Malikat Agha was a Mongol princess as well as one of the wives of Shah Rukh, ruler of the Timurid Empire.

Life

Malikat Agha was a daughter of the Khan of Moghulistan, Khizr Khoja. Like many other Mongol princesses, she was married into the Timurid dynasty as a means of legitimising the latter's rule. Her husband was Umar Shaikh Mirza I, the eldest son of Timur, while her sister, Tuman Agha, later became the wife of Timur himself.^[1][2] Malikat and her husband had four sons: Pir Muhammad, Iskandar, Bayqara and Ahmad. Following Umar Shaikh's death in 1394, she was subsequently remarried to his younger brother Shah Rukh, through whom she had one further son, Soyughatmish.^[3][4]

In spite of her exalted lineage, upon Shah Rukh's ascension to the throne, Malikat only acted as a junior wife, with the chief wife being the non-royal Gawhar Shad, the daughter of one of Timur's close followers.^[5] As such, it is not clear that her influential match brought much advantage to her sons from her first marriage.^[3] In fact, it may have been because of these elder sons, most of whom had rebelled in the early years of Shah Rukh's reign, that Malikat had a lower position. This subordinate role even extended to Soyughatmish, who, in comparison to the sons of Gawhar Shad, received a lower military posting from his father, serving in the relatively isolated governorship of Kabul.^[4]

Like many Timurid royal women, Malikat had sponsored the construction of religious buildings, such as Sufi khanqahs.^[6] One of the first madrassahs in Herat to specialise in teaching medicine was also established under her patronage,^[7] alongside a similar institution in Balkh which further served as a caravansary.^[8]

It was in this last structure that she was eventually buried, having predeceased her husband, but outliving several of her sons.^[4][9]

References

Bibliography

• Arbabzadah, Nushin (2017), Nile Green (ed.), "Women and Religious Patronage in the Timurid Empire", Afghanistan's Islam: From Conversion to the Taliban, Oakland: University of California Press: 56–70, ISBN 978-0-520-29413-4, JSTOR 10.1525/j.ctt1kc6k3q.8
• Balabanlilar, Lisa (2015), Imperial Identity in the Mughal Empire: Memory and Dynastic Politics in Early Modern South and Central Asia, Bloomsbury Publishing, ISBN 978-0-85772-081-8
• Bosworth, Clifford Edmund; Asimov, M.S. (2002), History of Civilizations of Central Asia, vol. IV, Part Two, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publ., ISBN 978-81-208-1596-4
• Glassen, E (December 15, 1989), "BĀYQARĀ B. ʿOMAR ŠAYḴ", Encyclopaedia Iranica, Encyclopaedia Iranica Foundation, retrieved December 10, 2019
• Manz, Beatrice Forbes (2007), Power, Politics and Religion in Timurid Iran, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1-139-46284-6
• Nashat, Guity; Beck, Lois (2003), Women in Iran from the Rise of Islam to 1800, University of Illinois Press, ISBN 978-0-252-07121-8
• Rizvi, Kishwar (2011). The Safavid Dynastic Shrine: Architecture, Religion and Power in Early Modern Iran. London, New York: I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-1-84885-354-6.
• Woods, John E. (1990), The Timurid dynasty, Indiana University, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies