1408
Saray Mulk Khanum (Bibi-Khanym)
Chief consort of Amir Timur
A Chinggisid princess who became Timur's senior wife, adviser and the guardian of Timurid princes. In Samarkand her name lives on in the Bibi-Khanym Mosque and Mausoleum.
© Adam Harangozó, CC BY-SA 4.0
A khan's daughter, 'the Great Lady'
Saray Mulk Khanum — modern scholars also read her name as Saray Malik Khanum — was born around 1341, a daughter of Qazan Khan of the Chagatai Khanate and thus a direct descendant of Genghis Khan. She was first married to Amir Husayn, grandson of Transoxiana's ruler Qazaghan; when Husayn died in 1370, Timur took her as his wife, and the marriage gave him the title Gurkan, 'royal son-in-law'.
At court she held the highest rank among the wives — the Katta Khanum, or 'Great Lady', popularly Bibi Khanum. She had no children of her own, but several of Timur's grandsons, among them Muhammad Sultan, Khalil Sultan and the young Ulugh Beg, grew up in her care, and while Timur was on campaign she wielded considerable authority. Clavijo, who saw her at a feast in the Kan-i Gil meadow outside Samarkand in 1404, described her red silk gown, her towering headdress of pearls, rubies and feathers, and a face so thickly whitened it looked like paper.
Madrasa, mausoleum and legend
According to the sources, in the late 1390s she paid for a madrasa opposite Timur's great Friday mosque. Only its foundations survive, along with a domed mausoleum whose crypt is believed to hold her mother, the queen herself and other Timurid women. The mosque's popular name, Bibi-Khanym, also comes from her; the folk tale of an architect who fell in love with the queen is a charming legend with no historical basis.
She outlived Timur by a few years, dying in 1408 (some sources say 1406). In 1941 the sarcophagus was opened and her remains were taken to a museum; in 1950 they were reburied in the crypt.
