Mirkhvand wrote under the patronage of Ali-Shir Nava'i (died 1501), an important counselor of Husayn Bayqara and advocate of arts and literature. Mirkhvand enjoyed good relations with Nava'i, as indicated of Mirkhvand's description of the latter in his universal history ("The garden of purity"), as well as the positive account of Mirkhvand in Nava'i's biographical dictionary ("The assemblies of rare talents"). Using the Timurid history book of Abd al-Razzaq Samarqandi (died 1482) as his cornerstone, Mirkhvand started writing his in 1474/5. Mirkhvand spent many years in the Ilkhlasiyya , a house for Sufis erected by Nava'i in 1483. Towards the end of his life, he lived for a year at the shrine of the prominent Hanbali and Sufi scholar Khwaja Abdullah Ansari (died 1088), near Herat. Mirkhvand died in Herat on 22 June 1498, and was buried in the shrine of Baha al-Din Umar Jaghara'i, the same place as his father.
