Role Historian Name Mir Khvand | Died 1498, Balkh, Afghanistan | |
Mir-Khwand (Mohammad ibn Khwandshah ibn Mahmud, written also as Mir-Khwand, Mirkhond, and other variants; 1433/1434–1498) was a noted Persian-language historian of the fifteenth century. He is known in Latin and Greek as Mirchond.
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Life
Born in 1433 in Bukhara, present-day Uzbekistan, the son of a pious man belonging to an old Bukharan family of sadah or direct descendants of Muhammad, Mir-Khwand grew up and died in Balkh. From his early youth he applied himself to historical studies and literature in general.
In Herat, Afghanistan, where Mir-Khwand spent the greater part of his life, he gained the favor of a famous patron of letters, Ali-Shir Nava'i (1440–1501), who served his old schoolfellow, the reigning Sultan Husayn Mirza Bayqara (r. 1469–1506), the last Timurid ruler in Iran, first as keeper of the seal, afterwards as governor of Jurjan. At the request of Mir ʿAli-Shir, himself a distinguished statesman and writer, Mir-Khwand began about 1474, in the quiet khanqah of Khilashyah, which his patron had founded in Herat as a house of retreat for literary men of merit, his great work on universal history, the Rawzat as-safaʾ (Arabic: روضة الصفا "Garden of Purity").
Rawzat as-safaʾ
His Rawzat as-safaʾ "The Garden of Purity" is a history of the world since creation in seven volumes.