Ali-Shir Nava'i
In Herat, present-day Afghanistan, where Mirkhvand spent the greater part of his life, he gained the favor of a famous patron of letters, Ali-Shir Nava'i (1440–1501), who served his old schoolfellow, the reigning Sultan Husayn Mirza Bayqara ("r". 1469–1506), the last Tīmūrid ruler in Iran, first as keeper of the seal, afterwards as governor of Jurjan. At the request of Mir ʿAli-Shir, himself a distinguished statesman and writer, Mirkhvand began about 1474, in the quiet khanqah of Khilashyah, which his patron had founded in Herat as a house of retreat for literary men of merit, his great work on universal history, the "Rawżat aṣ-ṣafāʾ" ( "Garden of Purity").