Hafiz-i Abru's Cream of Histories (Zubdat al-tawarikh)
A Persian Timurid history of 1335 to 1427, written for Prince Baysunghur in the 1420s.
Full title Cream of Histories (Zubdat al-tawarikh): Timurid history 736-830 AH (1335-1427), modern Persian edition
زبدة التواریخ
Hafiz-i Abru (d. 1430)
Hafiz-i Abru (died 1430) compiled this Persian history for the Timurid prince Baysunghur, drawing on earlier writers such as Shami and Rashid al-Din, and adding his own court observation for the reign of Shahrukh, whom he accompanied. It follows the Timurids, the Chaghatay khans, the Moghuls, the Golden Horde and the Uzbeks. The atlas does not hold the text: the corpus knows a 2001 Tehran edition, and it keeps full text only for works published before 1929 or openly licensed.
- How they knew
- Part eyewitness
- Who “Tartar” means here
- Not recorded. The card lists the Golden Horde and the Uzbeks among the peoples and notes that the work names the realm as running from the frontier of Khitay to the Arab lands.
- Why read it
- A Timurid synthesis that names the realm as running from the frontier of Khitay to the Arab lands, and a source for the embassies of Shahrukh's reign.
- Watch out
- For the fourteenth century it leans on Shami and Rashid al-Din, and the editor and print date are inferred from the preface. The atlas quotes nothing from this work.
What it says
No quotes from this one yet. Its text is out of reach for now, or the scan could not be read.
The fine print
How we know
mixed Part firsthand observation, part drawn from other sources.
mixed: compilation of Shami, Rashid al-Din and others for the fourteenth century; firsthand court observation for Shahrukh's reign (author accompanied Timur and Shahrukh)
Research notes
- Editor and print date inferred from the preface, not verified against a title-page image. Heavily dependent on Shami and Rashid al-Din for earlier periods.
- Hafiz-i Abru's Geography (Jughrafiya, with its description of Turkestan and Khorasan) was not found digitised; see candidates.
Why it matters
Timurid synthesis that names the realm 'from the frontier of Khitay to the Arab lands, from farthest India to Rum'; source for the Shahrukh-era embassies and for Uzbek and Moghul affairs. Hafiz-i Abru's geography (not located online) is the other half of his work.
Places named
Khorasan; Transoxiana; Moghulistan; Qipchaq steppe; Iran; China (Shahrukh's embassy to Ming)
Peoples named
Timurids; Chaghatay; Moghuls; Golden Horde; Uzbeks; Ming