Tamerlane

Tamerlane (1336-1405) was a celebrated Turko-Mongol conqueror whose victories, characterized by acts of inhuman cruelty, made him the master of the greater part of western Asia. His vast empire disintegrated at his death.

Tamerlane or Timur (Tamerlane is a corruption of the Persian Timur-i Lang, "Timur the Lame"), belonged to the Turkized Mongol clan of the Barlas, which had accompanied the Mongol armies westward and had settled in the Kashka Valley to the south of Samarkand, between Shakhrisyabz and Karshi. He was born near Shakhrisyabz on April 9, 1336. This whole region, the present-day Soviet Socialist Republic of Uzbekistan, was then part of the Chaghatai khanate, which received its name from its founder, the second son of Genghis Khan, and which included, besides Transoxiana—the countries between the Amu Darya (Oxus) and the Syr Darya—the whole area to the east of the Syr Darya up to the western borders of Mongolia.

In 1346/1347 the Chaghatai khan, Kazan, who had his residence at Karshi, was defeated and killed by a tribal leader called Kazaghan, and Transoxiana ceased to be part of the khanate. Kazaghan's death (1358) was followed by a period of anarchy, and Tughluk-Temür, the ruler of the territories beyond the Syr Darya (now known as Moghulistan, "land of the Moguls, or Mongols"), invaded Transoxiana in 1360 and again in 1361 in an attempt to reestablish Chaghatai rule.

Tamerlane declared himself Tughluk-Temür's vassal and was made ruler of the Shakhrisyabz-Karshi region. He soon, however, rebelled against the Moguls and formed an alliance with Husain, the grandson of Kazaghan. Together in 1363 they drove Ilyas Khoja, Tughluk-Temür's son, out of Transoxiana; he returned in the following year, having succeeded his father as khan, and inflicted a defeat upon Tamerlane and Husain, but they were able, after his withdrawal, to consolidate their power as joint rulers of the country. They were often on bad terms but with some interruptions maintained an uneasy partnership until 1370, when open war erupted. Besieged at Balkh, Husain was captured and executed, and Tamerlane, now the undisputed master of Transoxiana, took up residence at Samarkand, henceforward his capital city and the base of his operations against eastern and western Asia.

Expansion of Power

Tamerlane's first campaigns were directed against Khiva and his old enemies, the Moguls; it was not until 1381 that he turned his attention westward, leading an expedition into eastern Iran; further expeditions in subsequent years extended gradually into Iraq, Asia Minor, and Syria. The atrocities committed in the course of these campaigns are recorded even by his own court historian. At Sabzawar, in what is now Afghanistan, Tamerlane directed a tower to be constructed out of live men heaped on top of one another and cemented together with bricks and mortar. To punish a revolt in Isfahan, he ordered a general massacre of the population, and the heads of 70, 000 people were built up into minarets.

In 1387 an invasion of Transoxiana by Toktamish, the ruler of the Golden Horde, obliged Tamerlane to interrupt his operations in western Asia, and the repulsion of the invader, followed by expeditions into Moghulistan, was to keep him occupied for the next 4 years. It was not until 1392 that he resumed the conquest of western Asia in what is known as the Five Years' Campaign. After suppressing the Muzaffarid dynasty in Fars (spring 1393), Tamerlane entered present-day Iraq, received the submission of Baghdad, whose Jalayirid ruler, Sultan Ahmad, had fled at his approach, continued northward into eastern Turkey and the Caucasus area, defeated Toktamish in a battle on the Terek (April 1395), and advanced up the Don to capture the Russian town of Yelets, on the border between the Russian principalities and the territory of the Golden Horde. The campaign ended, in the winter of 1395-1396, with the destruction of the two main centers of the Horde at Astrakhan and New Saray, and Tamerlane returned to Samarkand to prepare for his invasion of India.

India, Turkey, and Egypt

This, the briefest of his campaigns, lasting less than 6 months, was the occasion of Tamerlane's greatest massacre: the execution in cold blood, before the gates of Delhi, of 100, 000 Hindu prisoners. There followed immediately the so-called Seven Years' Campaign (1399-1403), which brought Tamerlane into conflict with the two most powerful rulers in western Asia, the Ottoman sultan of Turkey and the Mamluk sultan of Egypt.

Syria, then part of Egypt's territory, was invaded in 1400, Aleppo falling in October of that year and Damascus in March 1401. Tamerlane now turned eastward against Baghdad, which had been reoccupied by Sultan Ahmad's forces and offered stubborn resistance to Tamerlane's attack. It was taken in June 1401, and the slaughter which followed was such that the heads of the dead were piled up into 120 towers. Tamerlane passed the winter of 1401/1402 in the eastern Caucasus before moving westward into Anatolia to deal the final blow to Sultan Bayazid (Bajazet), who was defeated and taken prisoner at the Battle of Ankara (July 20, 1402).

The Sultan died while still in captivity, but the story, familiar from Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great, that he was transported in an iron cage like a wild beast, is based on a misunderstanding of a phrase in the record of the historian Arabshah. The last action of the campaign was the storming and sacking of Smyrna, then held by the Knights of St. John, who had recaptured it from the Ottoman Turks a half century before.

Tamerlane returned from the Seven Years' Campaign by slow stages, reaching Samarkand in August 1404. He set off before the end of the year upon a still more grandiose enterprise, the conquest of China, liberated only some 30 years previously form its Mongol masters. He was, however, taken ill at Otrar, on the eastern bank of the Syr Darya, and died on Feb. 18, 1405.

Further Reading

Hilda Hookham's gracefully written Tamburlaine the Conqueror (1964) is the most detailed and up-to-date work addressed to the general reader. Older works include a 14th-century account in Arabic by Ahmed ibn Arabshah, Tamerlane, translated by J. H. Sanders (1936), and Harold Lamb, Tamerlane, the Earth Shaker (1928). See also the relevant sections in René Grousset, Empire of the Steppes (1939; trans. 1970); Richard N. Frye, Iran (1954); Sir John Glubb, The Lost Centuries (1967), which contains an excellent chapter on Tamerlane; and the Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6 (1971). □

Timur or Tamerlane , c.1336–1405, Mongol conqueror, b. Kesh, near Samarkand. He is also called Timur Leng [Timur the lame]. He was the son of a tribal leader, and he claimed (apparently for the first time in 1370) to be a descendant of Jenghiz Khan . With an army composed of Turks and Turkic-speaking Mongols, remnants of the empire of the Mongols , Timur spent his early military career in subduing his rivals in what is now Turkistan ; by 1369 he firmly controlled the entire area from his capital at Samarkand .

Campaigns he waged against Persia occupied him until 1387. By that time he had in his possession the lands stretching E from the Euphrates River. He advanced (1392) across the Euphrates, conquered the territory between the Caspian and Black seas, and invaded several of the Russian states. By weakening the Crimean Tatars he helped clear the way for the conquests of the grand duchy of Moscow. Timur abandoned some of his Russian conquests to return to Samarkand and invade (1398) India along the route of the Indus River. He took Delhi and brought the Delhi Sultanate to an end, but he withdrew with little addition to his domain.

In 1400, Timur ravaged Georgia and proceeded to the Levant, where he took Aleppo and Baghdad. His next war was fought in Asia Minor against the Ottoman Turks, and in 1402, at Angora, he captured their sultan, Beyazid I, who, contrary to popular belief, was well treated. Timur died while planning an invasion of China. His tomb at Samarkand was long known to archaeologists, but it is only recently that his skeleton, buried in a deep crypt, was found.

Timur's reputation is that of a cruel conqueror. After capturing certain cities he slaughtered thousands of the defenders (perhaps 80,000 at Delhi) and built pyramids of their skulls. Although a Muslim, he was scarcely more merciful to those of his own faith than to those he considered infidels. His positive achievements were the encouragement of art, literature, and science and the construction of vast public works. He had little hope that his vast conquests would remain intact, and before his death he arranged for them to be divided among his sons. The Timurids are the line of rulers descended from him. Christopher Marlowe's play Tamburlaine luridly recounts his conquests.

Bibliography: See biographies by H. Hookham (1962) and B. F. Manz (1989); J. H. Sanders, tr., Tamerlane (tr. of late 14th-century Arabic work by A. Ibn Arabshah, 1936).

Tamerlane (1336–1405) (Turkish Timur Leng, ‘Timur the Lame’) Mongol conqueror, b. Uzbekistan. He claimed descent from Genghis Khan. By 1369, Tamerlane conquered present-day Turkistan and established Samarkand as his capital. He extended his conquests to the region of the Golden Horde between the Caspian and Black Seas. In 1398, Tamerlane invaded nw India and defeated the Delhi Sultanate. He then turned towards the Mamluk Empire, capturing Syria and Damascus. In 1402, he captured the Ottoman Sultan Beyazid I at Angora. His death, at the head of a 200,000-strong invasion force of China, enabled the reopening of the Silk Road. His vast empire was divided among the Timurid dynasty.

Tamerlane (1336–1405), Mongol ruler of Samarkand 1369–1405; Tartar name Timur Lenk (‘lame Timur’). Leading a force of Mongols and Turks, he conquered Persia, northern India, and Syria and established his capital at Samarkand; he was the ancestor of the Mogul dynasty in India. He is also known as Tamburlaine, the spelling used by Marlowe in Tamburlaine the Great (1590).

From the late 16th century, Tamerlane has been referred to as the type of a savage conqueror or despot.

Tamerlane (or Tamburlaine; born Timur Lenk, ‘lame Timur’) (1336–1405) Mongol ruler of Samarkand (1369–1405). Leading a force of Mongols and Turks, between about 1364 and 1405 he conquered a large area including Persia, northern India, and Syria and established his capital at Samarkand; he defeated the Ottomans near Ankara in 1402, but died during an invasion of China. He was an ancestor of the Mogul dynasty in India.

Tamerlane, a tragedy by Rowe, produced 1701, of some historical interest because under the name of Tamerlane the author intended to characterize William III, while under that of Bajazet he held up Louis XIV to detestation.

Timur Tartar name of Tamerlane. A Timurid is one of his descendants; a member of the Turkic dynasty founded by him, which ruled in central Asia until the 16th century.

Tamerlane see Timur .

Timur See Tamerlane

Timur See TAMERLANE.

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