In Indo-Persian literary culture, women are categorically disadvantaged or excluded for reasons ascribed to their gender; Siraj al-Din ‘Ali Khan Arzu, for example, writes that since women cannot be prophets, they are not capable of being poets. Thus, the inclusion of women in tazkirah (literary anthology) sources is seen from within the tradition as an unusual and strange phenomenon. For example, the author of a tazkirah devoted to women poets who goes by the penname of Fakhri Hiravi (fl. 1555) sees the poetry of women as very strange and says, in the preface to his tazkirah, “because it was surprising to see the jewels from their mining of nature, upon completion I name this short piece Javahir al-‘Ajayib (Jewels of Wonder).” This tazkirah is remarkable not only because it was written about poetesses but also because it was written from the position of surprise. In this paper, I will study the element of surprise in Hiravi’s tazkirah to understand why it was exceptional to have poetesses in the tazkirah tradition at large, what were the reasons for that surprise, and how that surprise was managed by subsequent writers. As a case study, I will focus on the figure of Mihri, a famous poet from the Timurid period. Hiravi writes that it was out of astonishment at her verse that he was inspired to compose a whole anthology dedicated to women poets; as such, she is a crucial figure in the anthology. It is clear that Mihri was a significant in her milieu, and that her reputation was even protected by some writers. At the same time, her presence was naturally disruptive of social norms; the resulting anxieties can be seen in the way Hiravi is placed in sexually explicit and transgressive settings, as though providing the proper context to admit her figure into the literary canon of the tazkirah. I then examine how Mihri’s image gets narrowed down to certain things focusing on her womanhood in later tazkirahs written after Hiravi. We find that over time, the surprise and anxiety generated by an outstanding woman poet is managed by tailoring Mihri’s life to fit conventional tropes about unconventional women.