Timur (1336-1405), also known as Tamerlane, Temür, or Timur Leng, was the founder of the Timurid Empire (1370-1507), which had its heartlands in modern-day Uzbekistan and capital at Samarkand. A Muslim Turkic chieftain who claimed Mongol descent, Timur swept across Central Asia and then successfully attacked Russia, the Middle East, and India. Principally known for his brutal terror methods, Timur was the epitome of violent conquest for its own sake since he did not create lasting administrative structures or improve the well-being of his nominal subjects.
Name & Origins
Timur was born in 1336 near Samarkand (also spelt Samarqand), the great trading city of Central Asia, located in a region then known as Transoxania, approximately equivalent to modern-day Uzbekistan. Timur's name – more commonly Tamerlane in English in previous centuries – is a corruption of the Persian Timür-i Leng, meaning "lame Timür", a derogatory title which refers to the lameness in his right leg and right arm, a result of a raid in his early years. Timur was of Turkic and Mongol descent, but for reasons of prestige, he later promoted his links to the great Mongol rulers, largely through the ancestors of one of his wives. As the historian D. Morgan notes, Timur "was of Mongol descent though Muslim by religion and Turkish in speech and culture" (176).
The Mongol Collapse
When the Mongol emperor Genghis Khan (aka Cinggis Khan or Chingiz Khan, reign 1206-1227) died, he bequeathed to each of his four sons a territory to rule autonomously within the huge Mongol Empire (1206-1368) he had created. These four parts or khanates (from 'khan', meaning 'ruler') became: the Chagatai Khanate (circa 1227-1363), the Ilkhanate (1260-1335), the Golden Horde (circa 1227-1480), and the Empire of the Great Khan (Yuan Dynasty, 1271-1368). The first three khanates gradually declined in power over the next century as the nomadic and warlike Mongol elite eventually became part of the sedentary societies they had conquered. Breaking up into smaller political entities, these regions were further weakened by the arrival of the Black Death through the 1340s. Mongol control of China, meanwhile, ended with the rise of the Ming Dynasty from 1368.
Timur grew up in the Chagatai Khanate, and he participated in the successful campaigns of that state. Timur briefly served as a minister under Ilyas Khoja (d. 1368), the governor of Transoxania and son of Tughlugh Timur (circa 1312-1363), the Khan of the Chagatai Khanate. Timur then allied himself with the Mongol ruler Amir Husayn, his brother-in-law, and they managed to take over Transoxania by 1366. Following the death of Husayn, Timur took sole control of Transoxania around 1370, and he used the connections of one of his many wives to the Mongol khans to legitimise his claim as its new ruler.
Forging the Timurid Empire
From the 1370s, Timur had his eye on more of the former territories of the Chagatai Khanate and the Ilkhanate, territories which cover what is today mostly southern Kazakhstan, western Tajikistan, Iran, and parts of Turkmenistan, Turkey, Iraq, Armenia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Like the Mongols before him, Timur employed both light cavalry armed with bows and heavy cavalry with armoured horses, and the riders wielding long lances. Excellent horsemanship permitted Timur's troops to attack with speed and where they were least expected. Troops of various origins were loyal to Timur since his success rate at providing promised booty was extremely high. Timur, who almost always led his troops personally, "was undeniably a highly gifted and successful general. But he indulged in destruction and wanton cruelty to an extent that Chingiz would have considered pointless" (Morgan, 176). Other strengths of Timur besides generalship included his ability to forge alliances, use subterfuge, and weaken his enemies through political intrigues and sowing dissent before he even arrived on the battlefield.
The process of Timur's conquests was, then, brutal. Stories abounded of the lengths Timur went to terrorise conquered peoples, such as cementing captured victims alive into a tower or erecting a battle memorial made of the bones of the defeated. The idea, not a new one, was to ensure other cities in the region capitulated rather than face such terrible acts of vengeance, but the violence was always excessive, against both non-Muslims and Muslims. The city of Van in modern-day Turkey, formerly capital of the ancient kingdom of Urartu and still a noted cultural centre in the 14th century, was one of Timur's more infamous conquest victims. The city was sacked and destroyed in 1387, with Timur hurling 7,000 captives over the citadel's walls to their deaths.
Timur's vast Timurid Empire eventually stretched from the Mediterranean in the west to the frontiers of China in the east and from the Caspian and Aral Seas in the north to the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea in the south. By the 1390s, Central Asia was under his control, including parts of Persia. Timur then attacked the Golden Horde in 1395. At the Battle of Terek River in southern Russia on 14 April 1395, Timur obliterated the army of the Golden Horde ruler Toqtamysh (c. 1376-1395). Toqtamysh had been installed as a puppet ruler by Timur but had since refused to subordinate himself to the great conqueror. Victory enabled Timur to occupy Moscow for a year and conquer most of the territory along the lower Volga. This territory included the great trade centre of Sarai, which Timur, as he was wont to do, ruthlessly sacked to the permanent detriment of the city's fortunes. In addition, his destruction of Sarai's extensive archives has been a permanent lament of historians of the Golden Horde ever since. Just like Sarai, the Golden Horde never regained the status it had enjoyed prior to Timur's passing through.
Still not satisfied with his gains, Timur's next target was the wealth of India. In the winter of 1398-9, he invaded the subcontinent and defeated an army of the Sultan Mahmud Shah II (reign 1394-1413) at Panipat. Timur then moved on another 50 miles or so (80 km) to loot and sack the great city of Delhi, capital of the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526). The sacking was typical of Timur's approach to conquest, as the historian S. Mansingh notes:
The plunder, rape, and massacre of that single raid left behind him an indelible scar of anarchy and devastation on the collective memory of Indians. In the words of a contemporary writer Badauni, 'such a famine and pestilence fell upon Delhi that the city was utterly ruined, and those of its inhabitants who were left died, while for two months not a bird moved a wing'.
(416)
Timur's insatiable appetite for conquest and plunder continued in his latter years. He invaded Syria and sacked Aleppo in 1399. Baghdad was sacked in 1401. The next year, it was Anatolia's turn to be ravaged. Finally, an audacious expedition to attack Ming China was underway when the conqueror of Central Asia died en route in February 1405.
Samarkand & Cultural Achievements
Although infamous for his barbarous treatment of conquered peoples, Timur's empire did register several cultural achievements. Samarkand was made the capital, and Timur ensured its beautification and cultural enrichment by forcibly relocating certain conquered peoples to it, notably scholars, artists, architects, and artisans. Samarkand had once been a great administrative centre of the Mongol Empire and was still a major stopping point on the Silk Road. Timur expanded Samarkand slightly adjacent to the older city, which had been sacked by Genghis Khan. Timur's Samarkand became a great metropolis, and he named various quarters of its suburbs after the cities he had conquered. The city's reputation spread far and wide thanks to its fine buildings and beautiful gardens, becoming a byword in Western Europe for the exotic and little-known gardened cities of Central Asia.
Timur invested heavily in buildings with a religious function, particularly Muslim shrines and mosques, many of which were beautifully and painstakingly decorated with gilding and mosaic pieces of precious turquoise and azure. Unfortunately, not a great deal survives today, but there is the Great Mosque, the Timurid tomb-complex of Shāh-i zinda, and the Gūr-i Mir, the massive domed tomb which contains Timur's embalmed remains.
Death & Legacy
Timur died in Otrar (in modern-day Kazakhstan) on 19 February 1405 on his way to China. The ruling dynasty that Timur established is known as the Timurids. Timur's immediate successor was his son Shahrukh (1377-1447). No Timurid ruler ever gained the successes its founder had enjoyed, and the empire suffered for Timur's lack of skill or ambition as a statesman since the nomadic warrior failed to create any lasting administrative institutions in his conquered lands. As the historian J. J. Saunders puts it:
His career was a singularly barren one…Timur's kingdom vanished with his life, and his imperialism was imbued with no purpose other than agglomeration of sheer power built on the corpses of millions.
(174)
Timur's reputation as one of history's cruellest conquerors has certainly endured longer than his vast empire, helped by such literary and theatrical works as Tamburlaine the Great by Christopher Marlowe (1564-93), one of the leading playwrights of Elizabethan theatre. As Saunders notes, "Till the advent of Adolf Hitler, Timur stood forth in history as the supreme example of soulless and unproductive militarism" (ibid).
While Timur's empire rapidly shrank, the Timurid dynasty did, at least, continue to dominate in Turkestan and neighbouring regions well into the 16th century. Samarkand, in particular, continued to thrive as a cultural centre, notably in such areas of scholarship as astronomy and other sciences. A famous descendant of Timur was Babur (1483-1530), whose empire was centred around Kabul in Afghanistan. Babur replicated his infamous ancestor and conquered Delhi, but his legacy was far greater since he founded a new line of Muslim rulers in India, the Great Mughals of the Mughal Empire (1526-1857).
