Tamerlane (April 8, 1336–February 18, 1405) was the ferocious and terrifying founder of the Timurid empire of Central Asia, eventually ruling much of Europe and Asia. Throughout history, few names have inspired such terror as his. Tamerlane was not the conqueror's actual name, though. More properly, he is known as Timur, from the Turkic word for "iron."
Early Life
Timur was a member of the Turkicized Barlas tribe, a Mongol subgroup that had settled in Transoxania (now roughly corresponding to Uzbekistan) after taking part in Genghis Khan’s son Chagatai’s campaigns in that region. Timur thus grew up in what was known as the Chagatai khanate. After the death in 1357 of Transoxania’s current ruler, Amir Kazgan, Timur declared his fealty to the khan of nearby Kashgar, Tughluq Temür, who had overrun Transoxania’s chief city, Samarkand, in 1361.
Tughluq Temür appointed his son Ilyas Khoja as governor of Transoxania, with Timur as his minister. But shortly afterward Timur fled and rejoined his brother-in-law Amir Husayn, the grandson of Amir Kazgan. They defeated Ilyas Khoja (1364) and set out to conquer Transoxania, achieving firm possession of the region around 1366. About 1370 Timur turned against Husayn, besieged him in Balkh, and, after Husayn’s assassination, proclaimed himself at Samarkand sovereign of the Chagatai line of khans and restorer of the Mongol empire.
For the next 10 years Timur fought against the khans of Jatah (eastern Turkistan) and Khwārezm, finally occupying Kashgar in 1380. He gave armed support to Tokhtamysh, who was the Mongol khan of Crimea and a refugee at his court, against the Russians (who had risen against the khan of the Golden Horde, Mamai); and his troops occupied Moscow and defeated the Lithuanians near Poltava.
In 1383 Timur began his conquests in Persia with the capture of Herāt. The Persian political and economic situation was extremely precarious. The signs of recovery visible under the later Mongol rulers known as the Il-Khanid dynasty had been followed by a setback after the death of the last Il-Khanid, Abu Said (1335). The vacuum of power was filled by rival dynasties, torn by internal dissensions and unable to put up joint or effective resistance. Khorāsān and all eastern Persia fell to him in 1383–85; Fars, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Georgia all fell between 1386 and 1394. In the intervals, he was engaged with Tokhtamysh, then khan of the Golden Horde, whose forces invaded Azerbaijan in 1385 and Transoxania in 1388, defeating Timur’s generals.
In 1391 Timur pursued Tokhtamysh into the Russian steppes and defeated and dethroned him; but Tokhtamysh raised a new army and invaded the Caucasus in 1395. After his final defeat on the Kur River, Tokhtamysh gave up the struggle; Timur occupied Moscow for a year. The revolts that broke out all over Persia while Timur was away on these campaigns were repressed with ruthless vigour; whole cities were destroyed, their populations massacred, and towers built of their skulls.
In 1398 Timur invaded India on the pretext that the Muslim sultans of Delhi were showing excessive tolerance to their Hindu subjects. He crossed the Indus River on September 24 and, leaving a trail of carnage, marched on Delhi. The army of the Delhi sultan Mahmud Tughluq was destroyed at Panipat on December 17, and Delhi was reduced to a mass of ruins, from which it took more than a century to emerge. By April 1399 Timur was back in his own capital. An immense quantity of spoil was conveyed away; according to Ruy González de Clavijo, 90 captured elephants were employed to carry stones from quarries to erect a mosque at Samarkand.
Timur set out before the end of 1399 on his last great expedition, in order to punish the Mamlūk sultan of Egypt and the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I for their seizures of certain of his territories. After restoring his control over Azerbaijan, he marched on Syria; Aleppo was stormed and sacked, the Mamlūk army defeated, and Damascus occupied (1401), the deportation of its artisans to Samarkand being a fatal blow to its prosperity. In 1401 Baghdad was also taken by storm, 20,000 of its citizens were massacred, and all its monuments were destroyed.
After wintering in Georgia, Timur invaded Anatolia, destroyed Bayezid’s army near Ankara (July 20, 1402), and captured Smyrna from the Knights of Rhodes. Having received offers of submission from the sultan of Egypt and from John VII (then coemperor of the Byzantine Empire with Manuel II Palaeologus), Timur returned to Samarkand (1404) and prepared for an expedition to China. He set out at the end of December, fell ill at Otrar on the Syr Darya west of Chimkent, and died in February 1405. His body was embalmed, laid in an ebony coffin, and sent to Samarkand, where it was buried in the sumptuous tomb called Gūr-e Amīr. Before his death he had divided his territories among his two surviving sons and his grandsons, and, after years of internecine struggles, the lands were reunited by his youngest son, Shāh Rokh.
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Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):
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Theory:
He was the son of a rich merchant from shaharesabs, the city of apples, near samarkand. He recived the one of best educations of his times, mostly in persian.
He later left his home and turned to banditry because he was an asshole. And from there he went to the army. Now that i think of it he does sound like a wuxia mc.
Any way. Timur is important because he is very close to the point in technological development after which the steppe can no longer compete with agrarian empires. As evidenced by his leading an army from one of the periferal refions of eurasia (even if it was the least periferal) thousands of km deep into russia to own the nomads ruling there. After that, other agrarian polities in china and russia began enclosing the steppes.
In iran he is known for being a debate lord. There was a time when he kidnaped the economist ibn khaldun and the first thing he did was to challenge him to a debate. We have ibn khalduns acount of his captivity. it is said that because of this love of debate timur did not molest shrines or monastic orders because aparently he liked to debate the monks. Because he was an ashole to everyone else, monastic orders and religious foundations filled the power vacum and became very powerful in iran to this day. The safavids themselves were one of the orders he patronised.
Alternativley it could be that because of the geographic and historical peculiarities, iran favors monastic rule, after all, there are famous cases of religious institutions taking over the state (adrashir). Then, timur would have left the monks alone because they had the real power, and the debate lord crap was just to save face.
its unquestionable he was very good at rethoric, to the point he convinced many people to accept chagatai rule.
He kidnapped ibn Khaldun?!?!
history is too strange.
Ibin khaldun was working as a technocrat for the mameluke regime, they sent him to see what was up when timur was besiging a city in syria. Timur kept him in captivity for a month until he got bored. An autobiografical acount should be easy to find.
The debate is also interesting because recently the idiotic claim that middle easterners didnt knew their own ancient history until the 19th century when europeans arrived, has been gaining popularity. But in said dabate they are arguing about said ancient history, and while timur has a wrong take, ibn khaldun has the modern take. it is also clear they have acces to sources on ancient mesopotamia. And when you re examine such claims you realize that europeans knew abouit ancient history from the bible and the greeks, both of wich would have been avialable to medieval muslims. Yes, cyrus the great does not appear in the shahname, but kay khosrow does, and both are esentially the same character.
Wild. Who do they think the Europeans learned history from? I'm pretty sure that up until the 19th century when they started invading the middle east and north africa in numbers all Hellenic Greek works they had came from translations of translations and commentaries by medieval Muslim scholars.