The Timurids were the the descendants of Tamerlane (alias Timur). In the fifteenth century they ruled the shrinking remains of his empire in Iran and Central Asia - from the sixteenth they would go on to greater fame as the Great Mughals of India after the Uzbeks kicked them out of Transoxiana.

This book focues on the reign of Shahrukh (also written Shah Rukh), Tamerlane's youngest son whose long reign (1405-1447) saw him reunify the bulk of his father's dominions - renewed civil war after his death lead to the permanent loss of the western parts of the empire. What chiefly interests Forbes Manz, however, isn't these wars, but the functioning of the empire and of local elites during the relative stability of Shahrukh's years of secure power. It's about princes of the dynasty, military figures (mostly of Turco-Mongol origin), viziers and bureaucrats (mostly Iranians), and religious figures (likewise); and why they mostly cooperated with the ruler and why they sometimes did not.

The book isn't an easy read; dense, and with an unremitting barrage of Perso-Arabic names, many of them similar. It doesn't help that Forbes Manz frequently refers to the same personage with several different forms of the name - frex, the later Timurid ruler Sultan Husayn Bayqara is also spoken of as simply Sultan Husayn or Husayn Bayqara. He's not to be confused with Bayqara b. Umar Shaykh, also known simply as Bayqara. The reader also better know what a Sufi shaykh or a tariqa is.

Not a bad book, but I should probably have read something more introductory on the subject first. I might also have liked a bit more focus on military affairs, partly because that's a special interest of mine, partly because the Timurids were a military dynasty for whom military leadership was the chief task of the ruler.