Early Life
He was a grandson of the great conqueror, Timur (Tamerlane) (1336–1405), and the oldest son of Shah Rukh, both of whom came from the Turkicized Barlas tribe of Transoxiana (now Uzbekistan). His mother was a Persian noblewoman named Goharshad. Ulugh Beg was born in Sultaniyeh in Persia during Timur's invasion. 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, however, and the accession of Ulugh Beg's father to much of the Timurid Empire, he settled in Samarkand, which had been Timur's capital. After Shah Rukh moved the capital to Herat (in modern Afghanistan), sixteen-year-old Ulugh Beg became his governor in Samarkand in 1409. In 1411, he became the sovereign ruler of the whole Mavarannahr khanate.
Read more about this topic: Ulugh Beg
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“They circumcised women, little girls, in Jesus’s time. Did he know? Did the subject anger or embarrass him? Did the early church erase the record? Jesus himself was circumcised; perhaps he thought only the cutting done to him was done to women, and therefore, since he survived, it was all right.”
—Alice Walker (b. 1944)
“I have lifted the veil. I have created life, wrested the secret of life from life. Now do you understand? From the lives of those who have gone before, I have created life.”
—Edward T. Lowe, and Frank Strayer. Dr. von Niemann (Lionel Atwill)