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A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

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154 A history of Inner Asia<br />

imate than that of the Timurids and to reinstall Sunni rule in Iran, the<br />

khans spent their efforts on reaffirming their hold on Transoxania,<br />

Fergana, and eastern Khurasan.Samarkand and Bukhara took turns or<br />

combined as the ruling family’s capitals, while Balkh became the heir<br />

presumptive’s seat, and Tashkent the center of the fourth major appanage.Most<br />

khans endeavored to stimulate agriculture through new irrigation<br />

works and dams, to encourage the crafts and trade by building<br />

more caravanserais and bridges, and to please God and the religious<br />

class by building more mosques, madrasas, and khangahs, showing<br />

munificence to both the secular clergy and the powerful Naqshbandi<br />

tariqa.They also proved to be respectable patrons of the book arts, in<br />

both the artifactual and literary sense; Tabriz may have been the principal<br />

beneficiary from the collapse of Timurid Herat, with Bihzad and<br />

other craftsmen joining the ateliers of the Safavid rulers, but Shaybanid<br />

Bukhara and Samarkand also received their share.<br />

From among the khans of the dynasty, three may be singled out as<br />

especially prominent: the realm’s founder Muhammad Shaybani or<br />

Shaybak Khan (1500–10), his nephew Ubaydallah Khan (1533–39;<br />

effective ruler since 1512), and Abdallah Khan (Abdallah II, 1583–98;<br />

effective ruler since 1557).<br />

The founder, as we have said, competed with Shah Ismail for the<br />

Timurids’ Iranian heritage and lost both the contest and his life in this<br />

struggle.His successors contented themselves with periodic raids into<br />

Persian Khurasan, although in 1528 the contest just missed a reprise of<br />

1510 when Shah Tahmasp (1524–76) defeated Ubaydallah Khan, this<br />

time partly thanks to the cannon which the Persians learned to appreciate<br />

since the disastrous battle of Chaldiran.Ubaydallah was nevertheless<br />

less reckless, and by the time he added the official title to his effective<br />

exercise of power, he was paying more attention to the conditions in his<br />

own territories.He acquired the reputation of a just and pious ruler, and<br />

his favorite city Bukhara flourished to the point where Shaybanid civilization<br />

came close to a revival of the achievements of the Timurid age.<br />

One example is the splendid Mir Arab madrasa, built in 1535 under the<br />

khan’s auspices but through the direct sponsorship of the shaykhulislam<br />

(chief justice) Mir Arab.This madrasa also served as the final resting<br />

place for both the khan and his cleric; and it was one of the two Islamic<br />

seminaries in Uzbekistan (the other was the Barak Khan madrasa in<br />

Tashkent) which were allowed to function throughout the Soviet period.<br />

Here is what Ubaydallah Khan’s younger contemporary Haydar Mirza

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