Policy-Implementation Means in the court of Sultan Ḥosayn Bāyqarā

In Iran during the Timurid era, the fundamental-civilizational difference between the sedentary society of Iran and the nomadic communities of Tatar shepherds made the possibility of combining and merging the traditions of these two groups to be ruled out, and because of this, the non-urban traditions of the steppe and the urban traditions settled inevitably together and co-existed. This confrontation has been studied from different perspectives; however, the present article aims at going through the aforementioned confrontation from a new perspective by focusing on policy-implementation means. Thus, the present article, using a descriptive-explanatory method, attempts to introduce and typify the means of implementing political power in Herat during the reign of Sultan Ḥosayn Bāyqarā among three groups of people of the sword, people of the pen and the Sultan himself. The conclusion of this article indicates that in the court of Sultan Ḥosayn Bāyqarā, we are faced with two main types of political means: urban and steppe. The people of the sword relied on "blood relations and tribe", "Qazāqhood", and the tradition of "succession"; the people of the pen also relied on "setting up parties", "bestowing/withholding offices", "distributing money", and finally "looting and sending people to exile"; and the Sultan himself, in addition to controlling all the urban and steppe means, sought to realize his political objectives by benefiting from two additional means: "joint office-holding" and "granting/withholding special favors".