Timurid Accounts of Ascension (miʿrāj) in Türkī

Abstract

About three years after his accession to power in the province of Fars (which included the towns of Shiraz, Yazd and Isfahan), where he reigned from 1409 to 1414, Iskandar Sulṭān, grandson of Tamerlane, prepared a questionnaire touching on various theological points and sent it to the Sufi shaykh Shāh Niʿmatullāh Walī Kirmānī (d. 1431) and the theologian Sayyid Sharīf Jurjānī (d. 1413–14). Several of the queries it contained related to the celestial ascension of the Prophet: had the miʿrāj taken place in the physical sense? What was the nature of Burāq, the Prophet’s winged mount who was half donkey and half mule? Why did Burāq and the angel Gabriel stay behind when Muḥammad had reached the highest sphere? The Timurid prince also asked about Heaven and Hell, and about the rewards and punishments that awaited human beings in the next world. At the end of his questionnaire, Iskandar Sulṭān asserted that he desired clear answers. He felt that although these subjects had very often been discussed, the theologians (ʿulamāʾ) analysing them had never managed to come to any agreement.1 The Prophet’s journey into the spheres of the next world interested him a great deal, and in 1410 he may have asked his court panegyrist of the period, Mīr Ḥaydar, to compose a version of this story.2 This text has not survived, but if it was indeed written then the question arises of its possible influence on a Miʿrājnāma, composed in 1436 in Eastern Turkish (Türkī) at the court of Tamerlane’s heir, Shāhrukh (r. 1405–47).3 The many miniatures that illustrate this text, and the Uighur script in which it was transcribed, have for a long time interested orientalists and scholars: Christiane Gruber is one distinguished example. Her research reveals that accounts of ascension remained a favourite theme and source of inspiration for the poets