Abu Sa'id Mirza (Timurid sultan)

Abu Sa'id, the Timurid sultan, was in his twenty-fifth year in 853/1449, when, taking advantage of the desperate position of Ulugh Beg at whose court he lived, he tried his fortune in Transoxiana. The unsigned Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.) entry records that a siege of Samarkand in 1449 and a rising at Bukhara in May 1450 both failed. He then seized Yasi and held it against the troops of 'Abd Allah b. Ibrahim. In Jumada I 855/June 1451 he drove that prince out of Samarkand with the help of the Uzbek khan Abu l-Khayr, and in spring 858/1454 he crossed the Oxus and took Balkh. ¹

He next tried to take Harat, where Ibrahim b. 'Ala' al-Dawla had proclaimed himself. The siege of July-August 1457 failed, and was marked by the execution of Gawhar Shad, accused of intelligence with Ibrahim. Ibrahim then allied with him, but the Kara Koyunlu Jahanshah occupied Harat in June 1458, and Abu Sa'id, who had waited on the Murghab, entered the town peacefully in November 1458, and thus became master of Khurasan, which he had always coveted. ¹

In 863/1459 the three Timurid princes of the region were dealt with, and the following year Abu Sa'id occupied Mazandaran. The article says that his power then extended in theory over Transoxiana, Turkistan, Kabulistan and beyond, although Sultan Husayn and the amir Khalil challenged him in Mazandaran, Harat and Sistan. ²