TIMURID HERAT, CIRCA 1426

The early Timurids followed in the Ilkhanid tradition of commissioning universal histories in the manor of Rashid al-Din's famous 'Compilation of Histories' or 'Jam'i al-tawarikh. It is believed that Timur's son Shahrukh had a copy of Rashid al-Din's Jami' al-tawarikh in his library which was lacking its first volume. He commissioned his historian Hafez Abru to compile a replacement volume to complete the set. Hafez Abru, who was at the time working on an historical chronicle for Shahrukh's son Baysunghur known as the Majma' al-tawarikh, suggested to Shahrukh that sections of the text already prepared for the Majma' al-tawarikh be combined with sections of Rashid al-Din's text to produce the replacement volume. As a result folios from this replacement volume for Shahrukh's Jam'i al-tawarikh have often been misidentified as sections from Baysunghur's parallel chronicle. For a published illustrated folio also from the now dispersed replacement volume of the Jami' al-tawarikh by Hafez Abru commissioned by Shahrukh see Abollolah Soudavar, Art of the Persian Courts, New York, 1992, no.23, p. 66.