Centralizing Reform and its Opponents in the Late Timurid Period

Abstract

The disintegration of the Timurid empire after the death of its founder, Timur, in 807/1405 followed the normal pattern for Central Asian nomadic empires based on a military tribal elite. The charismatic Timur had exercised a tight hold on the government of his realm, mainly as a result of the highly personal nature of his rule and the flexibility which the absence of a formal administrative apparatus afforded him. But, after his death, the traditional Turko-Mongol concept that territory was held collectively by the patriarchal, agnatic clan and that all lineal male descendants shared the right to claim political sovereignty over it, reasserted itself. This corporate claim to sovereignty created a free-for-all situation in which individual members of the princely Timurid clan clamored to assert their claims to rule in the steadily shrinking territory under Timurid control, frequently resorting to the time-honored steppe tradition of guerilla struggle (qazāqliq) .