Gawhar Shad

Gawhar Shad was born in Samarkand in the late 14th century (around 1378–1379). Her father, Ghiyath ad-Din Tarkhan, was an influential noble of Chagatai stock under Amir Timur. She married Timur's youngest son Shah Rukh (sources give dates from 1388 to 1393) and bore him Ulugh Beg (1394), Baysunghur (1397) and Muhammad Juki (1402).

Because Shah Rukh preferred prayer and reading to government, Gawhar Shad ran the affairs of the divan and took part in appointing officials and commanders. In 1405 Shah Rukh moved the capital from Samarkand to Herat, and she lived there.

She was a patron of learning and the arts: the Musalla complex in Herat and the Gawhar Shad mosque and madrasa are linked with her name, and in 1418 a mosque was built in Mashhad as well. Painters, architects and poets, Jami among them, gathered at her court.

After Shah Rukh died in 1447 she tried to place her grandson on the throne and for about ten years held great influence over the empire; in the struggles for the throne she was for a time held under arrest by her grandson Abd al-Latif.

On 19 July 1457, when she was over eighty, she was executed on the order of Sultan Abu Said, who had taken Herat. Her mausoleum stands within the madrasa she founded in Herat. A women's university opened in Kabul in 2003 bears her name.