Our Notes & References

First book edition of the first translation into Russian of Timur’s legal code – by two female teachers from Tashkent. An important edition at the end of the ‘Great Game’, when Central Asia was dominated by the Russian Empire.

Very rare: we couldn’t locate any copy in the America, and only two in Western institutions (both in the UK: BL and University of London), and three in Russia (RNB, RGB, GPIB). No examples at auctions in the West, and only one in Russia, in very bad condition.

Ulozhenie Timura, also known as “Malfuzat-i Temuri” or “The Statutes of Timur”, is a set of instructions for the descendants of the Turco-Mongol conqueror and one of the most powerful and ruthless military leaders. “We could hardly have imagined that a Tatar prince, whose conquests were once seen as brigandage, had composed treatises on political and military strategy and devised a very astute system for his successors,” observed Louis-Mathieu Langlès, the French translator of Timur’s “Statutes” (our translation here and elsewhere).

Highly impressive for the versatile and detailed guidance, “The Statutes” comprise two parts: Timur’s autobiography and instructions on state and military organisation. These include the duties of officials, the structure of the judicial system, the rights of warriors, common people, and the poor, as well as regulations concerning conquered populations, feudal land ownership, taxes, and even the rituals of Timur’s court.

Originally compiled in Old Uzbek (Chagatai, or Central Asian Turkic), the text was preserved through its 17th-century Persian translation. In 1783, he British Davy and White published the Persian text alongside an English translation under the title Institutes, Political and Military. Written by the Great Timour…. An expanded French translation, Institutes, Politiques et Militaires de Tamerlan…, was later published by Langlès in 1787: this is the version which formed the basis for our “famous Kazan edition of 1894” (Karomatov), translated and edited by the orientalist, ethnographer, and pioneering researcher of Turkestan, Nikolai Petrovich Ostroumov (1846-1930).

As Ostroumov notes in his preface, the translation was unusually undertaken not by specialists but by teachers from the Tashkent Women’s Secondary School — A. G. Zaionchkovskaia and S. A. Piatnitskaia (first part) — as well as two students of 8th grade, D. Roitman and V. Stepanov, under the guidance of A. F. Pronevskii (second part). This first Russian translation was initially published in the magazine Pravoslavnyi sobesednik [Orthodox Companion] in 1892-93 at Ostroumov’s initiative. According to the Russian National Library catalog, the magazine’s publication was overseen by the Kazan Theological Academy Missionary Anti-Muslim Department (!).

Some parts or related texts were published shortly before this edition, however nothing was as complete or reliable as Ostroumov’s undertaking. A translation of Timur’s biography by Nikolai Suvorov, not to be confused with Timur’s autobiography from “The Statutes”, was published in Tashkent in 1890, based on Langles’ text from his 1787 edition, under the title Zhizn Timura [Life of Timur] – this excluded any legal text. 1894 also saw another publication of Timur’s autobiography from “The Statutes”, still excluding the legal code, this time translated directly from a Turkic manuscript, which itself was a translation from Farsi. Due to Nil Lykoshin, this translation was published as Avtobiografiia Tamerlana [Tamerlan’s Autobiography] but “was based on a defective and incomplete manuscript […] and therefore it is hardly advisable to rely on it” (Karomatov). In his preface, Lykoshin noted that the Turkic manuscript had originally been published by Ostroumov, who also helped edit his edition: a small world indeed.

A facsimile of the present edition was republished in Tashkent in 1968, accompanied by a brief preface by Ibragim Muminov.

Provenance

Ownership inscription in Russian “K. Ragidin[?]. 1918, July, Kazan”.

Bibliography

Karomatov Kh., Ulozhenie Temura. Tashkent, Izd. Lit. i iskusstva im. Gafura Guliama, 1999.