Sultan Husayn Bayqara, the last great Timurid ruler of Herat, died in 1506 while setting out on a military campaign to hold his kingdom together. The next year, an Uzbek army led by Muhammad Shaybani took the city, and a hundred years of rule by Timur's own descendants came to an end. Herat changed hands again in 1510, when Shah Ismail, the first Safavid ruler of Iran, took it from the Uzbeks.

This final episode follows what happened to Herat's royal painting workshop once the dynasty that built it was gone. Bihzad, the orphan-turned-master painter introduced earlier in this series, resurfaces in 1522 as head of Shah Ismail's royal library and painters at Tabriz. His pupil Shaykhzada went further east, to Bukhara, and worked for the family of the very Uzbek ruler who had ended Herat's golden age. Meanwhile Timur's own bloodline, driven out of every city it once ruled, found an unlikely second life: Babur, who had visited Herat as a young prince, took Delhi in 1526 and founded the Mughal empire, whose later painters drew on the tradition that had grown up at Herat.

Across this seven-day arc, mothers, sons, advisers, poets, and painters built mosques, observatories, and illuminated manuscripts under Timurid patronage, and every one of them eventually lost the power that made it possible. This episode closes the series by tracing what survived that loss: not a throne, but a craft, carried by the people who knew how to practice it into the courts of the very dynasties that had replaced their patrons.

Enjoyed this episode? Dive deeper into Islamic history with the Archives app - bite-sized lessons, real stories, and daily adventures you can finish in 5 minutes.

📲 Download the Archives app here
🌐 Learn more here
📸 Follow Basel on Instagram here

If this episode helped you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Assalamu alaykum, and we'll see you in the next one.