1480-1520 was undoubtedly a period of profound change in the central Islamic lands: the Aq-Qoyunlu, Mamluk and Timurid dynasties were swept from power by a new constellation of states – the Ottomans, Safavids, and Uzbeks. This political turbulence – which would come to be increasingly framed by polemicists along ‘official’ Sunni-Shi`ite binaries – transformed the rich and variegated religious landscape of the late 15th century from Anatolia to Khurasan. Understanding this transformation can be helped by focusing on those religious and bureaucratic notables who were living in Aq Qoyunlu or Timurid cities (e.g. Tabriz, Shiraz, Herat, Yazd), and how they chose to respond to the maelstrom events of 1480-1520. This particular paper will examine Qazi Mir Husain Maybudi (d. 1504), who had studied with the great philosopher al-Davani in Shiraz and later served as an Aq Qoyunlu-appointed judge in the city of Yazd. Most famous for his extensive commentary on the poetry of Ali, Maybudi also wrote a number of commentaries on philosophy, logic, astronomy, mathematics, and astrology. As a Shafi`i-inclined Sufi, scholar, litterateur, and philosopher who also wrote extensively on the inviolability of Ali and the Imams, Maybudi is indeed an exemplar of the ubiquitous confessional ambiguity of the 15th century. He was a witness to the rise of the Safavids, and indeed his collection of letters (munsha’at) contains a letter addressed directly to Shah Isma`il. Of particular interest, however, is a lengthy fath nama (“victory letter”) which was penned as a model epistolary text, and as such intended for a ruler to propagandize a great military victory. This unaddressed epistle includes a rich pastiche of Qu’ranic texts, Prophetic hadiths, millenarian references, esoteric poems, as well as a variety of literary allusions. It is the contention of this paper that Maybudi penned this letter amidst the rise of the Safavids in Azarbaijan and their expansion eastwards across the Iranian Plateau. Unlike his Aq Qoyunlu contemporaries like Khunji-Isfahani and Idris Bidlisi who fled to Samarqand and Istanbul and began contributing to the emerging polemical discourse, Maybudi sought instead to use his literary acumen and religious ecumenism to negotiate a role in this new world order. Despite this textual evidence which underscores Maybudi’s broad (and sophisticated) religious and literary sensibilities, later Safavid historiography has categorized him as a staunch and unrelenting Sunni whose participation in the defense of Yazd earned him a public execution at the behest of Shah Isma`il.