Timur, historically known as Amir Timur and Tamerlane, was a Turco-Mongol conqueror. He is chiefly remembered for the barbarity of his conquests from India and Russia to the Mediterranean Sea and for the cultural achievements of his dynasty.
Background
Ethnicity:
Timur belonged to the Barlas tribe which was basically of Mongol origin. Timur was a descendant of Genghis Khan from his mother’s side and hence he had to rule the territories he expanded as an Amir (Prince) rather than a Khan (King).
Timur, full name Timur Lenk, was born in 1336 near Samarkand Transoxania which is now in Uzbekistan. Timur’s father was Taragay and he was the leader of the Barlas tribe. They were a mix of Mongolian and Turkic, the earlier populace of Transoxiana. 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.
Education
Timur is not mentioned to have an official education but the early days of clashes between the Mongols and the Barlas tribe that he belonged to is seen to have influenced him.
Career
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 from its Mongol masters.
Tamerlane was, however, taken ill at Otrar, on the eastern bank of the Syr Darya, and died on February 18, 1405.
After the death of Timur, his descendants which included his sons and grandsons began fighting for the throne. Uleg Beg, Timur’s grandson was considered a scholar but couldn’t prove himself as a good ruler. In 1449, he was killed by his own son. It was Uleg Beg who created an astronomical observatory which was later used by the British astronomers for their studies.
Babur who founded the Mughal Dynasty in India in 1526 was the fifth or sixth generation of Timur. The Mughals got to rule over India till 1857. The famous Shah Jahan who built Taj Mahal was also a descendant of Timur. Samarkand in the rule of Timurid dynasty became the center of Science and scholarship. It persisted its reign over Central Asia for about a century and it was in the 16th century that the rulership ended.
Timur called himself a true Muslim. He wanted to expand the existence of Islam as far as possible. He was a true believer in God and is said to have prayed while he was on his deathbed. He believed that all that he did during his reign was being a true Muslim. During his conquer of Iraq and other Islamic countries, Timur killed many Muslims whom he called bad-Muslims.
Politics
Timur had very little political sense. He was never able to form a proper government in the lands he conquered and moved on. With no proper administration, he had to re-fight the battles to take over the countries he had conquered before.
Views
Timur was, above all, master of the military techniques developed by Genghis Khan, using every weapon in the military and diplomatic armory of the day. He never missed an opportunity to exploit the weakness (political, economic, or military) of the adversary or to use intrigue, treachery, and alliance to serve his purposes. The seeds of victory were sown among the ranks of the enemy by his agents before an engagement. He conducted sophisticated negotiations with both neighbouring and distant powers, which are recorded in diplomatic archives from England to China. In battle, the nomadic tactics of mobility and surprise were his major weapons of attack.
Quotations:
"It is better to be on hand with ten men than absent with ten thousand."
"By the blows of my well tempered sword I have conquered the greater part of the world to enlarge Samarkand and Bukhara, my capitals and residences; and you pitiful creature would exchange these two cities for a mole".
It is alleged that Timur's tomb was inscribed with the words, "When I rise from the dead, the world shall tremble." It is also said that when Gerasimov exhumed the body, an additional inscription inside the casket was found, which read, "Whomsoever opens my tomb shall unleash an invader more terrible than I."
Personality
Timur had qualities of becoming a leader early on. When he was forced to become a thief for survival, even then he had a group of robbers to lead. From being an early leader, Timur could easily motivate and manipulate people. He was witty and smart which is seen from his fight against Hussein and the way he took over many battles for the expansion of his territories as a ruler.
The tomb of Timur was opened by an archeologist in 1941 who confirmed that Timur had injuries on the right leg that he had got from being a robber initially and he was unable to raise his right hand. Though Timur did great during his life but his brutality of killing the inhabitants of the lands he conquered doesn’t make him famous in an optimistic way. He has history of burning, burying, beheading and even cutting a body in half by waist down.
Physical Characteristics:
It was determined that Timur was a tall and broad-chested man with strong cheek bones. At 5 feet 8 inches (1.73 meters), Timur was tall for his era. The examinations confirmed that Timur was lame and had a withered right arm due to his injuries. His right thighbone had knitted together with his kneecap, and the configuration of the knee joint suggests that he had kept his leg bent at all times and therefore would have had a pronounced limp.
Gerasimov reconstructed the likeness of Timur from his skull and found that Timur's facial characteristics displayed Mongoloid features with some Caucasoid admixture. Oshanin also concluded that Timur's cranium showed predominately the characteristics of a South Siberian Mongoloid type.
Quotes from others about the person
"In his formal correspondence Temur continued throughout his life to portray himself as the restorer of Chinggisid rights. He justified his Iranian, Mamluk, and Ottoman campaigns as a re-imposition of legitimate Mongol control over lands taken by usurpers." - Beatrice Forbes Manz
Connections
Timur had eighteen wives and twenty four concubines. He had five sons and four daughters.