Ulugh Beg

thumb|Ulugh Beg Observatory

thumb|[[Ophiuchus, miniature from the manuscript of The Book of Fixed Stars commissioned by Ulugh Beg. Probably Samarkand, . Bibliothèque nationale de France]]

Mīrzā Muhammad Tarāghāy bin Shāhrukh (; ), better known as Ulugh Beg (; 22 March 1394 – 27 October 1449), was a Timurid sultan, as well as an astronomer and mathematician.

Ulugh Beg was notable for his work in astronomy-related mathematics, such as trigonometry and spherical geometry, as well as his general interests in the arts and intellectual activities. It is thought that he spoke five languages: Arabic, Persian, Chaghatai Turkic, Mongolian, and a small amount of Chinese. During his rule (first as a governor, then outright) the Timurid Empire achieved the cultural peak of the Timurid Renaissance through his attention and patronage. Samarkand was captured and given to Ulugh Beg by his father Shah Rukh.

He built the great Ulugh Beg Observatory in Samarkand between 1424 and 1429. It was considered by scholars to have been one of the finest observatories in the Islamic world at the time and the largest in Central Asia. He also built the Ulugh Beg Madrasah (1417–1420) in Samarkand and Bukhara, transforming the cities into cultural centers of learning in Central Asia.

However, Ulugh Beg's scientific expertise was not matched by his skills in governance. During his short reign, he failed to establish his power and authority. As a result, other rulers, including his family, took advantage of his lack of control, and he was subsequently overthrown and assassinated.

Early life

He was a grandson of the great conqueror and king, Timur (Tamerlane) (1336–1405), and the oldest son of Shah Rukh, both of whom came from the Turkicized Mongol Barlas tribe of Transoxiana (now Uzbekistan). His mother was a noblewoman named Gawhar Shad, daughter of a member of the representative Turkic tribal aristocracy, Ghiyasuddin Tarkhan.

Ulugh Beg was born in Sultaniyeh during his grandfather's invasion of Persia. He was given the name Mīrzā Muhammad Tāraghay. Ulugh Beg, the name he was most commonly known by, was not truly a personal name, but rather a moniker, which can be loosely translated as "Great Ruler" (compare modern Turkish ulu, "great", and bey, "chief") and is the Turkic equivalent of Timur's Perso-Arabic title Amīr-e Kabīr.

As a child he wandered through a substantial part of the Middle East and India as his grandfather expanded his conquests in those areas. After Timur's death, Shah Rukh moved the empire's capital to Herat (in modern Afghanistan). Sixteen-year-old Ulugh Beg subsequently became the governor of the former capital of Samarkand in 1409. In 1411, he was named the sovereign ruler of the whole of Mavarannahr.

Science

The young ruler set out to turn the city into an intellectual center for the empire. Between 1417 and 1420, he built a madrasa ("university" or "institute") on Registan Square in Samarkand (currently in Uzbekistan), and he invited numerous Islamic astronomers and mathematicians to study there. The madrasa building still survives. Ulugh Beg's most famous pupil in astronomy was Ali Qushchi (died in 1474). Qadi Zada al-Rumi was the most notable teacher at Ulugh Beg's madrasa and Jamshid al-Kashi, an astronomer, later came to join the staff. The image, which can be found in this article, shows the remaining portion of the instrument, which consists of the underground, lower portion of the instrument that was not destroyed. The observatory built by Ulugh Beg was the most pervasive and well-known observatory throughout the Islamic world. Throughout his life as an astronomer, Ulugh Beg came to realize that there were multiple mistakes in the work and subsequent data of Ptolemy that had been in use for many years. The serious errors which he found in previous Arabian star catalogues (many of which had simply updated Ptolemy's work, adding the effect of precession to the longitudes) induced him to redetermine the positions of 992 fixed stars, to which he added 27 stars from Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi's catalogue Book of Fixed Stars from the year 964, which were too far south for observation from Samarkand. This catalogue, one of the most original of the Middle Ages, was first edited by Thomas Hyde at Oxford in 1665 under the title Jadāvil-i Mavāzi' S̱avābit, and reprinted in 1767 by G. Sharpe. More recent editions are those by Francis Baily in 1843 in Vol. XIII of the Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, and by Edward Ball Knobel in Ulugh Beg's Catalogue of Stars, Revised from all Persian Manuscripts Existing in Great Britain, with a Vocabulary of Persian and Arabic Words (1917).

In 1437, Ulugh Beg determined the length of the sidereal year as 365.2570370...d = 365d 6h 10m 8s (an error of +58 seconds). In his measurements over the course of many years he used a 50 m high gnomon. This value was improved by 28 seconds in 1525 by Nicolaus Copernicus, who appealed to the estimation of Thabit ibn Qurra (826–901), which had an error of +2 seconds. However, Ulugh Beg later measured another more precise value of the tropical year as 365d 5h 49m 15s, which has an error of +25 seconds, making it more accurate than Copernicus's estimate which had an error of +30 seconds. Ulugh Beg also determined the Earth's axial tilt as 23°30'17" in the sexagesimal system of degrees, minutes and seconds of arc, which in decimal notation converts to 23.5047°.

Mathematics

In mathematics, Ulugh Beg wrote accurate trigonometric tables of sine and tangent values correct to at least eight decimal places.

Foreign relations

Once Ulugh Beg became governor of Samarqand, he fostered diplomatic relations with the Yongle emperor of the Ming dynasty. In 1416, Ming envoys Chen Cheng and Lu An presented silk and silver stuffs to Ulugh Beg on behalf of the Yongle emperor. Ulugh Beg's emissaries came across Ghiyāth al-dīn Naqqāsh and other envoys representing Shah Rukh, Prince Baysunghur, and other Timurid authorities in Beijing; however, they stayed at separate hostelries. Ghiyāth al-dīn Naqqāsh even saw the Yongle emperor riding a black horse with white feet which had been gifted by Ulugh Beg.

thumb|Coinage of Ulugh Beg, dated AH 852 (1448–49). [[Herat mint.]]

Ulugh Beg led two major campaigns against his neighbours. This first one took place in 1425 and was directed against Moghulistan and its ruler Shir Muhammad. He was victorious but the impact of the campaign was limited and Shir Muhammad remained in power. A year later, Baraq, Khan of the Golden Horde and former protégé of Ulugh Beg, laid claim to Timurid possessions around the Syr Darya, including the town of Sighnaq. In response to that, in 1427 Ulugh Beg, accompanied by his brother Muhummad Juki, marched against Baraq. In a hill close to Sighnaq the Timurid army was surprised by a smaller enemy force but was soundly defeated. The humiliation suffered at the hands of Baraq was to have a lasting effect on Ulugh Beg. His campaign against the Golden Horde would be the last he would undertake against a neighbouring power. The armies he later sent against them would not win any resounding victories and by the end of his reign his territories would be raided by his northern and easterly foes.

In 1439, the Zhengtong emperor ordered an artist to produce a painting of a black horse with white feet and a white forehead that had been sent by Ulugh Beg. Six years later, the Ming emperor sent a letter to Ulugh Beg in order to express his gratitude for all the "tribute" from Samarqand.

Eventually, Ulugh Beg's reputation was rehabilitated by his nephew, Abdallah Mirza (1450–1451), who placed his remains at Timur's feet in the Gur-e-Amir in Samarkand, where they were found by Soviet archaeologists in 1941.

Marriages

Ulugh Beg had sixteen consorts:

Aka Begi, daughter of Muhammad Sultan Mirza bin Jahangir Mirza and Khan Sultan Khanika, mother of Habiba Sultan known as Khanzada Begum and another Khanzada Begum;
Sultan Badi al-mulk Begum, daughter of Khalil Sultan bin Miran Shah and Shad Malik Agha;
Aqi Sultan Khanika, daughter of Sultan Mahmud Khan Ogeday;
Husn Nigar Khanika, daughter of Shams-i-Jahan Khan Chaghatay;
Shukr Bi Khanika, daughter of Darwīsh Khan of the Golden Horde;
Rukaiya Sultan Agha, an Arlat lady, and mother of Abdal-Latif Mirza, Ak Bash Begum and Sultan Bakht Begum;
Mihr Sultan Agha, daughter of Tukal bin Sarbuka;
Sa'adat Bakht Agha, daughter of Bayan Kukaltash, mother of Qutlugh Turkhan Agha;
Daulat Sultan Agha, daughter of Khawand Sa'id;
Bakhti Bi Agha, daughter of Aka Sufi Uzbek;
Daulat Bakht Agha, daughter of Sheikh Muhammad Barlas;
Sultanim Agha, mother of Abdul Hamid Mirza and Abdul Jabrar Mirza;
Sultan Malik Agha, daughter of Nasir-al-Din, mother of Ubaydullah Mirza, Abdullah Mirza and another Abdullah Mirza;
A daughter of Abu'l-Khayr Khan, khan of Uzbek Khanate;
Khutan Agha;
A daughter of Aqila Sultan;

Legacy

thumb|Ulugh Beg and his astronomical observatory scheme, depicted on the 1987 USSR stamp. He was one of Islam's greatest astronomers during the Middle Ages. The stamp says "Uzbek astronomer and mathematician Ulugbek" in Russian.

thumb|right|150px|The [[Ulugh Beigh (crater)|Ulugh Beigh crater on the Moon, named for Ulugh Beg.]]

The crater, Ulugh Beigh, on the Moon, was named after him by the German astronomer Johann Heinrich von Mädler on his 1830 map of the Moon.
2439 Ulugbek, a main-belt asteroid which was discovered on 21 August 1977 by N. Chernykh at Nauchnyj, was named after him.
The 2017 documentary The Man Who Unlocked The Universe is based on his life, with Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva as executive producer.
The dinosaur Ulughbegsaurus was named after him in 2021.

Exhumation

Soviet anthropologist Mikhail M. Gerasimov reconstructed the face of Ulugh Beg through the analysis of the remains that were exhumed from his tomb in 1941. Like his grandfather Timurlane, Ulugh Beg is close to the Mongoloid type with slightly Europoid features. His father Shah Rukh had predominantly Caucasoid features, with no obvious Mongoloid feature.

Notes

References

Bibliography

1839. L. P. E. A. Sedillot (1808–1875). Tables astronomiques d’Oloug Beg, commentees et publiees avec le texte en regard, Tome I, 1 fascicule, Paris. A very rare work, but referenced in the Bibliographie generale de l’astronomie jusqu’en 1880, by J.
1847. L. P. E. A. Sedillot (1808–1875). Prolegomenes des Tables astronomiques d’Oloug Beg, publiees avec Notes et Variantes, et precedes d’une Introduction. Paris: F. Didot.
1853. L. P. E. A. Sedillot (1808–1875). Prolegomenes des Tables astronomiques d’Oloug Beg, traduction et commentaire. Paris.
Le Prince Savant annexe les étoiles, Frédérique Beaupertuis-Bressand, in Samarcande 1400–1500, La cité-oasis de Tamerlan : coeur d'un Empire et d'une Renaissance, book directed by Vincent Fourniau, éditions Autrement, 1995, .
L'âge d'or de l'astronomie ottomane, Antoine Gautier, in L'Astronomie, (Monthly magazine created by Camille Flammarion in 1882), December 2005, volume 119.
L'observatoire du prince Ulugh Beg, Antoine Gautier, in L'Astronomie, (Monthly magazine created by Camille Flammarion in 1882), October 2008, volume 122.
Le recueil de calendriers du prince timouride Ulug Beg (1394–1449), Antoine Gautier, in Le Bulletin, n° spécial Les calendriers, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, juin 2007, pp. 117–123. d
Jean-Marie Thiébaud, Personnages marquants d'Asie centrale, du Turkestan et de l'Ouzbékistan, Paris, éditions L'Harmattan, 2004. .

External links

Ulugh Beg: a short biography March 18. 2025
The observatory and memorial museum of Ulugbek
Bukhara Ulugbek Madrasah
Registan the heart of ancient Samarkand.
Biography by School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland
Legacy of Ulug Beg
BBC's History of the World in 100 Objects, jade dragon cup, discusses its patronage by Ulugh Beg