figure 1: Timurid Genealogical Chart (MS. British Library Or. 1406). Three images presenting the right margin, the whole of 23a, and the left margin are put side by side. The chart in question begins on the right margin, about one fourth of the folio’s height up from the bottom. figure 2: The marginal note referring to ʿAlī Chūpān, “al-Amīr Shīrshāh b. al-Amīr Khalīl,” and a group of the Wafāʾiyya Sufis figure 3: Mention of Ibrāhīm b. ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla (“qaburuhu bi-ʿAbd Allāh”) . *Note “qabruhu bi-mashhad al-Riḍā” to the left, for (Abū l-Qāsim) Bābur. Presentation of the Genealogical Chart The genealogical chart in question is written in Arabic and is found in the ms. British Library Or. 1406 (henceforth Or. 1406). Or. 1406 is a notebook that belonged to ʿAlī b. Qāsim al-Mūsawī al-Najafī who flourished in the latter half of the fifteenth century and who was a member of the Banū Muḥsin, a Ḥusaynid family established at Najaf. This notebook was formed as al-Mūsawī al-Najafī, a genealogist with a special interest and competence in the genealogy of ʿAlid sayyids (that is, putative members of the family of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib that has formed the historical core of the House of the Prophet or Ahl al-Bayt), wrote numerous treatises and fragmentary documents into it out of personal interest. In the section between the recto of folio 19 and the verso of folio 28 of Or. 1406 is found a treatise entitled the Bayān al-adʿiyāʾ, a text enumerating people whose claims to sayyid status were rejected by experts of genealogy. The Bayān al-adʿiyāʾ was written by a Ḥusaynid genealogist ʿAlam al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Katīla around the end of the fourteenth century. The Timurid genealogical chart discussed here is also found in this section. The bulk of it is found on the margin of folio, with two smaller parts on the margins inscribed on folios. The chart is written in the same hand as the majority of the texts in the manuscript, that is, in the hand of al-Mūsawī al-Najafī himself (see Figure 1 at the end of the article). It is clear from the layout of the part on folio that al-Mūsawī al-Najafī drew the genealogical chart in the blank spaces left behind on the margins of the Bayān al-adʿiyāʾ, which he had already copied into the same manuscript. In terms of structure, this Timurid genealogical chart may be divided into two sections: the section from Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya in Chart 1; d. 700–1; lower-right on 23a) to Shāhrukh ; 1377–1447; r. 1409–47; mid- left) in which the term ibn (son) is neatly and compactly inscribed; and the section dealing with the remaining sons and descendants of Timur other than Shāhrukh in which the term ibn is conveniently stretched and used as a line connecting a father with his son(s). It is inferred that the section from Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya to Shāhrukh was first written in one action (note that when writing in Arabic, the name Shāhrukh is actually writ-ten first, and then the generations are traced back), and that the other sections were inscribed afterwards on one occasion or on multiple occasions with some restrictions in terms of spacing. In addition to the contrast between the neat- ness in the layout of the first section and the apparent disorderliness in the second, we have other evidence for the accretionary structure of the composition. The Recording of the Genealogical Chart in Or. 1406 Why did al-Mūsawī al-Najafī inscribe the Timurid genealogical chart into Or. 1406? In considering this question, it must be noted that it was written into the folios where the Bayān al-adʿiyāʾ had been copied previously. Of special significance, in addition, is the fact that two genealogies similar to the one shown in the Timurid genealogical chart are recorded among the genealogies refuted in the Bayān al-adʿiyāʾ. One of them is that of the famous Central Asian Sufi saint Aḥmad Yasawī (d. 1166–67), whose genealogy presented in the Bayān al-adʿiyāʾ is word for word identical with our Timurid genealogy down to the generation of ʿAbd al-Ghaffār. The other is of a “B-yākā-khān” (for Bilgä Khan), called the “shaykh of Turkistan” (shaykh Turkistān) in the Bayān al-adʿiyāʾ, whose genealogy is identical with the genealogy presented in the Timurid genealogical chart down to the generation of Ilyās Khān. The validity of these two genealogies is refuted because they invariably claim that the related figures were descended from an ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya, a figure unknown in the literature of the discipline of genealogy and, importantly, one who also appears in our Timurid genealogical chart at its root. It is highly probable, therefore, that al-Mūsawī al-Najafī wrote down this Timurid genealogy as another instance of false genealogies comprising the name of ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya.7 Al-Mūsawī al-Najafī inscribed some other marginal notes on the folios where the Bayān al-adʿiyāʾ is copied to record pieces of impostor-related information not found in the Bayān al-adʿiyāʾ. When did al-Mūsawī al-Najafī write our Timurid genealogical chart into Or. 1406? To answer this question, we have to begin by discussing the process of the formation of Or. 1406 as a whole.8 As mentioned above, Or. 1406 is a notebook that was formed gradually as al-Mūsawī al-Najafī wrote different texts into it. Indications suggest that al-Mūsawī al-Najafī recorded different pieces of writing into this manuscript after it had assumed book form, starting at the verso of folio 1 and continuing quite orderly onto following folios. No date directly referring to the time of this first and principal round of production is found in the manuscript, but the features of the three texts, written allow us to conjecture that this first round of production began at some point during the first half of the 1460s.10 The first two of the three texts, at the same time, allow us to surmise that it was no later than the period immediately following the early 1470s that al-Mūsawī al-Najafī was filling the pages they are written into these two observations, when combined, would suggest the period around the 1460s as the presumed period of the formation of at least the earlier part of Or. 1406. As the available clues suggesting the terminus ad quem of the writing of a text into Or. 1406 are all found in the earlier part of the manuscript, however, we must say that the terminus ad quem of the initial formation of Or. 1406 as a whole remains unclear as of now.