Abu Sa'id Mirza

Who was Abu Sa'id Mirza?

Abū Saʿīd Mirza was the son of Muḥammad son of Miran Shah son of Amir Timur, and was a Timurid Empire ruler in Transoxiana, Khurasan and the southern Caspian region, what is today parts of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Azerbaijan and Afghanistan and member of the Timurid dynasty.

Abū Saʿīd was the great-grandson of Timur, the grandson of Miran Shah, and the nephew of Ulugh Beg. He was the grandfather of Babur, by his son Umar Sheikh Mirza, the founder of the Mughal Empire in South Asia. As a young man his ancestry made him a principal in the century-long struggle for the remnants of Timur's empire waged between Timur's descendants, the Black Sheep Turkomans, and the White Sheep Turkomans.

He raised an army but failed to gain a foothold in Samarkand or Bukhara; established his base at Yasi and conquered much of Turkestan in 1450. In June 1451, he captured Samarkand with the aid of the Uzbek Turks under Abūl-Khayr Khān, thus securing rulership of the eastern part of Timur's Empire, Transoxiana. He fought an inconclusive war with Mirza Abul-Qasim Babur bin Baysonqor of Khorasan in 1454; and took advantage of his cousin Jahan Shah's capture of Herat late in 1457 to capture it for himself in 1458, thus acquiring the rest of Timur's heartland and becoming the most powerful of the Timurid princes in central Asia. He defeated an alliance of three other Timurid princes at the Battle of Sarakhs in March 1459, and conquered eastern Iran and most of Afghanistan by 1461, agreeing with Jahan Shah to divide Iran between them; when the White Sheep Turkoman chieftain Uzun Hasan attacked and killed Jahan Shah, Abu Sa'id spurned Uzun Hasan's peace offer and answered Jahan Shah's son's request for aid.