Tatar conqueror, born near Samarkand, SE Uzbekistan. In 1369 he ascended the throne of Samarkand, subdued nearly all Persia, Georgia, and the Tatar empire, and conquered all the states between the Indus and the lower Ganges (1398). He won Damascus and Syria from the Mameluke sovereigns of Egypt, then defeated the Turks at Angora (1402), taking Sultan Bayezit prisoner. His death, while taking a 200 000 army to conquer Ming China, made possible the reopening of Chinese W trade routes, and a Persian trade mission to China (1409).
Tīmūr bin Taraghay Barlas (Chagatai Turkic: تیمور Tēmōr, "iron") (1336 – February 1405) was a 14th century warlord of Turco-Mongol descent, conqueror of much of Western and central Asia, and founder of the Timurid Empire (1370–1405) in Central Asia and of the Timurid dynasty, which survived in some form until 1857.
He ruled over an empire that extends in modern nations from south eastern Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, through Central Asia encompassing part of Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, India, even approaching Kashgar in China.
Timur's legacy is a mixed one, for while Central Asia blossomed, some say even peaked, under his reign, other places such as Baghdad, Damascus, Delhi and other Arab, Persian, Indian and Turkic cities were sacked and destroyed, and many thousands of people were slaughtered. Thus, while Timur remains a hero of sorts in Central Asia, he is vilified by many in Arab, Persian and Indian societies.
After his marriage into 13th century Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan's family, he took the name Timūr Gurkānī (Persian: تيمور گوركانى), Gurkān being the Persianized form of the original Mongolian word kürügän, "son-in-law".
Early life
Timur was born in Transoxiana, near Kesh (an area now better known as Shahr-e Sabz), 'the green city,' situated some 50 miles south of Samarkand in modern Uzbekistan.
Timur placed much of his early legitimacy on his genealogical roots to the great Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan.
His father Taraghay was head of the tribe of Barlas, a nomadic Turkic-speaking tribe of Mongol origin that traced its origin to the Mongol commander Qarachar Barlas.
Under a paternal eye, the education of young Timur was such that at the age of twenty he had not only become an adept in manly outdoor exercises but had earned the reputation of being an attentive reader of the Qur'an. Like his father, Timur was a Muslim and may have been influenced by Sufism.
In addition, the spurious genealogy on his tombstone taking his descent back to Ali, and the presence of Shiites in his army led some observers and scholars to call him a Shiite.
Military leader
In about 1360 Timur gained prominence as a military leader.
After the murder of Kurgan the disputes which arose among the many claimants to sovereign power were halted by the invasion of Tughluk Timur of Kashgar, another descendant of Genghis Khan. Timur was dispatched on a mission to the invader's camp, the result of which was his own appointment to the head of his own tribe, the Barlas, in place of its former leader Hajji Beg.
The exigencies of Timur's quasi-sovereign position compelled him to have recourse to his formidable patron, whose reappearance on the banks of the Syr Darya created a consternation not easily allayed. The Barlas were taken from Timur and entrusted to a son of Tughluk, along with the rest of Mawarannahr;
Rise to power
Tughluk's death facilitated the work of reconquest, and a few years of perseverance and energy sufficed for its accomplishment, as well as for the addition of a vast extent of territory. During this period Timur and his brother-in-law Husayn, at first fellow fugitives and wanderers in joint adventures full of interest and romance, became rivals and antagonists. At the close of 1369 Husayn was assassinated and Timur, having been formally proclaimed sovereign at Balkh, mounted the throne at Samarkand, the capital of his dominions.
It is notable that Timur never claimed for himself the title of khan, styling himself amir and acting in the name of the Chagatai ruler of Transoxania. Timur was a military genius but lacking in political sense.
Period of expansion
The next 35 years, until his death, Timur spent in various wars and expeditions. Timur not only consolidated his rule at home by the subjugation of his foes, but sought extension of territory by encroachments upon the lands of foreign potentates.
One of the most formidable of his opponents was Tokhtamysh who, after having been a refugee at the court of Timur, became ruler both of the eastern Kipchak and the Golden Horde and quarrelled with Timur over the possession of Khwarizm. Timur supported Tokhtamysh against Russians and Tokhtamysh, with armed support by Timur, invaded Russia and in 1382 captured Moscow. In 1383 Timur started the military conquest of Persia. Timur captured Herat, Khorasan and all eastern Persia to 1385.
In the meantime, Tokhtamysh, now khan of the Golden Horde, turned against Timur and invaded Azerbaijan in 1385. In this war, Timur led an army of over 100,000 men north for about 500 miles into the uninhabited steppe, then west about 1000 miles, advancing in a front more than 10 miles wide. During this march, Timur's army got far enough north to be in a region of very long summer days, causing complaints by his Muslim soldiers about keeping a long schedule of prayers in such northern regions. Timur led a second campaign against Tokhtamysh via an easier route through the Caucasus, and Timur destroyed Sarai and Astrakhan, and wrecked the Golden Horde's economy based on Silk Road trade.
India
In 1398 Timur, informed about civil war in India (started in 1394), began war against the Muslim Ruler in Delhi. After the honourable and couragous death in battle of Ilaas Awan, Timur (though very much impressed by Ilyaas Awan's bravery) approached Delhi to meet with the armies of the Emperor, Sultan Nasir-u-Din Mehmud of Tughlaq Dynasty, who was already weak due to a fight for power in the Royal Family. Timur entered Delhi and the city was sacked, destroyed, and left in a mass of ruins. Before the battle for Delhi, Timur executed more than 50,000 captives, and after the sack of Delhi almost all inhabitants who were not killed were captured and deported. It is said that the devastation of Delhi was not Timur's intent, but that his horde could simply not be controlled after entering the city gates.
Timur left Delhi in approximately January 1399.
Last campaigns and death
Timur went to Kashmir from Delhi and forced hundreds to embrace Islam. Before the end of 1399 Timur started a war with Bayezid I, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and the Mamluk sultan of Egypt. As Timur claimed suzerainity over the Turkmen rulers, they took refuge behind him. Timur invaded Syria, sacked Aleppo, and captured Damascus after defeating the Mamluk's army.
He invaded Baghdad in June 1401. Timur ordered that every soldier should return with at least two severed human heads to show him (many warriors were so scared they killed prisoners captured earlier in the campaign just to ensure they had heads to present to Timur). In 1402, Timur invaded Anatolia and defeated Bayezid in the Battle of Ankara on July 20, 1402. Timur's stated motivation for attacking Bayezid and the Ottoman Empire was the restoration of Seljuq authority. Timur saw the Seljuks as the rightful rulers of Anatolia as they had been granted rule by Mongol conquerors, illustrating again Timur's interest with Genghizid legitimacy.
By 1368, the Ming had driven the Mongols out of China. Timur more than once sent to the Ming Government gifts which could have passed as tribute, at first not daring to defy the economic and military might of the Middle Kingdom.
Timur wished to restore the Mongol Empire, and eventually planned to conquer China. In December 1404, Timur started military expeditions against the Ming Dynasty of China, but he was attacked by fever and plague when encamped on the farther side of the Sihon (Syr-Daria) and died at Atrar (Otrar) in mid-February 1405.
Of Timur's four sons, two (Jahangir and Umar Shaykh) predeceased him. His third son, Miran Shah, died soon after Timur, leaving the youngest son, Shah Rukh. Jahangir, Timur was ultimately succeeded in power by his son Shah Rukh.
Markham, in his introduction to the narrative of Clavijo's embassy, states that his body "was embalmed with musk and rose water, wrapped in linen, laid in an ebony coffin and sent to Samarkand, where it was buried." Timur had carried his victorious arms on one side from the Irtish and the Volga to the Persian Gulf, and on the other from the Hellespont to the Ganges River.
Contributions to the arts
Timur became widely known as a patron to the arts.
According to legend, Omar Aqta, Timur's court calligrapher, transcribed the Qur'an using letters so small that the entire text of the book fit on a signet ring.
Timur was also said to have created Tamerlane Chess, a variant of shatranj (also known as medieval chess) played on a larger board with several additional pieces and an original method of pawn promotion.
Exhumation
Timur's body was exhumed from his tomb in 1941 by the Russian anthropologist Mikhail M. He found that Timur's facial characteristics conformed to that of Mongoloid features, which he believed, in some part, supported Timur's notion that he was descended from Genghis Khan. He also confirmed Timur's lameness. Gerasimov was able to reconstruct the likeness of Timur from his skull.
Famously, a curse has been attached to opening Timur's tomb. In the year of Timur's death, a sign was carved in Timur's tomb warning that whoever would dare disturb the tomb would bring demons of war onto his land. Timur Lenk was the subject of two plays (Tamburlaine the Great, Parts I and II) by English playwright Christopher Marlowe. George Frideric Handel made Timur Lenk the title character of his Tamerlano (HWV 18), an Italian language opera based on the 1675 play Tamerlan ou la mort de Bajazet by Jacques Pradon. German-Jewish writer and social critic Kurt Tucholsky, under the pen name of Theobald Tiger, wrote the lyrics to a cabaret song about Timur in 1922, with the lines Mir ist heut so nach Tamerlan zu Mut — ein kleines bisschen Tamerlan wär gut
which roughly translates as "I feel like Tamerlane today, a little bit of Tamerlane would be nice." The alternate history novel The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson portrays a Timur whose last campaign is significantly different from the historical truth. Manz, "Tīmūr Lang", in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Online Edition, 2006 ^ The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, "Timur", 6th ed., Columbia University Press: "... Timur (timoor') or Tamerlane (tăm'urlān), c.1336–1405, Mongol conqueror, b. ...", (LINK) ^ "Timur", in Encyclopaedia Britannica: "... Baber first tried to recover Samarkand, the former capital of the empire founded by his Mongol ancestor Timur Lenk ..." ^ S.
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