Marlowe chiefly based his work on an abridged translation of Pedro Mexía's 1543 Silva de varia lección (A Miscellany of Several Lessons).[2] The translation into English via French, executed by Thomas Fortescue under the title The Forest or Collection of Historyes no lesse profitable than pleasant and necessary, was first published in 1571.[2][3] Another principal source was Petrus Perondinus's Vita Magni Tamerlinus; Marlowe mostly relied on Mexía for the episodes of the play and Perondinus for characterizing Tamburlaine.[4] Most of the minor characters were invented by Marlowe; the historians he drew on mention few names other than Tamburlaine himself (the historical Timur) and Bajazeth (Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I), though Mexía does mention a "Kyng of Persia and his brother" who were the origin of Marlowe's Cosroe and Mycetes[4] – likely based on the historical personages of the warring Muzaffarid brother kings Shah Mansur and Shah Yahya. Marlowe was apparently aware from his sources of Timur's three sons Umar Shaikh Mirza I, Miran Shah, and Shah Rukh, but not their names; in the play they become Calyphas, Amyras, and Celebinus.[4]
The decision to portray Tamburlaine and the Persians as Hellenistic pagans rather than Muslims in the play was apparently made for dramatic purposes and cannot be attributed to a lack of sources on life in the East.[4] For similar reasons, Marlowe departs from his sources in being far more hostile towards Bajazeth and far more sympathetic towards Tamburlaine.[4] Marlowe largely exhausted his historical sources in writing Part I of the play; Part II therefore relies on more extraneous sources and episodes and lacks some of the cohesion of the preceding part.[4]
