Ghiyāth al-dīn Naqqāsh


Ghiyāth al-dīn Naqqāsh
was an envoy of the Timurid ruler of Persia and Transoxania, Mirza Shahrukh, to the court of the Yongle Emperor of the Ming Dynasty of China, known for an important account he wrote of his embassy.
His name has also been transcribed in English works as
Ḡīāṯ-al-Dīn Naqqaš,
Ghiyasu'd-Din Naqqash,
Ghiyāthu'd-Dīn Naqqāsh, or
Ghiyathuddin Naqqash.
Ghiyasu'd-Din Naqqash was the official diarist of the large embassy sent by Mirza Shahrukh, whose capital was in Herat, to the court of China's Yongle Emperor in 1419. According to Vasily Bartold, he was a painter, as the moniker "Naqqash" indicated.
Nothing is known of Ghiyasu'd-Din Naqqash beyond what he tells in his diary. Rosemarie Quiring-Zoche suggested in 1980 that he may have been the same person as Mawlānā Ghiyāthu'd-Dīn Simnānī known from other sources, but later authors have viewed this suggestion as not proven by any evidence.

Shahrukh's embassy's travel to China

The embassy, which included envoys from Shahrukh himself and from his son Bāysonḡor,
left Shahrukh's capital Herat on November 24, 1419.
From Herat the envoys went via Balkh to Samarqand. They expected to meet there with another group of envoys, sent by Shahrukh's viceroy of Transoxania, Ulugh Beg. However, it turned out that Ulugh Beg's delegation had left already, and Shahrukh's party had to proceed separately. They left Samarqand for China on February 25, 1420, along with Chinese envoys returning home.
The envoys traveled along a northern branch of the Silk Road, via Tashkent and Sayram.
Naqqash's account notes the existence of large "infidel" communities in both Turpan and Kumul, both those that "worshipped the cross" and those adoring Shakyamuni.
The embassy entered China at the western end of the Great Wall at Jiayuguan on August 29, 1420. To comply with China's immigration regulations, a count of the travelers was taken at Suzhou, the first city after Jiayuguan. As it was commonly the case with Central Asian embassies to China, a large number of merchants had joined the emirs' envoys, the overall size of the traveling party reaching about 500 men.
From Suzhou, the embassy was transported on to Beijing by the Chinese courier service, over the 99 courier stations along the 2900-km route. The embassy travelled via Ganzhou, Lanzhou, Xi'an, another Yellow River crossing at Tong Pass, the capital of North Zhili Zhengding, and reached Beijing on December 14.
The Persians spent 5 months at the court of the Yongle Emperor. According to Naqqash, their main handler at the Yongle Emperor court was one Mawlānā Hājjī Yūsuf Qāzī, who occupied an important office in the emperor's government, and knew Arabic, Mongolian, Persian, and Chinese languages.
Naqqash's account contains a detailed description of the court ceremonies, the banquets combined with musical and artistic performances, and the administration of justice.
On May 18, 1421, the envoys left Beijing for their trip home. With several months' delays in Ganzhou and Xiaozhou due to Mongol incursions, they only were able to leave China, via the same Jiayuguan checkpoint, on January 13, 1422. The names of all members of the party were checked by the border authorities against the register which recorded their original entry into the country, and once everything matched, they were allowed to leave.
The Herat envoys returned to their hometown on August 29, 1422.
Ghiyasu'd-Din Naqqash kept a diary of his travels throughout China, where he wrote about China's wealthy economy and huge urban markets, its efficient courier system as compared to that in Persia, the hospitality of his hosts at the courier stations in providing comfortable lodging and food, and the fine luxurious goods and craftsmanship of the Chinese.

Transmission and publications of Ghiyāthu'd-Dīn's diary

Persian versions

Ghiyasu'd-Din's account of the Timurid mission to Beijing is considered one of the most important and popular Muslim works on China, and provides modern historians with important information on the transportation and foreign relations of the early-Ming China.
The original text of Ghiyasu'd-Din's diary has not survived to our days. However, soon after its creation, it became incorporated into numerous texts widely copied throughout the Iranian- and Turkic-speaking parts of the Middle East.
The earliest known work containing Ghiyāthu'd-Dīn's account is the Persian chronicle , compiled by Shah Rukh's court historian Hafiz-i Abru.
More familiar to the later Persian-language readers was another version of Ghiyāthu'd-Dīn's report, found in the work called
Matla-us-Sadain wa Majma-ul-Bahrain , compiled by Abd-ur-Razzaq Samarqandi, who, like Ghiyāthu'd-Dīn, also travelled abroad as an envoy of Shah Rukh.

Turkic translations

By the late 15th century Turkic translations of Ghiyāthu'd-Dīn account appear as well.
One such translation, bearing a rather misleading title Tārīkh-i Khaṭā'ī, has survived to our day in Cambridge University Library. It is a copy of the translation made in AH 900 in Ardistān by Hājjī bin Muhammad, for the city's Turkic-speaking governor who did not speak Persian.
The document is considered unique by modern researchers in that it is the only known Turkic translation of Ghiyāthu'd-Dīn's work prepared outside of the Ottoman Empire. According to modern linguists, the idiom used by the translator, which Ildikó Bellér-Hann
calls "Türk ʿAcämī", can be described as "the historical predecessor of what is today called the Azerbaijani Turkic language".
Throughout 16th through 18th centuries, Ghiyāthu'd-Dīn's work became incorporated into various Turkish compilative works published in the Ottoman Empire. Notably, it served as one of the three main sources for the information on China in Katip Çelebi's Jihān-numā, along with Khataynameh and a European source.

Western translations

An English translation of Hafiz-i Abru's text by K.M. Maitra, along with the Persian original, was published in Lahore in 1934 as "A Persian Embassy to China: Being an extract from Zubdatu't Ol Tawarikh of Hafiz Abrut".
In the late 1960s, L. Carrington Goodrich of Columbia University realized that K.M. Maitra's translation was very much out of print, and practically unobtainable. In order to have this work "rescued from oblivion", he had a microfilm of the British Museum's copy of the book sent to him, and had it reprinted in New York in 1970 with his own introduction.
Wheeler Thackston published his English translation of Naqqash's account in 1989. A critical edition, it made use of several known versions of the story.
A transcription of Hājjī bin Muhammad's "Türk ʿAcämī" translation into Romanized orthography, and an English translation, have been published in 2005 in the USA by Ildikó Bellér-Hann.
A Russian translation of Ghiyasu'd-Din Naqqash's diary was published in Kazakhstan in 2009.