Discusses the importance of intellectual networks and the formation of the republic of letters in Islamic history.

¿lker Evrim Binbas¿ is a lecturer in Early Modern Asian Empires in the Department of History at Royal Holloway, University of London.

1. Introduction; 2. The making of a Timurid intellectual; 3. Informal intellectual networks in Timurid Iran; 4. The prophet of Cairo and the master of Isfahan; 5. The articulation of a princely political discourse; 6. Writing the past; 7. The king's two lineages: the evolution of a politico-theological idea; 8. Epilogue.