Michele Bernardini provides here an insightful analysis of how Timurid historical sources present the emergence of Timur in the Ulus-i Chaghata’i in the 1360s, and the degree to which we can responsibly identify a Timurid “homeland” (vaṭan). The impetus for this inquiry is Bernardini’s ongoing work with the late 15th century epic poem Timūr-nāma by ‘Abd Allāh Hātifī and his discovery that Hātifī uses the term vaṭan on more than one occasion while narrating Timur’s rise to power under Tughluq Timur (d. 1361). Intrigued by the historiographical implications of how the Timurids framed their geographical origins, Bernardini surveys a number of prominent sources (the respective Ẓafar nāma-s by Niẓām al-Dīn Šāmī and Šaraf al-Dīn ‘Alī Yazdī, the Muntaḫab al-tavārīḫ-i mu‘īnī by Mu‘īn al-Dīn Naṭanzī). In this way, Timurid sources present the mid-14th century and the collapse of Qazan Khan (last remnant of Mongol rule in the Ulus-i Chaghata’i) as particularly fractured and politically discombobulated. Divergent geographic and political terms abound in this period, but Bernardini presents a convincing argument that the term vaṭan was increasingly popularized by Timurid historians in an effort to create a historiographical artifice which could propagandize an enduring and sentimental Timurid homeland. Bernardini profiles the originality of this approach to vaṭan by surveying how this term has been understood in the Encyclopedia of Islam with Arabic-centric entries (“waṭan”, “waṭaniyya”), and in doing so introduces how this term was employed in a unique historical space defined by Perso-Islamic traditions and an interloping Turco-Mongol political culture.