AY TĪMŪR

 

AY TĪMŪR (or TEYMŪR), MOḤAMMAD, Sarbadār commander and ruler, “the son of a slave” (probably one of the Turkish ḡolāms that Masʿūd, the previous Sarbadār leader, recruited to supplement his bandit and Shiʿite dervish soldiery). Masʿūd left Ay Tīmūr governing Sabzavār when campaigning against Herat (743/1342) and Māzandarān (summer, 745/1344). When Masʿūd and his army fell in Māzandarān, Ay Tīmūr found himself the ruler. To defend Sabzavār and Nīšāpūr against Ṭaḡāy Tīmūr (for the reading of this name, see Smith, History, pp. 181-82) and Arḡūnšāh Jāūnī Qorbānī (Mong. Je’ün Gurban), Ay Tīmūr had to acknowledge Ṭaḡāy Tīmūr’s sovereignty (Sabzavār coin of 746), station his good troops on the frontiers, and eke out their numbers with the Shiʿite dervishes demobilized after Masʿūd murdered their leader, Ḥasan Jūrī. These measures led to military success and political failure. Ay Tīmūr remained unguarded against the dervishes, who hated him as Masʿūd’s man, and the gentry of Bāštīn (whence came the first Sarbadār leaders, ʿAbd-al-Razzāq and Masʿūd) and aristocrats of Sabzavār (especially Šams-al-dīn ʿAlī), who despised him. Alleging his disrespect for the dervishes, preference for “the commons and the mob,” and the impropriety of rule by “the son of a slave,” these deposed and, instigated by Šams-al-dīn ʿAlī, murdered Ay Tīmūr in Jomādā I, 747/August-September, 1346.

 

Bibliography:

A lost Tārīḵ-eSarbadārān is partly reproduced in Mojmal-e faṣīḥī, Mašhad, 1339 Š./1960, pp. 70-74.

Mīrḵᵛand (Tehran), pp. 614-17.

Dawlatšāh, ed. Browne, p. 281.

See also F. Tauer, ed., Cinq opuscules de Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū, Prague, 1959, notes, p. 16.

J. M. Smith, Jr., The History of the Sarbadār Dynasty, 1336-1381 A.D., and Its Sources, The Hague and Paris, 1970, pp. 126-30, and index.

Search terms:

 ای تیمور ay timur  ay taimour ay taimur

 

(J. M. Smith, Jr.)

Originally Published: December 15, 1987

Last Updated: August 18, 2011

This article is available in print.
Vol. III, Fasc. 2, p. 126