Niẓām al-Dīn ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī (844–906/1441–1501), also known as Mīr ʿAlī Shīr, was an important cultural and political figure during the reign of the last great Tīmūrid ruler, Sulṭān Ḥusayn Bāyqarā (r. 873–911/1469–1506), and an outstanding Chaghatay Turkic poet writing under the pen name Navāʾī. Born in Herat (in present-day Afghanistan) on 17 Ramaḍān 844/9 February 1441, ʿAlī Shīr was the scion of a cultured family of Uyghur bakhshīs, or Turkic chancery scribes, who had long been in the service of the Tīmūrid dynastic family. His father, Ghiyāth al-Dīn Kichik…

Ghiyāth al-Dīn Muḥammad (b. c.880/1475–6, d. c.942/1535–6), called Khvāndamīr, was a historian of the late Tīmūrid and early Ṣafavid periods. He is known primarily for his Persian universal history Ḥabīb al-siyar fī akhbār afrād al-bashar (“The beloved of careers reporting on the multitudes of people”). His father, Humām al-Dīn Muḥammad, belonged to to the northern branch of the Tīmūrids in Transoxania—Khvāndamīr calls him the vizier of the sultan Maḥmūd b. Abī Saʿīd (r. 899–900/1494–5); Ḥabīb al-siyar, ed. Dabīr Siyāqī, 4:98—but his family lived in Herat (in present-d…

Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Marzūqī (d. 421/1030) was an Arabic literary critic, grammarian, and lexicographer of Iranian origin, who codified the concept of the “essentials of poetry” (ʿ amūd al-shiʿr). He was born in Isfahan, but his birthdate is unknown. According to the biographers Yāqūt (d. 626/1229) and al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), he studied the seminal grammatical treatise al-Kitāb by Sībawayh (d. c.177/793) with the renowned grammarian Abū ʿAlī al-Fārisī (d. 377/987). Ibn Khallikān’s (d. 681/1282) biography of al-Fārisī, which refers t…

Khvāja Ḥaydar ʿAlī “ Ātish” (d. 1846–7) was a leading Urdu poet and poetry teacher (ustād) in early nineteenth-century India. A poetic pupil (shāgird) of Ghulām Hamadānī Muṣḥafī (1750–1824), Ātish (lit., fire, flame) employed Ṣūfī themes in the classical genre of the Urdu ghazal. Ātish produced two collections ( dīvāns) of ghazals. The first was published in 1845, and the second appeared in 1847, after the poet’s death. Ātish was born in Faizabad (Fayḍābād, in present-day Uttar Pradesh) but spent most of his life in Laknau (previously known as Lucknow). His fath…

Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Ghaffār al-Fārisī (288–377/919–87) was one of the best known and most prolific Arab grammarians of the fourth/tenth century. He was born in the Iranian town Fasā, hence his nisba al-Fasawī, which he himself never used. His father was Persian, and his mother was an Arab woman of the Banū Sadūs. In 307/919 he came to Baghdad, where he received a rigorous education in philology from al-Akhfash al-Aṣghar (d. 315/927), Ibn al-Sarrāj (d. 316/928), al-Zajjāj (d. 311/923), Ibn Durayd (d. 3…

ʿAlī (or ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn) b. Muqātil b. ʿAbd al-Khāliq al-Ḥamawī al-Tājir (“the merchant,” d. 761/1359) was one of the most influential zajal poets of the eighth/fourteenth century. His zajals (stanzaic poems in dialect) count among the most cited of the genre and he is accorded a preponderant place in works specifically relating to zajals such as the Bulūgh al-amal fī fann al-zajal (“The fulfillment of hope in the technique of composing zajals”) by Ibn Ḥijja al-Ḥamawī (d. 837/1434). He is also held in such esteem in anthologies such as the ʿUqūd al-laʾāl fī l-muwashshaḥāt wa-l-azjāl (“The …

Al-ʿAkawwak (160–213/776–828) was the sobriquet of Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Jabala, an Arab poet of Baghdad, known for his panegyrical odes. He was born in al-Ḥarbiyya, near Baghdad, into a family originally from Khurāsān. Blind from birth or as a result of smallpox in his seventh year and afflicted with leprosy, he was dark-skinned, short, and compact (hence his laqab, “stumpy”). These disadvantages did not, however, keep him from becoming a model for other poets, a shāʿir matbūʿ, admired for his panegyrical odes to prominent men such as ʿAbdallāh b. Ṭāhir (d. c.230/845) and…

Ṭāhā Ḥusayn (1889–1973) was a leading figure in the Nahḍa, the Egyptian and Arabic literary revival. He wrote critical and political essays, was a historian, polemicist, translator, and newspaper editor, and served as minister of education in the last Wafdist government (1950–2). His vast, diverse, and sometimes controversial intellectual production earned him the unofficial title of “Dean of Arabic Letters.” His writings generally express a progressive conception of history and a pedagogical view of literature. 1. Education Ṭāhā Ḥusayn belonged to a generation of Egypti…

The Banū l-Munajjim were a family of six or seven generations whose founder, Abū Manṣūr, came from Ṭabaristān to serve as astrologer (munajjim) at the court of the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Manṣūr (r. 136–58/754–75). An interest in the ancient sciences (astronomy, astrology, music) persists throughout the generations, but the emphasis later shifts to theology, poetry, and belles lettres. The one constant was a close affiliation of the family with the courts of the current rulers, high officials, and leading scholars. Many w…

Mughal architecture developed from Tīmūrid and sultanate precedents. The ninth/fifteenth-century architecture of the Tīmūrid empire was then considered the most sophisticated in the Islamic world, and it was brought to India by Bābur, a Tīmūrid prince who became the first Mughal emperor. Construction under the North Indian Muslim sultanates from the late sixth/twelfth century through the early tenth/sixteenth lacked the technological advances of Tīmūrid buildings but was distinguished by remarkab…

Chaghatay literature was written in the Turkic-Chaghatay language from the eighth/fourteenth to the early fourteenth/twentieth centuries in the area of Central Asia and contemporary Afghanistan. The appellation “Chaghatay” originates from the name of Genghis Khan’s son, Chaghatay (c. 580-1-639–40/1185–1242), who ruled much of Central Asia (specifically, the Altai up to the Amu Darya River), and the first author to use it for the language was Navāʾī (d. 906/1501). Though undoubtedly originally spo…

Muḥammad b. Burhān al-Dīn Khvāndshāh b. Kamāl al-Dīn Maḥmūd (b. c.836–7/1433–4, d. 903/1498), called Mīrkhvānd, was a historian during the reign of the Tīmūrid ruler Sulṭān-Ḥusayn Bāyqarā (r. 873–911/1469–1506) in Herat. He is the author of the Persian universal history Rawḍat (Rawżat) al-ṣafā fī sīrat al-anbiyāʾ wa-l-mulūk wa-l-khulafāʾ (“The garden of purity. On the lives of prophets, kings, and caliphs”). Mīrkhvānd belonged to a family of sayyids (descendants of the Prophet) from Bukhara that traced its ancestry back to Zayd (d. 122/740), the son of the fou…

Sulṭān Ḥusayn b. Manṣūr b. Bāyqarā Mīrzā was born in Herat in Muḥarram 842/June–July 1438. He was named after his maternal grandfather, Sulṭān Ḥusayn, and he included the name of his paternal grandfather, Bāyqarā, in his own name. His name, with honorifics, was Muʿizz al-Dīn Abū l-Ghāzī Sulṭān Ḥusayn-i Bāyqarā Mīrzā. In 856/1452 he joined the retinue of his Tīmūrid cousin Abū l-Qāsim Bābur in Herat but shortly thereafter, evidently dissatisfied with his patron, he took advantage of the opportunity af…

ʿĀbid (ʿĀbid is the penname of ʿĀbid Khvāja b. Mīrak Khvāja, who also used the pennames ʿĀbidī and Mujrim) lived in the second half of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth. He was born in Bukhara, in the village of Kumushkent. He graduated from the Mīr ʿArab madrasa in Bukhara. In the preface to his Chaghatay dīvān (collection of a poet’s poems), he mentions two Bukharan rulers of the Manghit dynasty (1753–1920), Amīr Maʿṣūm Shāh Murād (r. 1785–1800), as deceased, and Amīr Ḥaydar (r. 1800–25), as then reigning. ʿĀbid wrote a poem glorifying…

Amīr Dawlatshāh b. Amīr ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla Bukhtīshāh Ghāzī Samarqandī, takhalluṣ (pen name) ʿAlāʾī (b. c.842/1438, d. 900/1495 or 913/1507) was the author of the seminal Tadhkirat al-shuʿarāʾ, a biographical dictionary of 152 poets incorporating important historical information on Tīmūrid Iran. It is the second earliest work of this type to survive, preceded only by the Lubāb al-albāb of ʿAwfī (fl. early seventh/thirteenth century), of which Dawlatshāh was unaware. Like his father, Amīr ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla Bukhtīshāh, and his cousin Amīr Fīrūzshāh (d. 848/14…

Arūr (a variation al-Rūr and Alūr) was a city on the Indus River in northern Sind, situated at 27°41′ N and 68°56′ E. Prior to the Arab conquest of 93–6/711–14, Arūr was renowned as the political and economic centre for a large and influential state extending from Sind into the Punjāb and Afghanistan. Sind's Buddhist rulers, the Sāhasīs, centred their power on a monastery ( naw-bahār, or vihāra) in Arūr, but were replaced by the Brahman Sīlāʾij dynasty, founded by Chach, the previous chamberlain ( ḥājib), around 605 CE. The Brahmans shifted their capital from Arūr to Brahmanābād…

Ḥusayn Vāʿiẓ Kāshifī (Mawlānā Kamāl al-Dīn Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī, with the sobriquet Vāʿiẓ, Ar. wāʿiẓ “preacher,” and the pen name Kāshifī, “the unveiler,” c. 830–910/1426–1504–5), was a prolific and influential Tīmūrid-era (771–913/1370–1507) Persian author and poet, religious scholar, preacher, Ṣūfī, and occultist. He was born in about 830/1426 (Herrmann, 90) in Sabzavār, in the province of Bayhaq, hence his name is often followed by the gentilics Bayhaqī or Sabzavārī. He lived for almost forty years in Herat, whe…

Yusuf Amiri (Yūsuf Amīrī) was a poet who lived in Herat in the first half of the ninth/fifteenth century. Tadhkirat al-shuʿarā (“Biographies of the poets”), by Dawlatshāh Samarqandī (d. 900/1494 or 913/1507), relates that he was one of the most talented poets of the reign of the Tīmūrid Shāh Rukh (r. 811–50/1409–47). Amiri wrote poetry in both Chaghatay and Persian, but more of his work is extant in the Turkic language. ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī (d. 906/1501), in his Majālis al-nafāʾis (“The assemblies of rare talents”), states that the Turkish poems of Amiri are superb. Moreover, in his Muḥākamat a…

Mahdī Khān Astarābādī (d. mid 1170s/early 1760s) was Nādir Shāh’s court historiographer and scribe, who achieved fame also as a lexicographer and scholar of the eastern Turkic Chaghatay language. Neither the dates nor the locations of his birth and death are known, but his name suggests family ties to Astarābād. He first served at the Ṣafavid court in about 1140/late 1720s and was noted to have sent a letter of congratulation to Nādir upon his capture of Isfahan from the Afghans in the autumn of 1…

The city of Herat saw its greatest flowering in the arts and architecture during the Tīmūrid period (771–913/1370–1507). Built upon and around ancient and mediaeval settlements (Grötzbach, 321–8), the city is presently the capital of a province by the same name in western Afghanistan. Herat is situated in a fertile valley that extends from east to west along the Harī Rūd River and is bounded to the north and south by spurs of the Kūh-i Bāba range. In the Ṣafavid period (907–1135/1501–1722) the city became the capital of the province of Khurāsān but was increasingly eclip…