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Timur bin Taraghay Barlas was a 14th century warlord of Turco-Mongol descent, conqueror of much of Western and central Asia, and founder of the
Timurid Empire in
Central Asia and of the
Timurid dynasty, which survived in some form until 1857. He is also known as
Timur-e Lang which translates to
Timur the Lame, as he was lame after sustaining an injury to the leg as a child.
He ruled over an empire that extends in modern nations from south eastern
Turkey,
Syria,
Iraq,
Kuwait,
Iran, through
Central Asia encompassing part of
Kazakhstan,
Afghanistan,
Russia,
Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan,
Kyrgyzstan,
Pakistan,
India, even approaching
Kashgar in
China.
Timur's legacy is a mixed one, for while Central Asia blossomed, some say even peaked, under his reign, other places such as
Baghdad,
Damascus and other Arab, Persian and Turkic cities were sacked and destroyed, and many thousands of people were slaughtered. Thus, while Timur remains a hero of sorts in
Central Asia, he is vilified by many in Arab and Persian societies. At the same time, many Western Asians still do name their children after him, while
Persian literature calls him "Teymour, Conqueror of the World" .
After his marriage into 13th century Mongol conqueror
Genghis Khan's family, he took the name
Timur Gurkani ,
Gurkan being the Persianized form of the original Mongolian word
kürügän, "son-in-law". Alternative spellings of his name are:
Temur,
Taimur,
Timur Lenk,
Timur-i Leng,
Temur-e Lang,
Amir Timur,
Aqsaq Timur, as well as the
Latinized
Tamerlane and
Tamburlaine.
Early life
Timur was born in
Transoxiana, near Kesh , 'the green city,' situated some 50 miles south of
Samarkand in modern
Uzbekistan.
Timur placed much of his early legitimacy on his genealogical roots to the great Mongol conqueror, Chingis Khan, or
Genghis Khan. What is known is that he was descended from the Mongol invaders who initially pushed westwards after the establishment of the Mongol empire.
His father Tara
ghay was head of the tribe of Barlas, a nomadic Turkic-speaking tribe of Mongol origin that traced its origin to the Mongol commander Qarachar Barlas. Tara
ghay was the great-grandson of Qarachar Noyon and, distinguished among his fellow-clansmen as the first convert to
Islam, Tara
ghay might have assumed the high military rank which fell to him by right of inheritance; but like his father Burkul he preferred a life of retirement and study. Tara
ghay would eventually retire to a Muslim monastery, telling his son that "the world is a beautiful vase filled with
scorpions."
Under a paternal eye, the education of young Timur was such that at the age of twenty he had not only become an adept in manly outdoor exercises but had earned the reputation of being an attentive reader of the
Qur'an. Like his father, Timur was a Muslim and seems to have been influenced by Janbalani
Sufism. At this period, according to the
Memoirs , he exhibited proofs of a tender and sympathetic nature, though these claims are generally now held to be spurious. Later he had converted to be Nusairi by Sayyed Barakah, a Nusairi leader from
Balkh that had a strong influence on Timur.
The question of Timur's religious beliefs has been a matter of controversy ever since he began his great conquests. His veneration of the house of the Prophet Mohammed, the spurious genealogy on his tombstone taking his descent back to Ali, and the presense of Shiites in his army led some observers and scholars to call him a Shiite. However, his official religious counselor was the Hanafite scholar Abd alJabbar Khwarazmi. Timur's religious practices with their admixture of Turco-Mongolian shamanistic elements belonged to the Sufi tradition. Timur avowed himself the disciple of Sayyid Baraka, the holy man of the commercial city of Tirmidh. He also constructed one of his finest buildings at the tomb of Ahmad Yaassawi, who was doing most to spread Folk Islam among the nomads.
Military leader
About 1360, however, he gained prominence as a military leader. Timur took part in campaigns in
Transoxania with the khan of Chagatai, a descendant of
Genghis Khan. His career for the next ten or eleven years may be thus briefly summarized from the
Memoirs. Allying himself both in cause and by family connection with
Kurgan, the dethroner and destroyer of
Volga Bulgaria, he was to invade
Khorasan at the head of a thousand horsemen. This was the second military expedition which he led, and its success led to further operations, among them the subjection of
Khwarizm and Urganj.
After the murder of Kurgan the disputes which arose among the many claimants to sovereign power were halted by the invasion of Tughluk Timur of
Kashgar, another descendant of
Genghis Khan. Timur was dispatched on a mission to the invader's camp, the result of which was his own appointment to the head of his own tribe, the Barlas, in place of its former leader Hajji Beg.
The exigencies of Timur's quasi-sovereign position compelled him to have recourse to his formidable patron, whose reappearance on the banks of the
Syr Darya created a consternation not easily allayed. The Barlas were taken from Timur and entrusted to a son of Tughluk, along with the rest of
Mawarannahr; but he was defeated in battle by the bold warrior he had replaced at the head of a numerically far inferior force.
Rise to power
Tughluk's death facilitated the work of reconquest, and a few years of perseverance and energy sufficed for its accomplishment, as well as for the addition of a vast extent of territory. During this period Timur and his brother-in-law Husayn, at first fellow fugitives and wanderers in joint adventures full of interest and romance, became rivals and antagonists. At the close of 1369 Husayn was assassinated and Timur, having been formally proclaimed sovereign at
Balkh, mounted the throne at Samarkand, the capital of his dominions.
It is notable that Timur never claimed for himself the title of
khan, styling himself
amir and acting in the name of the Chagatai ruler of Transoxania. Timur was a military genius but lacking in political sense. He tended not to leave a government apparatus behind in lands he conquered, and was often faced with the need to conquer such lands again after inevitable rebellions.
Period of expansion
The next 35 years, until his death, Timur spent in various wars and expeditions. Timur not only consolidated his rule at home by the subjugation of his foes, but sought extension of territory by encroachments upon the lands of foreign potentates. His conquests to the west and north-west led him among the Mongols of the
Caspian Sea and to the banks of the
Ural and the
Volga. Conquests in the south and south-West encompassed almost every province in
Persia, including
Baghdad,
Karbala and
Kurdistan.
One of the most formidable of his opponents was
Tokhtamysh who, after having been a refugee at the court of Timur, became ruler both of the eastern
Kipchak and the
Golden Horde and quarrelled with Timur over the possession of
Khwarizm. Timur supported Tokhtamysh against Russians and Tokhtamysh, with armed support by Timur, invaded Russia and in 1382 captured
Moscow. After the death of
Abu Sa'id , ruler of the
Ilkhanid Dynasty, there was a power vacuum in the
Persia. In 1383 Timur started the military conquest of Persia. Timur captured
Herat, Khorasan and all eastern Persia to 1385.
In the meantime, Tokhtamysh, now khan of the
Golden Horde, turned against Timur and invaded
Azerbaijan in 1385. It was not until 1395, in the battle of Kur River, that the power of Tokhtamysh was finally broken, after a titanic struggle between the two monarchs. In this war, Timur led an army of over 100,000 men north for about 500 miles into the uninhabited steppe, then west about 1000 miles, advancing in a front more than 10 miles wide. Tokhtamysh's army finally was cornered against the Volga River near
Orenburg and destroyed. During this march, Timur's army got far enough north to be in a region of
very long summer days, causing complaints by his Muslim soldiers about keeping a long schedule of
prayers in such northern regions. Timur led a second campaign against Tokhtamysh via an easier route through the
Caucasus, and Timur destroyed Sarai and
Astrakhan, and wrecked the Golden Horde's economy based on
Silk Road trade.
India
In 1398 Timur, informed about civil war in
India , began war against the
Muslim Ruler in
Delhi. He crossed the
Indus River at Attock on September 24. The capture of
towns and
villages was very often accompanied by their destruction and the massacre of their inhabitants. On his way to
Delhi he met fierce resistance put up by the Governor of Meerut, Qilladar Ilyaas Awan Alvi, who engaged him in an intense battle which lasted nearly two months inflicting heavy losses on both sides. After the honourable and couragous death in battle of Ilaas Awan, Timur easily approached
Delhi to meet with the armies of the
Emperor,
Sultan Nasir-u-Din Mehmud of Tughlaq Dynasty, who was already weak due to a fight for power in the
Royal Family. The
Sultan's army was easily defeated and destroyed on December 17 1394. Timur entered Delhi and the city was sacked, destroyed, and left in a mass of ruins. Before the battle for Delhi, Timur executed more than 50,000 captives, and after the sack of Delhi almost all inhabitants who were not killed were captured and deported. It is said that the devastation of Delhi was not Timur's intent, but that his horde could simply not be controlled after entering the city gates. However, some historians have stated that he told his armies they could have free reign over Delhi.
Timur left Delhi in approximately January 1399. In April 1399 he was back in his own capital beyond the
Oxus . An immense quantity of spoil was conveyed from India. According to Ruy Gonzáles de Clavijo, ninety captured
elephants were employed merely to carry stones from certain quarries to enable the conqueror to erect a
mosque at Samarkand, probably the enormous
Bibi-Khanym Mosque.
Last campaigns and death
Before the end of 1399 Timur started a war with
Bayezid I, sultan of the
Ottoman Empire, and the
Mamluk sultan of
Egypt. Bayezid began annexing the territory of Turkmen and Muslim rulers in
Anatolia. As Timur claimed suzerainity over the
Turkmen rulers, they took refuge behind him. Timur invaded Syria, sacked
Aleppo, and captured
Damascus after defeating the Mamluk's army. The city's inhabitants were massacred, except for the artisans who were deported to Samarkand. This led to Tamarlane's being publicly declared an enemy of Islam.
He invaded
Baghdad in June 1401. After the capture of the city, 20,000 of its citizens were massacred. Timur ordered that every soldier should return with at least two severed human heads to show him . In 1402, Timur invaded Anatolia and defeated Bayezid in the Battle of Ankara on July 20. Bayezid was captured in battle and subsequently died in captivity, initiating the twelve year Ottoman Interregnum period. Timur's stated motivation for attacking Bayezid and the Ottoman Empire was the restoration of
Seljuq authority. Timur saw the Seljuks as the rightful rulers of
Anatolia as they had been granted rule by Mongol conquerors, illustrating again Timur's interest with Genghizid legitimacy.
By 1368, the Ming had driven the Mongols out of China. The first Ming Emperor
Hongwu Emperor demanded, and got, many Central Asian states to pay homage to China as the political heirs to the former House of
Kublai. Timur more than once sent to the Ming Government gifts which could have passed as tribute, at first not daring to defy the economic and military might of the Middle Kingdom.
Timur wished to restore the Mongol Empire, and eventually planned to conquer China. In December 1404, Timur started military expeditions against the
Ming Dynasty of
China, but the old warrior was attacked by fever and plague when encamped on the farther side of the Sihon and died at Atrar in mid-February 1405. His scouts explored Mongolia before his death, and the writing they carved on trees in Mongolia's mountains could still be seen even in the twentieth century.
Of Timur's four sons, two predeceased him. His third son, Miran Shah, died soon after Timur, leaving the youngest son, Shah Rukh. Although his designated successor was his grandson Pir Muhammad b. Jahangir, Timur was ultimately succeeded in power by his son Shah Rukh. His most illustrious descendant
Babur founded the
Mughal Empire and ruled over most of
North India. Babur's descendants,
Akbar,
Jahangir,
Shah Jahan and
Aurangzeb, expanded the Mughal Empire to most of the
Indian subcontinent along with parts of
Afghanistan.
Markham, in his introduction to the narrative of Clavijo's embassy, states that his body "was embalmed with musk and rose water, wrapped in linen, laid in an ebony coffin and sent to
Samarkand, where it was buried." His tomb, the
Gur-e Amir, still stands in Samarkand. Timur had carried his victorious arms on one side from the
Irtish and the
Volga to the
Persian Gulf and on the other from the Hellespont to the
Ganges River.
Contributions to the arts
Timur became widely known as a patron to the arts. Much of the architecture he commissioned still stands in
Samarqand, now in present-day
Uzbekistan.
According to legend, Omar Aqta, Timur's court
calligrapher, transcribed the
Qur'an using letters so small that the entire text of the book fit on a
signet ring. Omar also is said to have created a Qur'an so large that a
wheelbarrow was required to transport it.
Folios of what is probably this larger Qur'an have been found, written in gold lettering on huge pages.
References
Timur's generally recognized biographers are Ali Yazdi, commonly called Sharaf ud-Din, author of the Persian
Zafarnama, translated by Peter de la Croix in 1722, and from
French into
English by J. Darby in the following year; and Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Abdallah, al-Dimashiqi, al-Ajami, commonly called Ahmad Ibn Arabshah, author of the Arabic Aja'ib al-Maqdur, translated by the Dutch Orientalist Colitis in 1636. In the work of the former, as Sir William Jones remarks, "the Tatarian conqueror is represented as a liberal, benevolent and illustrious prince", in that of the latter he is "deformed and impious, of a low birth and detestable principles." But the favourable account was written under the personal supervision of Timur's grandson, Ibrahim, while the other was the production of his direst enemy.
Among less reputed biographies or materials for biography may be mentioned a second
Zafarnama, by Nizam al-Din Shami, stated to be the earliest known history of Timur, and the only one written in his lifetime. Timur's purported autobiography, the
Tuzuk-i Temur is a later fabrication although most of the historical facts are accurate recent biographies include Justin Marozzi's
Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World , and Roy Stier's
Tamerlane: The Ultimate Warrior .
Exhumation
Timur's body was
exhumed from his tomb in 1941 by the Russian anthropologist Mikhail M. Gerasimov. He found that Timur's facial characteristics conformed to that of Mongolian features, supporting Timur's notion, in some part, that he was descended from
Genghis Khan. He also confirmed Timur's lameness. Gerasimov was able to reconstruct the likeness of Timur from his skull.
Famously, a curse has been attached to opening Timur's tomb. In the year of Timur's death, a sign was carved on Timur's tomb warning that whoever would dare disturb the tomb would bring demons of war onto his land. Gerasimov's expedition opened the tomb on June 19, 1941.
Operation Barbarossa, which claimed more lives than any other theater of war in history, began three days later on June 22, 1941.
Fiction
- There is a popular Irish Reel entitled Timour the Tartar.
- Bob Bainborough portrayed Tamerlane in an episode of History Bites.
- German-Jewish writer and social critic Kurt Tucholsky, under the pen name of Theobald Tiger, wrote the lyrics to a cabaret song about Timur in 1922, with the lines
Mir ist heut so nach Tamerlan zu Mut —
ein kleines bisschen Tamerlan wär gut
which roughly translates as "I feel like Tamerlan today, a little bit of Tamerlane would be nice." The song was an allegory about German militarism, as well as a wry commentary on German fears of "Bolshevism" and the "Asiatic hordes from the East."
- He is referred to in the poem "The City of Orange Trees" by Dick Davis. The poem is about an opulent society and the cyclic nature of zeal, prosperity and demise in civilisation.
- Tamerlane features prominently in the short story Lord of Samarcand by Robert E. Howard which features a completely fictional account of his last campaign and death.
...
GameCube video game
Eternal Darkness, Pious Augustus recites a speech echoing Tamerlane's actual speech after sacking
Damascus, implying that Tamerlane was the masked warlord.
- The alternate history novel The Years of Rice and Salt is an alternate history [i] novel [i] written by science fiction [i] ...
by Kim Stanley Robinson portrays a Timur whose last campaign is significantly different from the historical truth.
- Tamerlane was a figure in the 2006 Russian film Day Watch. The film implied that a magic piece of chalk was responsible for his military victories.
References
External links
- Timur's memoirs on his invasion of india
- For alternative information about Timur
