Commanders in Profile: Timur (1336-1405). The Turco-Mongol Apogee.
To history he’s known as Timur or in the west as Tamerlane. He’s one of the great conquerors of history and one who probably best epitomized the Turco-Mongol-Persianate tradition. Taking ancestral links from the Mongols of the Mongol Empire and cultural links from the fellow nomadic Turks as well as the Persians, Timur synthesized all of these influences. He would rise from relative obscurity to command one of the most powerful empires of the Middle Ages.
-Timur is born on April 9, 1336 in the city of Kesh, in modern day Uzbekistan. He is a member of the Barlas, a Mongolian tribe which has been culturally Turkified over the years. He is not a direct descendant of Genghis Khan but is evidently a distant relative through his father due to a shared common ancestor back in Mongolia. His mother’s origins are unknown and variously described as Mongolian or even Persian. His name means “iron” in the Chagatai Turkic language.
-By the time of Timur’s birth, the once powerful Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan has fragmented among competing junior dynasties that form separate states. In Timur’s case, he is born into the Chagatai Khanate, which descends from Genghis Khan but has since converted to Islam and is now culturally Turkified with the majority of its populace being nomadic Turks from Central Asia.
-Timur’s father, Taraghai is a minor noble of a certain social standing and wealth in the Chagatai Khanate.
-Timur turns to the life of nomadic raiding, with a band of followers he conducts raids on travelling caravans, part of the Silk Road that pass through these lands from Europe to China. The raids usually take good, such as animals or other measures of wealth. During one raid against a shepherd, Timur is wounded by two arrows one to his right leg and one to his right hand, both wounds will cripple him the rest of life. Causing Timur to lose two fingers and suffer a limp on his leg. This will give rise to his later name in the west, Tamerlane which is a corruption of the moniker Timur the Lame.
-Timur will become a military leader of Turkic horsemen, the horse archer tradition of the Turks and Mongols would be the central element to his military thereafter. Timur joins the Chagatai Khan on several campaigns by the 1360′s. He invades parts of modern Iran and elsewhere in Central Asia. Becoming leader of the Barlas after his father’s death and becoming a powerful regional governor in the area of his birth, known as Transoxiana, north of the Oxus River which flows in Central Asia.
-In time, the Chagatai Khans begin to lose their central authority and brothers of the dynasty lead to rival claims which weaken the khanate’s power. Timur, ever the shrewd politician sides with whoever is the most advantageous for himself. In time, Timur will reduce the khan’s to mere ceremonial figureheads. He cannot take the title for himself because Mongol tradition dictates only direct descendants of Genghis Khan can do so and this, Timur wasn’t. He instead take the title, Amir which is Arabic for leader, and connotes a military or noble designation which suited Timur, a king in all but name.
-Timur was known to have been multilingual speaking Mongolian, Chagatai Turkic and Persian. This multilingualism would have an appeal in addition to his personal appeal through his intelligence and military prowess. His Mongol linguistics appealed to his tribesmen, giving him a premiere position in their society. His Chagatai Turkic language was the language of his military, it appealed to the core of his army, namely his rank and file horse archers of Turkic extraction. His Persian skills which became the language of culture and governance in the Islamic world from Anatolia to India, appealed to the artisans, politicians, religious clergy and engineers.
-Timur would typically destroy whole cities and their populaces, save for artisans and engineers, people who he could put to work in his own capital, Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
-Timur over the coming decades invaded Persia (modern Iran) as well as Afghanistan as well as consolidated control of Transoxiana. His empire, known in history as the Timurid Empire would control much of Central and West Asia. in 1380 he invaded Persia which has been party of the Mongol successor state, the Ilkhanate. However, due to the Black Death plague of the 1330′s-1340′s, the khanate dynasty was devastated and collapsed. Causing a number of fragmented successor states to rise up in its wake. Due to their decentralized nature, Timur with his consolidated strength was able to overcome enemy after enemy. Gradually ruling over the whole of Persia.
-Timur also was popular with his people due to his supposedly charitable nature, increasing schools and patronizing the arts, namely religious in nature.
-He called himself the “Sword of Islam” and setup a cult of personality to appeal to both his Mongol lineage and his Islamic religion. He could neither be the Great Khan by restriction of birth in the traditional confines of Mongol culture nor could he be the Caliph of Islam by din of descent. Instead through his military victories and charity would he appeal as a spiritual successor to both these claims, a sort of personal ordination by the hand of God.
-The title, Sword of Islam was questionable given that most of his enemies were fellow Muslims, nevertheless the moniker persisted.
-Timur’s varied campaigns took his expanse further west into Mesopotamia and Syria, conquering Baghdad from the Turkic khanates that survived. Additionally, in the 1380′s he came into conflict with the Golden Horde or Tatars. The Golden Horde was the Mongol successor state that ruled over the Caucasus and Eurasian steppe of southern Russia and Ukraine. In time, his long off and on campaigns with the Golden Horde would permanently weaken them. In a ripple effect of Timur’s conflict with the Golden Horde, the Slavic Rus’ principalities which had been vassals of the Mongols since the 13th century now were able to gradually rebel and become independent giving rise to medieval Russia under the power of the princely city-state of Muscovy or Moscow.
-In 1398, Timur turned his attention to the Dehli Sultanate of Northern India which was ruled by the Turco-Indian Tughlaq dynasty. In the battle of Dehli, Timur showed his characteristic tactical prowess. Facing a large Indian army that included armored elephants draped in chain mail and with tusks dipped in poison. Knowing his men were afraid of the elephants and the damage they could do, Timur planned to likewise panic the elephants and reverse their charge on the battlefield. Prior to the battle, he had a trench dug by his men to slow the elephants advance. Then he loaded up pack camels and tied hay and wood to their backs. He set these bundles of hay and wood on fire and prodded the camels with hit iron pokers which sent them charging forward toward the elephants. This bit of psychological warfare worked, scaring the elephants at the sight of camels, howling in pain with flames emitting from their backs. The elephants turned and stampeded towards their own lines from which the Timurid army launched a follow up attack overwhelming the Indian army.
-Timur had 100,000 people executed in Delhi, sacked and burnt the city and looted its many riches to be swept back to Samarkand. This would be emulated when the Persian Shah, Nader Shah in the early 18th century would likewise attack and sack Delhi, ironically then under the leadership of Timur’s descendants.
-1399 saw Timur declare war on the Ottoman Empire then rising in Anatolia as well as the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt.
-1400 saw an invasion of Armenia and Georgia in one of his few campaigns against Christians, as many as 60,000 were enslaved and untold numbers killed with entire districts being depopulated.
-The war with the Ottomans, actually started as a series of insulting letters exchanged with the then Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I. The Ottomans has in the last century risen from semi-obscure beylik in western Anatolia to the most powerful Anatolian Turkic state and one with a presence in Europe with conquest of the Balkans and laying siege to the capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople. However, Timur invaded Anatolia, claiming over lordship of all Turkmen rulers. Bayezid was forced to lift his siege of Constantinople and instead contend with Timur.
-Things came to a head in 1402 at the Battle of Ankara in central Anatolia when the Timurid and Ottoman armies, the two rising Islamic powers of the age would meet. Both armies were large and fought very hard that day, especially of note were the Serbian knights who were vassals of the Ottomans. Their heavy armor repelled the Timurid cavalry’s arrows and the ferocity of the Serbian troops caused Timur to remark that Serbs “fought like lions”. Nevertheless, Ottoman troops on a forced march in summer heat were tired and thirsty from the outset and exhaustion set in and allowed the Timurids with their superior numbers to gradually overwhelm them, though the Serb and Romanian vassals fled the battlefield realizing it a lost cause, Bayezid stayed on to fight. The Ottomans tired, thirsty, partially abandoned by their European troops and then betrayed by their own Tatars who joined the Timurid ranks were eventually surrounded and Bayezid himself was captured and taken prisoner. Never before or ever again would an Ottoman Sultan be taken prisoner on the field of battle, he died in captivity a few months later.
-With Bayezid’s death a civil war in the Ottoman Empire would take place among his sons which provided some relief to the last remnants of the Byzantine Empire as Constantinople would be spared for another few decades. Timur had unintentionally bought them more time. This victory over the Ottomans earned Timur fame in Europe and actually earned him some praise, unique for a Muslim ruler in the eyes of Christian Europe.
-In fact Timur engaged in diplomatic exchanges with France and the Spanish Kingdom of Castile during this time, each sending embassies back and forth. Timur referred to the Castilian king Henry III as like a son. Overall, mixed views of Timur pervaded, his barbaric mass beheadings were condemned but his running interference against a common enemy in the Ottoman Empire was appreciated.
-His westward expansion took him to western Anatolia and city of Smyrna which had an Ottoman contingent hiding and protected by Christian Knights of Rhodes and supported by Genoese Italian sailors. The Timurids put up a two week siege which finally succeeded in capturing the city despite fierce resistance from the Knights of Rhodes. Much of the city as was Timur’s custom was executed by mass beheading, burning or burying alive. Some Knights escaped on Genoese ships as did the Ottomans, ferried back to the Balkans where they were safe. This marked the extent of Timur’s westward expanse, he returned east to his empire having wrought the necessary damage upon the Ottomans and setting them up for a 12 year long civil war which kept them distracted.
-Timur, next planned an eastward campaign against the Ming dynasty of China which had overthrown the Mongol over lordship of China which had existed since the days of Genghis Khan. Timur’s goal was to conquer China and restore Mongol rule there now with an Islamic flavor. In 1405 he set out after months of preparation and died en route to China in Kazakhstan on February 17th of that year. His cause of death is believed to have been the common cold, though is not known definitively. He was by then nearing his 70′s and was liable to have been prone to death by disease.
-Timur was buried in simplistic fashion though in an ornate mausoleum in Samarkand. His tomb was said to had a curse placed on it. That anyone who disturbed it would face a great calamity. Nader Shah, his Turco-Persian emulator in the 18th century is rumored to have taken some jade from Timur’s tomb only to have his son fall ill until the jade was returned. Most famously in 1941 with Uzbekistan part of the USSR, Soviet scientists exhumed Timur’s body and conducted research confirming his disability and able to get a description of his body size, frame and reconstruct his facial features. The exhumation took place days before the Nazi invasion of the USSR. Some have tried to link the events. Indeed Timur’s body was re entombed in 1942 prior to the victory of Stalingrad which shifted the tide of war on the Eastern Front of World War II. Whether one believes in a link between these events and disturbances to the tomb of Timur, the idea of a curse persists into the modern era.
-Timur’s legacy was a one of great ambition and a demonstration of the power of the individual to through their own deeds appeal to others and in doing so come to wield great power and influence. He attempted to straddle legacies that influenced him, a Mongol tradition and an Islamic religious duty, both of which motivated him to attempt a Mongol renaissance but combine with Islam’s religious unity. Timur might not have been able to succeed in all his ambition due to time and his death but his achievements were certainly vast and plentiful.
-His legacy isn’t just military victory and conquest but it is one of patronizing art and in his attempt to put forth that Turco-Mongol tradition with Islamic influences that influenced architecture in Central Asia and the greater Islamic world in general. He also had a legacy that lived outside him and beyond him. His campaigns indirectly gave rise to the later Russian Empire and preserved the Byzantine Empire. His own love of Persian culture and government administration became a hallmark of Islamic empires for ages to come in terms of language and high culture.
-Timur’s legacy is also one that existed within his family, his empire never really maintained the stability it did under him, his successors ruled but another century or so but the state began to crumble and decentralize much like predecessor states in the region had before him. Eventually the Uzbek tribes and the Kurdish Safavid dynasty which came to rule Persia in the 1500′s replaced the remnants of the Timurid Empire and the various Turkic tribes in its power vacuum. One of his descendants by the name of Babur escaped to the east and established power over Delhi forming the Mughal Empire which spread Islam throughout India and came to rule much of the subcontinent for the next several centuries.
-Finally, Timur’s atrocities need to be accounted for as well, millions dead due to war, mass executions or through famine and disease are attested too. Some estimates say upward of 17 million died as a result of Timur’s campaigns through various causes, roughly this was 5% of the world’s estimated total population at the time. Already ravaged by the Black Death decades before, it would take some places decades if not centuries to recover its population...
