Timurid Empire

Abstract

The Timurids were a Muslim dynasty of Turco‐Mongol origin who ruled large parts of Persia and Central Asia from the late 14th to the early 16th century, until they were ultimately replaced by the Safavid dynasty in Iran and the Shibanid‐Uzbeks in southern Central Asia. The founder of the dynasty, Temür (r.1370–1405) was one of the last great nomadic conquerors of Eurasia who reshaped the political and cultural environment from the Caucasus to northern India. Despite his vast conquests and self‐conscious emulation of Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan) (r.1206–1227), the core of his empire remained limited to the western part of the Mongol Empire, especially the settled areas of Persia and part of Central Asia. Temür's descendants, the Timurids, engaged in a series of destructive succession struggles and by the mid‐15th century had lost control of parts of their empire. Nevertheless, they presided over one of the most artistically brilliant periods in Islamicate history, often dubbed “the Timurid Renaissance.” Their broad cultural and artistic patronage led to the development of one of the most sophisticated courts in premodern Eurasia. Having emerged in the wake of the fragmentation of the unified Mongol Empire in the mid‐14th century, a crucial period of transition in Central Eurasia, the Timurid Empire lasted only a century and half. But the artistic and cultural legacy of the dynasty influenced the art, culture, and politics of its successor states as well as the great premodern Islamicate empires – the Ottomans in Anatolia, the Safavids in Iran, and especially the Mughals in northern India, where the descendants of Temür under Zahir al‐Din Muhammad Babur (d.1530), established a new and long‐lasting Timurid empire in South Asia.