdy -

the networks of patronage and economic activity surrounding merchants, ulema and sufis -

play a less visible role. If we remember to look we can see that they did present a

challenge.

The sources hint at the care Temiir took to conciliate religious figures and to limit the

power of local bureaucrats.28

In looking at the succession to a dynastic founder we may then exaggerate the extent of

26 Patricia Crone, Pre-Industrial Societies (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., 1989), pp. 35-57. 27 The sources report rebellions by Iranians straightforwardly, while disloyal behaviour by amirs and princes

after about 1389 is often disguised, or blamed on the evil influence of Persian advisors, from whom such behaviour

presumably could be expected. See for instance the accounts of Amiranshah's, Pir Muhammad b. cUmar Shaykh's and Sultan Husayn's disloyalty. (ZNY, ii, pp. 48?50, 168, 228). Several rebellions by amirs under Temiir,

mentioned in the later genealogy, the Mu*izz al-ansab, never appear in the histories. (Mucizz al-ansabft shajarat al

ansab, ms. Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale 67, ff. 960-973.) 28

Manz, Rise and Rule, pp. 114-15; Jean Aubin, "Le khanat de Cagatai et le Khorassan (1334-1380)", Turcica, VIII/2 (1976), pp. 51-3; Jiirgen Paul, "Scheiche und Herrscher im Khanat Cagatay", Der Islam, LXVII/2 (1990),

pp. 304-8.


change in the transition from conquest to a state based on relatively unmoving frontiers. It

is easy in particular to overemphasize the decline in the level of control held by the ruler.

After the death of the conqueror the histories still exalt the ruler, but now pay greater attention to dramas within the royal family, the bureaucracy, and society. We are

vouchsafed information about other centres of power, about quarrels, disagreements and

disloyalty. The story being told, after all, is how these are dealt with.29 This presents us

with a difficult challenge in interpretation. Did these other powers, these dissensions, exist

with equal force earlier, or have they increased? Are we simply being told different stories

about the relation of ruler to society, or has the hold of the ruler actually loosened? There

is no way we can be certain.

There is another influence at work in our perceptions of the first and subsequent

generations of a nomad conquest dynasty. This is the enormously compelling and

influential writing of Ibn Khaldun. His analysis of the nomad dynastic cycle, contrasting the

casabiyya, the zeal, energy and fellow-feeling, of the founding generation with the softness,

luxury and dissension of subsequent generations fits neady (and not surprisingly) with the

formulations of medieval Islamic historiography. The emphasis on the superiority of the

first, conquering, generation also coincides with the modern inclination to see control by

domination rather than by balance as the natural function of government. In looking at the

succession to Temiir we thus start with a predisposition to emphasize the differences

between him and his successors. The change in the focus of the histories, along with an

idealization of the difference between nomad and setded and between dominator and

balancer, all lead us in this direction. There is no reason to change our thinking totally ?

I

do not suggest that there was no significant change from one generation of rule to another.

Nonetheless the change may have been less complete, more gradual and less deliberate than

we have supposed.

The eventual winner in the succession struggle after Temur's death was his youngest son

Shahrukh, governor of the province of Khorasan. Shahrukh was able to reconstitute the

realm his father had created and for some time to maintain almost the same frontiers. In

1409 he took over Transoxiana and the Timurid capital of Samarqand, but instead of

remaining there he installed his son Ulugh Beg as governor and returned to his own capital

of Herat. Shahrukh is portrayed usually in contrast to Temiir, as the initiator of a new and

different period in Timurid history -

less centralized, less militaristic, more cultured. He is

seen as almost obsessively pious, peace-loving, unable or unwilling to exercise strong

personal power. This then was the switch from the Turco-Mongolian founder to the more

Perso-Islamic successors, the beginning of territorial decline and cultural growth.30

I want to suggest that we reassess this judgement and reconsider the nature of the legacy

Shahrukh inherited from Temiir. Although Temur's death indubitably brought a major

change, some of this was the logical -

indeed inevitable -

result of his own activity. One of

Shahrukh's first acts was to move the Timurid capital to Herat, long a centre of Iranian

power and culture. Let us examine how this change came about and what it meant. As I

29 It was T. I. Sultanov of the Institute of Oriental Studies in St Petersburg who brought this characteristic to

my attention. 30

Bartol'd, Ulugbek, pp. 45, 58, 96?8; H. R. Roemer, "The Successors of Timur", in Cambridge History of Iran, VI (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 103-5.


have suggested above, Temiir had created the borders of his realm to coincide with the

frontier between the regions of primarily settled and those of primarily nomad economy. This resulted in the reimposition of the steppe border in the Jaxartes region. When Temiir

incorporated the closer agricultural regions of the Eastern Chaghatayids and the Golden

Horde, while excluding the steppe, he made this frontier once more a political one, with

Transoxiana included definitively in the settled sphere. Transoxiana was of crucial

importance to the Timurid realm, as the birthplace of Temiir, the centre of the Ulus

Chaghatay, and the realm of the Chaghatayid khans. Temiir's efforts to develop this region

through the importation of craftsmen, scholars and agricultural populations are well

known. Nonetheless even during his reign it was a border province, vulnerable to attack.

We see this in Tokhtamish's raid up to the Oxus, when the neighbouring powers of

Khorezm and Moghulistan proved themselves ready to abandon Temiir. We should

remember moreover that this had happened in the middle of Temiir's successes, and it had

required several years to repair the damage.

Shahrukh's decision to move the capital from Transoxiana to Herat need not then be

seen as a shift of emphasis from nomad to settled support. One can equally well interpret it

as the recognition of a change which had already taken place. Transoxiana held a central

place within the sphere defined by Temiir's campaigns, but it was not the geographic centre of the lands he had incorporated. Most of these lay to the south and west of his

homeland. Since the central chancellery travelled with the court, Transoxiana was likewise

not its administrative centre; the dlwan of Samarqand was essentially a provincial adminis

tration. What was probably even more instrumental in the decline of Transoxiana was the

fact that Temiir had removed many of its indigenous armies, which he had setded as

garrison troops throughout his new dominions. What remained there were largely troops

from Syria, Khorasan and Azarbaijan, with little loyalty to the dynasty. It is partly for this

reason that Temiir's grandson Khalil Sultan, who first seized Samarqand, failed to keep it.

He found that he could hold power only as long as he could afford lavish disbursements, and his heterogeneous troops abandoned him as soon as the treasury was

empty.31 Shortly

after Shahrukh's accession, Ulugh Beg allowed the scholars and artisans Temiir had

imported to return to their homes.32 Thus as a result of Temiir's policies, Herat held a safer

and more central location than Samarqand and one giving closer access to the bulk of the

Chaghatay armies, garrisoned throughout the Iranian provinces. When not actively

defended, Transoxiana quickly became prey to raids from its northern and eastern

neighbours. We find that Herat remained as the primary centre of the Timurid realm while

Samarqand sank to the level of provincial capital. Let us address next the question of Shahrukh's management of Temiir's army and

administration. Despite the fact that he was the youngest son, and not the designated

successor, Shahrukh succeeded in reconstituting Temiir's realm, and in holding almost all

of it for forty years. The core of his army and the ruling elite stayed the same - the amirs of

the Ulus Chaghatay remained at the centre of the Timurid army and court administration

31 Taj al-Salmani, ed. and trans. H. R. Roemer, Sams al-Husn: eine Chronik vom Tode Timurs bis zum Jahre 1409

von Taj al-Salmanl (Wiesbaden, 1956) (hereafter Shams), pp. 121-2; Manz, Rise and Rule, pp. 131-7. 32

Woods, "Genealogy", p. 115.


through Shahrukh's reign, and indeed until the end of the Timurid period.33 Both amirs

and Timurid princes remained involved in the oversight of provincial and financial

administration, working closely with Persian viziers. Within his realm Shahrukh, like

Temur, ruled through balance, though he balanced more quiedy and more loosely. Under

Shahrukh, the peace-time histories allow us to see the workings of the administration more

clearly, to discern individual personalities and to follow controversies. Shahrukh allowed

considerable prominence to some of his officials, who stayed in office for long periods.

Scholars have suggested that it was these men, along with Shahrukh's most prominent wife,

who really controlled the realm.34 If we look at the careers of these people however, we

see the same pattern of overlapping responsibilities and informal controls which had served

Temiir so well.33 Shahrukh's two most eminent amirs, cAlika and Firuzshah, and his son

Baysunghur all held responsibility within the same sphere. Among the Persian staff of his

diwan, power was shared and limited by periodic demotions.36 It was not until the end of

Shahrukh's long reign that his ill-health and the deaths of several major amirs weakened

central control.

When we look at the issue of territorial expansion, we see a much greater change from

Temur's time; Temur's holdings first ceased to expand and then began to shrink. Here also,

however, one can see the results of Temur's own actions. At his death Temiir had left a

realm clearly intended to resemble that of Chinggis Khan. It was divided among the

families of his four sons, and supreme power was to go to the family of his most nobly born

son, Jahangir. Nonetheless in many ways Temur's realm offers a sharp contrast to that of

Chinggis. Chinggis had left an unfinished task to his heirs, with the conquest of China and

the Middle East still to be completed. Although Temiir died in mid-campaign, the territory he left had a more complete and logical form. The lands within his dominions, culturally and politically close to the Chaghatay elite, could be immediately exploited. Around these

were a buffer region, less profitable and more difficult to control, in which Temiir had

simply exacted recognition of suzerainty.

Temur's realm had one interesting particularity. The most symbolically important

regions for Mongol legitimacy lay not in the centre but on the borders, in Azarbaijan and

Transoxiana, both difficult to defend. Azarbaijan, as the centre of Ilkhanid rule, was crucial

to Timurid claims to Mongol succession in Iran, begun under Temiir, and strengthened by

Shahrukh.37 Strategically it was important also as a pasture land, and as a bulkhead into the

politically volatile border region between Mamluks, Ottomans and Timurids. For this

33 Shiro Ando, Timuridische Emire nach dem Mu'izz al-ansab (Berlin, 1992), pp. 4, 120-71, 219.

34 H. R. Roemer in Cambridge History of Iran, VI, p. 104; Bartol'd, Ulugbbek, p. 97. Ismail Aka gives greater credit to Shahrukh, though he also stresses the importance of his subordinates: Ismail Aka, Mirza ?ahruh ve zamani

(1405-1447) (Ankara, 1994), p. 218. 3:> See B. A. F. Manz, "Administration and the delegation of authority in Temiir's dominions", Central Asiatic

Journal,XX/3 (1976), pp. 191-207. 36 For the responsibilities of'Alika, Firuzshah and Baysunghur in the dtwan see Majma* f. 532b, cAbd al-Razzaq

Samarqand!, Matla< al-sa'dayn wa Majma* al-bahrayn, ed. Muhammad Shafi? (Lahore, 1360?8/1941-9) (hereafter

Matla*), ii/2, pp. 656, 665, 690, 747, 752-5, 793, 837-42. For sharing of power in dtwan among viziers, and for

dismissals, see Ghiyath al-Din Khwandamir, Dastur al-wuzarac, ed. Sa*id Nafisi (Tehran, 1317/1938-9), pp. 352-3,

357-61; Ahmad b. Jalal al-Din Fasih Khwafi, Mujmal-ifaslhi, ed. Muhammad Farrukh (Mashhad, 1339/1960-1), pp. 230, 235, 257, 259, 275, 292; and Matlac, ii/2, pp. 670, 673.

37 Manz, "Tamerlane and the symbolism of sovereignty", p. 113.


reason it was also extremely difficult to hold, and despite frequent campaigns, neither

Temur nor Shahrukh was able to maintain direct and consistent rule beyond Sultaniyya.38

Especially during the early part of his reign Shahrukh pursued an aggressive policy on his

borders, leading expeditions in Azarbaijan himself, while delegating campaigns in the south

to his son Ibrahim Sultan and in the northeast to Ulugh Beg. Shahrukh's policy, though

aggressive, was not expansionist. He aimed at holding on to the legacy that Temiir had left.

The end of expansionism may have been due to Shahrukh's personality ?

he was a canny

and cautious ruler, who undertook campaigns only when he judged conditions favourable.

But one can also ask what he could profitably have conquered. Unlike Chinggis Khan or

the early Ottoman sultans, Temiir had completed his conquests, and there was no obvious

opening for new opportunity or new glory. It made sense for Shahrukh to expend his

energies in defending his outer borders, crucial to the legitimacy of his realm, rather than

seeking new territories to conquer.

When we look at the extent and administration of Shahrukh's realm therefore, we

should see neither a failure nor a revolution, but a restoration and an able attempt to

preserve what Temiir had left. Shahrukh was certainly a person quite different from his

father but he was also responding to a different challenge -

not to the challenge which

Temiir had met, but the one which he had created. Temiir was not quite like the financial

mogul who leaves his children a trust fund instead of a company, thus discouraging the

very spirit which had won him wealth. He did however leave an enterprise whose

boundaries were already defined.

The issue of cultural loyalty

When we look at cultural and religious policy, we can also find significant continuity

between Temiir and his successors. As we have seen, Temiir called on both Islamic and

Turco-Mongolian traditions to justify his actions and legitimate his rule. After his death the

competing princes, choosing their legitimation from the traditions available to them,

considered a large number of options. The first concern was to show their continued

attachment to Temur's legacy. The fact that Temur's successors failed to honour his will

does not mean that they considered it unimportant. The will of a dead sovereign was

considered sacred and binding, and Temur's relatives consistently attempted to find a

justification in the name of his testament, the only standard which no one could openly

challenge.39 His grandson Khalil Sultan, grasping power in Samarqand, enthroned as khan a

young great-grandson of Temur's, from the same wife as Temur's designated successor,

and thus claimed adherence to Temur's testament.40 When the senior prince in Fars, Pir

Muhammad b. cUmar Shaykh, consulted with his advisors, some of them suggested that he

38 Sultaniyya itself was often threatened and sometimes taken, but not allowed to remain long outside Timurid

control. Majma\ ff. 493, 498, 502b, 52ib-22b, 553a~54a, 591a; Matla\ pt. 2, pp. 320-3, 899-902. 39 For the will of a dead sovereign, see Mu'in al-Din Natanzi, ed. Jean Aubin, Extraits du Muntakhab al-tavarikh

i Mu'ini (Anonym d'Iskandar) (Tehran, 1336/1957) (hereafter Muntakhab), p. 222, and D. O. Morgan, "The 'Great

Yasa of Chingiz Khan' and Mongol law in the Ilkhanate", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, XLIX/i (1986), p. 171. For discussion of Temiir's testament, Majma\ ff. 372a?b, 430b, 431b; Muhammad b. Fadl

Allah al-MusawI, Tarlkh-i Khayrat, ms. Istanbul, Turhan Hadica Sultan 224, f. 433b, 435b?37a. 40

Majma\ f. 365a; Musawi, Tarlkh-i khayrat, ff. 436?73.

Beatrice Forbes Manz 3 5

seek a patent of rule from the cAbbasid caliph in Egypt and abandon the Chinggis Khanid

yasa. Pir Muhammad, with some prescience, chose instead to put his coinage and khutba in

the name of Shahrukh, connecting this choice to Temiir's will.41

Shahrukh likewise claimed justification for seizing power through Temiir's will but

further bolstered his prestige by emphasizing his position as Islamic monarch. The histories

written for him soon after he came to power stress both his connection to Temiir and his

piety and observance of religious obligations.42 Even more conspicuously than his father,

he visited shrines and constructed mausolea, also attempting to contribute a cover to the

Kacba.43 Although he could not directly claim the tide of caliph, he used the term

"Caliphate" to refer to his rule in his coinage.44 According to some sources he even

repealed the Mongolian yasa, and reimposed the sharVa as the sovereign law. He also

discontinued the practice of ruling through a Chinggisid puppet khan and the histories

written for him downplay mention of Temiir's own khans.4d

These actions have been taken as evidence that Shahrukh was abandoning Temiir's

adherence to the yasa, and moving to a fully Islamic state.46 Shahrukh's use of Islam is

irrefutable, but it has to be reconciled with the fact that the Turco-Mongolian heritage remained active under him and indeed that he sponsored it. Taxes forbidden under the

sharVa continued in force, the yarghu court survived and Shahrukh himself invoked the

yasa.47 Shahrukh, then, promoted Islam without abandoning his connection to the Turco

Mongolian heritage. In this again he resembled his father, and when we consider the

society he ruled it is hard to see how he could have behaved differendy. After all, Shahrukh

and his successors owed their position to Temiir's charisma, and likewise to the fact that

they were Turco-Mongolian rulers, controlling at least partially nomadic armies. In the

world they lived in, this was a common reason for holding power, well understood by

setded and nomad alike. When we examine the attitudes of Temiir and Shahrukh towards

the two traditions they inherited we should try not to be influenced by Temiir's position as

founder of a nomad conquest dynasty. Here again the influence of the Ibn Khaldun's

formulation pushes us to differentiate. It is tempting to emphasize the Mongol element in

Temiir, whose career fits this mould, and under Shahrukh to stress the Islamic, and to

consider Turco-Mongolian elements as a survival. We must remember that Temiir himself

did not arise out of the nomad steppe, but from one of the oldest centres of Islam. He lived

in the same two worlds as his successors.

41 Majma\ ff. 372a-b. Pir Muhammad, according to the histories, believed that this accorded with Temur's

wishes since Temiir had handed his mother to Shahrukh, and thus intended Pir Muhammad to look to Shahrukh as his superior.

42 Hafiz-i Abru, Majmu'a al-tawarlkh, ms. Istanbul, Damad Ibrahim Pasha 919, ff. 927a-b, 929a-b; Shams,

pp. 15-16. For Shahrukh's invocation of Temur's will in correspondence see Nava'I, Asnad, pp. 141-2. 43

Aka, Mirza ?ahruh, pp. 178, 180-1; Matla\ ii/2, pp. 792, 834. 44

Komaroff, "Epigraphy", pp. 216-17. 43 M. Subtelny, "The Sunni revival under Shah-Rukh and its promoters: a study of the connection between

ideology and higher learning in Timurid Iran", Proceedings of the 27th Meeting ofHaneda Memorial Hall Symposium on

Central Asia and Iran, August 30, 1993 (Kyoto, i993(?)), pp. 14-23; Jalal al-Din Abu Muhammad al-Qayini, Nasa'ih i Shahrukh!, ms. Vienna, Nationalbibliotek, Cod. A.F. 112, ff. ib-2b; Majmac, f. 486b; Woods, "Genealogy",

pp. 115-16. 46

Subtelny, "The Sunni revival", pp. 15-19; Woods, "Genealogy", pp. 115-16. 47 Bartol'd "Khalifa i Sultan", Sochineniia, VI (Moscow, 1966), pp. 46?8; Mu'izz, f. 133b; Subtelny, "Sunni

revival", p. 20; Aka, Mirza ?ahruh, pp. 183-4; Matla\ p. 729 (the yasa is here referred to by another name, the tora.)


The sources on which we rely for our information encourage us to perceive Mongol

and Islamic traditions as incompatible. In reading and evaluating the writings of the time, it

is useful to remember that both the Islamic and the steppe nomad tradition had long contained strands of conscious revivalism and defensiveness against outside influence. The

call to re-Islamification began long before the steppe invasions of the central Islamic lands

and has continued to the present. The nomads likewise constantly attempted to renew their

purity, from the time of the T'ii Ch'iieh restoration of the seventh century well into the

modern period.48 Whether or not these two traditions were fundamentally compatible, by

the time of Temiir the Mongols of Iran and Central Asia had been Muslim for almost a

century, and whatever tensions this caused were old and well worn, still important, but

neither fatal nor capable of remedy. After the downfall of the Ilkhans and the western

Chaghatayid khans the same combination of Iranian and Turco-Mongolian commanders

and troops served under new dynasties.49 To grow up within the elite meant belonging to

both worlds, and engendered an active cultural loyalty to both. To rule required an appeal to both Islamic and Turco-Mongolian traditions, and a balance between them. Rulers

moreover were not using these ideologies to appeal to two fully distinct and separate ethnic

groups of opposing tendencies, but to accommodate a wide range of attitudes across a

mixed population. It was thus logical and necessary for Shahrukh to balance his ostentatious Islamization

with public support for the other side of his heritage. What changed between Temiir and

his successors was less the balance between the two traditions than the way in which they

were used. Under Shahrukh the most immediate and obvious change was in the

formulation of dynastic legitimation. Temiir's legitimation had been elaborate but

unsatisfying. Within both worlds he was a figure larger than life - an equal to Chinggis

Khan, whose career he consciously imitated, and a grandiose patron of Islam and of Persian

culture. Yet his formal legitimation made him a handmaiden within both traditions. He

was not a Chinggisid, and he based his rule in settled lands. Likewise though he campaigned in the name of Islam and defeated his major rivals, the caliphate remained under the control

of his Mamluk enemies.

Shahrukh adapted Temiir's legitimation to his own needs, downplaying in particular those aspects which relegated the dynasty to second place. He showed less concern than

Temiir for the restrictions which Chiggisid concepts of legality placed on genealogical and

sovereign claims. Although Temiir had for most of his life carefully avoided using the titles

Khan or Khaghan, Shahrukh and his successors were less modest in their claims, both for

themselves and retroactively for Temiir. Shahrukh as we have seen abandoned the

institution of puppet khan and ceased to use the title Guregen in official correspondence. This allowed him to adopt tides which Temiir had denied himself. He avoided official use

of the tide Khan in his coinage and correspondence, but it was routinely applied to him in

48 See for instance the Orkhon inscriptions: V. Thomsen, Inscriptions de I'Orkhon dechifrees (Helsingsfors, 1896),

pp. 97-106, 114-17. Mahmud al-Kashghari echoes this concern for purity: Dtwan Lughat al-Turk: Mahmud Kasgart,

Compendium of Turkic Dialects, ed. and trans. R. Dankoff in collaboration with James Kelly, Turkish Sources, vii

(Cambridge, Mass., 1982), pp. 83, 115, 124-5. 49 We find Mongol amirs for instance in the armies of both the Kartids and the Muzaffarids. See Shabankara'i,

pp. 316, 325; ZNS (HA), ii, pp. 58-9, F. Tauer, Cinq opuscules, p. 32; Aubin, "Khanat", p. 50.


contemporary histories, and sometimes to Temiir as well.30 By allowing his puppet khan

the figment of sovereignty Temiir had denied himself also the Islamic and Iranian

equivalents of this tide; Sultan and Padshah applied not to him but to his khan. Shahrukh's

abandonment of the practice allowed him to use sovereign Islamic tides as well. Shahrukh's

son Ulugh Beg, when he came to power after Shahrukh's death, may or may not have kept

a puppet khan in imitation of Temiir but in coinage he put Temur's name where the

Khan's had formerly been.51 It is possible in fact that this represents the continuation of a

policy that Temiir was beginning at the end of his life, when he failed to replace his last

khan and minted at least a few coins, outside Samarqand, in which the title of khan was

applied to him.52

It is under Shahrukh that we find the full development of Timurid Chinggisid

legitimation. Temiir had invoked the Ilkhans as his predecessors and Shahrukh further

elaborated this part of his legitimation. His literary patronage mirrored and continued the

Ilkhanid pattern and we find the Ilkhanid tide Padshah-i Islam applied now to him.53 His

major act of patronage was the preservation and continuation of Rashid al-Din's works,

both the Jamic al-tawarxkh and the genealogy of the Chinggisid house. In the western part of

his realm, his government was commonly referred to as Ilkhanid4 At the same time

Shahrukh elaborated the Chaghatayid connection, which though clearly in place by the

end of Temur's reign, was more completely elaborated in the histories written for

Shahrukh and the governors he appointed. The histories written during his reign show a

remarkable consistency in covering the four great branches of the Chinggisid dynasty, and

the role that Temur's ancestor Qarachar Barlas played as advisor to Chinggis and to

Chaghadai.55 What Shahrukh de-emphasized then was not the Chinggisid but the

"handmaiden" aspects of Temur's legitimation -

the need of a puppet khan and the

dynasty's in-law relationship to the Chinggisid house.

We see the new legitimation expressed on Temur's tombstone, where his descendants

adapted the relatively sober Turco-Mongolian genealogical tradition to the Iranian

preference for prestige over believability. Temur's immediate ancestry was given as it had

been rendered during his life, and his tribe's connection to the lineage of Chinggis Khan as

30 Mujmal, iii, throughout; Majma1, throughout; Shams al-husn, pp. 17, 23.

31 Komaroff, "Epigraphy", pp. 210-13.

32 Woods, "Genealogy", p. 121, note 75; see also Mansura Haider, "The sovereign in the Timurid state",

Turcica, VIII/2 (1976), p. 70, citing C.J. Rodgers, Catalogue of the Coins (Calcutta, 1894), pp. 140-1. 53

C. Melville, "Padshah-i Islam: the conversion of Sultan Mahmud Ghazan Khan", Pembroke Papers, 1 (1990), p. 171; Majma\ f. 2a; Majmuca, f. 3a.

34 Nava'i, Asnad, pp. 164-5, 180-1, 187, 215-16.

35 For a survey of early Timurid historiography see John E. Woods, "The rise of Timurid historiography",

Journal of Near Eastern Studies, XLVI (1987), pp. 81-108. John Woods, in his article, "Timur's genealogy", has

convincingly shown that the construction of Temiir's genealogy began under Temiir, and has suggested that later sources based themselves on lost works commissioned by him (pp. 109-16). Nonetheless, all the fullest elaborations of the myth which we now have date from works of Shahrukh's time. For the coverage of Chinggisids and

Qarachar Barlas see Sharaf al-Din cAli Yazdi, Muqaddima to the Zafarnama, ed. A. S. Urunbaev (Tashkent, 1972);

Majma\ ff. 1 ia?b; Mu'izz al-ansab, which is a genealogy of both the four Chinggisid houses and the descendants of

Qarachar, introduction ff. 81b?82a; Natanzi, Muntakhab, pp. 68?156; and for the lost work written for Ulugh Beg during Shahrukh's reign, entided Tarlkh-i arbac ulus, see Iu. Bregel/Storey, Persidskaia literatura, bio-bibliograficheskit obzor (Moscow, 1972), ii, p. 777; Khwandamir, trans., Thackston, pp. 4, 42, 43, 76. The later anonymous Persian

work, Shajarat al-atrak which claims to be an abridgement of the Arbac ulus, is translated by Colonel Miles, The

Shajrat ul Atrak, or Genealogical Tree of the Turks and Tatars (London, 1838). The Harvard University manuscript of this work (Houghton Library P. 006), agrees in its outlines with the Miles translation.


recorded in Rashid al-Din. Their common ancestors were then traced back to the mythical

ancestress of the Mongols Alan Goa, impregnated by a shaft of light. This light, in a new

twist, was identified as the spirit of the Prophet's son-in-law, cAli b. Abu Talib.56 After his

death Temiir could be direcdy connected with the highest figures in both worlds he had

aspired to rule.

As time passed, the understanding of the Turco-Mongolian tradition continued to

evolve, and its competition and coexistence with Islamic tradition took on different forms.

Under Temiir and Shahrukh, we find the traditions invoked for dynastic legitimation, and

tensions expressed primarily in terms of sharVa and yasa. Though these concerns did not

disappear, later other theatres of conflict became paramount: in administration the

questions of land distribution and taxation, and in the cultural sphere that of language.

These changes began in the period of Shahrukh but reached their peak under the last great

ruler, Sultan Husayn Bayqara.

While the act of conquest is often considered part of the nomad tradition so also is the

dismemberment of the realm through grants of land in lieu of salary. It is not surprising to

find after Temiir an increasing fiscal decentralization. Shahrukh managed to achieve power without emptying the treasury of Khorasan, but he did have to offer payment to his

followers to retain their loyalty. The most effective rewards were tax-exempt grants of

land, soyurghals, hereditary and conferring greater administrative independence than the

iqta\ From Shahrukh's accession on they became a

widespread means of reward for the

Timurids and by the time of Sultan Husayn Bayqara (i 469-1506), soyurghals were bestowed

liberally not only on Chaghatay amirs, but on literati and ulema as well.

While on the one hand the later Timurids used the Turco-Mongolian system of

recompense more heavily than Temiir, they also developed a more fully articulated

Persian-style bureaucracy. Throughout the period we find a

struggle between two systems

of administration and taxation, in which neither side could prevail. Proponents of

centralization called for a return to an "Islamic" system, hoping to curtail the land grants of

the Turco-Mongolian elite, which severely eroded the government's tax base and its

control over local administration. An "Islamic" reform had several advantages for the

Timurid rulers. It could increase revenue and centralize administration and at the same

time it could be used as a public display of religious observance. Husayn Bayqara, often

desperate for money, tried more than once to institute such a reform. On the other hand

"Islamic" tax reforms had a number of disadvantages. While they might increase the

revenues from land, they decreased income from other sources by prohibiting various non

canonical taxes, most notably the tamgha, a levy on trade which was a highly useful source

of revenue. Tax reforms also alienated many of the most powerful people in the realm who

depended on income from their own soyurghals; this included ulema as well as amirs. For

the whole of the Timurid period, the Turco-Mongolian and Islamic systems of taxation

continued to compete and no ruler could afford to espouse one fully at the expense of the

other. Under these circumstances fiscal centralization and a secure tax base remained an

impossibility.37

56 Woods, "Genealogy", pp. 87-8.

57 M. Subtelny, "Centralizing reform and its opponents in the late Timurid period", Iranian Studies, XXI/i?2,

pp. 123-51.


Temiir and his successors are remembered as symbols not of decline, but of glory. The

cultural revival which began under Shahrukh reached its culmination at the end of the

dynasty, under Sultan Husayn Bayqara, who turned Herat into a shining centre of cultural

patronage. The question we must address now is how the obstacles which prevented

political stability could allow such success in the ideological and cultural spheres. Temiir's

legacy in these areas was likewise a mixed one - Turco-Mongolian and Iranian

- but the

tensions which proved a liability in the administrative sphere here led to lasting achieve

ments.

The political fragmentation which destroyed military superiority contributed to cultural

efflorescence. The distribution of wealth among large numbers of people, all competing for

prestige and power, led to a rivalry in patronage which made the Timurid period a

particularly remunerative one for practitioners of the arts. Princes and other governors who

ruled provinces under Shahrukh maintained regional courts as centres of learning and

culture -

in Shiraz, Yazd, Khorezm and Samarqand. At the end of the fifteenth century,

Sultan Husayn Bayqara, unable to maintain full control over Khorasan, presided over a

court which attracted the greatest talents of the age. He has lived on in memory as a symbol

of cultural splendour. Major government figures, enjoying huge incomes from their land

grants, could afford to support poets and artists, and did so as a way to assert their positions.58

While individuals competed with each other for prestige through cultural patronage the

two traditions they belonged to, Iranian and Turco-Mongolian, also competed. Temiir

had set up his chancellery in two languages, Persian and Turkic in the Uighur script, with a

set of scribes for each. He had also apparendy commissioned histories of his reign in Persian

and Turkic, though only the Persian works have survived.09 The bilingualism of both the

chancellery and of high literature continued through the life of the dynasty.60 After

Temiir's death, during the early reign of Shahrukh, we find a revival of interest in old

Turkic works and in the use of the Uighur script. There are new manuscripts of the famous

Turkic Mirror for Princes, the Kutadgu Bilig, and a sumptuously illustrated MVraj-nama in

the Uighur alphabet.61 Though the fashion for Uighur script soon declined, literary Turkic

in the Arabic script began enjoying patronage during the reign of Shahrukh, and rose to its

apogee in the reign of Sultan Husayn. The Timurid princes and their Chaghatay followers

became adept in high Persian culture; they wrote poetry, practised calligraphy and

personally supervised the work they patronized. At the same time they remained conscious

of their Turco-Mongolian heritage, for it was this which gave them the right to rule. They

patronized works in Chaghatay Turkic and developed this language into a vehicle for high Islamic and Persianate culture. Along with the stylized miniatures painted for Persian

literary works, court artists drew album paintings of Chinese and Central Asian inspiration.

The world histories which Timurid princes commissioned placed their dynasty within both

the Mongolian and the Islamic traditions. These two traditions were combined but not

58 M. Subtelny, "Socioeconomic bases of cultural patronage under the later Timurid", International Journal of Middle East Studies, XX (1988), pp. 479-505.

59 Woods, "Rise of Timurid historiography", pp. 82-3.

60 Mucizz, ff. 97b, 103a, iiob-iua, ii9b-i2oa, 127a, 133b, 138a, 142a, 152b, 154a, i59a-b.

61 Bombaci, Histoire de la literature turque, trans. Melikoff (Paris, 1968), pp. 109, 111?12; Esin, "Bakshi" in Arts of

the Book, p. 288; Kutadgu Bilig, dated 845/1439, Nationalbibliotek, Austria, ms. NH 13; M-R, Seguy, The Miraculous Journey of Mahomet: Miraj nameh (New York, 1977).


amalgamated, and aspects of their rivalry remained alive, indeed perhaps sharpened as the

dynasty continued. They are cogendy expressed in the works of the bilingual poet cAli Shir

Nava'i, the ornament of Sultan Husayn's court, who proclaimed the innate superiority of

the Turkic language and railed against Turks who adopted Iranian ways.62 Timurid cultural achievements, fuelled by decentralization, shone ever brighter as

Timurid political fortunes declined. When the dynasty fell in 1507 Herat was still a brilliant

cultural centre. Its calligraphers, painters, architects, poets and historians now had to seek

new patrons, and they found a warm welcome at courts throughout the Islamic world.

These artists, stamped with the prestige of their service under Timurid monarchs, helped then to set standards of excellence for the rising dynasties which presided over the

succeeding period -

the Uzbeks, Safavids, Mughals and Ottomans. In all of these, a ruling

class of largely Turkic origin ruled over a setded society of different origins. All found a use

for the symbols of prestige which the Timurids provided. Thus the fall of the Timurid

dynasty sent out scholars, artists and literati to almost all the regions that Temiir had

originally conquered, and Timurid influence once more stretched well beyond the areas

that Temiir and his successors had controlled.

Conclusion

If we are to understand Temur's career and the nature of his legacy, we must step back

sufficiendy to survey both the world he lived in and the difficulties we face in under

standing it. The change from Temiir the conqueror to his more stationary successors was

indeed a major one, but we must consider with care what this change was. This was

neither a decline from absolute control to weak rulership nor a switch from Turco

Mongolian to Islamic norms. The basic elements of Temur's system remained in place;

what changed was the way they were used. Temiir and his successors had many choices

open before them, but one they did not have - they could not choose which world to live

in but had, by the very nature of their power, to operate within the composite world of

Mongol and Islamic traditions, nomad and setded economies. The formal literary sources

available to us present an idealized picture of Islamic and Mongol history, emphasizing the

universal pretensions and unity of vision within each, and the conflicts and incompatibilities

between them. When we try to analyze Temur's ambition and the dynastic legitimation he

and his successors used these sources provide a useful guide; they mirror the world to

which he and his descendants justified themselves, and are indeed to a certain extent the

same productions which formed Temur's ambitions.

Temiir and his followers were bilingual nomads who ruled by virtue of their Turco

Mongolian descent and military tradition, and supported their rule by exploiting setded

resources. In his conquests Temiir aimed to dominate the whole of both his worlds. In his

legitimation on the other hand the same universal pretensions constricted him, since by

birth he was excluded from their highest positions. He could not formally claim the pre

eminence he had actually won. The grandiosity of his campaigns, his patronage and his

62 Nava'i, Muhakamat al-lughatayn, trans. R. Devereux (Leiden, 1966).


display of wealth allowed him to practice moderation in formal legitimation and territorial

administration, and still to rank as the foremost figure of his world.

The fact that Temiir's successors did not inherit his realm intact does not undercut the

weight of his legacy or the importance of the choices he had made. The parameters of

expectation and legitimation which he had set survived, and the charisma he had won

remained central to the prestige of the dynasty. The components of Temiir's policies and

ideology remained in place, but took on different forms under his successors. Shahrukh and

the later Timurids could not approach the glory of Temiir's campaigns. On the other hand

Temiir's spectacular career allowed -

indeed required -

them to claim a higher formal

position. Temiir's success in positioning Chinggisid khans as his proteges and his

destruction of the Golden Horde did not end the prestige of Mongol tradition, but it did

allow his descendants greater freedom in their use of sovereign tides than Temiir had

allowed himself.

As the unity of the Mongol Empire receded deeper into history, allegiance to its legacy took on different forms. Controversy over dynastic ideologies gave way to other concerns.

Temiir's creation of a dual chancellery and his use of both Perso-Islamic and Turco

Mongolian administrative practice had created another field for competition. In the last

years of the dynasty rivalry between Persian and Turk, Islamic and Mongol moved into the

administrative and cultural spheres, fuelling controversies over landholding, taxation and

literary language. Temiir's legacy as a conqueror and grandiose patron, at once

Mongol and

Muslim, remained problematic and compelling to the end of the dynasty he founded, and

indeed well beyond.

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Beatrice Manz