Ghiyath al-Din Naqqash (1417-1422 CE)

by Caroline Stone

Some twenty embassies were exchanged between China and Central Asia in the early 15th century, two of which have been recorded in the accounts of Ghiyath al-Din Naqqash and Chen Cheng. The former is fascinating in that it shows Ming China as it appeared to a court painter from Herat and for the evidence it provides for a period of mutual curiosity and openness to the outside world.

Shah Rukh, who reigned from 1404 to 1447, was the son of Timur and ruler of Persia and Central Asia. He had an insatiable interest in the world beyond his vast domains and took great pleasure in both receiving and despatching embassies. In 1414, the Yongle (Yung-lo) emperor, Chengzu (Ch’eng-tsu), third of the Ming dynasty, sent an embassy to Herat, to the court of Shah Rukh, records of which survive in Chinese sources. This was a return visit and 17 Central Asian ambassadors accompanied the Chinese party back from Nanking.

Three years later, Shah Rukh decided to mount a much larger embassy to the court of Yongle. Not only he, but five of his sons, governors of the various provinces of their father’s empire, sent envoys. One of the representatives of Timur’s third son, Baysunqur, was a well-known painter, Ghiyath al-Din Naqqash. The historian Hafiz-i Abru tells us:

The above-mentioned Khwaja Ghiyasu’d Din (Ghiyath al-Din) ever since the day he had gone out of the capital of Herat with the idea of his journey to Cathay till the very day of his return had set down in the form of a diary concerning whatever place he had visited and everything he had seen including the particulars of the route, the description of the country, buildings, the institutions in the cities, the magnificence of the kings, the system of Government and administration together with certain wonderful objects which he had observed in that country, by reason of his being trustworthy in character and having been written from a disinterested and unbiased motive the substance and gist of those narratives are reproduced herewith.

Almost three years later, on 11th Ramadan, AH 825/29 August, AD 1422, the embassy returned to Herat. The mission had been successfully accomplished. The fate of the original manuscript of the diary is unknown. It may have contained sketches and paintings of the things Ghiyath al-Din describes so graphically, perhaps in a separate album. The text was preserved in two versions, the earliest being that of Hafiz-i Abru, who included it in his Zubdat al-Tawarikh (The Cream of Chronicles), a universal history, the final volume of which records the reign of Shah Rukh down to 1427. Slightly different versions are incorporated in the Matla’ al-Sa‘dayn of ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Samarqandi, the Habib al-Siyar of Khwandamir and the Rawdat al-Safa of Mirkhwand.

The diary is a lively series of scenes of the most striking events which Ghiyath al-Din observed and it comes as no surprise to learn that the author was an artist. The importance of the diary lies in the evidence it provides for the contacts between China and the world of Iran, the glimpses of the festivals and customs of Ming China, and the attitudes of a sophisticated man from Herat when confronted with a completely different culture.