This article examines Giyasiddin Khwandamir’s “Maosir al-muluk” (composed c. 905/1499-1500) as a source for reconstructing the urban planning culture and waqf institutions of the Timurid state (771-911/1370-1506). The work is analyzed through the source-studies (manbashunoslik) method of comparative-historical criticism, placing Khwandamir’s testimony in dialogue with a corpus of roughly twenty Timurid-era and pre-Timurid chronicles, diplomatic accounts, and surviving legal deeds (waqfnamahs), as well as with the modern Turkish, Central Asian, and Western historiographical traditions that have engaged this material. The analysis addresses three interlocking themes: the spatial-architectural typology of Timurid Samarkand and Herat, the legal-economic anatomy of the waqf system, including its administrative personnel and its dialectical relationship with soyurghal and tarkhan land grants, and the agrarian-hydraulic infrastructure that sustained both cities. The results indicate that “Maosir al-muluk” functions not as an ordinary court chronicle but as an institutional and juridical synthesis that bridges the more rhetorical narrative accounts (Yazdi, Ibn Arabshah, Clavijo) and the archival record. The discussion situates these findings within the broader historiography and concludes that Khwandamir’s treatise remains an indispensable, if not independently sufficient, source that requires triangulation against archival waqfnamahs and comparative chronicles for empirical verification.

Khwandamir, “Maosir al-muluk”, Timurid urbanism, waqf, soyurghal, tarkhan, Samarkand, Herat, comparative source criticism.

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