Nawa'i in Historical Context (1)

Maria Subtelny at University of Toronto is supreme among English-language scholars who focus on this period. Her most recent work, Timurids in Transition: Turko-Persian Politics and Acculturation in Medieval Iran (Leiden: Brill, 2007), is effectively a summation of her life's work, combining both new and previously published scholarship on the latter years of the Timurid dynasty, with particular focus on the reign of Sultan Husayn Mirza and the socio-economic condition of Herat.

However, while it does a fine job detailing complex political machinations and interpreting the economic record - notably waqf (religious foundation) charters - it isn't overly concerned with Mir 'Ali Shir, at least not from the cultural perspective.

On a similar note, The Garden of the Eight Paradises: Babur and the Culture of Empire in Central Asia, Afghanistan and India (1483-1530) (Leiden: Brill, 2004), by Stephen F. Dale of Ohio State University, while ostensibly pre-occupied with the founder of the Mughal dynasty, has important points to make about the cultural significance of Herat and the flowering of Turkic literature under the benevolent gaze of Mir 'Ali Shir.

Maria Szuppe does a fine job analyzing political relationships, change and continuity at the beginning of the 15th Century in Entre Timourides, Uzbeks et Safavides: questions d'histoire politique et sociale de Hérat dans la première moitié du XVIe siècle (Paris: Association pour l'avancement des études iraniennes, 1992). Ultimately, her survey falls slightly - but only just - outside the period of interest, but her short survey on the main chroniclers of the period (Khwandamir, Vasifi et al) is invaluable.

Soviet and Uzbek scholarship on Nawa'i is voluminous, but for starters A. K. Borovkov's edited volume from 1946 - originally timed to coincide with the 500th anniversary of Mir 'Ali Shir's birth, but postponed due to a little unpleasantness involving Hitler on the USSR's western borders - contains several valuable articles, not least A. K. Yakubovsky's essay on the political, cultural and social milieu of 15th century Khurasan.

References

A. Yu. Yakubovskiy, 'Cherti obshestvennoy i kulturnoy jizni epokhi Alishera Navoi [some lines on the cultural life of the age of Alisher Navoi]', in A. K. Borovkov, ed., Alisher Navoi, (Moscow/Leningrad: USSR Academy of Sciences, 1946), pp3-30.

Stephen F. Dale, The Garden of the Eight Paradises: Babur and the Culture of Empire in Central Asia, Afghanistan and India (1483-1530), (Leiden: Brill, 2004).

Maria Subtelny, Timurids in Transition: Turko-Persian Politics and Acculturation in Medieval Iran, (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

Maria Szuppe, Entre Timourides, Uzbeks et Safavides: questions d'histoire politique et sociale de Hérat dans la première moitié du XVIe siècle, (Paris: Association pour l'avancement des études iraniennes, 1992).