Ghiyath al-Din Naqqash
Mawlānā[1] Ghiyāth al-Dīn Naqqāsh[2][3] (غیاث الدین نقاش) (fl. 1419–22) was an envoy of the
His name has also been transcribed in English works as Ḡīāṯ-al-Dīn Naqqaš,[6] Ghiyasu'd-Din Naqqash,[7] Ghiyāthu'd-Dīn Naqqāsh,[1] or Ghiyathuddin Naqqash.[8]Ghiyasu'd-Din Naqqash was the official diarist of the large embassy sent by
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.[12]
Shahrukh's embassy's travel to China
The embassy, which included envoys from Shahrukh himself (Shādī Khwāja and Kökchä) and from his son
The envoys traveled along a northern branch of the Silk Road, via Tashkent and Sayram. Naqqash's account notes the existence of large "
The embassy entered China at the western end of the
From Suzhou, the embassy was transported on to Beijing by the Chinese courier service (yichuan), over the 99 courier stations along the 2900-km route. The embassy travelled via Ganzhou, Lanzhou (where they were impressed by the pontoon bridge over which they crossed the Yellow River), Xi'an (although the [extant part of] the diary does not cover this city), another Yellow River crossing at Tong Pass (November 18), the capital of North Zhili Zhengding (December 3), and reached Beijing on December 14.[4]
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.[17][18]
Naqqash's account contains a detailed description of the court ceremonies (in particular, the early-morning audiences), the banquets combined with musical and artistic performances (he was especially impressed by
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.[4]
The Herat envoys returned to their hometown on August 29, 1422 (11 of Ramazan 825 AH).[22]
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.[4]
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,[11] and provides modern historians with important information on the transportation and foreign relations of the early-Ming China.[4] The original text of Ghiyasu'd-Din's diary has not survived to our days. However, soon after its creation, it (or large excerpts from it) became incorporated into numerous texts widely copied throughout the Iranian- and Turkic-speaking parts of the Middle East.[23]
The earliest known work containing Ghiyāthu'd-Dīn's account is the Persian chronicle (whose name is variously transcribed as Zobdat al-tawāriḵ-e Bāysonḡori or Zubdatu-t-tawārīḫ-i Bāysunġurī[24]) (زبده التواریخ بایسنقری), compiled by Shah Rukh's court historian Hafiz-i Abru (died 1430).[4]
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 (مطلع السعدين ومجمع البحرين) (The Rise of the Two auspicious constellations and the Confluence of the Two Oceans), compiled by
Turkic translations
By the late 15th century Turkic translations of Ghiyāthu'd-Dīn account appear as well. One such translation, bearing a rather misleading[26] title Tārīkh-i Khaṭā'ī ("History of Cathay"), has survived to our day in Cambridge University Library. It is a copy of the translation made in AH 900 (AD 1494/1495) in Ardistān by Hājjī bin Muhammad, for the city's Turkic-speaking governor who did not speak Persian. [27] 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".[27]
Throughout 16th through 18th centuries, Ghiyāthu'd-Dīn's work became incorporated into various
Western translations
An English translation of Hafiz-i Abru's text by K.M. (Kishori Mohan) 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".[29] In the late 1960s,
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.[8]
A transcription of Hājjī bin Muhammad's "Türk ʿAcämī" (proto-Azerbaijani) translation into Romanized orthography, and an English translation, have been published in 2005 in the US by Ildikó Bellér-Hann.[31]
A Russian translation of Ghiyasu'd-Din Naqqash's diary (as per Hafiz Abru) was published in Kazakhstan in 2009.[32]
See also
- Chen Cheng (Ming Dynasty), the Yongle Emperor's envoy to Shah Rukh's court
- Ormuzat the same time period
- Bento de Góis, a Portuguese Jesuit who traveled with caravans along a similar route 180 years later
Notes
- ^ a b Bellér-Hann 1995, p. 1
- ISBN 9780521457354
- ISBN 0-521-24333-5
- ^ ISBN 0-520-21091-3
- ISBN 0-521-24333-5
- ^ Soucek 2001
- ^ "Naqqah" in Timothy Brook's books is apparently a typo for Naqqash
- ^ a b Naqqash 1989
- ISBN 978-90-04-28529-3.
- ^ Rossabi, Morris. 1976. “Two Ming Envoys to Inner Asia”. T'oung Pao 62 (1/3). BRILL: 27. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4528048?seq=27.
- ^ a b c Bartold, Vasilij Vladimirovič (1956), Four studies on the history of Central Asia, Volume 1 Volume 21 of Russian Translation Project Series of the American council of learned societies, Brill Archive
- ^ a b Bellér-Hann 1995, p. 5
- ^ Abru 1970, p. 6
- ^ Bellér-Hann 1995, p. 157
- ^ Bellér-Hann 1995, p. 159. The ca. 1497 Türkic translation specifically mentions "the cross", while the earlier Persian versions (at Hafiz-i Abru and Razzaq) only mention "idols".
- ^ Bellér-Hann 1995, p. 160
- ^ Bellér-Hann 1995, p. 171
- ^ ed. Thackston 2001, p. 61.
- ^ Bellér-Hann 1995, pp. 169–175
- ^ Bellér-Hann 1995, pp. 175–176
- ^ Hecker, Felicia J.. 1993. “A Fifteenth-century Chinese Diplomat in Herat”. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3 (1). Cambridge University Press: 93. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25182641?seq=9#page_scan_tab_contents.
- ^ Abru 1970, p. 5
- ^ Bellér-Hann 1995, pp. 3, 10, 20
- ^ Maria Eva Subtelny and Charles Melville, Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru at Encyclopædia Iranica
- ^ Bellér-Hann 1995, pp. 11
- ^ Bellér-Hann 1995, p. 4
- ^ a b Bellér-Hann 1995, p. 3
- ^ a b Bellér-Hann 1995, pp. 16–20
- ISBN 0-7103-0243-6
- ^ Abru 1970, p. iv
- ^ Bellér-Hann 1995
- ^ Сборник «Материалы по истории Казахстана и Центральной Азии». Выпуск I. Составитель и ответственный редактор Ж. М. Тулибаева. Archived 2010-06-14 at the Wayback Machine (Materials for the history of Kazakhstan and Central Asia, issue no. 1. Ed. Zh. M. Tulibayeva.) (in Russian)
References
- Abru, Hafiz (1970), A Persian embassy to China, being an extract from Zubdatu't tawarikh of Hafiz Abru, New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp.. "Translated by K.M. Maitra, M.A., Professor of Persian, Dyal Singh College, Lahore. With a new introduction by L. Carrington Goodrich, Dean Lung Professor Emeritus of Chinese, Columbia University.
- Bellér-Hann, Ildikó (1995), A History of Cathay: a translation and linguistic analysis of a fifteenth-century Turkic manuscript, Bloomington: Indiana University, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, ISBN 0-933070-37-3
- Soucek, Priscilla (2001), "Ḡīāṯ-al-Dīn Naqqaš", Encyclopædia Iranica
- Quatremère, Etienne Marc (1843), "Notice de l'ouvrage persan qui a pour titre: Matla-assaadeïn ou-madjma-albahreïn", Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du roi et autres bibliothèques, vol. 14, Part 1, Imprimerie royale. The French translation is on pp. 387–426, preceded by the Persian text and a preface.
- Naqqash, Ghiyathuddin (1989), "Report to Mirza Baysunghur on the Timurid Legation to the Ming Court at Peking", in ISBN 092267311X, archived from the originalon 2012-10-23