A. Location and prior history.
B. A center of trade and diplomacy.

A. Samarkand's architectural monuments.
B. Ulugh Beg, man of science.
C. A note on Herat and the later Timurids.

A. The establishment of the Ming dynasty.
B. China and the inner Asian trade routes.
C. The era of the Treasure Fleets.
D. Relations with the Timurids.
E. Chinese influence on the Islamic arts of the Middle East.

Beatrice Forbes Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane (Cambridge UP PB, 1991). Political History.

Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom, The Art and Architecture of Islam 1250-1800 (Pelican History of Art) (Yale UP, 1994), esp. chs. 4, 5, 14. Nicely illustrated summary of important Timurid architecture.

Aydin Sayili, The Observatory in Islam and Its Place in the General History of the Observatory (Ankara, 1960), esp. chs. VI (on the Maragha observatory) and VIII (pp. 260-289) (on Ulugh Beg's observatory).

Morris Rossabi, "Two Ming Envoys to Inner Asia," T'oung Pao, LXII/1-3 (1976), 1-34. The second one is Ch'en Ch'eng.

Idem, "Cheng Ho and Timur: An Relation?," Oriens Extremus, 20/2 (1973), 129-36.

Idem, "A Translation of Ch'en Ch'eng's Hsi-Yü Fan-Kuo Chih," Ming Studies, 17 (1983), 49-59.

Felicia J. Hecker, "A Fifteenth-Century Chinese Diplomat in Herat," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, ser. 3, 3/1 (1993), 86-98. Analysis of Ch'en Ch'eng's largely accurate observations, including his transcription of Persian.

Louise Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne 1405-1433 (New York/Oxford, 1996). Appealingly written and broader than the title suggests.

Ma Huan, Ying-yai sheng-lan: "The Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores" (1433), tr. J. V. G. Mills (Cambridge, 1970). The descriptive account by the "chronicler" of Zheng He's treasure fleets.

Toh Sugimura, The Encounter of Persia with China: Research into Cultural Contacts Based on Fifteenth Century Persian Pictorial Materials (Osaka, 1986). Islamic world paintings and their Chinese sources. Of particular interest, the way Buddhist religious painting "secularized" in a Muslim context.

Yolanda Crowe, "Some Timurid Designs and their Far Eastern Connections," in Lisa Golombek and Maria Subtelny, Timurid Art and Culture: Iran and Central Asia in the Fifteenth Century (Brill, 1992), pp. 168-178. Of particular interest, the relationship between Chinese lacquerware and Timurid incised tiles.

Margaret Medley, "Chinese ceramics and Islamic design," in William Watson, ed., The Westward Influence of the Chinese Arts from the 14th to the 18th Century (=Colloquies on Art & Archaeology in Asia No. 3) (London), 1-10. Good overview, with reference to trade.

G. A. Bailey, "The Dynamics of Chinoiserie in Timurid and Early Safavid Ceramics," in Golombek and Subtelny, loc. cit., 179-190. Middle eastern interpretations of designs on Chinese porcelain.