“Sharafnama-i Shahi”

Before you is one of the principal state chronicles of the Shaybanid era – Sharafnama-i Shahi by Hafiz Tanish Bukhari. Also known as the Abdullanama, this work was produced in the sixteenth century at the court of Abdullah Khan II, the ruler who unified much of Transoxiana.
This manuscript is not a late reproduction, but a copy created very close to the events it describes. For that reason, it conveys the atmosphere of the Bukhara court with unusual immediacy.
Notice the dense Bukhara style of nastaliq script. Unlike the more decorative manuscripts produced in India, the calligraphy here appears restrained and disciplined. Red rubrications guide the reader through the text, while the broad margins suggest that the manuscript was intended for serious study and political use rather than pure display.
The chronicle is valuable not only for its accounts of military campaigns and rulers. Hafiz Tanish also describes madrasas, caravanserais, irrigation systems, relations with Sufi sheikhs, and the urban life of Central Asia. Through manuscripts like this, sixteenth-century Bukhara emerges not as legend, but as a living intellectual and political center of the Islamic world.