to take possession of the Central-Asian throne, the other consenting to become governor of the vacated Persian province and abandon the cares of the empire at Samarkand. In 1409 Khalil Shah died; and the story goes that Shadu ’l-Mulk stabbed herself and was buried with her royal lover at Rai, one of the towns which his grandfather had partly destroyed.
Shah Rukh, the fourth son of Timur, reigned for thirty-eight years, and appears to have been a brave, generous, and enlightened monarch. He removed his capital from Samarkand to Herat, of which place he rebuilt the citadel, restoring and improving the town. Merv also profited from his attention to its material interests. Sir John Malcolm speaks of the splendour of his court and of his encouragement of science and learning. He sent an embassy to China, and an English version of the travels to India of one of his emissaries, Abd ur-Razzak, is to be found in R. H. Major’s India in the Fifteenth Century (London, Hakluyt Society, 1857). As regards his Persian possessions, he had some trouble in the north-west, where the Turkomans of Asia Minor, known as the Kara Kuyun,[1] or “Black Sheep,” led by Kara Yusuf[2] and his sons Iskandar and Jahan Shah, had advanced upon Tabriz, the capital of Azerbaijan. On the death of the Shah Rukh in 1446 he was succeeded by his son Ulugh Bey, whose scientific tastes are demonstrated in the astronomical tables bearing his name, quoted by European writers when determining the latitude of places in Persia. He was, moreover, himself a poet and patron of literature, and built a college as well as an observatory at Samarkand. There is no evidence to show that he did much to consolidate his grandfather’s conquests south of the Caspian. Ulugh Bey was put to death by his son Abd ul-Latif, who, six months later, was slain by his own soldiers. Babar—not the illustrious founder of the Mughal dynasty in India, but an elder member of the same house—next obtained possession of the sovereign power, and established himself in the government of Khorasan and the neighbouring countries. He died after a short rule, from habitual intemperance. After him Abu Saʽid, grandson of Miran Shah, and once governor of Fars, became a candidate for empire, and allied himself with the Uzbeg Tatars, seized Bokhara, entered Khorasan, and waged war upon the Turkoman tribe aforesaid, which, since the invasion of Azerbaijan, had, under Jahan Shah, overrun Irak, Fars and Kermān, and pillaged Herat. But he was eventually taken prisoner by Uzun Ḥasan, and killed in 1468.
It is difficult to assign dates to a few events recorded in Persian history for the eighteen years following the death of Abd ul-Latif, and, were it not for chance European missions, the same difficulty would be felt in dealing with the period after the death of Abu Saʽid up to the accession of Ismaʽil Sufi in 1499. Sultan Ahmad, eldest son of Abu Saʽid, reigned in Bokhara; his brother, Ornar Sheikh, in Ferghana; but the son of the latter, the great Babar, was driven by the Uzbegs to Kabul and India. More to the purpose is it that Sultan Ḥosain Mirza, Ḥosain Mirza. great-grandson of Omar Sheikh, son of Timur, reigned in Herat from 1487 to 1506. He was a patron of learned men, among others of the historians Mirkhond and Khwadamir, and the poets Jami and Hatifi. But at no time could his control have extended over central and western Persia. The nearest approach to a sovereignty in those parts on the death of Abu Saʽid is that of Uzun Ḥasan, the leader of the Ak Kuyun, or “White Sheep” Turkomans, and conqueror of the “Black Sheep,” whose chief, Jahan Shah, he defeated and slew. Between the two tribes there had long been Uzun Ḥasan. a deadly feud. Both were composed of settlers in Asia Minor, the “Black Sheep” having consolidated their power at Van, the “White” at Diarbekr.
Sir John Malcolm states that at the death of Abu Saʽid, Sultan Ḥosain Mirza “made himself master of the empire,” and, a little later, that “Uzun Ḥasan, after he had made himself master of Persia, turned his arms in the direction of Turkey”; but the reader is left to infer for himself what the real “empire” of Ḥosain Mirza, and what the limit of the “Persia” of Uzun Ḥasan. The second could not well be included in the first, because the Turkomans were in possession of the greater part of the Persian plateau, while the “sultan” was in Herat, to which Khorasan belonged. It may be assumed that an empire like that acquired by Timur could not long be maintained by his descendants in its integrity.
The Turkish adjective uzun, اوزون “long,” applied to Ḥasan, the Turkoman monarch of Persia (called also by the Arabs Ḥasanu ’t-Tawil), is precisely the qualifying Persian word دراع used in the compound designation of Artaxerxes Longimanus; and Malcolm quotes the statement of a Venetian envoy in evidence that Uzun Ḥasan was “a tall thin man, of a very open and engaging countenance.” This reference, and a further notice in Markham’s history, supply the clue to a store of valuable information made available by the publications of the Hakluyt Society. The narratives of Caterino Zeno, Barbaro and Contarini, envoys from Venice to the court of Uzun Ḥasan, are in this respect especially interesting. Zeno was sent in 1471 to incite this warlike ruler against the Ottoman sultan, and succeeded in his mission. That the result was disastrous to the shah is not surprising, but the war seems to hold a comparatively unimportant place in the annals of Turkey.
Uzun Ḥasan had married Despina (Gr. Δέσποινα), daughter of the emperor of Trebizond, Calo Johannes of the house of the Comneni, and Zeno’s wife was niece to this Christian princess. The relationship naturally strengthened the envoy’s position at the court, and he was permitted to visit the queen in the name of the republic which he represented. Barbaro and Contarini met at Isfahan in 1474, and there paid their respects to the shah together. Kum and Tauris or Tabriz (then the capital) were also visited by the Italian envoys following in the royal suite; and the incidental notice of these cities, added to Contarini’s formal statement that “the extensive country of Ussuncassan [sic] is bounded by the Ottoman Empire and by Caramania,” and that Siras (Shiraz) is comprehended in it, proves that at least Azerbaijan, Irak, and the main part of the provinces to the south, inclusive of Fars, were within the dominions of the reigning monarch.
There is good reason to suppose that Jahan Shah, the Black Sheep Turkoman, before his defeat by Uzun Ḥasan, had set up the standard of royalty; and Zeno, at the outset of his travels, calls him “king of Persia”[3] in 1450. Chardin alludes to him in the same sense; but Ḥasan the Long is a far more prominent figure, and has hardly received justice at the hands of the historian. Indeed, his identity seems to have been lost in the various modes of spelling his name adopted by the older chroniclers, who call him indiscriminately[4] Alymbeius, Asembeius, Asembec, Assimbeo, or Ussan Cassano. He is said to have earned the character of a wise and valiant monarch, to have reigned eleven years, to have lived to the age of seventy, and, on his death in 1477 or (according to Krusinski and Zeno) 1478, to have been succeeded on the throne of Persia by his son Yaʽqub. This prince, who had slain an elder brother, died by poison (1485), after a reign of seven years. The dose was offered to him by his wife, who had been unfaithful to him and sought to set her paramour on his throne.
Writers differ as to the succession to Yaʽqub. Zeno’s account is that a son named Allamur (called also, Alamut, Alvante, El-wand and Alwung Bey) was the next king, who, besides Persia, possessed Diarbekr and part of Anarchy. greater Armenia near the Euphrates. On the other hand, Krusinski states that, Yaʽqub dying childless, his relative Julaver, one of the grandees of the kingdom, seized the throne, and held possession of it for three years. Baisingar, it is added, succeeded him in 1488 and reigned till 1490, when a young nobleman named Rustan (Rustam?) obtained the sovereign power and exercised it for seven years. This account is confirmed by
- ↑ They were commonly called Kara Kuyun-lu and the “White Sheep” Turkomans Ak Kuyun-lu, the affix “lu” signifying possession, i.e. possession of a standard bearing the image of a black or white sheep.
- ↑ According to Erskine, this chief killed Miran Shah, whose dwelling-place was Tabriz.
- ↑ See also Ramusio’s preface.
- ↑ Knolles, Purchas, Zeno.
