Ghiyath al-Din Naqqash

Mawlānā Ghiyāth al-Dīn Naqqāsh (; ) was an envoy of the Timurid ruler of Persia and Transoxania, Mirza Shahrukh (r. 1404–1447), to the court of the Yongle Emperor (r. 1402–1424) of the Ming Dynasty of China, known for an important account he wrote of his embassy. His name has also been transcribed in English works as Ḡīāṯ-al-Dīn Naqqaš, Ghiyasu'd-Din Naqqash, Ghiyāthu'd-Dīn Naqqāsh,

Ghiyasu'd-Din Naqqash was the official diarist of the large embassy sent by Mirza Shahrukh, whose capital was in Herat, to the court of China's Yongle Emperor in 1419. According to Vasily Bartold, he was a painter, as the moniker "Naqqash" indicated.

Nothing is known of Ghiyasu'd-Din Naqqash beyond what he tells in his diary. Rosemarie Quiring-Zoche suggested in 1980 that he may have been the same person as Mawlānā Ghiyāthu'd-Dīn Simnānī known from other sources, but later authors have viewed this suggestion as not proven by any evidence. From Herat the envoys went via Balkh to Samarqand. They expected to meet there with another group of envoys, sent by Shahrukh's viceroy of Transoxania, Ulugh Beg. However, it turned out that Ulugh Beg's delegation had left already, and Shahrukh's party had to proceed separately. They left Samarqand for China on February 25, 1420, along with Chinese envoys returning home.

The embassy entered China at the western end of the Great Wall at Jiayuguan on August 29, 1420.

From Suzhou, the embassy was transported on to Beijing by the Chinese courier service (yichuan), over the 99 courier stations along the 2900-km route. The embassy travelled via Ganzhou, Lanzhou (where they were impressed by the pontoon bridge over which they crossed the Yellow River), Xi'an (although the [extant part of] the diary does not cover this city), another Yellow River crossing at Tong Pass (November 18), the capital of North Zhili Zhengding (December 3), and reached Beijing on December 14.

Naqqash's account contains a detailed description of the court ceremonies (in particular, the early-morning audiences), the banquets combined with musical and artistic performances (he was especially impressed by Chinese acrobats), and the administration of justice (he got to witness death by a thousand cuts).

On May 18, 1421, the envoys left Beijing for their trip home. With several months' delays in Ganzhou and Xiaozhou due to Mongol incursions, they only were able to leave China, via the same Jiayuguan checkpoint, on January 13, 1422. The names of all members of the party were checked by the border authorities against the register which recorded their original entry into the country, and once everything matched, they were allowed to leave.

Ghiyasu'd-Din Naqqash kept a diary of his travels throughout China, where he wrote about China's wealthy economy and huge urban markets, its efficient courier system as compared to that in Persia, the hospitality of his hosts at the courier stations in providing comfortable lodging and food, and the fine luxurious goods and craftsmanship of the Chinese.

The earliest known work containing Ghiyāthu'd-Dīn's account is the Persian chronicle (whose name is variously transcribed as Zobdat al-tawāriḵ-e Bāysonḡori or Zubdatu-t-tawārīḫ-i Bāysunġurī ) (زبده التواریخ بایسنقری), compiled by Shah Rukh's court historian Hafiz-i Abru (died 1430).

Turkic translations By the late 15th century Turkic translations of Ghiyāthu'd-Dīn account appear as well. One such translation, bearing a rather misleading title Tārīkh-i Khaṭā'ī ("History of Cathay"), has survived to our day in Cambridge University Library. It is a copy of the translation made in AH 900 (AD 1494/1495) in Ardistān by Hājjī bin Muhammad, for the city's Turkic-speaking governor who did not speak Persian. The document is considered unique by modern researchers in that it is the only known Turkic translation of Ghiyāthu'd-Dīn's work prepared outside of the Ottoman Empire. According to modern linguists, the idiom used by the translator, which Ildikó Bellér-Hann calls "Türk ʿAcämī", can be described as "the historical predecessor of what is today called the Azerbaijani Turkic language". Notably, it served as one of the three main sources for the information on China in Katip Çelebi's Jihān-numā, along with Khataynameh (a later (1516) account by the merchant 'Ali Akbar Khata'i) and a European source. In the late 1960s, L. Carrington Goodrich of Columbia University realized that K.M. Maitra's translation was very much out of print, and practically unobtainable, as a result of Maitra's displacement due to the 1947 Partition of India. In order to have this work "rescued from oblivion", he had a microfilm of the British Museum's copy of the book sent to him, and had it reprinted in New York in 1970 with his own introduction.

Wheeler Thackston published his English translation of Naqqash's account in 1989. A critical edition, it made use of several known versions of the story.

A Russian translation of Ghiyasu'd-Din Naqqash's diary (as per Hafiz Abru) was published in Kazakhstan in 2009.