Selected Histories for Mu'in al-Din (Muntakhab al-tawarikh)
A Persian chronicle of 1413 to 1414 with unique material on the Jochid ruling houses.
Full title Selected Histories for Mu’in al-Din: extracts on the Mongol and Timurid periods, Persian text ed. Jean Aubin, Tehran 1957
منتخب التواریخ معینی
Mu'in al-Din Natanzi (attributed), the 'Anonym of Iskandar'
Attributed to Mu'in al-Din Natanzi and long called the Anonym of Iskandar, this chronicle was written in Shiraz in 1413 to 1414 for the Timurid prince Iskandar Sultan. It covers the Mongol and Timurid periods to 1405 and holds an account of the Jochid and Chaghadaid lines, the White Horde and Blue Horde, not found in Rashid al-Din. The atlas does not hold the text: the corpus knows Aubin's 1957 Tehran edition, and it keeps full text only for works published before 1929 or openly licensed.
- How they knew
- Compiled from others
- Who “Tartar” means here
- Not recorded. The card's focus is the Jochids, the ruling house of the Golden Horde and of its White and Blue Hordes, whom Russian and European writers called Tartars.
- Why read it
- A key independent witness for the eastern branch of the Golden Horde and the line of its khans around 1300 to 1400.
- Watch out
- The authorship is only attributed, and the Jochid family tree here conflicts with other sources. 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
compilation Assembled from earlier sources. The author did not observe it directly.
compilation with independent Central Asian material: written 1413-1414 in Shiraz for Iskandar Sultan; contains a unique account of the Jochid and Chaghadaid lines (the 'White Horde' and 'Blue Horde' section) not found in Rashid al-Din
Research notes
- Authorship attributed by Aubin; the earlier name 'Anonym of Iskandar' (Barthold) persists. The Jochid genealogy in this text conflicts with other sources and is itself a matter of dispute.
Why it matters
Key independent witness for the eastern Jochid ulus (the 'left hand' of the Golden Horde) and for the succession of khans in the Qipchaq steppe c.1300-1400; much used by Tiesenhausen and by modern Golden Horde historians.
Places named
Qipchaq steppe; Transoxiana; Moghulistan; Iran
Peoples named
Jochids (Aq Orda, Kok Orda); Chaghadaids; Timurids; Moghuls