Farming, Irrigation and Landholding under the Timurids

In the fifteenth century, Timurid rulers governed agricultural regions across Central Asia and Iran, especially Transoxiana, around the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers in modern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and Khorasan in northeastern Iran and western Afghanistan. In these dry landscapes, cultivation clustered around river-fed oases. Canals brought water to fields, orchards and gardens, while grants and endowments determined who received income from cultivated districts.

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Water, fields and orchards

The late-fifteenth-century Timurid prince and memoirist Babur described the Fergana Valley, in present-day eastern Uzbekistan and neighboring Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, as rich in grain and fruit. A stream ran from Osh through its suburbs toward Andijan, with orchards along its banks; a main canal from the hills passed between a mosque and the town. This Fergana and Osh water network supplied gardens and settlements along the route. Water access connected cultivation beyond a single household’s plot.

Ruy González de Clavijo, an envoy who visited Samarkand, in present-day Uzbekistan, in 1404, saw streams running through the city and its extensive gardens, alongside cotton plots and melon grounds. Villagers peeled melons, sliced them and dried the pieces in the sun, preserving a seasonal crop for later use.

Repairing and extending irrigation

Major canals and oasis systems needed political backing as well as local use. During Shah Rukh’s reign (1409–1447), officials repaired irrigation in the Marv oasis, in present-day Turkmenistan, after its system had been damaged during earlier Mongol invasions. Under Sultan Abu Sa‘id (1451–1469), his senior minister, or vizier, Qutb al-Din Tawus Semnani built the Juy-i Sultani canal northeast of Herat in western Afghanistan. The project accompanied an increase in cultivated acreage, and Abu Sa‘id’s administration confirmed established patterns of water use. A canal carried water from its source into agricultural ground, so the rules for sharing that flow affected fields already served as well as newly cultivated plots. These Timurid irrigation repairs and canal works joined construction to the allocation of water.

Land, revenue and religious endowments

A soyurghal was a ruler’s favor or grant. Under the Timurids it could assign a district or its revenues to a prince or military leader; under Shah Rukh, the grant could encompass a whole province. A grant directed tax revenue, while cultivators did the work of producing the harvest. In this way, the soyurghal grant shaped where agricultural income went and how much reached the ruler’s treasury.

Religious foundations also held agricultural property. A waqf is an endowment whose property or revenues support a designated religious or charitable purpose. Sultan Husayn Bayqara, who ruled Khorasan from Herat late in the fifteenth century, took a personal interest in farming and gardening and appears to have organized production on state lands and on the endowed lands of shrine complexes. The Timurids developed these complexes as centers for managing irrigated agriculture. Cultivators’ work therefore supported shrine upkeep as well as court and military revenue. The wider Timurid economy depended on both cultivated production and the division of its proceeds.

A later record of Herat agriculture

The Persian manual Ershad al-Zira‘a was completed in Herat in 1515, after the Uzbek conquest of the city in 1507 and amid a famine from 1513 to 1515. Its author, Qasem b. Yusuf Abunasri, was an accountant or surveyor attached to the shrine complex at Gazurgah, north of Herat. To assemble the manual, he consulted crop registers and experienced agricultural workers, especially landscape architect Mirak Sayyed Ghiyas and his workmen. Mirak had designed and planted formal gardens for Sultan Husayn Bayqara, and later worked for Babur in India and Ubayd-Allah Khan in Bukhara. The manual’s chapters on soils, crops, orchards, grafting and preservation drew on knowledge shaped by that practical work. Written as Herat’s agriculture faced severe disruption, the book sought to preserve regional farming and gardening practices and encourage their revival under the new Safavid government.