In the years after Temür's death his youngest son, Shahrukh, succeeded in taking over Temür's central lands. Shahrukh had none of the theatrical inclination of his father and limited his military campaigns to those he considered truly necessary. He was also much more willing to share power than his father had been, and under him we find both more provincial independence and more individual power among the Persian and Turco-Mongolian elite. These traits, along with his conspicuous religious observance, have won him a reputation as a ruler who devoted himself to religion while leaving the business of governing to his officials and his powerful wife, Gawharshad. This assessment appears to be based on the assumption that Temür had left an intact polity which was relatively easy to govern. Such was not the case. Shahrukh had to win the realm he ruled through battle and diplomacy; he had to balance innumerable separate centers of power – dynastic, provincial and local. While some contemporary historians of the latter part of Shahrukh's reign portray him as a distant and preoccupied ruler, those writing about his early and middle years show a man active in the affairs of army and administration. Even Shahrukh's early rival and critic, the prince Iskandar b. ʿUmar Shaykh, gives Shahrukh credit for skill in ruling. He states that he knew how to maintain the externals of religious and customary law, and although he allowed his subordinates considerable power, he himself controlled major decisions.