Sultan Hossein Byqara

Hossein Bayqara (1438 – May 4, 1506) was a Timurid ruler of Herat from 1469 to 1506, with a brief interruption in 1470. His father was Mansur, a great-grandson of Timur. He is also referred to as Sultan-Husayn Mirza. Mansur died when Hossein Bayqara was around seven or eight years of age; the latter ended up in the service of Babur Ibn-Baysunkur, ruler of Herat, in 1452. Following Babur's death in 1457 and the subsequent invasion of Khurasan by the Timurid ruler of Samarkand, Abu Sa'id, Husayn adopted the life of a mercenary. After a while, he decided#### to fight for himself and wrested Gurgan from the Black Sheep Turkmen. Later on he would conquer Mazandaran. At first submissive to Abu Sa'id, he took advantage of the Samarkand ruler's attempts to put down a revolt in Transoxiana in 1460; by the following year he was laying siege to Herat, which had fallen into Abu Sa'id's hands in 1459. However, he was soon defeated and forced to take refuge in Khwarazm, from which he began making pillaging raids into Khurasan; these raids were conducted in earnest starting in 1464. Seeking to protect himself against Abu Sa'id, he received the help of the Uzbeks. Upon Abu Sa'ids death at the hands of the White Sheep Turkmen in 1469, his empire collapsed. Hossein Byqara gained control of the city. His boundary with the White Sheep started on the southern edge of the Caspian Sea, running south, then east across the north of the Dasht-e Lut, ending at Lake Hamun. His border with the Timurids was the Oxus River. He more or less respected both borders, refusing to cross north in an attempt to capture Transoxiana from the northern Timurids. He was probably aware of the Uzbek threat to the region, and was wise enough not to pursue a border with this dangerous tribal people.

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