[1] He wrote the Zafarnama, the earliest extant Timurid chronicle and the oldest surviving biography on Timur (r. 1370–1405).
[4] He held the titles of mawlana ("our master") and va'iz ("preacher"), which suggests that he received a traditional Islamic religious education.
The fact that he authored a work in praise of the Twelve Imams also suggests, at the bare minimum, was sympathetic to the line of Ali (died 661).
In 1366-1367, he translated from Arabic to Persian for Shaykh Uways Jalayir the mirror for princes by the Sicilian scholar Ibn Zafar al-Siqilli (died 1169-1170).
The modern historian Peter Jackson explains that the title Zafarnama is not attested in the original recension utilised later in the compilations of Hafiz-i Abru, but only in a second version dedicated by Shami to Umar Bahadur, Timur's grandson (who had also just been appointed governor of Azerbaijan).