Abd al-Razzaq Samarqandi

Kamal al-Din Abd al-Razzaq ibn Ishaq Samarqandi was a historian and diplomat of the Timurid age, the author of the chronicle Matla-us-Sadain wa Majma-ul-Bahrain. He was born in November 1413 in Herat, the capital of Shah Rukh's realm. He took the name "Samarqandi" from his father, Jalal al-Din Ishaq, a native of Samarkand who served as qadi and imam at Shah Rukh's court.

He was educated in Herat, studying Quranic exegesis, hadith, Islamic law, history, language and literature; his teachers included his father and other learned relatives. After his father's death, around 1437, he entered the service of Shah Rukh's court and in time became one of the trusted officials entrusted with diplomatic correspondence.

From January 1442 to the end of 1444 Abd al-Razzaq headed Shah Rukh's embassy to southern India. He was received at Calicut by the Zamorin, visited ports of the Malabar coast and the capital of the Vijayanagara empire, where the ruler Deva Raya II received him. He later wrote the story of the journey into his chronicle, and the account is valued as an eyewitness description of south Indian cities and of Indian Ocean trade. In 1446–1447 Shah Rukh sent him on a mission to Gilan.

After Shah Rukh's death in 1447, Abd al-Razzaq served his successors in Herat and Samarkand. In 1463, when he asked to be relieved of state duties, the ruler Abu Said appointed him shaykh of the Shahrukhiyya khanqah in Herat, a post he kept for the rest of his life.

His principal work is Matla-us-Sadain wa Majma-ul-Bahrain ("The Rising-Place of the Two Auspicious Stars and the Meeting-Place of the Two Seas"), written mostly in 1467–1470. The chronicle covers the Mongol conquests, Timur and the Timurids from about 1304 to 1470. For the early years the author relied on Hafiz-i Abru's Zubdat al-tawarikh, while his account of events from the 1420s to 1470 counts as one of the most important sources, since he witnessed much of it himself.

Abd al-Razzaq Samarqandi died in Herat in the summer of 1482. The Persian text of the chronicle was published in Lahore in 1936 and it was translated into Uzbek in the twentieth century, including A. Urinboev's translation of 1969; his account of the Indian journey was translated into English as early as 1857.