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Sikandar Shah Miri

Sultan of Kashmir from 1389 to 1413

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 20, 2026
Entity authorityQ3817955
Source-derived summary

Sikandar Shah Miri (Kashmiri: سُلطان سِکَندَر شاہ میٖری, Persian: سلطان سکندر شاہ مِیرِی; 1380 – 31 May 1413), also known by his sobriquet Sikandar But-shikan (lit. Sikandar the Iconoclast) or Idol Breaker, was the seventh Sultan of Kashmir and a member of Shah Mir dynasty who ruled from 1389 until his death in 1413.

Sources

The only contemporaneous source that exists is the Rajatarangini (lit. Flow of Succession of Kings) by Jonaraja. Jonaraja was the Brahmin court-poet of Sikandar's successor Zain-ul-Abidin and was commissioned to continue Kalhana's Rajatarangini. One manuscript of his work—edited between 1561 and 1588 by an anonymous person using information from other sources—emends certain portions of the text in the margins; he is conventionally called Pseud. J. (and the work, Ps-JRT) in scholarship.

Extant Persian sources, including ⁠Baharistan-i-shahi (anon.), Tohfatu'l-Ahbab (anon.) and Tarikh-i-Kashmir corpus, were written relatively later and drew from recensions of Rajatarangini(s) but they provide considerable additional information. These were later used by authors starting from Abul Fazl, the first chronicler from outside Kashmir and Nizamuddin Ahmad to independent Persian chroniclers to colonial historians and Kashmiri Pandits, with different ideological proclivities, to produce varying strands of histories suiting different sociopolitical goals.

Background

The Shah Miri dynasty likely descended from either Khasa chieftains of Panjgabbar valley or Kohistani Dards from Swat; Shah Mir himself was the first to settle in Kashmir.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Sikandar Shah Miri” as sultan of Kashmir from 1389 to 1413. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Sikandar, Shah and Miri.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1380, 1413, 1389, 1561—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1400. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Sikandar, Shah and Miri providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Sikandar Shah Miri”, the useful work is to connect “sultan of Kashmir from 1389 to 1413” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3817955. VIAF identifies the subject as 311826896. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1380, 1413, 1389 and 1561.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Sikandar Shah Miri” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.