Ulugh Beg
1394 CE–1449 CE · Sultaniyya
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.
Did you know?
The prince who charted the stars — and was killed by his own son
Ulugh Beg (1394–1449), a grandson of the conqueror Timur, ruled Samarkand but gave his passion to astronomy, building one of the medieval world's greatest observatories. In 1437 he completed a star catalogue fixing the positions of more than a thousand stars with remarkable precision, and in 1449 he was deposed and put to death on the order of his own eldest son — just four years before the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
How we know
Ulugh Beg b. 22 Mar 1394, d. 27 Oct 1449 (beheaded on order of eldest son Abd al-Latif); Zij-i Sultani star catalogue completed 1437, lists 1,018 stars (992 newly observed); grandfather Timur d. 1405; Constantinople fell 1453 (1453−1449 = 4 yrs).
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Sultaniyya
What they did here
Ulugh Beg was born on 22 March 1394 in Sultaniyya (in present-day northwest Iran), the eldest son of Shah Rukh and grandson of Timur. The birth date and place are well attested in the standard biographical literature (Britannica; Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers).
About Sultaniyya
Sultaniyya, in northwestern Iran near Zanjan, was built by the Ilkhanid ruler Oljaitu in the early 14th century as his capital; its great domed mausoleum (completed c. 1312) is one of the masterpieces of Persian Islamic architecture. The theologian al-Allama al-Hilli (d. 1325) was attached to Oljaitu's court there.
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