Tamerlane

Tamerlane the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur (1336-1405), known as Tamerlane in the West, who founded the Timurid Empire in Central Asia and whose campaigns from the Mediterranean to Delhi made him one of the most feared military leaders in history. He was also a great patron of architecture and learning.

Origins and the Rise to Power

Timur was born in 1336 near Kesh, in the region of Transoxiana that is now Uzbekistan, into a family of Turkicised Mongol descent. He grew up in a land divided among local chiefs and Mongol successors of Genghis Khan, and he began his career as a minor chief and later a leader of mounted troops.

He rose through a confused period of warfare and shifting alliances, fighting with and against the khans of the region and the Mongol rulers of Moghulistan. In the early 1370s he established himself as the effective ruler of Transoxiana, ruling nominally in the name of a descendant of Genghis Khan while holding real power in his own hands.

A wound to his right leg and hand sustained in these early struggles left him lame, and from this disability came the European name by which he is known. He made Samarkand his capital and set about building it into one of the great cities of the Islamic world, the centre of his growing dominions.

The Persian and Golden Horde Campaigns

Timur's armies campaigned ceaselessly on many frontiers. Between 1381 and 1393 he subdued Persia, marching through Khurasan, Afghanistan and the Caspian provinces, overthrowing local dynasties and installing governors loyal to himself. He defeated the Muzaffarids of Shiraz and the Jalayirids of Baghdad, and made his authority felt from the Zagros mountains to the borders of Anatolia.

In the 1390s he turned north against the Golden Horde, whose ruler Tokhtamysh had been his former ally. After lengthy pursuit and fierce encounters including the battle on the Terek river, he broke the power of the Horde and disrupted its hold over the trade routes of the steppe, weakening the Mongol state that had dominated Russia.

These campaigns were characterised by extreme brutality. Cities that resisted were sacked and their populations slaughtered, and Timur deliberately cultivated a reputation for terror as an instrument of policy. His conquests were not accompanied by the creation of a stable administrative structure in every region, so that many of them lapsed after his death.

The Invasion of India and the Ottoman War

In 1398 Timur invaded the Delhi Sultanate, drawn partly by its wealth and partly by the disorders of its government. He defeated the army of Sultan Nasir al-Din Mahmud and the minister Mallu Khan near Delhi, entered the city in December and subjected it to days of massacre and plunder, carrying away enormous treasure and the craftsmen of the conquered realm.

He then turned west, where the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I had been extending his power into Anatolia and the Balkans. The two met at the battle of Ankara in 1402, and Timur destroyed the Ottoman army and took Bayezid prisoner. The Ottoman state was thrown into civil war for a decade, and its expansion into Europe was halted for a generation.

This victory was the summit of Timur's power. He had defeated the two greatest warrior sultans of the age, the Mamluk sultan of Egypt and the Ottoman sultan, and his empire reached from Syria and Anatolia to the borders of China and the Ganges plain.

Samarkand and the Timurid Renaissance

Timur's destructiveness in war was accompanied by an extraordinary zeal for building in peace. He adorned Samarkand with mosques, madrasas, mausoleums and gardens of monumental scale, importing architects, craftsmen and materials from the lands he conquered. His own mausoleum, the Gur-i-Amir, and the great mosque of Bibi Khanum are among the masterpieces of Islamic architecture.

He patronised scholars, poets and artists, and gathered at his court the historians, astronomers and physicians of the eastern Islamic world. His interest in the world beyond his borders led him to send embassies to distant rulers, including the powers of Europe, and their reports give a vivid picture of his court.

The cultural achievements of his reign formed the foundation on which the Timurid Renaissance of the fifteenth century was built. Under his descendants this tradition reached a pinnacle in the architecture and manuscript art of Herat and Samarkand, and it was carried into India by a later generation.

Death and the Timurid Legacy

Timur died in 1405 at Otrar while on campaign toward China, having set out to conquer the Ming empire. His empire did not long survive him as a single state, for it was divided among his descendants and contested among rival princes, and much of Persia and Iraq was lost to other powers.

Yet the Timurid dynasty proved durable in Central Asia, and one of Timur's descendants, Babur, went on to found the Mughal empire of India, which preserved Timurid culture and claimed his legacy. In this way the conqueror's line governed much of the Indian subcontinent for centuries.

Timur is remembered with a mixture of dread and admiration: a destroyer whose campaigns caused vast suffering, and a patron whose capital became a fountain of art and science. In Central Asia he is honoured as a national hero, and the monuments of Samarkand stand as a lasting emblem of his ambition and his taste.

See also

• Timurid Empire
• Samarkand
• Battle of Ankara
• Mughal Empire