This study investigates the linguocultural modelling of key historical concepts in Timurid chronicles, focusing on how cultural knowledge, ideological values, and socio-political worldviews are encoded and transmitted through language in classical historiographic discourse. (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Evans, 2019). Drawing on a corpus of primary Timurid-era sources—including Temurnoma, Zafarnoma, and related chronicles — the research employs an integrated methodology combining cognitive linguistics, conceptual analysis, and discourse-oriented cultural linguistics. The analysis reconstructs culturally salient concepts such as authority, justice, statehood, rituality, military ethos, and territoriality, revealing their semantic evolution and symbolic configurations within Timurid intellectual culture. Through the identification of conceptual metaphors, culturally grounded lexical markers, and narrative framing strategies, the study demonstrates how historical concepts were linguistically modelled to shape collective cultural memory and legitimize political power. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of Central Asian historical discourse, offering an innovative linguocultural framework applicable to the study of pre-modern texts across diverse cultural traditions. This research provides a theoretically grounded and empirically supported model useful for modern cognitive-historical studies, comparative cultural linguistics, and the interdisciplinary analysis of historical narratives.

Linguocultural modelling, Timurid chronicles, historical concepts

Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī. Ẓafarnāma. Critical editions and facsimile manuscripts. Tehran: Anjuman-e Āsār-e Millī, various editions.

Niẓām al-Dīn Shāmī. Ẓafarnāma. Ed. Felix Tauer. Prague: Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences, 1937.

Salāḥ al-Dīn Tashkandī. Temurnoma (Timurnāma). Facsimile manuscripts (e.g., Walters Ms. W.648).

Majmaʿ al-Tavārīkh (Anonymous Timurid-era compendium). Critical editions.

Malfūẓāt-i Timūr (purported “autobiographical” accounts attributed to Timur; now considered later fabrications). Various manuscript editions.

Subtelny, Maria Eva. Timurids in Transition: Turko-Persian Politics and Acculturation in Medieval Iran. Leiden: Brill, 2007.

Woods, John E. The Timurid Dynasty. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

Manz, Beatrice Forbes. The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane. Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Manz, Beatrice Forbes. “Tamerlane and His Principality.” Journal of Asian History 23 (1989): 1–28.

Melville, Charles. “Persian Historiography after Shāh Rukh.” In Persian Literature in the Safavid Period. Leiden: Brill, 2012.

Aigle, Denise. Le “cycle” de Tamerlan: Historiographie timouride et politique impériale. Leuven: Peeters, 2004.

Bernard O’Kane. Timurid Architecture in Khurasan. Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers, 1987.

Roxburgh, David. The Persian Album, 1400–1600: From Dispersal to Collection. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

Thackston, Wheeler M. A Century of Princes: Sources on Timurid History and Art. Cambridge, MA: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, 1989.

Lakoff, George, & Johnson, Mark. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.

Evans, Vyvyan. Cognitive Linguistics: A Complete Introduction. Routledge, 2019.

Sharifian, Farzad. Cultural Linguistics. John Benjamins, 2017.

Wodak, Ruth. The Politics of Fear: Discourse and Domination. Sage, 2015.

van Dijk, Teun A. Discourse and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Chilton, Paul. Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. Routledge, 2004.

Saeed, John I. Semantics. Wiley-Blackwell, 2016.

Assmann, Jan. Cultural Memory and Early Civilization. Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Bourdieu, Pierre. Language and Symbolic Power. Harvard University Press, 1991.

White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.

Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative. University of Chicago Press, 1984.

Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Routledge, 2002.

Persianate Kingship, Political Cosmology, and Metaphor

Azfar Moin. The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam. Columbia University Press, 2012.

Stewart, Devin. “The Metaphor of the Body Politic in Islamic Political Thought.” Journal of Islamic Studies.

Bosworth, C. Edmund. The Later Ghaznavids: Splendour and Decay. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1977 (Persianate legitimizing titles context).

Blair, Sheila S. Islamic Calligraphy. Edinburgh University Press, 2006.

Gruber, Christiane. The Timurid Book of Ascension. London: Routledge, 2010.

Kadoi, Yuka. Arts of the Timurid Period in Asia. Routledge, 2015.

Elaine Wright. Muraqqa‘: Imperial Mughal Albums. The British Library, 2008.

Simpson, Marianna S. The Illustration of an Epic: The Earliest Manuscripts of the Shahnama. Bibliotheca Persica Press, 1979.

Central Asian Studies & Persianate Historiography

DeWeese, Devin. Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde. Penn State Press, 1994.

Paul, Jürgen. The State and the Military: The Samanid and Timurid Empires. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1994.

Biran, Michal. “The Chinggisid World Order.” In The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire. Cambridge University Press.

Fazlallah ibn Ruzbihan Khunji. Tarikh-i Alamara-ye Amini. Critical editions (contextual for Timurid–post-Timurid political discourse).

Walters Art Museum. Timurnama (W.648) — Safavid-era illustrated manuscript.

Harvard Art Museums — Illustrated Zafarnama folios (e.g., "Timur Celebrates His Conquest of Delhi", "Timur Hunting").

British Library Persian Manuscripts — digital facsimiles of Timurid-era historical texts.

Metropolitan Museum of Art — Persianate illustrated manuscripts in the Timurid–post-Timurid tradition.