The Timurnama is the fourth part of Hatefi's Khamsa, a quintet of five long Persian poems, and has been published in India in 1869 and 1958.

The Timurnama was written by the Persian poet Hatefi (c. 1454–1521), a nephew of Jami, who in turn was a prolific scholar and writer of mystical Sufi literature.

[3] The scholar Carles Melville argues that Hatefi thereby "implicitly identify[ed] Timur as another Alexander.

[2][5] Hatefi's main source of information on the life of Timur was the Zafarnama of Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdi (d. 1454).

The scholar Bernardini argues that it is a "literary effort to confer an aura of superhumanity over trivial historical facts".