History vs. Tamerlane the Conqueror - Stephanie Honchell Smith
He was born in the 1330s
in the Chaghatayid Khanate
formerly the Mongol Empire
in Central Asia.
On the unforgiving steppe,
he rose from a lowly sheep thief
to become one of history’s
greatest conquerors,
uniting nearly all of Central Asia,
Afghanistan, and Iran under his rule.
But was he a great state builder
or a bloodthirsty tyrant?
Order! Order!
Who do we have on the stand today?
Tamer...lane?
That wasn’t his name, your Honor.
The great Timur— meaning iron—
was nicknamed “Timur the lame”
by enemies who mocked permanent
injuries to his leg and arm.
Injuries he sustained raiding
a rival tribe’s sheep herd—
he was a thief and a scoundrel
from the start!
Maybe— we actually don’t know for sure—
but even if that’s true,
raiding rivals was just part
of nomadic life at the time.
Timur was not born into a ruling family,
so he had to prove his worth
through daring and horsemanship.
He was hardly a commoner.
Timur’s family was minor nobility.
His uncle and brother-in-law were
high-ranking officials.
And when they trusted Timur
on a diplomatic mission,
he defected to a rival khan!
Strategic maneuvering!
He reconciled with his uncle
and brother-in-law soon after.
Only for long enough to consolidate
his own power.
Then he went to battle against
his brother-in-law—
supposedly his closest ally.
He was assassinated,
and Timur seized power!
They may have been friends,
but he was a corrupt man
who alienated a lot of people.
Timur was right to oust him.
Afterward, he managed to reunite
most of the khanate’s territories
and put an end to decades
of bloody infighting.
Okay, so where are we?
I can hardly keep up.
1370, your honor.
And he’s khan now?
Well, not quite.
Timur was not a direct descendant
of Genghis Khan,
so he couldn’t claim the title.
Instead, he appointed figurehead khans
and referred to himself as amir,
or commander,
and later as güregen, or son-in-law,
after he married a woman who was
descended from Genghis Khan.
He claimed to be a divinely ordained
protector of the Mongol and Muslim worlds,
yet he undermined both
Mongol and Muslim power
by relentlessly waging
war against his neighbors,
weakening them so much that Christian
Europe romanticized him as an ally.
His campaigns killed as many
as 17 million people!
Propaganda.
Timur’s official biographies deliberately
exaggerated the number of deaths
to deter rebellions.
Like the Mongols, Timur offered
cities the chance to surrender
and only ordered massacres
if they revolted.
He rebuilt irrigation canals
to support agriculture,
and regularly distributed
food to the poor.
Just in his hometown of Kesh,
he paid for the meat of 20 sheep
to be given to the poor every day.
His campaigns were brutal,
but by unifying Central Asia,
Afghanistan, and Iran,
he was also able to reinvigorate
the Silk Road.
Much of Eurasia benefited from the revival
of long-distance trade,
and Central Asian cities,
such as Samarkand and Herat,
became thriving commercial hubs
under his rule.
And meanwhile, other cities
like Baghdad, Aleppo, and Delhi
were plundered and burned
and took decades to recover.
This illiterate warlord destroyed
centuries’ worth of cultural heritage,
leaving nothing but pyramids
of skulls in his wake.
Timur may have been illiterate,
but he was also an active patron
of culture and the arts.
During his conquests,
he spared artisans and scholars,
sending them to work on public projects
like schools and mosques.
Unlike many women in the world
at the time,
his wives, daughters, and daughters-in-law
were highly educated
and politically active.
Timur also personally met with—
and impressed—
the famed Arab historian
Ibn Khaldun in Damascus,
and he so thoroughly mastered chess
that he is said to have enjoyed
a more complex variant
that was named for him.
So what happened after that?
Timur died from an illness in 1405,
when he was likely in his early 70s.
The empire he founded lasted
another hundred years,
ushering in an architectural, artistic,
literary and scientific renaissance
across Central Asia.
In Samarkand, Timur’s grandson,
Ulugh Beg,
built the largest astronomical observatory
in the world at the time.
Even after the fall of Timur's empire,
his descendant Babur re-established
himself in India,
founding the Mughal Empire,
which would become home to nearly
a quarter of the world’s population
and which built such splendors
as the Red Fort and Taj Mahal.
Timur's legacy is still celebrated
in monuments across Central Asia,
where he is remembered as
“Buyuk Babamiz” or “our great forefather.”
And yet today in Europe, India,
and much of the Middle East,
he's remembered as a butcher.
That’s more reflection of the success
of his own propaganda
than of the man himself.
Hold on now, I think
I’ve almost got the king cornered!
Emerging from relative obscurity,
Timur’s conquests formed a legacy
lasting nearly 500 years
that remains on trial even today.
