page_title: Turco-Persian tradition
section_title: Through the centuries
hierarchical_section_title: Turco-Persian tradition / Historical outline / Through the centuries
caption_attribution_description: हिन्दी: ताजमहल العربية: مسجد ومقام تاج محل، بمدينة أغرة، بالهند. English: Taj Mahal, Agra, India. Deutsch: Taj Mahal im indischen Agra. Español: Vista del Taj Mahal, Agra, India. Français&#160;: Le Taj Mahal, à Âgrâ, en Inde. Русский: Мавзолей Тадж-Махал, Агра, Индия.
context_page_description: The composite Turco-Persian tradition refers to a distinctive culture that arose in the 9th and 10th centuries in Khorasan and Transoxiana. It was Persianate in that it was centered on a lettered tradition of Iranian origin and it was Turkic insofar as it was founded by and for many generations patronized by rulers of Turkic heredity. In subsequent centuries, the Turco-Persian culture would be carried on further by the conquering peoples to neighbouring regions, eventually becoming the predominant culture of the ruling and elite classes of South Asia, specifically North India, Central Asia and Tarim basin and large parts of West Asia.
context_section_description: The culture of the Turco-Persian world in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries was tested by invading armies of inland Asia. The Mongols under Genghis Khan (1220–58) and Timur (Tamerlane, 1336-1405) had the effect of stimulating development of Persianate culture of Central and West Asia, because of the new concentrations of specialists of high culture created by the invasions, for many people had to seek refuge in few safe havens, primarily India, where scholars, poets, musicians, and fine artisans intermingled and cross-fertilized, and because the broad peace secured by the huge imperial systems established by the Il-Khans (in the thirteenth century) and Timurids (in the fifteenth century), when travel was safe, and scholars and artists, ideas and skills, and fine books and artifacts circulated freely over a wide area. Il-Khans and Timurids deliberately patronized Persianate high culture. Under their rule developed new styles of architecture, Persian literature was encouraged, and flourished miniature painting and book production, and under Timurids prospered Turkic poetry, based on the vernacular known as Chaghatai (today called Uzbek; of Turkic Qarluq origin).
  In that period the Turco-Persian culture of India prospered. Mamluk guards, mostly Turks and Mongols, along with Persians (now known as Tajiks), Khaljis and Afghans, dominated India from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, ruling as Sultans in Delhi. Their society was enriched by influx of Islamic scholars, historians, architects, musicians, and other specialists of high Persianate culture that fled the Mongol devastations of Transoxiana and Khurasan. After the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, Delhi became the most important cultural center of the Muslim east. The Delhi Sultans modeled their life-styles after the Turkic and Persian upper classes, who now predominated in most of Western and Central Asia. They patronized literature and music, but became especially notable for their architecture, because their builders drew from Muslim world architecture to produce a profusion of mosques, palaces, and tombs unmatched in any other Islamic country.
  In Mongol and Timurid times the predominant influences on Turco-Persian culture were imposed from Central Asia, and in this period Turco-Persian culture became sharply distinguishable from the Arabic Islamic world to the west, the dividing zone fell along Euphrates. Socially, the Turco-Persian world was marked by a system of ethnologically defined elite statuses: the rulers and their soldiery were Turkic or Turkic-speaking Mongols; the administrative cadres and literati were Persian. Cultural affairs were marked by characteristic pattern of language use: New Persian was the language of state affairs and literature; New Persian and Arabic the languages of scholarship; Arabic the language of adjudication; and Turkic the language of the military.
  In the sixteenth century arose the Turko-Persian empires of the Ottomans in Asia Minor and South Eastern Europe, Safavids in Persia, and Mughals in India. Thus, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries the territories from South Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Asia Minor to East Bengal were dominated by Turco-Persian dynasties.
  At the beginning of the fourteenth century the Ottomans rose to predominance in Asia Minor, and developed an empire that subjugated most of the Arab Islamic world as well as south-eastern Europe. The Ottomans patronized Persian literature for five and a half centuries and, because Asia Minor was more stable than eastern territories, they attracted great numbers of writers and artists, especially in the sixteenth century. The Ottomans developed distinctive styles of arts and letters. Unlike Persia they gradually shed some of their Persianate qualities. They gave up Persian as the court language, using Turkish instead; a decision that shocked the highly Persianized Mughals in India.
  The Safavids of the fifteenth century were leaders of a Sufi order, venerated by Turkmen tribesmen in eastern Anatolia. They patronized Persian cultu
caption: Taj Mahal
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