Ulugh Beg

Ulugh Beg (his given name was Muhammad Taraghay) was a prince of the Timurid dynasty — the empire founded in Central Asia by his grandfather, the conqueror Timur (Tamerlane). Born in 1394, he was the eldest son of Shah Rukh and was raised at Timur's court. From about 1409 he governed Samarqand and the surrounding region of Transoxiana (Mavarannahr, the lands "across the Oxus river"), and for the last two years of his life he was the Timurid sultan.

He is remembered above all as a patron and practitioner of astronomy and mathematics. He founded a madrasa (Islamic college) in Samarqand and others in Bukhara and Ghijduvan; the Bukhara madrasa reportedly bears an inscription urging the pursuit of knowledge. Around 1428 he built a large observatory at Samarqand, where astronomers including Qadizada al-Rumi, al-Kashi, and Ali Qushji worked. Their collaborative star catalogue and astronomical tables, the Zij-i Sultani (completed around 1437), were among the most accurate produced in the medieval world and were later studied in Europe.

When Shah Rukh died in 1447, Ulugh Beg succeeded him but soon faced a war of succession. He was defeated by his own son, Abd al-Latif. Permitted to set out on pilgrimage to Mecca, he was instead killed near Samarqand in October 1449, reportedly after a religious court sanctioned his death. He was buried in Timur's mausoleum, the Gur-i Amir.