Timurid Tents and Enclosures based on the Juxtaposition of Zafar-nameh of Yazdi and Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo

As the histories record accounts, alluding to contexts of events is unavoidable; so they include some descriptions of the handicrafts belonging to the context, therefore, the histories can be placed among the main resources of art and culture subjects. Subjects such as tents, which were very usual in Timurid time. Different kinds of Timurid tents were introduced by various native terms in the histories such as Zafar-nameh. However, the tents due to being used routinely those days and writing about such things in the histories was disdained, there are few detailed descriptions of them in the book and most of them are couched in literary terms. So the lack of information cannot depict their characteristic features thoroughly. Fortunately, the absence is eliminated by Clavijo’s descriptions in his book, contemporary with Zafar-nameh. As the tourists and visitors are more interested in unusual things, which are almost rare in their lands, they give much more explanations. Clavijo, the ambassador of Spain, has compiled an extremely detailed account on the various tents during his journey to Timur territory. This article, based on resources, extracts the names referred to tents from Zafar-nameh at first, and a general meaning of each word according to the context. Then by the juxtaposition with Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo brings the detailed descriptions to complete the depiction of various tents. However, passing the centuries after Timurid time and extinction of some kinds of tents have made their names disused and forgotten or their meanings completely changed.