Talk:Timurid Empire

Name in Chagatai language

As I remember, previous revisions of this article had name of empire in Chagatai, just like Timur. Also, that language mentioned as an official language in infobox. So should we add Chagatai name too? --Zyma (talk) 08:14, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Chagatai language was not an official language in the empire yet had a widespread use, but all the official documentation was done in Persian. Including Chagatai everywhere where possible is due to the fact that modern version of Chagatai is Uzbek which is the official language of Uzbekistan comprising most of the empire's heart. --Lingveno (talk) 20:30, 11 April 2017 (UTC) <--- blocked adversiting

I agree with the addition of Chagatai name to the article, since the Timurids were of Chagatai heritage. BerkBerk⁶⁸ 18:55, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Timurid Religion

Sufism is not a "branch" of Islam like that of Sunni and Shi'ite, it can't constitute the state religion. Timur and the Timurids were Sunni rulers with Sufi tendencies. What does the cited Russian source actually say about this? Chamboz (talk) 20:16, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

It says that Sufism and Sufi people held great power in Central Asia during the Timurid dynasty rule and Sufism was widespread. If Sufism is not really a branch of Islam and cannot be an official religion, I propose getting it back to Islam or to Sunni Islam. --Lingveno (talk) 20:26, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, Sufism isn't really a branch, I'd say it should get changed back to Sunni Islam. --HistoryofIran (talk) 21:41, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Do we have sources for Sunni Islam? --Lingveno (talk) 22:16, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Do you have the ability to research information?

• Timurids in Transition: Turko-Persian Politics and Acculturation, Volume 7, by Maria Subtelny, page 201;"Traditions that constituted the basis of the Timurid-sponsored revival of Sunni Islam."
• Medieval Heresies: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, by Christine Caldwell Ames, page 269;"Timur the Lame came to rule this polity and then to expand it westwards, finally creating a Sunni Muslim "Timurid" empire..."--Kansas Bear (talk) 22:25, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

@Chamboz LiefyOnTheGo (talk) 06:13, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

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Flag

Wanted to raise a concern about the flag. The one which is presented in the article looks more like a fan-art rather than a historical flag. In any source you will find that the flag was light-blue with the silver circles, and not black with red. The same blue flag you will find in the Timur museum in his hometown of Shahrisabz. --Lingveno (talk) 19:26, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Agreeing with Lingveno, there is absolutely no historical sources to my knowledge, that would support the flag shown on this wikipedia page. All sources who argue on behalf of this black/red flag, cite the catalan atlas, eventhough first of all, that doesn't fit in any way chronologically in a time when it would be believable to assume Timur had his own flag representing his rule (instead of for example, a chagatayid bairaq, since claimed to be an amir on behalf of a chagatay pretender) , secondly, there is no black flag with red dots in the whole catalan atlas, at least where Timur would have been. We see the ilkhanid golden sign, with a red square, and we see the golden horde flag up in cumania / pontic steppe, and we see assumed chagatay flag, white with a yellow square, around eastern transoxania and moghulistan. The flag people mistakenly have assumed as a flag of Timur (for some reason) seems to be the white flag with three red crescents pointing up, which can be seen east of the golden horde, all the way to china, that is to say, the ulus of the great khan, which would make it the flag of the greath khans heart lands, maybe Yuan remnants? The coloring is an obvious mistake. There are cleaned versions of the Catalan Atlas to be found, and even if you look at the original scans of the map, you can clearly see the white color of the golden horde flag, for example, to have dimmed in the same way as the aforementioned three-crescent flag to the east. Whether Timur deliberately used the flag of the great khan to bolster his ambitions (at least on his own behalf), is questionable since he never even later took the title of khan.Hegaton (talk) 11:34, 10 October 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hegaton (talk • contribs) 11:31, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

lede is missing something ...

Reading it, I would think this was some average period in history. Nothing about the utter destruction and brutality Timur inflicting on civilization. 50.111.19.21 (talk) 00:03, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Regarding the name "Turan"

HistoryofIran, we are two peas in a pod here. I understand your point, frankly, because "Turan" has not previously caught my eye as the name for the Timurid state (which perhaps means that it is deeply unpopular in academic circles), but the fact that it was mentioned in the ancient message ordered to be carved out on the stone by Timur himself (and probably dictated personally by Timur as well ), makes it worth mentioning at least somewhere, true perhaps, not in the lead section of the page. I am also under the impression that "Turan" may have been used as an endonym, just as Deutschland is used nowadays by Germans. Likewise, it is similar to the extravagant titles used by the Ottoman sultans for themselves, such as "Kaiseri Rum" and etc, unpopular with the comtemporaries and modern historians, but still considered worthy of mention in the relevant pages.

PS: Besides Karsakpay inscription, "Turan" is mentioned as a preferred name by Timur and Timurids for their state in Sharif al-Din Ali Yazdi's "Zafarnama" and the reasons beyond it throughly analyzed in the following books:

• Ando, S. (1995): Die timuridische Historiographie II – Saraf al-Din Ali Yazdi. Studia Iranica 24, pp. 219–246.
• Anwari-Alhosseyni, S. (1986): Logaz und Moamma. Eine Quellenstudie zur Kunstform des Persischen Rätsels. Berlin.
• Bartold, V. V. (1973): Novyi istochnik po istorii Timuridov (New source on the history of Timurids). In: Bartold, V. V.: Sochineniia. Moscow, Vol. 8, pp. 546–574.
• Melville, C. (2012b) : The Mongol and Timurid Periods. In: Melville, C. (ed.): Persian Historiography. London, pp. 155–208 (A History of Persian Literature X).
• Storey, C. A.– Bregel, Y. E. (1972): Persidskaia Literatura. Bio-bibliograficheskii obzor. Moscow.
• Woods, J. E. (1987): The Rise of Timurid Historiography. JNES 46, pp. 81–108.

Please, hit me up when you post a reply to my message. Thank you! --Visioncurve^{Timendi causa est nescire} 04:11, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

I only have access to the Melville and Woods source, where there is not a single mention of Turan there (well, there is, but not regarding that), unless I've misunderstood something. Do you have a reliable source that states Turan was the name of the Timurid realm? Regarding Yazdi's work, I would be vary of WP:PRIMARY SOURCES. With all due respect, I think you're misunderstanding the difference between claiming rule over a region and it being actually the name of a realm. For example, Mawarannahr (Transoxiana) would certainly not be the name of the whole state [1] (which is stated by the Soviet historian Chekhovich I assume? Seems dodgy). That also begs the question, is [2] even reliable? What is it exactly supposed to be? I can't read Russian and I'd rather avoid delving into it through translation and whatnot. The Ilkhanate ruler Öljeitü is also referred to as the ruler of Turan, yet that wasn't the name of his realm (per The Timurid century, page 56). --HistoryofIran (talk) 13:41, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Timur assumed the title Sultan of Turan, but I doubt that's a thing for a state. More like Suleiman calling himself Caesar of Rome. Doesn't make Ottomans, Rome. Don't know what the original source says, but instead saying "the state was also called as Iran-u-Turan", we could say "the realm was referred to as" instead. Beshogur (talk) 15:20, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Actually, that's what I tried to do in the end. I removed Turan from the lead and instead created a new section further down the page, which I thought would be an ideal place to provide info not only on the Turan name, but also all other names some way or another attributed to the state of Timur. I guess I correctly used wording there as well (such as: "according to Yazdi or in the Timurid literature and etc"), though I agree with Beshogur on his suggestion of exploiting more liberal "the realm was referred to" phrase. At the end of the day, I'm trying to bring you guys into this: it is a fact that these names were allegedly used in some capacity by starting with Timur and ending with Timurid poets and men of letters, which alone should make them worth mentioning in this article. --Visioncurve^{Timendi causa est nescire} 03:45, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Also interesting: The terms Čaġatāy el(i), Čagatāy ḫaγlï, and Čagatay ḫalqï occurring in the fifteenth century Chagatay authors mean 'the Turkic people of the Timurid Empire' or 'Timurid Turk'. Also noticeable that Nawai also uses Čagatay ḫalqï (i.e. the 'Chagatay community') in order to distinguish the Timurid Turks from the whole of the Turkic peoples. See János Eckmann (1966). "Chagatay Manual", pages 3-4. It doesn't directly state that it was an altername name to the realm, but the people I suppose. The author doesn't provide translation here for Čaġatāy el(i), but it literally means Chagatay nation/country. Therefore I don't think we can add this, just wanted to give some info. Will search into more. Beshogur (talk) 11:29, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Why not? I consider it a very interesting piece of information. Would've loved to encounter it somewhere in the article. Give it a thorough thought! ;-) --Visioncurve^{Timendi causa est nescire} 12:07, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Doesn't explicitly state such a thing. Beshogur (talk) 12:28, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Visioncurve Stuff like this is indeed worth mentioning, not to mention it's quite interesting as well. But that's not my main gripe here. I'm really questioning the WP:OR and WP:RS here. Please tell me what you think of my comment, and if you want, I'll gladly send you some high quality sources about the Timurids which I recently found (not sure if this sounds patronizing - well, it's not meant to). --HistoryofIran (talk) 13:51, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

HistoryofIran, that would be greatly appreciated, really. Sources I use for the Timurids page seem to be getting older, which in my opinion, impacts their quality and perhaps, their reliability. Moreover, most of them are in Russian. So, yeah, that would be indeed, helpful. Thank you in advance! --Visioncurve^{Timendi causa est nescire} 04:02, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Visioncurve It's not really much about their age, but their overall quality and reliability (doesn't seem WP:RS), and thus I suggest that they get removed until we find better stuff. Please reply to my mail so I can send the files. --HistoryofIran (talk) 15:09, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

@Visioncurve: Thoughts? --HistoryofIran (talk) 13:08, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

@HistoryofIran:, Yeah, I share your opinion on that. Some of the mentioned sources may not well be WP:RS unfortunately, however, a few of the Russian sources seem to be the only available sources out there. This is chiefly due to the fact that most of the area was first under Imperial Russian, and then under the Soviet control, hence, substantial parts of the area's history was studied "behind the iron curtain" solely by Russian/Soviet historians. Nonetheless, I think we should not get bent out of shape by this fact. It brings us to the place where we have to give them the benefit of the doubt (some specific works of Soviet historians deserve respect). So my suggestion is not to remove them until we find better stuff (your suggestion), but remove them perhaps after we find better sources. What do you think? --Visioncurve^{Timendi causa est nescire} 05:58, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

@Visioncurve: Could we at least get the WP:VERIFY issue out of the way for starters? --HistoryofIran (talk) 11:25, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

@HistoryofIran:, in my opinion, the sources that were employed to source "Names of the State" section of the article are in line with the rules specified in WP:VERIFY. These are:

1. Yazdi, Sharaf al-Din (2008). Zafarnama. Tashkent: San'at. p. 254.
2. Grigor'ev, A.P (2004). "Timur's Inscription, 1391". Historiography and source study of the history of the countries of Asia and Africa. Saint-Petersburg State University. p. 24.
3. Chekhovich, O (1960). "Defence of Samarqand in 1454". Social Sciences of Uzbekistan. 4: 37–38.
4. Husain Syed, Muzaffar (2011). Concise History of Islam. New Delhi: Vij Books India Pvt Ltd. p. 197.
5. Ghosh, Amitav (2002). Imam and the Indian. Orient Blackswan. pp. 103–380.

IMO, the above-mentioned, cited sources legibly support the material as presented in the article. Some of them may not be easily available in the internet, but WP:VERIFY states that editor should not reject reliable sources just because they are difficult to access. It also states that Editors may also use material from reliable non-academic sources, particularly if it appears in respected mainstream publications. Other reliable sources include:

• University-level textbooks
• Books published by respected publishing houses
• Magazines (regarding "San'at" magazine of Uzbekistan)
• Mainstream newspapers

Moreover, as per WP:VERIFY, citations to non-English sources are also allowed on the English Wikipedia. Subsequently, I think this should do it, but of course, we may all have different opinions about respective sources.

BTW, I have replied to your email and am waiting for the promised sources. Thank you in advance. --Visioncurve^{Timendi causa est nescire} 13:23, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

@Visioncurve: That begs the question, what is 'reliable' exactly? These sources makes claims that are not even remotely mentioned in any prominent source, even those that deal with that subject. Dunno about the sources but Muzaffar Husain Syed and Amitav Ghosh aren't even historians, thus they should imo certainly be removed per WP:RS. What about the rest? Are they historians? Could you send me the sources (except the Ghosh and Syed one)? And it seems my mail got rejected because it was too large. Two mails to the Ocean mail inc. --HistoryofIran (talk) 16:11, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

HistoryofIran, well, the cited Uzbek magazine can be accessed through this link, while the Grigoryev's (who BTW was a Soviet/Russian orientalist, turkologist, specialist in the history and source study of the Golden Horde (1930-2010)) article about Timur's inscriptions can be downloaded here, unfortunately, the work of Olga Chekhovich (Soviet orientalist, historian, specialist in the study of sources on Central Asia (1912-1982)) is only on paper (presented to me years ago by a fellow student, don't ask to scan it, pls). Regarding your sources you wanted to send me, is there any other way I can get'em? I'd really like to go through them. Kheili khoshkhaal misham! --Visioncurve^{Timendi causa est nescire} 05:24, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

The Uzbek magazine doesn't seem one bit WP:RS. Sorry, but it looks more like a school project. I looked at the authors profile, it says that she is a faculty member of the Tashkent Architectural Building Institute. --HistoryofIran (talk) 14:12, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Nope, the author is Ms. Zukhra Rakhimova, Candidate of Art History, Professor of the Department of Museology of the National Institute of Arts and Design of Uzbekistan, according to the UNESCO website. --Visioncurve^{Timendi causa est nescire} 12:14, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Oh okay, I assumed the uploader Elena Barsukova was the author. Still, it seems more like this is more a specialist in art-related stuff than history. I'll later ask at WP:RSN. Btw, that was not all the sources, I will send more today. Hotmail is wack, so I can't really include that many files, and it takes ages to load. --HistoryofIran (talk) 13:17, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, really. I've already started paging through Timurids in Transition. --Visioncurve^{Timendi causa est nescire} 13:33, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

@Visioncurve: perhaps they really meant (ruler of) Iran and Turan, because the same name appears in Kitab-i Diyarbakriyya regarding Shahrukh Mirza. Calling him "padishah of Iran and Turan". Considering Timur assumed this title as well, more likely as a geographic region rather than a state name. Beshogur (talk) 13:35, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

List of Emperors: Remove columns?

May I propose that we make the list of rulers a single column? It will help in seeing the sequence of rulers.

We can add years, or approximate years, of rule after that.

— iFaqeer (talk to or email me) 05:21, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Demonym

Hi @Beshogur:. With all due respect, I think you're misunderstanding the word 'demonym';

"the name used for the people who live in a particular country, state, or other locality:"

Which would mean that your current addition indicates that all denizens of the Timurid Empire, non-Turk alike (and Turks who were non-Chagatay as well), were called "Chagatay". Moreover, Nava'i is clearly talking about the Timurid family here, not all the people ruled by them. And even if he didn't, just because he used x to refer to all the denizens, doesn't mean that was actual the official designation of the people of the country. Looking forward to your response. --HistoryofIran (talk) 22:30, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Which would mean that your current addition indicates that all citizens of the Timurid Empire In modern terminology, I guess almost, a country citizen is considered of x nation, despite the ethnicity. I don't think there's a way to make distinguish non-Turkic and Turkic citizens of the Timurid Empire. But that's not the discussion here I suppose. Moreover, Nava'i is clearly talking about the Timurid family here, not all the people ruled by them. If you have the pdf of Chagatay manual, author clearly says: The terms Cagatay eli, Cagatay Hayli, and Cagatay halqi occurring in the fifteenth century Chagatay authors mean 'the Turkic people of the Timurid Empire' or 'Timurid Turk'. That this is so, is clear from two passages in Muhammad Salih's Saybaninama. .... Know that I am affectionate toward everyone (and) get on well with the whole people. The Chagatay people shall not call me Uzbek, they shall not be uneasy and anxious in vain. Thus giving example of another author. the name used for the people who live in a particular country, state, or other locality I guess it applies to my addition? And even if he didn't, just because he used x to refer to all the denizens, doesn't mean that was actual the official designation of the people of the country as my edit summary, the author shows that the term Chagatay was even used in Chagatay version of Zafarname (Yazdi) in order to designate the Timurids. If my addition isn't WP:OR, which I think isn't, because the author clearly states who is designed as whom, and not a primary source, why is this such a problem? Thanks in advance. Beshogur (talk) 22:51, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree with @HistoryofIran that the phrasing of the quote is ambiguous. I would instinctively interpret that as referring to the core of the Timurid state, which, logically, was made up of Chagatai-speaking tribesmen of the former Chagatai Khanate. I do not think the author clearly extends this to all denizens of the diverse Timurid Empire. There are other problems here. Who says Nava'i is correct? (Also, who is Nava'i?) In the quotation, the author merely states that "Nava'i uses X", he doesn't say he agrees with it or believes it to be correct, or that this constitutes a clear demonym. I think it is an overreach based on the sourcing to firmly categorise the populace of an empire on the basis of this slightly shakey, ambiguous source. Additionally @Beshogur, your argument about modern terminology and modern countries is anachronistic. We do not seek to apply modern nation state terminology to ancient empires. People residing in the Timurid Empire were not citizens or residents. If we termed them, it would be as denizens or subjects. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:12, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

What do you mean who is Navai? He was an official under Husayn Bayqarah. You can not neglect such things. Also I gave three different examples where Chagatay was used an an expression, including one in Chatagay version of Zafarnama. terms Cagatay eli, Cagatay Hayli, and Cagatay halqi occurring in the fifteenth century Chagatay authors mean 'the Turkic people of the Timurid Empire' or 'Timurid Turk'. is enough. If the Timurids were Turkic, why does this generalize in your opinion? Also the quotation is clear, everyone could read what it actually means. Yours "non Turkic citizens" argument is very far fetched. It's not anachronistic. I can't see anywhere on wikipedia template that it says demonym is only used for modern countries. Beshogur (talk) 09:59, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

I did not say demonym was only used for modern countries, I said the concepts of citizenship and residency are. You are taking a term, Chagatay, applied to the Timurids in a fairly vague way, and assuming that this extends to all Timurid subjects in a sort of citizen-like manner. Not all Mongol subjects were called Mongols. They were called Mongol subjects, with the term Mongol reserved for the ruling elite drawn from the nomadic tribespeople, even if this term later broadened from the original Mongol tribes to include other tribes with originally different names. "Chagatay authors", to me, means authors that write in the Chagatai language, nothing else, but I'd be happy to look at the source. Lastly, you do not have a single source that actually says "Chagatay is a demonym"; you are deducing that information from an array of disparate and not particularly clear sources. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:28, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Incidentally, the two main examples in your edit summary are hardly clear. The Zafarnama example of the Timurid army being referred to in terms of Cagatay cerigi (soldiers) can obviously be explained by the fact that the majority of the soldiers were in indeed Chagatai-speaking tribesmen, just as the Mongol army was made up of Mongolic tribesmen. The use of the phrase Cagatay eli (land) works in just the same way. Territorial claims are also referred to generically, e.g. Mongol territory - this has nothing to do with everyone on the land being known as Mongols. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:42, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

In this case, Chagatay has nothing to do with Mongols, but rather Turki speakers. you do not have a single source that actually says "Chagatay is a demonym" If we would take everything that had to be literary written in the source, we have to remove a lot of stuff. In my case, the author clearly speaks about the designation of Timurid people at that time, so there is no WPOR in my case. If the Cagatay cerigi is ok, this should be ok as well. Also the author gives an example that the "Chagatay ethnicon" also appears in Ottoman sources at that time. If Timurids were a Turkic dominated state, why does that word bother so much? Beshogur (talk) 11:20, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

It would be helpful if you could provide some direct links in talk to the examples that you are providing, so that they can be properly discussed. An ethnicon is not a demonym, and is linked far more closely with race and ethnicity. I wouldn't disagree that Chagatai is an ethnicon. I also don't disagree that there is a lot of stuff on Wikipedia that does indeed need removing because it is synthesized from material rather than actually written anywhere. I find your use of the phrase "Timurid people" interesting - to most people, the Timurids are a dynasty, but you are appear to be coming at this from the perspective that whatever terminology is applied to the ruling family or class can be drawn down over the entire populace. This is I believe the essence of what we are contesting. I see Timurid royalty, a Chagatai military elite and subjects. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:30, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

The Timurid empire was also very specifically a bilingual and multiethnic entity, with the Persian language actually slightly favoured at the level of the court, so part of the reason for not using the sweeping 'ethnicon' if you like of Chagatai is that it is a very poor descriptor for the substantial population of Persian subjects, as well as the numerous other tribes and ethnicities, of the Timurid Empire. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:34, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

well, again, I could show various articles using demonyms that denotes ethnicities, and "generalize" other citizens of the empires, like Russian Empire. I don't think that's a valid reason. Nobody calls here its Persian subjects Chagatay, again it's about the Turkic population of the Timurids. Still I think it's not wrong, I can move this to the body of the article.

Beshogur, you have two users who are more or less saying the same regarding your addition, please at least consider. Nava'i is not referring to the inhabitants of the Timurids, nor to all the Turks who lived under the Timurids, but the Timurid family (and perhaps the rest of the Chagatay elite as well). This is WP:OR. --HistoryofIran (talk) 12:14, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

You might be correct that the Russian Empire page should not have a demonym in the infobox - the article uses the phrase 'subjects' not citizens, it was a feudal system with semi-enslaved 'serfs' and much of the populace would be better described by their constituent ethnolinguistic groupings, e.g.: Polish, Finnish, etc. ... would a Khazakh-language peasant farmer at the time be considered Russian at the time? Quite possibly not. I checked multiple empire pages and demonym is left out of the infoboxes for most - certainly for the Mongol Empire, Persian Empire and Roman Empire. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:17, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

@HistoryofIran: Nava'i is not referring to the inhabitants of the Timurids, nor to all the Turks who lived under the Timurids, but the Timurid family are we reading the same thing? Where exactly? Also I don't see what's exactly WP:Or. Beshogur (talk) 12:54, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Apparently not, it seems you are reading something entirely else than me and Iskandar. This is dragging on for too long, I will open a WP:THIRD. --HistoryofIran (talk) 12:57, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

I will open a WP:THIRD. It's fine for me. Beshogur (talk) 13:02, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi! I saw this listed at WP:3O. What is the edit you're discussing? What are the main arguments for or against each version? I'd appreciate a short answer from each of you, e.g. one or two paragraphs, designed to be understood by someone just beginning to read about this, and without any comments about the other editor. Thanks. I'll probably come back and read your answers and maybe give an opinion. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 18:33, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

@Coppertwig: TLDR; Some high-class bloke from the 15th-century had his personal own way of adressing the Timurid royal family to distinguish them from other Turkic groups, thus he called them Čaġatāy ḫalqï (Chagatay). However, Beshogur added it as a demonym into the infobox, which would mean that all the denizens of the empire were officially known as 'Chagatay', while in reality it was just a way of one person to adress a certain group per the quote in the source. --HistoryofIran (talk) 18:52, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

@HistoryofIran: sorry but you're wrong again. The word halq is actually "people", not any indication that it was said to the Timurid family. Can you show me the quote of Janos Eckmann please? Also not single person, but Janos Eckmann giving more examples about the ethnonym "Chagatay". The book can be easily found online, I would request to 3rd persons to read pages 3-4. Beshogur (talk) 23:28, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Kindly read WP:CIR, I'm not going to attempt to explain it further to you. And what do you mean by showing his quote? You literally added it on the infobox. --HistoryofIran (talk) 23:56, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

If you mean Timurid Turks, this doesn't answer my question, because see previous quote Chagatay authors mean 'the Turkic people of the Timurid Empire' or 'Timurid Turk', which doesn't match yours own way of adressing the Timurid royal family to distinguish them from other Turkic groups quote. Beshogur (talk) 00:21, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, but I understood 0 of that. And as I already said I'm not going to attempt to explain it further to you, i.e. I'm not interested in discussing further either. Let's not make this thread any longer so others can read it. --HistoryofIran (talk) 00:26, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

@Beshogur: With all due respect, taking a word that broadly means 'people' used by an author in the 15th century without clarification and assuming that you clearly know what that author was defining is a bit of a stretch of the imagination. 'People' is an incredibly broad concept. People could be an immediate tribe, a race, a society or more or less any level of social grouping. In modern terminology, saying 'my people', can mean people who simply share the same interests as you. Fluid terms used like this, as I said, without clarification, are hardly definitive. And, a word being an ethnonym does not make it, without contextualisation, a demonym. Iskandar323 (talk) 02:22, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

This: "The poetic measures spread among the Turkic peoples (Türk ulusï), especially among the Chagatay people (Čaġatāy ḫalqï)." simply tells us about certain literary innovations spreading among Turkic and Chagatai language speakers at a certain time. It does not even mention the Timurids in this specific given context. It does seem a little like you are drawing together disparate sources that do not make your point in their own right and deciding to join up the dots. Iskandar323 (talk) 02:29, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Here's my opinion: I think the demonym should not appear in the infobox, because two editors (Iskandar323 and HistoryofIran) oppose having it there, and only one (Beshogur) supports having it there; and also for other reasons. This didn't need to be posted to WP:3O. Because two editors agreed and only one opposed, the version the two editors supported should have stayed and there should have been no more reverting. I apologize for taking up your time by lengthening the discussion, but note that when you post to WP:3O you should at least state on the talk page what edit you're discussing, and preferably summarize the discussion. In general, if an edit is reverted back to the original version, don't put it back in; discuss it on the talk page and only put it in if there's consensus on the talk page. In this case: if more sources are found or more arguments are made, or a compromise edit is proposed, still don't put it back in until consensus or at least a majority of editors supporting it is achieved on the talk page. Please keep article page histories short by not repeatedly reverting. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 19:02, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

@Iskandar323: Where is the previous sentence? I'm not connecting, Janos Eckmann does. I'm not interpreting something, but the author does. If you want to remove, go on. I'm not going to argue anymore. Beshogur (talk) 19:10, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Beshogur: I'm sorry, I didn't read the pages of the book you mentioned. Also, as far as I'm aware you've only listed one source. Sorry if I have that wrong. If you want to try to convince me (or possibly others), I suggest listing your sources e.g. "source 1: year, author, title etc. and quote; source 2: ... etc." because the way you discussed it above it looks as if you're just mentioning one source but I'm not sure. What Navai wrote was a primary source. You have a secondary source that says something about Navai. For the demonym you would need at least one, or maybe you would need several, sources. The sources should be secondary sources and should either use the word, or say that it's the right word to use. The quote you gave didn't do either of those things. It only said that Navai used it. It didn't say whether Navai was using the proper word. Also: one of the editors above said there was a mixture of ethnic groups. So, it would take more discussion and more sources etc. to resolve that. So you can consider me to be a 3rd editor agreeing with removing the demonym based on the discussion up to this point. Maybe a compromise might be putting something in the text of the article if it isn't already there; discuss it on the talk page and get consensus first. Maybe something like "The word Chagatay has sometimes been used ..." I don't know whether that would be appropriate or not or where in the article it would go. You can discuss this with each other if you want. Thanks for editing Wikipedia, everybody! ☺Coppertwig (talk) 19:27, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

'emir'

Under status should we not include more than just Emir, considering the titles Timur himself held at his death as well as that of all his successors. Could we also please have a more comprehensive list of rulers under Government, if not an exhaustive list at least for key ones like Shah Rukh and Ulug Beg. In the Government section I'm also not sure why Emir is hyperlinked to send to the Timurid dynasty wiki page Kind Regards, NotAnotherNameGuy (talk) 18:02, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Persianate Turkic instead of Persianate Turco-Mongol

I believe that the empire itself should be called Persianate Turkic since Chagatai Turkic and Persian was commonly used, and Mongols didn't really leave any cultural heritage to the Timurid civilization. Timur's tribe particularly being Turco-Mongol doesn't mean that whole empire is Turco-Mongol, dynasty was Turkic with Persian cultural influence. BerkBerk68^talk 14:11, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

It seems like WP:ANI is indeed the only way to make you stop. As you have been told multiple times [3] [4] [5], in Wikipedia we follow what WP:RS says, not the personal feelings/opinions of users. The Turco-Mongol bit is supported by two sources, both published by the University of California Press. Stop spamming talk pages with this kind of stuff. --HistoryofIran (talk) 14:25, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

It's not like even that the word Turco-Mongol is controversial when it comes to the Timurids, at least to individuals who maintain a neutral POV. Actually some sources even state that the Mongol component was more prevalent, thus further contradicting what you're claiming;

"Tamerlane and his descendants, the Tīmūrids, were a continuation of Mongol dominion in that they respected Mongol customs and prestige. But during the fifteenth century CE, the Tīmūrids increasingly derived their authority from Tamerlane’s own prestige and synthesized a new royal culture that combined Islamic religious, Persian, and Mongol understandings of the past (cf. Bernardini 2008)." pp. 219-220, Bashir, Shahzad, A Perso-Islamic Universal Chronicle in Its Historical Context: Ghiyas al-Din Khwandamir's Habib al-siyar. In Historiography and Religion, edited by Jörg Rüpke, Susanne Rau, and Bernd-Christian Otto. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2015 --HistoryofIran (talk) 14:32, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Again, again and again, you are misinterpreting different conditions. It is pretty ordinary situation for a post-Mongol Central Asian state to adopt Mongolian prestige. I am not even writing this comment to change the "Turco-Mongol" statement, I am writing this to give a respond on the falsely claimed POV issue directed to me.

For understanding the Turkic and Mongolian situation, we have to check classifications of Ulugh Beg. I will make further researches to see if there is anything remarkable about this topic that is supported by reliable sources so we could build an encyclopedia with representation of significant informations. As I said, Turco-Mongol statement is not on my scope of interest right now, I will just try to verify my knowledge about Ulugh Beg's identity adoption. BerkBerk⁶⁸ 20:48, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

No sources once again, surprise. Anyways, happy reading!:

"According to Barthold, Timurid cultural efflorescence was the ultimate fruit of the fusion of the creative forces of the Turco-Mongol and Perso-Islamic cultures that had been galvanized by the Mongol invasions in the thirteenth century. The case in point for Barthold was Ulugh Beg, son of Shahrukh and governor of Transoxiana. Ulugh Beg was very attached to Turco-Mongol political principles, but he also appreciated the value of Islamic learning and scholarship." p. 3 Intellectual Networks in Timurid Iran: Sharaf al-Dīn ‘Alī Yazdī and the Islamicate Republic of Letters

"The comfort Timurids felt with their blended Turco-Mongol and Perso-Islamic cultural traditions is perhaps best illustrated by Timur’s mausoleum, the Gur-i Amir in Samarqand, erected by Timur’s grandson, Ulugh Beg" / Out of these conditions – the individual need of the Timurid princes to establish political legitimacy, the specific components of the imperial image already established by Timur, the inheritance of the Turco-Mongol/Perso-Islamic hybrid cultural and ideological fusion, and the fractured political situation in fifteenth-century Mawarannahr – Timur’s successors developed a distinct and recognizable Timurid ‘cultural personality,’ a highly individual set of ‘social assumptions, political and cultural values and even ... aesthetic standards.’" / "In the interests of his own survival and orientation, Timur had acted with great deliberation in the construction of an imperial identity, pulling from a variety of dynamic symbols and narratives of sovereignty. As for his successors in Mawarannahr, their expressions of aesthetic and political control were propagated in the interests of dynastic power at the dynamic and complex juncture of Turco-Mongol and Perso-Islamic traditions" - p. 14, 15, 38 Imperial Identity in the Mughal Empire: Memory and Dynastic Politics in Early Modern South and Central Asia

"On the one hand there were Temür’s many descendants who grew into a new dynasty of Turko-Mongol royal status known as the Timurids." / Echoing Woods’ suggestion of “the absence of a powerful central authority” in the face of dynastic volatility, she suggested that the Timurid state, as well as its regional successor states, therefore remained stuck in an intermediate stage between so-called Turko-Mongol traditionalism and Perso-Islamic rationalism, conceptualized here as “a patrimonial-bureaucratic regime at best”." pp. 2, 136, Trajectories of State Formation across Fifteenth-Century Islamic West-Asia

"Even though they became highly acculturated, the Timurids never abandoned their Turko-Mongolian traditions." - p. 233 - Timurids in Transition: Turko-Persian Politics and Acculturation in Medieval Iran, Volume 7

"The Timurids were a Muslim dynasty of Turco-Mongol origin.../Both urban-Islamicate Persianate and Turco-Mongol steppe cultural elements continued to co-exist and inform and influence Timurid art, culture, and politics." Timurid Empire, The Encyclopedia of Empire, Wiley & Sons, Nurten Kilic-Schubel

"Historic and contemporary views of Babur aside, how did he imagine his own second life - as an individual and the founder of an empire in Hindustan. In the Vaqay' he emotionally, exhaustively, persuasively memorializes himself as his father's son, by implication and also by objeective achievement, more perfect even then Umar Shaikh Mirza. He does so by offering himself to readers as a cultured Turco-Mongol, Perso-Islamic aristocrat,..." - p. 216, Babur, Cambridge University Press, Stephen Dale

"Babur’s dynasty, which was originally Sunni Muslim and Central Asian (Turko-Mongol), became partly Indian through intermarriage with the local aristocracy. Once again, the varied but mostly Hindu population of northern India came under Muslim rule." / "The Timurids were a Turco-Mongol dynasty that ruled Central Asia and Khurasan from about 1370 to 1506 and became the other major branch of Mughal ancestry" p. 4, 16 - Mughal Occidentalism: Artistic Encounters Between Europe and Asia at the Courts of India, 1580-1630

--HistoryofIran (talk) 00:18, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

"No sources once again, surprise. Anyways, happy reading!" first of all I guess you didn't understand my statement about the term "Turko-Mongol". If you did (which I highly doubt since you responded it on your whole comment) and said that to my Ulugh Beg statement, I am just searching for non-primary genealogical records related to Ulugh Beg. BerkBerk⁶⁸ 22:04, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

"I believe that the empire itself should be called Persianate Turkic since Chagatai Turkic and Persian was commonly used, and Mongols didn't really leave any cultural heritage to the Timurid civilization. Timur's tribe particularly being Turco-Mongol doesn't mean that whole empire is Turco-Mongol, dynasty was Turkic with Persian cultural influence." I'm gonna let the readers decide the rest. Happy hunting with the Ulugh Beg stuff. --HistoryofIran (talk) 22:07, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Gurkani

Isn't "Gurkani" the dynastic name of Timurids? is there any reference on Gurkani being used as the official state name? BerkBerk⁶⁸ 19:42, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

I think we should use the state name instead of dynastic name of Timurids. BerkBerk⁶⁸ 12:12, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

So we should use the supposed state name under Timur for a realm that lasted 100 years after his death..? Fyi; The long period of Turkish rule in Iran could itself be divided into a number of distinct periods in terms of Iranian identity: the Ghaznavid transitional period with the continuity of Samanid tradition (see above); the Saljuq period, marking a complex situation for Iranian identity; the Mongol and Timurid phase, during which the name “Iran” was used for the dynastic realm and a pre-modern ethno-national history of Iranian dynasties was arranged --HistoryofIran (talk) 12:32, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

New Map

Hello, i saw that my map is deleted. My references are: - The Empire of the Steppes - René Grousset - Tarikh-i-Rashidi of Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat - An Historical Atlas of Central Asia - Yuri Bregel - History of Civilizations of Central Asia - Volume IV - Theage of achievement:A.D. 750 to the end of the fifteenth century - Manz, Beatrice Forbes, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane. Cambridge University Press, 1989, ISBN 0-521-34595-2. - The Cambridge History of Iran - Volume 6 - The Timurid and Safavid Periods - Edited by Peter Jackson - Emir Timur Tarih, Siyaset, Miras- Prof. Dr. A. Ahat Andican - TÜRK ANSİKLOPEDİSİ – cilt VIII - Timur ve Seferleri / Yrd. Doç. Dr. Gürsoy Solmaz - The Cambridge History Of India Volume III by Wolseley Haig - Mamluk Cairo, a Crossroads for Embassies - Studies on Diplomacy and Diplomatics - Edited by Frédéric -Bauden & Malika Dekkiche - Practising Diplomacy in the Mamluk Sultanate - Gifts and Material Culture in the - Medieval Islamic World - Doris Behrens-Abouseif - Sharafnama by Sharafkhan Bidlisi – vol 1/ Şerefname - Cilt 1 - Kürt Tarihi - نقش هرموز در تجارت عصر تيموري (The role of Hormuz in Timurid trade) - rasekhoon.net - بازخوانی تاریخ/ملوک هرمز و یورش تیمور (Re-reading the history / king of Hormuz and the invasion of Timur) - tabnakhormozgan.ir - تعیین حدود مغستان، خاستگاه ملوک هرموز (Determining the boundaries of Maghistan, the origin of the kings of Hormuz) - jhr.ui.ac.ir -تعیین حدود مغستان، خاستگاه ملوک هرموز (Determining the boundaries of Maghista, the origin of the kings of Hormuz) - journals.ui.ac.ir - La campagne de Timur en Anatolie (1402) by Marie-Mathilde Alexandrescu-Dersca - AKKOYUNLULAR VE ERZİNCAN (Uzun Hasan Devrine Kadar) Yrd. Doç. Dr. Ahmet TOKSOY Vif12vf

Afshar-beg (talk) 21:10, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Afshar-beg, please see WP:RS, WP:VER and WP:CITEHOW. The references could be lined up a lot better, and not one of those references of books have a page cited, some of them seem non-reliable (eg tabnakhormozgan), some are primary sources (Sharafnama), and so on. --HistoryofIran (talk) 22:12, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Language

Hello, I have read on "The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane" by Beatrice Forbes Manz that administration was Persian - Chagathai (Turkic) collaborative work, but do we have any reference on that either of these languages had official status?

editors that might be interested: @HistoryofIran, @Visioncurve @Beshogur BerkBerk⁶⁸ 23:38, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Alright, seems like HistoryofIran already gave his response. BerkBerk⁶⁸ 23:46, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

So far I have only seen Chagatai appearing as a language in literature and obviously, the mother-tongue of the Timurids. --HistoryofIran (talk) 23:53, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Yeah alright, but why don't we use native language on the native name section of the template? BerkBerk⁶⁸ 23:56, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

There are no rules for such thing. If we are to take things literally, the name of the infobox is 'Former Country', not 'Former dynasty'. --HistoryofIran (talk) 23:58, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Recent edits

@पाटलिपुत्र:. Hello, why remove "Persianate" and portray the Iranian/Persian and Turko-Mongolian aspect of the empire on par with something much less significant as the Chinese aspect? Especially with the former? The quotes of the two sources you yourself added, and its whole Culture section for that matter, clearly demonstrates the Iranian/Persian aspect of the empire was the most dominant. HistoryofIran (talk) 12:16, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi @HistoryofIran:. I'm a bit bothered by the exclusive and one-sided focus on "Persianate" in the intro, especially since the sources are very clear that its was a hybrid culture with very strong Turko-Mongol (obviously, they were Turko-Mongol) and Chinese elements (per source [6]). By the way, I did not remove "Persianate": I left "Persian influence", piping to Persianate... we could have "Persianate influence" if you wish (not sure it makes sense though). You added a rather non-academic source (Gérard Chaliand [7]) that has a rather simplistic take on the matter [8], but quality sources apparently tend to be extremely balanced and cautious, and explain that it is a mixed culture that combined multiple influences [9][10]. Currently, the paragraph on Culture rightly says: Thus, the Timurid era had a dual character,[31] reflecting both its Turco-Mongol origins and the Persian literary, artistic, and courtly high culture of the dynasty.[34][35], so mentioning in the intro that "The empire was culturally hybrid, combining Turko-Mongolian, Chinese and Persian influences[11][12]" also properly summarizes article content, as well as the sources... but we could drop "Chinese" if you wish, as it was arguably the lesser of the three. पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 14:07, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

How was it exlusive and one-sided? The original revision was something like “culturally Persianate, Turko-Mongolian empire (im on phone atm, cant be bothered to go find the exact spelling and diff). How is that not balanced? As for Chaliand, I just took the source from the body of the article, though I should have checked. Though as you probably know, its not hard finding a source saying similar. HistoryofIran (talk) 14:36, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

The statement is exclusive and one-sided, because it makes it sound like the only culture that mattered to these Turko-Mongols was Persian culture. Which is just not true. Their culture was apparently profoundly hybrid, and the Persian acculturation was seemingly progressive, per source [11][12], which is quite logical anyway. Let's be a bit balanced here... पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 14:52, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Sure, empires always have more than one “culture”, especially the Timurids. However it is no secret that WP:RS-including the quotes of the very two citations u added, show that Persian culture was by far the most dominant. Removing it from the introduction and putting it down below on par with Turko-Mongolian (technically not, since u kept “Turco-Mongolian in the intro) and especially Chinese culture is far from balanced. I havent checked the rest of the new edits, but I think the lede should be reverted back to its original revision, as this quite controvertial edit has no WP:CONSENSUS. Sorry, but with your logic, we would have to remove “Persianate” and similar from the lede of about every article, otherwise it “sounds like the only culture that mattered”. HistoryofIran (talk) 15:10, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I cannot spend too much time on this and I am not overly interested, but, ironically, let me provide extracts of some of the quotes that you provided above in a different discussion. These sources confirm my own sources presenting Timurid culture as a fairly balanced hybrid between the Turko-Mongol and the Perso-Islamic traditions:

• "According to Barthold, Timurid cultural efflorescence was the ultimate fruit of the fusion of the creative forces of the Turco-Mongol and Perso-Islamic cultures that had been galvanized by the Mongol invasions in the thirteenth century." p. 3 Intellectual Networks in Timurid Iran: Sharaf al-Dīn ‘Alī Yazdī and the Islamicate Republic of Letters
• "The comfort Timurids felt with their blended Turco-Mongol and Perso-Islamic cultural traditions is perhaps best illustrated by Timur’s mausoleum, the Gur-i Amir in Samarqand, erected by Timur’s grandson, Ulugh Beg" / Out of these conditions – the individual need of the Timurid princes to establish political legitimacy, the specific components of the imperial image already established by Timur, the inheritance of the Turco-Mongol/ Perso-Islamic hybrid cultural and ideological fusion, and the fractured political situation in fifteenth-century Mawarannahr..." - p. 14, 15, 38 Imperial Identity in the Mughal Empire: Memory and Dynastic Politics in Early Modern South and Central Asia
• "Even though they became highly acculturated, the Timurids never abandoned their Turko-Mongolian traditions." - p. 233 - Timurids in Transition: Turko-Persian Politics and Acculturation in Medieval Iran, Volume 7
• "The Timurids were a Muslim dynasty of Turco-Mongol origin... Both urban-Islamicate Persianate and Turco-Mongol steppe cultural elements continued to co-exist and inform and influence Timurid art, culture, and politics." Timurid Empire, The Encyclopedia of Empire, Wiley & Sons, Nurten Kilic-Schubel.

I am not advocating for a "removal of Persianate", but, rather for a more balanced presentation of the Timurid Empire as "culturally hybrid, combining Turko-Mongol and Persianate influences" (I removed "Chinese", and changed "Persian" to "Persianate" per your suggestion...) पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 16:45, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Pataliputra, I think we're misunderstanding each other here. I am not denying that the Timurids were more than just Persian in culture - I am in fact acknowledging that they were a mix of Persian/Iranian and Turko-Mongolian, though certainly mostly the former if we were to compare. The current revision by you, however, portrays the Persian culture as even less than the Turko-Mongolian bit. I assume you're already aware of this, otherwise I will gladly post citations here, though many of them are already in the article, including the ones that show Persian was the official, court, high literature, administration and lingua franca of the empire, whilst Chagatai Turkic was "merely" the Timurid mother-tongue and also used in literature.

There are plenty of sources that call the Timurids for "Persianate", which doesn't equal to that they were only Persian in culture, however, that was indeed the most dominant aspect (I did said I won't post citations unless required, though u can see some here I guess [13]). Say, if even Persian was 50% and Turko-Mongolian 50% of the culture of the empire, the new revision still doesn't portray that. Why? Because instead of saying "Persianate, Turco-Mongolian empire", it only says "Turco-Mongol empire", linking to the ethnocultural synthesis that is the Turco-Mongol tradition. I could easily use your logic here (which, with all due respect, I didnt think you addressed in my previous comment) and say that this new intro makes it "sound like that Turco-Mongolian culture is the only culture that mattered”. Per WP:ONUS and WP:CONSENSUS, I have restored "Persianate", and I think the following info that you added should be moved to the later part of the lede and rewritten/expanded to a certain degree; "The empire was culturally hybrid, combining Turko-Mongolian and Persianate influences,[11][12] with the last members of the dynasty being "regarded as ideal Perso-Islamic rulers".[13][14]". Also, while we're at it there was something I wondered before this; the new flag you added, are you sure it was the flag of the Timurid Empire, and not "just" Timur? If it was only used by Timur, then perhaps the description should be changed to reflect that. --HistoryofIran (talk) 23:08, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

1) "PERSIANATE..."
I am often uneasy with the "Persianate" tag being added at the beginning of the lead for most articles about invaders of Iran, especially before all other, more fundamentamental, considerations of nationality/ ethnicity etc... It reminds me of India-related articles were some users regularly try to put the "Indianized" tag to every invader, as an obvious way to pretend and insinuate that the "invaders" were really the ones that were conquered by the invaded, this time by means of the local culture. We usual resist such impulses... Just for perspective, on India-related articles, we do not write in the lead that the Khalji Dynasty was an Indianized Turco-Afghan dynasty, despite the fact that many sources indeed describe their progressive indianization [14], although this discussion is perfectly legitimate for a Culture paragraph. Obviously, the Timurids were Turko-Mongols by nature, before becoming "culturally Persianate" to whatever extent: the lead should respect this hierarchy in importance. And especially in the case of the Timurids, it seems fairly unfair to only describe them as "Persianate", when actually Turko-Mongol culture remained so important for them (per sources). Cultural interractions, which are always complex, multiple, and usually two-ways, and a quasi-automatic consequence of invasions, are usually best left to later stages of an article, and should not be the first qualifier of a dynasty: an argument could be made that this is WP:UNDUE. I would support for the "Persianate" attribute to be used in a secondary position only, after nationality/ ethnicity are mentioned, in a balanced sentence about the culture of the polity in question, as I suggested above.
2) THE FLAG
What is certain is that the previous "long-standing" flag is fake. It does not even appear in the Catalan Atlas (1375) as claimed. If anything, this flag: would be the one from the Catalan Atlas, but it seems that it is actually intended as the flag of the earlier Empire of the Great Khan. By the way, the Catalan Atlas, with an average time-lag of about 30 years, was probably published too late (in 1375) to take into account the Timurids, which anyway are not mentioned at all in the map. The symbol I added is not a flag, but at least a known dynastic symbol used by the Timurids (see paragraph "Symbols of the state"), and I think one of the formative reasons behind the conjectural, original research flag . The three annulets symbol is documented, and per Kadoi is probably symbolic of the Timurids. It was also used by rulers after Timur, such as Ulugh Beg in . I'm afraid it is about the best we can have in terms of Timurid dynastic symbolism. पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 07:29, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't really don't know that much about Indian history, especially not the Khaljis. But we ultimately write what WP:RS says. If they routinely emphasize the Indianization/Indian aspect of the Khaljis, then perhaps that does deserve a mention in the lede. But I don't think that's case (the source has a passing mention saying "partly Indianized"...?), and thus it sounds like an unfair comparison to the Timurids; dynasties like the Timurids, were already heavily Persianized in culture and using a Persian-style government from the get-go if not very early on, the former being the case here.

"Moreover, Timur was scarcely a nomad, a creator of a steppe empire, but rather the product of an islamized and iranized society..." p. 173 - The History of the Mongol Conquests, J. J. Saunders, University of Pennsylvania Press

"In almost all the territories which Temür incorporated into his realm Persian was the primary language of administration and literary culture. Thus the language of the settled 'divan' was Persian." - p. 109, Manz, Beatrice Forbes (1999). The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane. Cambridge University Press

And we're still not only describing them as "Persianate"? Can we please drop that faulty logic? Otherwise it will just be WP:REHASHy discussion, especially since you're not adressing my comments towards it. Sources routinely emphasize on the Persianate aspect of the Timurids, which it clearly described as the most dominant one, far from being WP:UNDUE;

"With his death in 1405, Timur’s empire disintegrated, in accordance with the nomadic patrimonial succession rules for the division of the conqueror’s empire among his sons. The disintegration of Timur’s empire into a growing number of Timurid principalities ruled by his sons and grandsons allowed the remarkable rebound of the Ottomans and their westward conquest of Byzantium and the rise of rival Turko-Mongolian nomadic empires of the Qara Qoyunlu and Āq Qoyunlu in western Iran, Iraq, and eastern Anatolia. In all of these nomadic empires, however, Persian remained the official court language and the Persianate ideal of kingship prevailed. The political culture of the polycentric Timurid empire was deeply tinged by Sufism as the dominant Persianate form of Islam spread throughout the Persianate world with the free movement of its bearers, namely the bureaucratic estate of divān monshi (chancery secretaries), from one court to another" - p. 45, Arjomand, Saïd Amir Arjomand (2022). Revolutions of the End of Time: Apocalypse, Revolution and Reaction in the Persianate World. Brill.

"Similarly, Timurid Herat and Samarqand were the most influential Persianate role models of the elites of the Ottoman and arguably also Mughal empires. Secondly, the decentering of Iran is also justified by this volume’s main focus on the Timurid period onwards, on the centuries during which a multiplicity of Persian literary traditions and hubs of Persianate culture came to dilute the sweet clarion call of Shiraz." / "For whatever the rhetorical claims of Nawa’i’s Muhakamat al-Lughatayn (Contention of the Two Languages), the appearance of Chaghatai texts at the court of Sultan Husayn Bayqara (r. 1469–70, 1470– 1506) never amounted to anything approaching a systematic Timurid program to promote Turkic at the expense of Persian: both the Timurid court and chancery remained wedded to Persian. Indeed, the scope of Persographia expanded, since Persian began to be deployed as a language of jurisprudence (fiqh) under the late Timurids precisely after Bayqara’s chief magistrate in Herat compiled Mukhtar alIkhtiyar, a legal textbook that remained in use till the twentieth century." / "The first section of the book, “Pan-Eurasian Expansions, ca. 1400–1600,” charts the widest reach that Persian usage achieved under the early modern empires and regional polities that followed the breakup of the Mongol and Timurid empires that had done so much to expand and promote the prestige of Persian." - pages xv, 30, 50, In Green, Nile (ed.). The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. University of California Press.

"But since the advent of Islam in the seventh century, Central Asia had been intregal to the Persianate dynasties and cultures from the Samanids down to the Timurids and even as late as the Mughals." page 230, Dabashi, Hamid (2012). The World of Persian Literary Humanism. Harvard University Press

"Persian literature, especially poetry, occupied a central in the process of assimilation of Timurid elite to the Perso-Islamicate courtly culture, and so it is not surprising to find Baysanghur commissioned a new edition of Firdawsi's Shanameh ..." - page 130, David J. Roxburgh. The Persian Album, 1400–1600: From Dispersal to Collection. Yale University Press, 2005

"The Mughals came out of the Persianate cultural florescence patronised by Timur and his descendants in Samarqand and Herat." p. 235, The Muslim World in Modern South Asia: Power, Authority, Knowledge, Francis Robinson, State University of New York Press

""During the Tīmūrid period, three languages, Persian, Turkish, and Arabic, were in use. The major language of the period was Persian, the native language of the Tajik (Persian) component of society and the language of learning acquired by all literate and/or urban Turks. Persian served as the language of administration, history, belles lettres, and poetry." - Tīmūrids, EI2

--HistoryofIran (talk) 13:06, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

RfC about the use of "Persianate"

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Should the adjective "Persianate" be used as the primary qualifier in the lead of the articles about the various Turko-Mongol nomadic entities who invaded Iran and became more or less acculturated to Persian culture? पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 16:54, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

No (per nomination).
As of today, the adjective "Persianate" has been added as the primary qualifier, and quite stereotypically, in the lead sentence of most Turko-Mongol polities who invaded/occupied Iran in the Medieval period:

• Timurid Empire: "a late medieval, culturally Persianate Turco-Mongol empire"
• Qara Qoyunlu: "a culturally Persianate, Muslim Turkoman monarchy"
• Aq Qoyunlu: "a culturally Persianate, Sunni Turkoman tribal confederation"
• Ilkhanate: "ruled by the Persianated Mongol House of Hulagu"
• Qutlugh-Khanids: "a culturally Persianate dynasty of ethnic Khitan origin"
• Khwarazmian Empire: "a culturally Persianate, Sunni Muslim empire of Turkic mamluk origin"
• Ghurid dynasty: "a Persianate dynasty of presumably eastern Iranian Tajik origin"
• Ghaznavid Empire: "a culturally Persianate, Sunni Muslim dynasty and empire of Turkic mamluk origin"

1) Although there is no denying the progressive Persian acculturation of these invaders over time, and the powerful influence of Persian culture, I tend to think that it is WP:UNDUE to place a particular cultural influence, here the "Persianate" qualifier, at the beginning of the lead before all other, more fundamentamental, considerations of nationality/ ethnicity etc... For example, the Timurids were Turko-Mongols by nature, before becoming "culturally Persianate" to whatever extent: the lead should respect this hierarchy. I would support for the "Persianate" attribute to be used in a secondary position only, after nationality/ ethnicity are mentioned, in a balanced sentence about the culture of the polity in question, for example: "The Timurid Empire was a late medieval Turco-Mongol empire (...) The empire was culturally hybrid, combining Turko-Mongolian and Persianate influences with the last members of the dynasty being regarded as ideal Perso-Islamic rulers", with references (this version).
2) As a general rule, I don't think Wikipedia uses adjectives related to acculturation as the primary qualifier when defining a polity in the lead, such as "Indianized", "Westernitized", "Americanized", "Sinicized", although it is perfectly legitimate to develop such arguments in a "Culture" section, with references. For example, we do not present Japan in the lead as "a Sinicized Asian nation", although the absorption of Chinese culture by Japan is a huge formative factor, and is otherwise well documented in our articles on this country.
3) Systemically adding the "Persianate" tag as the first qualifier for these polities could be understood as Irano-centrism, and a way to deny original nomadic cultures, or to somehow suggest that the invaders were really the ones "vanquished" by local culture, which is futile (but is often seen in India-related articles where some users may try to qualify all invading polities as "Indianized"). To the lay person, it also gives the false impression that the culture of these nomads was exclusively Persian, which is misleading, and is generally not corroborated by facts, or even by the content of the article the lead is supposed to summarize. पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 16:54, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose; As soon as I showed sources that contradicted your claims, it's RFC.. sigh.

1. ) You need to prove that it's WP:UNDUE for every listed dynasty; you need to prove that the (often initial) nationality/ethnicity of the rulers is more important than the dominant culture of the society/government/bureaucracy they ruled; you failed to do that with the Timurids. People are welcome to read the discussion up above to see that.
2. ) That depends on what WP:RS says, we ultimately base our articles on those, as the case in the listed articles, since it was undoubtedly their most important aspect, something the lede is meant to demonstrate. Also, "Indianized"/Sinicized/whatever is not the same as "Persianate", which its article calls "a society that is based on or strongly influenced by the Persian language, culture, literature, art and/or identity"
3. ) You're thinking too deep into this, and by that logic, I could claim that removing "Persianate" is anti-Iranian, and seeing the word "Sunni" come up first makes me think the only thing they thought about was Sunni Islam. By that same logic, WP:RS that uses the term "Persianate" or emphasize the Persian culture of listed dynasties are "Irano-centric". You keep bringing India up, despite it not being relevant here, it's a completely different nation with a different history. I do, however, think "Persianated" and "Persianate" should be removed from the ledes of the Ilkhanate and Qutlugh-Khanids articles, as it's not cited by any source neither in the lede nor body of the article. --HistoryofIran (talk) 17:17, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

No (Support) - I agree with the nominator that it is not appropriate to use the first adjective in an article to describe a state as being influenced by a particular culture. This is especially true when the state only adopted that culture later in its history (which is true for most of the states mentioned in the original comment). Additionally, the sources cited for these examples often do not use the term "Persianate" to introduce these states, but instead refer to their origins. It would be more appropriate to mention "Persianate" in a different part of the article’s lead, ideally in a part that discusses the culture and language of the state. — Golden ^{call me maybe?} 13:36, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

• Comment: I agree that some rebalancing may be in order. Let's put it this way: if I were asked what one word defined each of these empires, my answer to a lot of them would be "Turkic" and I agree that while all of this information is relevant, the prioritization a bit off. Taking the Qara Qoyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu, I note that Persian, as the "official" language (for court/administrative stuff), is also being placed above the "dynastic" language, which is Azerbaijani, in the infobox. I believe that this is where the crux of the matter lies. No doubt that all of these entities overlapped with the Persian sphere and took over the reins of the existing Persianate administrative structures in place, but it is the "dynastic" identity that actually defines the character of these powers, much as the Abbasid Empire remained an Arab Empire despite its extremely significant Persian influence. The languages of the ruling class are a dead giveaway for many of these. With the Ghaznavids, it is the "military" (read: conquering overlords) language of Turkic that we should be looking to. Back to the Qara Qoyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu, these were Turkoman tribal confederations; whatever other information exists about them, faith alignment, Persian administrative function, etc., is secondary to their Turkic tribal nature. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:19, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Support Medieval empires in the Muslim East have their own logic of governance|administration. The fact that Persians are the majority in the bureaucracy does not mean that the empire is Persianized. When we look at the Middle Ages from the 21st century, we must take into consıderation that there was no nation-state. Firstly the empire was a dynasty's property, and the dynasty's source of legitimacy and its language were important, not some bureaucrat's documentation language.

It's not as simple as "Persians being the majority in the bureaucracy", otherwise this would not even be a discussion - see what the cited sources says. You're heavily downgrading it, which is frankly not surprising considering your past edits [15]. Your claim that there were no nation-state from the Middle Ages to 21st century is not only irrelevant, but heavily erroneous; were the no countries in 2000? 1900? and so on. I see a lot of claims here, with no source to back it up. --HistoryofIran (talk) 20:01, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

I'll put the sources here as well (this is just for the Timurids, I can easily bring it out for the dynasties as well, unlike some other users for their claims), let's see how this will be refuted;

"Moreover, Timur was scarcely a nomad, a creator of a steppe empire, but rather the product of an islamized and iranized society..." p. 173 - The History of the Mongol Conquests, J. J. Saunders, University of Pennsylvania Press

"In almost all the territories which Temür incorporated into his realm Persian was the primary language of administration and literary culture. Thus the language of the settled 'divan' was Persian." - p. 109, Manz, Beatrice Forbes (1999). The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane. Cambridge University Press

"With his death in 1405, Timur’s empire disintegrated, in accordance with the nomadic patrimonial succession rules for the division of the conqueror’s empire among his sons. The disintegration of Timur’s empire into a growing number of Timurid principalities ruled by his sons and grandsons allowed the remarkable rebound of the Ottomans and their westward conquest of Byzantium and the rise of rival Turko-Mongolian nomadic empires of the Qara Qoyunlu and Āq Qoyunlu in western Iran, Iraq, and eastern Anatolia. In all of these nomadic empires, however, Persian remained the official court language and the Persianate ideal of kingship prevailed. The political culture of the polycentric Timurid empire was deeply tinged by Sufism as the dominant Persianate form of Islam spread throughout the Persianate world with the free movement of its bearers, namely the bureaucratic estate of divān monshi (chancery secretaries), from one court to another" - p. 45, Arjomand, Saïd Amir Arjomand (2022). Revolutions of the End of Time: Apocalypse, Revolution and Reaction in the Persianate World. Brill.

"Similarly, Timurid Herat and Samarqand were the most influential Persianate role models of the elites of the Ottoman and arguably also Mughal empires. Secondly, the decentering of Iran is also justified by this volume’s main focus on the Timurid period onwards, on the centuries during which a multiplicity of Persian literary traditions and hubs of Persianate culture came to dilute the sweet clarion call of Shiraz." / "For whatever the rhetorical claims of Nawa’i’s Muhakamat al-Lughatayn (Contention of the Two Languages), the appearance of Chaghatai texts at the court of Sultan Husayn Bayqara (r. 1469–70, 1470– 1506) never amounted to anything approaching a systematic Timurid program to promote Turkic at the expense of Persian: both the Timurid court and chancery remained wedded to Persian. Indeed, the scope of Persographia expanded, since Persian began to be deployed as a language of jurisprudence (fiqh) under the late Timurids precisely after Bayqara’s chief magistrate in Herat compiled Mukhtar alIkhtiyar, a legal textbook that remained in use till the twentieth century." / "The first section of the book, “Pan-Eurasian Expansions, ca. 1400–1600,” charts the widest reach that Persian usage achieved under the early modern empires and regional polities that followed the breakup of the Mongol and Timurid empires that had done so much to expand and promote the prestige of Persian." - pages xv, 30, 50, In Green, Nile (ed.). The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. University of California Press.

"But since the advent of Islam in the seventh century, Central Asia had been intregal to the Persianate dynasties and cultures from the Samanids down to the Timurids and even as late as the Mughals." page 230, Dabashi, Hamid (2012). The World of Persian Literary Humanism. Harvard University Press

"Persian literature, especially poetry, occupied a central in the process of assimilation of Timurid elite to the Perso-Islamicate courtly culture, and so it is not surprising to find Baysanghur commissioned a new edition of Firdawsi's Shanameh ..." - page 130, David J. Roxburgh. The Persian Album, 1400–1600: From Dispersal to Collection. Yale University Press, 2005

"The Mughals came out of the Persianate cultural florescence patronised by Timur and his descendants in Samarqand and Herat." p. 235, The Muslim World in Modern South Asia: Power, Authority, Knowledge, Francis Robinson, State University of New York Press

""During the Tīmūrid period, three languages, Persian, Turkish, and Arabic, were in use. The major language of the period was Persian, the native language of the Tajik (Persian) component of society and the language of learning acquired by all literate and/or urban Turks. Persian served as the language of administration, history, belles lettres, and poetry." - Tīmūrids, EI2

--HistoryofIran (talk) 20:08, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

@HistoryofIran: I suppose the location of this discussion is perhaps a little ironic in the sense that the Timurid empire is probably the least contentious of these entries. I have no major problem with "Persianate Turko-Mongolic Empire" in this particular context. However, I would assert that in all cases the phrase "culturally Persianate" is rather tautologous and unnecessarily redundant, since the understanding that the influence is a cultural one is self-contained in the term "Persianate" from the outset. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:06, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

I am not saying that there were no nation-states in the 20th and 19th centuries, I am saying that there were no nation-states in the 16th Middle East. At that time, there were no nation-states even in Europe. For example, the White Sheep or the Black Sheep were confederations or empires. An empire, which is composed of many countries (possibly non-sovereign states) and nations under a single monarch or ruling state government.

I am citing the nation-state as an example because such a system must be modern in order to be established. In empires, each ethnic group is engaged in its own life and pays taxes. If Persianization happened, how come tens of millions of Turks or other non-Persians live in the territory of these empires? If the Persianization of the state took place, how could the Persians be formed as the second force in the state after the Qara Qoyunlu only during the Safavid period?

If these ruling dynasties lived nomadically and spoke their own dynastic languages, what kind of Persianization can we talk about?

Sorry, I don't understand what you're trying to say. Anyhow, we ultimately follow WP:RS, not our own personal deductions. If you think all these historians are in the wrong, then I sure do hope you have a lot of WP:RS to back that up. --HistoryofIran (talk) 20:32, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

For the record: user:Qızılbaş has never edited the Timurid Empire article prior to leaving this comment. - LouisAragon (talk) 16:31, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Oppose - What I have observed, is that Qizilbash thinks Persianate has to do with the number of Persians in the Timurid Empire???? 🙄 Clearly they have not read the article. While, Golden states, " I agree with the nominator that it is not appropriate to use the first adjective in an article to describe a state as being influenced by a particular culture.", yet Golden thinks the majority language used by a poet should be presented as that poet's ethnicity(violation MOS:Ethnicity). Neither cares to address the fact that majority of literature produced by the Timurid Empire was in Persian; Zafarnāmeh, Shāhnāmeh of Baysunghur, Mukhtar al-Ikhtiyar(legal manual), Irshad al-zira'a(agricultural treatise), Ulugh Beg wrote astronomical treatises in Persian, hell even Timur's grandson was taught Persian poetry! Even the sultans Shāh Rukh Mīrzā and his son Mohammad Taragai Oloğ Beg, patronized Persian culture. And all of this information is referenced. --Kansas Bear (talk) 22:22, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

The diff you linked actually demonstrates that I do not think it should be just based on majority language. — Golden ^{call me maybe?} 03:47, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Empire versus poet is an apples and oranges comparison and doesn't really help much here. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:10, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Neither does a "support" vote based on Persianate being the number of Persians in the Timurid Empire.

• "The fact that Persians are the majority in the bureaucracy does not mean that the empire is Persianized."

And yet you made no comment about that. Also, your recent response to HistoryofIran, you stated, "However, I would assert that in all cases the phrase "culturally Persianate" is rather tautologous and unnecessarily redundant..". Apparently not when Qizilbash could not even be bothered to read the Lead, hell much less the culture section of this article! HA!

I have yet to see why Turco-Mongol is mentioned in the lead of the article. Turco-Mongol is scarcely referenced in this article and can only be linked to the ethnic origin of its founder. --Kansas Bear (talk) 12:43, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Actually I talked about Ag Qoyunlu and Qara Qoyunlu. I don't think that the Aq Qoyunlu and Qara Qoyunlu states were Persianized. If you mean Persianization from a cultural point of view, that period is also considered to be the flourishing period of literature in Azerbaijani Turkish, and some rulers used this language (H. Javadi and K. Burrill, 1988, Iranica; Minorsky, 1954, Cambridge Universit Press).

I gave the example of a nation-state because I feel that some comrades consider medieval Iran to be a Persian nation-state and try to Persianize everything in geography to justify it. According to that Orientalist logic, the "Latin nation-state existed" in Europe for a long time. It is also obvious that this approach is a remnant of Arianism (Asgharzadeh, 2007, Mustafa Vaziri, 2014).--Qızılbaş (talk) 13:00, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

• "that period is also considered to be the flourishing period of literature in Azerbaijani Turkish, and some rulers used this language (H. Javadi and K. Burrill, 1988, Iranica; Minorsky, 1954, Cambridge Universit Press)."

Wow, that is so amazing! I am the one that added that reference to that article. HA!

What neutral sources do you have that support this "flourishing period of Azerbaijani literature? A discussion a couple of years ago on Beshogur's talk page [16][17]. I have looked long and hard for neutral reliable sources for the Aq Qoyunlu usage of Azerbaijani language. So as the Aq Qoyunlu article stands right now, the weight of the information concerning culture points to a Persianate. --Kansas Bear (talk) 16:46, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

• No. I oppose leaving "Persianite" as primary qualifier, and would even recommend omitting the word altogether as a narrow, rare and unfamiliar term. I'd write a separate phrase conveying the idea in clearer language. Certainly not primary. Walrasiad (talk) 23:01, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

• No I strongly oppose. No justification for spreading the adjective so generously all through out these articles. Imho the word is rather artificial, redundant and in fact, confusing. In all of my readings of relevant topics, I do not recall ever coming across it, not that I have read it all. Persian culture influenced would have been more descriptive if necessary and justified. Not in a lede or primary of course. In any case, Mogul Empire is a good example. Eastern Roman Empire is another good example.Murat (talk) 03:04, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

  @Hudavendigar: Would you mind changing the 'Oppose' to a 'No' for consistency with other 'No' votes? A closing admin may interpret an 'Oppose' vote as opposition to the RfC's OP. — Golden ^{call me maybe?} 09:28, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

No justification, only the vast majority of WP:RS that supports it (WP:WEIGHT), which no one wants to address. Though this is what's typical of a RFC; guidelines get thrown out the window. --HistoryofIran (talk) 14:27, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

For the record: user:Hudavendigar/Murat's last edits on Wikipedia prior to his comment here were made on 29 December 2022. His first comment after 4 months of inactivity were to support this RfC -- on the talk page of an article he had never edited before. I'd say that's a very interesting comeback venue after such a long hiatus. - LouisAragon (talk) 16:27, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the interest shown in my participation. I am a very long time editor, not an obsessive one though, and yes, I was away from these pages for a long while but due to changes in my life, I plan to contribute more. Especially these topics, which are of special interest. Stay well. Murat (talk) 02:18, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose Per the sound policies and dozens of WP:RS cited by user:HistoryofIran. Its interesting to see that none of the users that espoused !Support votes have managed to rebuke any of these cited RS (see also: WP:VOTE). - LouisAragon (talk) 16:20, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

  There's no need for a rebuke. Most voters, including myself, aren't disputing that these countries were influenced by Persian culture or were Persianate. The issue is with using 'Persianate' as the primary descriptor for these countries. — Golden ^{call me maybe?} 16:27, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

• "There's no need for a rebuke"

There is. Wikipedia is written using reliable sources. Said veteran user has cited numerous sources that attest to the empire and its key figures being deeply influenced by Persian culture. A large amount of aforementioned sources literally use the word "Persianate". That means it wasn't just "influenced" by it; it was deeply influenced by said culture, and it was a primary descriptor in terms of describing the culture the empire and its rulers radiated to the outside world. The users that are against the inclusion of said words haven "not" demonstrated that it wasn't Persianate/deeply influenced by Persian culture. Hence my assertion is correct. - LouisAragon (talk) 16:46, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

@HistoryofIran:@LouisAragon: Again, nobody denies that these Turkic polities all became culturally "Persianized" to some extent following their invasion and long occupation of Persian territory, and sources are indeed extensive to that effect. No problem with that. The only issue here is the systematic, stereotypical use of "Persianate" as the primary qualifier for all these polities in the first sentence of the lead, as shown in the 8 examples in my opening statement above, as if "Persianization" was their primary characteristic, surpassing everything else. As far as this RfC is concerned, I'm afraid nobody has shown that academics routinely use "Persianate" or "Persianized" as the primary descriptive when defining these polities. Even for the Timurid Empire, arguably the most culturally "Persianate" of all, introductory sentences such as "The Timurid Empire was a culturally Persianate...", "The Timurid Empire was a Persianate...", "The Timurid Empire was a Persianized..." (turns of phrase seen systematically in our articles), are virtually non-existent in the literature. Using "Persianate" as the primary descriptive of these polities seems quite WP:UNDUE, and it seems that Wikipedia has been promoting a type of formulation which is not supported by academics and appears quite WP:POV. पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 16:58, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Did you seriously ping me so I could read more of your WP:REHASH? I'm not sure what "primary descriptive/qualifier" means to you, but if you expect sources to introduce info like Wikipedia articles for it to be valid, then you need to read more sources, especially when you carelessly (again) throw around the word WP:POV. And again, you need to prove that it's WP:UNDUE, which you were told almost a month ago. --HistoryofIran (talk) 17:03, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

@HistoryofIran: Don't you think this is a bit strange?:

• "The Timurid Empire was a culturally Persianate".... 0 hits on Google Scholar
• "The Timurid Empire was a Persianate"... 0 hits on Google Scholar
• "The Timurid Empire was a Persianized"... 0 hits on Google Scholar
• "Timurids were Persianate" 0 hits on Google Scholar
• "Timurids were Persianized" 0 hits on Google Scholar
• "Timurids were Persianised" 0 hits on Google Scholar
• "Timurids were a Persianate"... 0 hits on Google Scholar
• "Timurids were a Persianized".... 0 hits on Google Scholar
• "Timurids were a Persianised".... 0 hits on Google Scholar

This is a fairly clear indicator that virtually no scholar ever uses such sentences: they are Wikipedia inventions/ neologisms/ WP:OR/ WP:SYNTH/ WP:OR/ WP:UNDUE. "Persianate" indeed applies to Timurid culture, and everybody is fine with that, but virtually no scholar uses "Persianate" or "Persianized" as the primary descriptive when defining or characterizing the Timurid Empire... "Persianate" or "Persianized" are best used in later sentences of the introduction/ article when discussing culture.पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 18:35, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

If you're gonna name drop guidelines, I expect you to explain why they're the case, as it makes zero sense to someone who actually knows the guidelines. Claiming that it's a "Wikipedia invention" shows you haven't read the sources nor its actual Wikipedia article, Persianate society. Also, it's rather odd to base this on how many hits it gives on Google Scholars, and doesn't disprove the multiple sources I posted. You do realize replacing those links with "Turko-Mongol" scarcely show any results, so by your logic, we should remove it too? No. --HistoryofIran (talk) 18:48, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose As per HistoryofIran and Kansas Bear.---Wikaviani ^{(talk) (contribs)} 17:11, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
• Comment: I feel like there are some really obvious potential workarounds here, like, instead of saying "culturally Persianate" in front of the "X empire" part, say "X empire with Persianate characteristics, and then everyone can just go home happy right? Iskandar323 (talk) 19:04, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, this should be easily resolved by adding a sentence about culture for example. In reality, their cultural characteristics are usually a mix between Turgo-Mongol traditions, and the adoption of Persian literature and arts or administration methods, and the proportions of the mix vary with each polity. For the Timurids specifically, a sentence such as "The empire was culturally hybrid, combining Turko-Mongolian and Persianate influences" could be sourced from:

• Timurids, The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Columbia University Press. This cultural rebirth had a double character; on one hand, there was a renewal of Persian civilization and art (distinguished by extensive adaptations from the Chinese), and on the other, an original national literature in the Turk-Jagatai language, which borrowed from Persian sources.
• Subtelny, Maria (30 August 2007). Timurids in Transition: Turko-Persian Politics and Acculturation in Medieval Iran. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-474-2160-3. Turko-Mongolian ideals necessarily blended with Perso-Islamic concepts of legitimation. This resulted, as mentioned already, in the coexistence of many Turko-Mongolian practices alongside Perso-Islamic ones (...) Nevertheless, in the complex process of transition, members of the Timurid dynasty and their Turko-Mongolian supporters became acculturated by the surrounding Persianate millieu adopting Persian cultural models and tastes and acting as patrons of Persian language, culture, painting, architecture and music. At the same time, to preserve their Turkic cultural heritage, they promoted the use of a Chagatay (Eastern Turkic) language and literature that was written in the Arabo-Persian script, and even retained the symbolic used of the Turkic Uighur script.पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 19:38, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Back to square one (more WP:REHASH). Putting the Turco-Mongolian aspect on par with the Persian one is WP:UNDUE, even your second source somewhat demonstrates that. This is starting to look like WP:CIR. --HistoryofIran (talk) 20:01, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't get what's causing problems here. Turko-Mongols was what they were as a people; Persianate here is a reflection of their societal attachments. Isn't this bog-standard common knowledge. E.g.: "... Timur belonged to a Turko-Mongol tribe named Barlas. ... It is interesting to note that various dynasties of Turks or Turko-Mongols, namely, the Ottomans, the Uzbeks and the Timurids ..." [18] And here's a whole jstor entry on the Turko-Mongol monarchic tradition. Timur pops in on page 245, where it says: "Both Bayezit and Tamerlane were Turkic-speaking, non-Chinggissid Muslim rulers. Iskandar323 (talk) 20:28, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

New so called flag in this article

There has been a flag newly added before a couple of months which is relied on the Timurid coins as it's source. I didn't delete this change in order not to start a start an author's conflict. Nevertheless, it can not be argued being accurate to be considered as the state flag but something to support the three circle symbol in the flag of the Timurid Empire since it has already known as a red flag with those three circle from the Catalan atlas and other contemporary and modern sources. I can give the "Catalan Atlas" as a contemporary source and a long and satisfying discussion about Timurid flag in "History, Polotics and Legacy, Amir Timur" by A. Ahad Andican. Further sources could be given easily. I want to appeal the change i mentioned above and bringing back the old Red and Black flag with three circle. Afshar-beg (talk) 12:31, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

There is no Timurid flag in the Catalan Atlas (1375), simply because the Timurid Empire does not appear in that map, probably because its creation was too recent (1370). Please check the Catalan Atlas article if in doubt. The only known symbol of the Timurids is the "Three annulets" symbol, per sources given in the article. पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 13:03, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

It was not too recent because it had been at least 5 years. If you look carefully, you can see it is easily distinguishable from the other Eastern Chagatai flags with white colors in the Atlas. Also, the Transoxianian state, which Timur took over in 1370, was separated from the Eastern Chagatai Khanate in 1362. Therefore, it was not too recent and can be expected to use another flag to differentiate themselves from the Eastern Khanate, which we can also see in the Catalan Atlas. I believe that the three annulets issue was put forward just to be seen as an innovator, contributor, or trailblazer, and this mistake must be rectified immediately. Afshar-beg (talk) 21:23, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

There is no such flag in the Catalan Atlas (and no mention of Timur or the Timurid Empire either). See for yourself [19], and look at the sources. पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 04:15, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

There is one flag similar to the commonly known timurid flag in the second page from righ. Afshar-beg (talk) 14:11, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I suppose you mean this flag , but this is the flag for China (Yuan dynasty), not the flag of the Timurids, which don't appear in the map. पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 14:24, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

You were right. The flag in the Catalan Atlas was mistakenly considered the Timurid Empire's flag. However, I found a new and reliable source confirming that the Timurid Empire had a red flag. If it will change something, if there's a chance to bring the old Timurid flag back in this article, I am going to share the source wherever I should. Afshar-beg (talk) 19:10, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

@Afshar-beg:Please share your source here... पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 19:17, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

We already know from many sources that the Timurid flag has the three annulets symbol on it, as Yuka Kadoi also stated. However, we have further information about the accuracy of widely accepted former flag that Zeki Velidi Togan, who has an indisputable reputation in the science of history and known with his works in Russia, Turkey and worldwide, confirms in his book "Turkestan, nowadays Türk-ili (original name: Türkistan, Bugünkü Türk-ili)". I have the book's second edition (1981) physically as paperback. The first edition, if I am not mistaken, was in 1945-1947. This book was also used by many notable historians such as Martin B. Dickinson and many which became sources of many Wikipedia and Encyclopedia of Islam articles. Afshar-beg (talk) 20:20, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Native name in Perso-Arabic Script

Hello @Nashville whiz, you recently reverted my edit in the infobox native name, so I opened this discussion to discussing about that. In my edit[20], I did change the name in Perso-Arabic script in infobox native name parameter. Is there any other place needing the change I missed? PadFoot2008 (talk) 12:30, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi @PadFoot2008, I owe you an apology since it seems that I somehow missed that part. I'm restoring your edit. Take care, Nashville whiz (talk) 06:14, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

It's alright. Mistakes happen. Thanks! PadFoot2008 (talk) 06:23, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

A more accurate map of the Timurid State

I recently added a detailed map showing the greatest extent of the Timurid State [21] and also stated that I can provide sources about any issue concering the map. However, my edit was reversed by पाटलिपुत्र without specifying any reason. I would like to either reapply my edit or be given a valid explanation. Afshar-beg (talk) 11:23, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi User:Afshar-beg. Your map seems quite inflated compared to standard published maps (such as this one). You would have to make a case that your version is the standard one... Best पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 11:57, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Sources per that map

Seeing someone else bring up that map again, I checked the video the map is from to see if the creator of the map did have any sources on it, and in the comment section he had an insane amount of them per that map.

I'll just copy paste it below for you to see. @HistoryofIran from here on the pinned comment: [22]

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- The Empire of the Steppes - René Grousset - Tarikh-i-Rashidi of Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat - An Historical Atlas of Central Asia - Yuri Bregel - A History of Inner Asia - Svat Soucek - Mongols, Turks, and Others: Eurasian Nomads and the Sedentary World -BABUR NAMA (MEMOIRS OF BABUR - Translated from the original Turki Text of Zahiru'd-din Muhammad Babur Padshah Ghazi by ANNETTE SUSANNAH BEVERIDGE - History of Civilizations of Central Asia - Volume IV - Theage of achievement:A.D. 750 to the end of the fifteenth century - History of Civilizations of Central Asia- Volume V - Development in contrast: from the sixteenth tothe mid-nineteenth century - Manz, Beatrice Forbes, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane. Cambridge University Press, 1989, ISBN 0-521-34595-2. - The Cambridge History of Iran - Volume 6 - The Timurid and Safavid Periods - Edited by Peter Jackson - Emir Timur Tarih, Siyaset, Miras- Prof. Dr. A. Ahat Andican - Encyclopedia of Mongolian and the Mongol Empire - Christopher P. Atwood - Timurids in Transition Turko-Persian Politics and Acculturation in Medieval Iran by Maria E. Subtelny - Yazdi Sharaf al-Din Ali, Zafarnama , Trad. in French by Petis de la Croix under the title “ Histoire de Timur Bec ”, II, 29 - MEDIEVAL PERSIA 1040–1797 - Second edition - David Morgan - THE MONGOLS AND THE DELHI SULTANATE IN THE REIGN OF MUḤAMMAD TUGHLUQ (1325—1351) - P. JACKSON - Central Asiatic Journal , 1975, Vol. 19, No. 1/2 (1975), pp. 118-157 - The Golden Horde and Its Fall Grekov B.D., Yakubovsky A. Yu. - TÜRK ANSİKLOPEDİSİ – cilt VIII - Timur ve Seferleri / Yrd. Doç. Dr. Gürsoy Solmaz - Onaltıncı yüzyılda Türk dünyası 1. (Özbek ve Kazak hanlıkları) MEHMET ALPARGU - Babur: Timurid Prince and Mughal Emperor, 1483-1530 by Stephen Frederic Dale - The Cambridge History Of India Volume III by Wolseley Haig - Power, Politics and Religion in Timurid Iran - Beatrice Forbes Manz - Timurlular Devleti Tarihi - Prof. Dr. İsmail Aka - Mirza Şahruh ve Zamanı (1405-1447) - Prof. Dr. İsmail Aka - TÜRK TARİH KURUMU- - Timurlular, Bozkırdan Cennet Bahçesine 1360-1506 - Hayrunnisa Alan - TDV Islam Ansiklopedisi - Encyclopedia of Islam The Jalayirids - Dynastic State Formation in the Mongol Middle East - Patrick Wing - Şeybani Özbek Hanlığı: Siyasi, İdari, Askeri ve İktisadi Yapı - Abdulkadir Macit - The 'Ancient Supremacy': Bukhara, Afghanistan and the Battle for Balkh, 1731-1901 (Jonathan Lee) - Bosworth, C. Edmund (2009). "ḴOTTAL". Encyclopædia Iranica, Online edition. Retrieved 6 May 2014. - State and Tribe in Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan: The Reign of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan (1826-1863) -Christine Noelle - Gibb, H.A.R. trans. and ed. (1971). The Travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, A.D. 1325–1354 (Volume 3). London: Hakluyt Society. p. 571. - Приключения Шелкового пути (Silk Road Adventures) - faculty.washington edu - Silk Road Cities - ELENA PASKALEVA GABRIELLE VAN DEN BERG - Rickard, J (20 September 2010), Siege of Isfizar, 1383 - About Nickname of Kara Yülük Othman Beg - Fatma Akkuş Yiğit - Dil Araştırmaları Sayı: 16 Bahar 2015, 191-198 ss. - ENCYCLOPÆDIA IRANICA ATĀBAKĀN-E LORESTĀN - Prof.Dr.Yaşar YÜCEL, Anadolu Beylikleri Hakkında Araştırmalar II, TTK Basımevi, Ankara 1991 - History of Georgia, Vol. II, Tb. 2008 P. 89-90 - AZƏRBAYCAN MİLLİ ELMLƏR AKADEMİYASI - A. BAKIXANOV ADINA - TARİX İNSTİTUTU - AZƏRBAYCAN TARİXİ - XIII-XVIII əsrlər - YEDDİ CİLDDƏ - III CİLD - Mâzenderân’da Yerli Bir Aile: Celâvîler - MUSTAFA ŞAHİN- Iğdır University Journal of Social Sciences - Mamluk Cairo, a Crossroads for Embassies - Studies on Diplomacy and Diplomatics - Edited by Frédéric Bauden & Malika Dekkiche - Practising Diplomacy in the Mamluk Sultanate - Gifts and Material Culture in the Medieval Islamic World - Doris Behrens-Abouseif - Sharafnama by Sharafkhan Bidlisi – vol 1/ Şerefname - Cilt 1 - Kürt Tarihi - AKKOYUNLULAR VE ERZİNCAN (Uzun Hasan Devrine Kadar) Yrd. Doç. Dr. Ahmet TOKSOY - BBC News Uzbekistan profile – Timeline - Royal and historical letters during the reign of Henry the Fourth, king of England and of France, and Lord of Ireland by Hingeston, F. C. (Francis Charles), 1833-1910; Great Britain. Public Record Office - Vodyanskoye settlement // Encyclopedia of the Volgograd region - Encyclopaedia Iranica - balkh town and province - Ferghana Valley The Heart of Central Asia - S. Frederick Starr with Baktybek Beshimov, Inomjon I. Bobokulov, and Pulat Shozimov - Çağatay Hanlığı (1227 - 1345) - Prof. Dr. Mustafa Kafalı - The Pearson Indian History Manual for the UPSC Civil Services Preliminary Examination By Singh - İlhanlı Tarihi – Abdulkadir Yuvalı - نقش هرموز در تجارت عصر تيموري (The role of Hormuz in Timurid trade) - rasekhoon net - بازخوانی تاریخ/ملوک هرمز و یورش تیمور (Re-reading the history / king of Hormuz and the invasion of Timur) - tabnakhormozgan ir - تعیین حدود مغستان، خاستگاه ملوک هرموز (Determining the boundaries of Maghistan, the origin of the kings of Hormuz) - jhr ui ac ir -تعیین حدود مغستان، خاستگاه ملوک هرموز (Determining the boundaries of Maghista, the origin of the kings of Hormuz) - journals ui ac ir - La campagne de Timur en Anatolie (1402) by Marie-Mathilde Alexandrescu-Dersca - Essai sur la civilisation timouride - Lucien Bouvat - Anadolu Beylikleri ve Akkoyunlu, Karakoyunlu Devletleri - İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı - Rickard, J (28 April 2010), Battle of Kul-i-Malik, May 1512 Noorullah (talk) 00:34, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

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With that being said, should the new map be added per these rather insane amount of sources? Noorullah (talk) 00:35, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, but this looks dodgy. They needed 50 sources (no pages (WP:CITE, WP:VER), some don't even seem WP:RS (used BBC news for example)) to create that map? --HistoryofIran (talk) 00:42, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

I see what you mean. Perhaps the map creator @Afshar-beg can provide some insight, he did seem willing to do so a month ago in a talk page post above this. Noorullah (talk) 00:46, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

New Map

About two weeks prior I added a new map to replace the old one. It uses a reliable source, yet editors continue to take it down and replace it with unsourced maps. Before this devolves into edit warring I'd like some discussion on the talk page here. HetmanTheResearcher (talk) 23:47, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

@HetmanTheResearcher Not a bad map but some feedback. Khizr Khan remained governor of Delhi under Timur's suzerainty, meaning what remained of the Delhi Sultanate was under him. Noorullah (talk) 02:21, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Not talking about the Delhi Sultanate as it currently appears on your map, seems a bit inflated actually, but I don't fully know enough about that. I believe it was just from the Punjab-Delhi that Khizr Khan ruled. Noorullah (talk) 02:22, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, if you have a source that complies with WP:RS I can add this in. HetmanTheResearcher (talk) 06:58, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Having given about ten days for the initial editors to discuss in the talk page I'll end the discussion here. Further arguments have shown the initial map, while inaccurate, is better than my proposed map, so I will withdraw my map proposal. Still, I believe some improvement to the map is needed needed, such as bringing it more in line with Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps/Conventions using an orthographic map. HetmanTheResearcher (talk) 23:40, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

@HetmanTheResearcher:I don't think your new "red" map [23] is an improvement, as the borders of the Timurids seem identical, but terrain is lacking. It is aesthetically rather inferior too (not very refined, a bit "cartoonish", and departing from the map style of germane articles). I am also having a hard time believing your source for the purple banner: it is different from any banner I have seen so far in miniatures, or possible banners described in the literature. What does your source use as reference (primary source) for this purple banner? Could you send me a scan of the page from "Les drapeaux de l’islam : de Mahomet à nos jours" (p.252-253) to verify? Thanks पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 05:59, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

The problem with the other ones is simply a lack of sources per WP:VER. The old map has problems, like showing Aleppo as under Timurid control when it was only raided and omitting Timurid raids. Replacing the unsourced ones with a new, sourced one was needed to improve the quality of the article. For aesthetics I held back on details to not overcomplicate. The lack of terrain is an issue, future maps could improve on that (assuming they comply with WP:RS).

For the banner I can not since my faculty forbids the redistribution of copyrighted material, apologies. WP:SOURCEACCESS may be able to help regarding access to the source. I can get back in two days regarding the text of the source when I have access to it again. HetmanTheResearcher (talk) 06:56, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

@HetmanTheResearcher: For the source of the banner, just send me a scan through private e-mail (see "Email this user" in "Tools" on my user page): it will not breach anything. If I can certify the source is correct (and basing itself on proper data), I will be your best supporter. पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 07:48, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Alright, I can send it when I have access to the source again HetmanTheResearcher (talk) 18:05, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi @HetmanTheResearcher:. Thanks for sending the source for the banner by e-mail (Les drapeaux de l’islam : de Mahomet à nos jours. Buchet-Chastel. P.252-253). I can confirm the general shape of your banner is correctly following the source. I have a doubt about the color though (especially since your scan is black-and-white): the text says "la couleur était rouge" ("the color was red"), which is more consistent with miniatures showing similar banners . Shouldn't the banner in your file be more vividly red, rather than the brownish color it is today? Best पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 06:54, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

@पाटलिपुत्र You are right, I used a darker colour than than what the text shows. I'll upload a corrected version soon HetmanTheResearcher (talk) 16:45, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks HetmanTheResearcher! I added the banner to the infobox, with ref and quote. Thanks for finding this. पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 17:28, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

No problem, glad I could contribute! HetmanTheResearcher (talk) 02:58, 31 January 2024 (UTC)