“Sharafu'd-Dín,” says Rieu, “attained a position of great eminence, no less by his learning and piety than by the rare elegance of his style, and was for a long time the favourite companion of Sháh-rukh and of his son Mírzá Ibráhím Sulṭán. It is related in the Ta'ríkh-i-Rashídí * that the former entrusted to his keeping and able tuition Yúnus Khán, the young Khán of the Moghuls, who had been captured in 832/1428-9 by Mírzá Ulugh Bey, and who stayed with Sharafu'd-Dín till the latter's death. In 846/1442-3 Mírzá Sulṭán Muḥammad, who had been appointed Governor of 'Iráq and established his residence in Qum, invited Sharafu'd-Dín, who was then teaching crowds of pupils in his native city, to his court, and kept him there as an honoured guest and trusted adviser. When some years later, in 850/1446-7, the Prince having raised the standard of rebellion, Sháh-rukh came with an army to Iṣfahán to enforce his submission, and ordered several of his ill-advised councillors for execution, Sharafu'd-Dín, who was also ac­cused of having incited the Prince to revolt, was rescued from danger by the timely interference of Mírzá 'Abdu'l-Laṭíf, who, on the plea that his father, Mírzá Ulugh Bey, required the Mawláná's assistance for his astronomical observations, despatched him to Samarqand. After the death of Sháh-rukh, Sulṭán Muḥammad, then master of Khurásán, gave him leave to go back to Yazd. Sharafu'd-Dín returned to his birthplace in 853/1449-1450, and settled in the neighbouring village of Taft. He died there in 858/1454, and was buried in the precincts of a college built by himself and called after him Sharafiyya.”

Some manuscripts of the Ẓafar-náma contain “an Intro­duction treating of the genealogy of the Turkish Kháns and of the history of Chingíz Khán and his descendants down to the time of Tímúr.” * This was compiled in 822/1419, six years earlier than the Ẓafar-náma. It is instructive to compare parallel sections of the histories of Niẓámu'd-Dín Shámí and Sharafu'd-Dín 'Alí Yazdí, so as to see how the latter has amplified and embroidered the work of his predecessor; and, did space allow, it would not be without interest to offer side by side translations of such parallel passages, e.g. the account of the Battle of Angora (June 16, 1402), which resulted in the overthrow and capture of the Ottoman Sulṭán Báyazíd, called “the Thunder-bolt” (Yil-dirim ). Since Sharafu'd-Dín's later work, for all its faults of taste and style, probably contains all or nearly all the matter chronicled by Niẓám-i-Shámí, it is doubtful whether the work of the latter, though more desirable in itself on account of its priority, as well as of its greater simplicity and concision, will ever be published.