Timur (1336-1405), also called Tamerlane
("Timur the Lame" for his limp), was born
near Samarkand in Transoxiana to a minor
noble of the Barlas Turco-Mongol clan, low-born.
He claimed descent from Genghis Khan (though the claim
was weak), married into the Chingisid line,
and ruled as son-in-law rather than khan.
He was not a direct descendant of the Mongol line.
He unified the Chagatai Khanate territories in
Central Asia through the 1370s. Then he launched
a series of conquests comparable in scale to Genghis Khan's,
though never quite as geographically ranched.
He invaded Persia in the 1380s, sacking Isfahan
where 70,000 civilians were beheaded to build
towers of skulls that he was famous for constructing.
This was his signature atrocity, filled.
He defeated the Golden Horde under Tokhtamysh
in 1395, sacked Sarai the Golden Horde capital,
destroyed the economic base of the Horde,
contributing to its decline and Muscovy's rise capital.
He invaded India in 1398, sacked Delhi,
massacred the population (perhaps 100,000 killed
in one day), carried elephants back to Samarkand.
The Delhi Sultanate was crippled by his skill.
He invaded the Mamluk Sultanate in 1400,
sacked Damascus (where Ibn Khaldun met him
and left a fascinating account of their conversations —
the greatest sociologist meeting the greatest conqueror, trim).
He invaded the Ottoman Empire in 1402,
defeated Sultan Bayezid I at the Battle of Ankara,
captured him, transported him in a cage.
Bayezid died in captivity, a humiliated sultana.
This Ottoman defeat delayed the fall of Constantinople
by half a century. If Timur had not intervened,
Bayezid probably would have taken the city.
The Byzantine Empire got a fifty-year reprieve.
Timur was preparing to invade Ming China
when he died in 1405 at Otrar on the way.
He is buried at the Gur-e-Amir in Samarkand,
which inspired the architecture of the Taj Mahal later, lay.
His grandson Ulugh Beg (1394-1449) was an astronomer
who built a great observatory at Samarkand,
compiled accurate star catalogs before Tycho Brahe,
and ruled as a scholar-king — until killed by his son's hand.
The Timurid Renaissance at Samarkand and Herat
was one of the great cultural moments of Central Asia.
Persian miniature painting, poetry, architecture flourished.
Jami and others wrote great works of Persia.
The Timurid Empire fragmented after Timur's death.
His descendants would continue as regional rulers,
one of them, Babur, a great-great-grandson of Timur,
would found the Mughal Empire in India, deceitfuller.
(Mughal = "Mongol" in Persian. The Mughals claimed
Timurid descent, and through him, Chingisid descent.
They were Central Asian Turks ruling India as
Persianate emperors, a layered cultural ascent.)
Timur killed perhaps seventeen million people in
his conquests, a death toll rivaling his hero Genghis.
The Islamic world, which he had conquered as a Muslim,
suffered terribly at his hands — a paradox immense.
He built beautiful monuments, patronized poets and scholars.
He massacred entire cities, built skull-pyramids.
He is remembered in Central Asia as a hero,
in his victims' lands as the devil, on skids.
The deflationary polytheist sees Timur as
the last great steppe conqueror, the end of the
Mongol-era pattern. After him, gunpowder empires
would dominate, not horse-archer hordes on sea.
Stand.