Person1394 – 1449

Ulugh Beg

Also called: Ulugbek

Grandson of Timur who ruled Samarkand and worked as an astronomer, building a great observatory and compiling a star catalogue

Eldest son of Timur’s son Shah Rukh, he governed Samarkand for nearly forty years from his youth. He built a madrasa on the Registan and in the 1420s an observatory with a huge sextant tens of metres across. His astronomical tables (the Zij-i Sultani) gave the positions of about a thousand stars. He succeeded to the empire on his father’s death but was put to death by his own son Abd al-Latif.

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1 related event

1
1370 – 1507Founding of the Timurid Empirerelated figure
In a Central Asia where the Chagatai Khanate had split, the Turkic commander Timur built a state with its capital at Samarkand and, proclaiming the revival of the Mongol empire, swept across western Asia.

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Timur1336 – 1405
Conqueror who founded the Timurid Empire (r. 1370–1405), sweeping across western and Central Asia from his capital Samarkand; he died marching on Ming China

Themes this person appears in

Turkic-Islamic Empires and Other Civilizations1000 – 1533
From the Ghaznavid raids on India to the Mughal Empire and Suleiman I — five centuries in which Turkic-led Islamic empires took western Asia and India, while Africa, Southeast Asia and the Americas raised civilisations of their own