Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi


Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi or Sharif al-Din Ali’ Yazdi , also known by his pen name Sharaf, was a 15th-century Persian scholar who authored several works in the arts and sciences, including mathematics, astronomy, enigma, literature such as poetry, and history, the Zafarnama, a life of Timur, being his most famous. He was born in the affluent city of Yazd, Iran in the 1370s. He devoted much of his life to scholarship, furthering his education in Syria and Egypt until Timur's death in 1405.
As a young man, he was a teacher in his native Yazd and a close companion of the Timurid ruler Shahrukh and his son Ibrahim Sultan. In 1442/43 he became the close advisor of the governor of Iraq, Mirza Sultan Muhammad, who lived in the city of Qom.
Sharif al-Din rebelled against Shahrukh Timur in 1446-1447 when the government was vulnerable, but was later commissioned to different cities for his acumen. The later years of his life were spent in Taft, where he eventually died in 1454.
Yazdi was directed to write a biography of Timur in 1421 known as the Zafarnama, completing it four years later in 1425. Timur's grandson Sultan Abu al-Fath Ibrahim Mirza was patron during the completion of his father's biography.

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