Fasih Khwafi

Fasih Ahmad ibn Jalal al-Din Muhammad al-Khwafi was a historian and poet of the Timurid era. He was born in 1375 in Khorasan (one reference work gives 28 September in the old style, which is 6 October in the new). Sources differ on his birthplace, naming the Khaf district, Bakharz or Herat. His nisba “Khwafi” is explained by his mother’s family coming from Khaf, while his father’s family was from Bakharz. He grew up and was educated in Herat.

He began his service at the court of Shah Rukh, Timur’s son, in Herat, where he is recorded in office in 1415. In the chancery (divan) he held senior posts — vizier of the divan in 1416–1417 and head of the divan in 1417–1418. Shah Rukh sent him on diplomatic errands, among them to Khalil Sultan in Samarkand and, in 1422–1424, to Kerman. In 1425–1430 he headed the divan at the court of Shah Rukh’s son, Prince Baysunghur.

In the year 836 of the Hijra (1432/33) he fell from favour and lost his post. According to some accounts, it was in these years that he set about his only major work. “Mujmal-i Fasihi” (“Fasih’s Compendium”) was written in Persian between 1433 and 1442 and presented to Shah Rukh; it is also known as “Mujmal al-tavarikh” (“Compendium of Histories”).

The work opens with universal history and brings the year-by-year narrative down to 845 AH (1441/42). It treats the Arab caliphs, the Saffarids, Samanids, Ghaznavids, Seljuks, Ghurids and Khwarazmshahs briefly and the Timurids in detail. The book also gives information about poets, jurists, hadith scholars and sheikhs, economic and cultural life, and the buildings raised in his time; its conclusion is devoted to the city of Herat. It is an important source for the age of Timur and the Timurids.

Fasih also wrote verse in Persian and Arabic, some of which survives in anthologies. He died in Herat in 1442 or, by other accounts, a little later (around 1443). A Russian translation of “Mujmal-i Fasihi” by D. Yusupova was published in Tashkent by the Fan publishing house in 1980.