Al-Maqrīzī’s Biography of Tīmūr

Durar al-ʿuqūd al-farīda fī tarāǧim aʿyān al-mufīda is an Arabic biographical dictionary by a famous historian of the Mamluk Sultanate, al-Maqrīzī, of his contemporaries. This recently published work contains a long biography of Tīmūr, or Tamerlane, the founder of the Timurid dynasty. In discussing the biography, this article presents some interesting and original details: first, it reviews the editions of Durar al-ʿuqūd that have been published to date; secondly, it gives an outline of Tīmūr’s biography; after that, it scrutinizes al-Maqrīzī’s sources for Tīmūr’s life and then the relations between his and other Arabic biographies of Tīmūr; lastly, it considers the value of the work.