A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

Timur and the Timurids 131
had inherited none of his ancestor’s political and psychological acumen.
For although he won the ensuing struggle militarily in a battle fought
near Herat in the spring of 1448 against his nephew Ala al-Dawla, he
failed to give adequate credit to his elder son Abd al-Latif for the victory.
Instead, he showed undisguised preference for his younger son Abd al-
Aziz.This was followed by another injustice and a fatal blunder: the
injustice was to deprive Abd al-Latif of the treasury which he had gathered
in Herat; the blunder was to return with Abd al-Aziz to Samarkand
while leaving Abd al-Latif as governor in Herat.Ulugh Beg thus provoked
an intense hatred on the part of his elder son while leaving him
in a position to take revenge.The inevitable clash occurred a year later,
when Abd al-Latif marched on Samarkand with an army and defeated
his father in September 1449.Ulugh Beg returned to the city as a virtual
fugitive and eventual prisoner of his irate son; worse still, the religious
authorities, never fond of the prince-scientist, issued a fatwa (legal ruling)
mandating his deposition and execution.Ulugh Beg, in a manner not
uncommon in similar situations, had meanwhile set out on a pilgrimage
to Mecca.He was arrested a short distance from Samarkand and
beheaded on 27 October 1449.He was accorded the proper burial,
however: in Timur’s own mausoleum, the Gur-i Emir, where he thus
joined his illustrious grandfather and other principal members of the
family: his cousin Muhammad Sultan, his uncle Miranshah, and his
father Shahrukh.He lay there undisturbed until 1941, when a team of
Soviet archeologists led by the Uzbek scholar T.N.Kari-Niyazov opened
his sarcophagus.They found the skeleton as the historical sources had
led them to expect, with the head severed by what must have been a blow
with a sword.Following a technique devised by Soviet anthropologists,
A.V.Oshanin studied the physiognomy of the skull, and his colleague
M.M.Gerasimov then sculpted a reconstruction of Ulugh Beg’s face.
While Ulugh Beg was launching his and his team’s scientific workin
Samarkand, in Herat his younger brother Baysunghur (1397–1433), who
seemed to be the favorite of their parents, Shahrukh and Gawhar Shad,
also displayed a genius for culture and the arts.Both brothers revived and
brought to new heights several branches of learning and art.Ulugh Beg
created an ambience that made it possible for Islamic astronomy to reach
back to its earlier achievements and raise it to a still higher level.
Baysunghur focused on the classical epic of Iran, Firdawsi’s Shahname,
and in 1426 sponsored the compilation of what we might call a critical
edition, providing it with an introduction that included the poet’s biography,
and had his calligraphers and painters produce splendid copies of