"Evidence of Timurid legitimacy in the Safavid period? The case of the Barnābādi Khwājas of Herat"
Résumé
In the Timurid period and later, the figure of Timur (Tamerlane) remained the major legitimating figure in the Turko-Iranian cultural space, especially in eastern Iran, Central Asia and Mughal India. Building on an earlier research on the image of Timur and the Timurids in the Safavid court historiography, the present paper turns to an interesting case study concerning a provincial family from Herat, known as the Khwājas of Barnābād, who occupied different positions in Safavid administration of Herāt and the Khorāsān province during the 16th to 18th centuries. Their family history is known through a unique text, the Tazkera-ye Barnabadi (early 19th c.; ms. used here: St Petersburg, C402; facsimile edition 1980), written by a member of the family Moḥammad-Reżā. The chronicle narrates the biographies of prominent family members, includes a series of copies of documents (waqf endowments, different court orders, appointments, etc.), but also it provides the story of origin and rise to the prominence of the Barnābādi Khwājas linked to a mazār of a quite obscure ancestor who lived in the early 15th century.
I propose to analyse the elements of this family narrative concerning the figure of this ancestor, and bring to light a series of allusions and indications suggesting that Timurids, and especially the close spiritual entourage of Timur, appear here as the original legitimating set of references.
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