Soviet historiography, while often downplaying the connections of Transoxiana with the broader Persianate world, consistently approached the legacy of the Uzbek period from a critical perspective. The widely accepted paradigm of “Timurid splendor versus widespread Uzbek decline” was eventually challenged by a new generation of post‑Soviet scholars, who argued that—contrary to earlier narratives—primary sources attest to the continued presence of Timurid cultural and institutional legacies in Transoxiana, particularly during the Shaybanid period.

Within this broader framework of Persianate cultural inheritance, the present study, while acknowledging the persistence of major civilizational elements of the fifteenth-century Persianate world in Transoxiana, addresses another unresolved question in the historiography: why, despite numerous Timurid–Uzbek continuities, did the transition to Shaybanid rule in Transoxiana—unlike the Safavid transition in Iran or the Mughal transition in India—not give rise to a new configuration of cultural flourishing?

Employing a comparative-historical approach and the method of process tracing, this study distinguishes between two analytical levels: first, the mechanisms that enabled the flourishing of Persianate cultural heritage during the Timurid period; and second, the factors that disrupted these mechanisms under the Shaybanids. The findings suggest that Timurid cultural efflorescence emerged from a structural linkage between political authority, geographical and cultural integration, urban and elite networks, courtly competition, and a relative balance between military and bureaucratic forces. Under the Shaybanids, however, changes in the foundations of political legitimacy, the contraction of the state's geographical horizon, the disruption of elite networks across the Persianate world, the predominance of tribal-military competition over cultural rivalry, and the transformation of institutions through which power and resources were distributed prevented the reproduction of these mechanisms. Consequently, the persistence of cultural elements in the Shaybanid period did not necessarily entail the continuation of the generative mechanisms that had previously sustained Timurid cultural dynamism.