Gawhar Shad

Gawhar Shad (died 1457) was the chief consort of the Timurid emperor Shah Rukh. Married around 1388, she bore Shah Rukh Ulugh Beg in 1394 and helped move the capital from Samarkand to Herat in 1405.

With her husband she patronized the arts and made Persian language and culture central to Timurid rule, funding Herat's Musalla complex and the Goharshad Mosque in Mashhad, begun in 1418.

After Shah Rukh died in 1447 she was de facto ruler for a favored grandson until Abu Sa'id seized power and had her, aged over eighty, executed on 19 July 1457.