Bureaucrats’Governor: An Investigation of the Transformation of theTimurid Military-political Structure in Shahrokh’s Era

Timur’s period was the time of the conquest and evolution of the empire during which a military aristocracy played the most salient role in the structure of power. In Shahrokh’s era, a kind of structural transformation occurred in the nature and manner of the exertion of power that could be considered as the symbol of passing the Timurid empire from a military-dominated discourse to a military-civil structure. In this era, it seems that, for the first time throughout Iran’s history, the governors and military elements had distanced from the merely military functions and permanent stances of the men of the sword by engaging themselves in administrative and executive activities. The Present Study employed a descriptive analytic method. It not only ponders on the administrative structure of the Timurid period, and effort to a conflict between the literati and the men of the sword but also addresses the major question of what the effects of the transformation of the political structure and the institutionalization of the Timurid power in Shahrokh’s period on the function and stance of the military governors of this period were. The results of the research reports that in the light of the realistic personality of Shahrokh’s and the institutionalization of power in this period, the administrative structure was improved so that some governors paid attention to executive affairs and created a new political experience in Iran’s middle period.