Timur Khwaja

Timur Khwaja (Persian: تیمور خواجه, Tatar: Timer Xuca) was briefly Khan of the Golden Horde in 1361, having succeeded his father Khiḍr Khan.

Timur Khwaja
Timur Khwaja in later Russian chronicle.
Khan of the Golden Horde Western Half (Blue Horde)
Reign	1361
Predecessor	Khiḍr Khan
Successor	Ordu Malik
Died	August/September 1361
Dynasty	Borjigin
Father	Khiḍr Khan
Religion	Islam

The forceful Khiḍr Khan, a descendant of Jochi's son Shiban according to the Tawārīḫ-i guzīdah-i nuṣrat-nāmah,[1] asserted himself as ruler of the Golden Horde in June 1360, having eliminated his rival Nawruz Beg. Nevertheless, the new khan's authority was limited by the presumable autonomy of the former beglerbeg Mamai Kiyat in the west, and the renewed autonomy of the former Ulus of Orda in the east, under the local Jochid khan Qara-Noqai. A greater threat proved to be the advance of another Jochid prince, Ordu Malik, on the capital Sarai in 1361. In circumstances that remain obscure, Khiḍr Khan and his son Qutlugh were now murdered by another son of Khiḍr Khan, Timur Khwaja, who seized the throne at Sarai, in August 1361.[2] Timur Khwaja would reign for only a short time, possibly five weeks.[3] Nevertheless, coins were minted in his name at Sarai and Mokhshi; the latter might have been Timur Khwaja's original base.[4] He was opposed from the start by his uncle, Murād (or Murīd), who declared himself khan at Gülistan, by the advancing Ordu Malik, and possibly by Mamai in the west. In these circumstances, Timur Khwaja quickly lost control of Sarai and fled back east of the Volga before being killed. Unsurprisingly, he had accomplished little. He was succeeded at Sarai by the triumphant Ordu Malik.[5] The murder of Khiḍr Khan by Timur Khwaja and the latter's brief and unsuccessful reign contributed to the deepening of the Golden Horde's political crisis, from which it would never completely recover.

The brevity and confusion of Timur Khwaja's reign are reflected in the minimal information preserved in the sources, as well as a great deal of variation as to the details. The above summary represents the most generally accepted version of the events, although there exist slightly different interpretations.[6] The sources exhibit disagreements even over the name of Khiḍr Khan's parricide son, some of them apparently confusing him with Khiḍr Khan's brother Murād (or Murīd).[7] The very unreliable but formerly historiographically influential Muʿīn-ad-Dīn Naṭanzī (earlier known as the "Anonymous of Iskandar") gives Timur Khoja impossibly as the son of Ordu Shaykh (i.e., Ordu Malik) and as the brother of Murīd, and gives the future khan ʿAzīz Shaykh as son of Timur Khwaja. Naṭanzī also attributes a reign of some two years to Timur Khwaja, and has him murdered, unrecognized, by the husband of a woman he assaulted.[8] Given Naṭanzī's obvious errors, it is difficult to know how much of the remaining information he relates may be reliable. Even the Russian chronicles disagree as to whether it was the forces of Mamai or those of Ordu Malik that terminated Timur Khwaja's reign; moreover, the length of this brief reign also varies among different sources, from about a week to two weeks, to five weeks, ignoring Naṭanzī's impossible two years.[9]