The women of the fifteenth-century Timurid court. A cross-sectional study between words and images

Abstract

The news that reaches the West about the women of Tamerlane´s court has varied sources, all of them written by men. Travelers, missionaries, chroniclers, all wrote with their particular perspective what they saw and heard at the Timurid court. This paper aims to compare some written sources with a selection of manuscripts´ illuminations commissioned by the direct descendants of Tamerlane, also of course composed and sponsored by men. The testimonial sources will be the travel book of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, Life and Deeds of Greater Tamerlane (1406), the report presented by John de Galonifontibus, bishop of Sultania to the court of King Charles VI of France (1403), and The Wonders of Destiny of the Ravages of Tamerlane by Ahmad b. Muhammad Ibn 'Arabsah (1435). Among the illuminated manuscripts that show us women in different aspects of court life, we will have images of the panegyric Zafarnama or Book of Victories in its versions by the authors Sharaf Al-Din 'Ali Yazdi (1424) and Pir 'Ali al-Jami  (16th c.); furthermore, we will refer to the lyrical work of Khwāhu Kermānī (1396), of great influence in the Persian-Islamic world; finally, we will compare the images of the Mirâj Nâmeh or The Miraculous Journey of Mohammed (1436), a model of mystical literature that recounts in detail the nocturnal and miraculous transfer of the Prophet through the seven heavens in the ascent to divinity and the descent into the hell of eternal punishments. The interesting thing about all the sources is that they have been produced by eyewitnesses of the Timurid court, and both in their poetic, chronic and devotional facets they have depicted the real woman in more or less idealized environments, giving a glimpse of the cultural patterns of the oriental society of the time.