This article discusses a genealogical chart drawn in the second half of the fifteenth century that presents a hitherto unknown genealogy as that of the Timurids. A close reading of the genealogy reveals that it presents a pattern of legitimation prevalent among the Yasavi Sufis of Central Asia. The genealogy is based on an Islamization narrative featuring holy warriors purportedly descended from Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya who supposedly ruled the area corresponding to the former domains of the historical Chaghatay Khanate, the body politic from which the Timurids emerged. The inventor of the genealogy, however, remains unknown.
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Ibn Katīla, “Bayān al-adʿiyāʾ,” 988. In fact, when we refer to the Central Asian Islamization narrative with which both genealogies are linked (discussed below), it is understood that the two genealogies can be regarded as parallel with each other down to the generation of ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ([5]), although corruptions in the texts mask such parallelism upon first inspection. Ibn Katīla, the Iraqi author of the Bayān al-adʿiyāʾ, migrated and resided first in the “land of the Turks” (bilād al-Turk), and then in Samarqand and Kish. The Bayān al-adʿiyā was, in all likelihood, written in the “land of the Turks” or Transoxiana and contains such accounts pertaining to Central Asia as mentioned here. See my introduction to Ibn Katīla, “Bayān al-adʿiyāʾ.”
Ibn Katīla, “Bayān al-adʿiyāʾ,” 989. For interpreting “B-yākā Khān” to be a form masking “Bilgä Khan,” see Devin DeWeese and Ashirbek Muminov, eds., Islamization and Sacred Lineages in Central Asia: The Legacy of Ishaq Bab in Narrative and Genealogical Traditions, volume 1, Opening the Way for Islam: The Ishaq Bab Narrative, 14th–19th Centuries (Almaty and Bloomington: Daik-Press, 2013), 289. The transcription system used for “Bilgä Khan” is that used in the said reference (the same will apply for Turkic personal names cited from the same reference below).
The references are: (1) Or. 1406, 25b; (2) ibid., 28b; (3) ibid., 22b; (4) ibid., 19b; (5) ibid., 28b.
Mano, “Amīru Teimūru Kyuregen,” 114; Woods, Timur’s Genealogy, 92–3; Manz, “Family and Ruler,” 65–8; Subtelny, Timurids, 19–22; Kawaguchi, Teimūru Teikoku Shihaisō no Kenkyū, 213 n. 8; idem, Teimūru Teikoku, 248.
Binbaş, Intellectual Networks, 280–1. Binbaş, however, does not deem this possibility likely.
Jean Calmard, “Mohammad b. al-Hanafiyya dans la religion populaire, le folklore, les legends dans le monde turco-persan et indo-persan,” Cahiers d’ Asie centrale 5/6 (1998): 202. The primary sources Calmard’s analysis is ultimately based on when discussing the perception of Timur’s Khurasanian followers recount only the destruction by those followers (implying, above all, ex-Sarbadarids) of iconic structures in Damascus that were closely associated with the Umayyads. It is Calmard who sees the mentioned perception beyond their actions. I thank Professors Jean Calmard and Denise Aigle for providing me with the related pages (pp. 281–5 and the accompanying notes) of Calmard’s unpublished dissertation, “Le culte de Karbalâ dans l’ Iran présafavide,” Université de Paris III, 1975, on which Calmard’s discussion in the related portion of his article is based.
Cf. Takao Ito’s recent article, “Al-Maqrīzī’s Biography of Tīmūr,” Arabica 62 (2015): 308–27, which showed, among other things, how variegated claims concerning Timur’s ancestry emanating from the Timurid establishment could be. Ito discusses a claim that connected Timur’s genealogy to Esen Qutlugh, a senior amir of the later Ilkhanid period.
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This article discusses a genealogical chart drawn in the second half of the fifteenth century that presents a hitherto unknown genealogy as that of the Timurids. A close reading of the genealogy reveals that it presents a pattern of legitimation prevalent among the Yasavi Sufis of Central Asia. The genealogy is based on an Islamization narrative featuring holy warriors purportedly descended from Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya who supposedly ruled the area corresponding to the former domains of the historical Chaghatay Khanate, the body politic from which the Timurids emerged. The inventor of the genealogy, however, remains unknown.
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 729 | 53 | 5 |
Full Text Views | 278 | 45 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 74 | 7 | 0 |