Today, we’re going to provide a “different” sort of blog
post. Previously, most of this series
about Central Asia in general and Kyrgyzstan in particular has been, frankly,
fairly cheerful in outlook: we’ve talked
about the local handicrafts, yaks, yurts,
and poetry, all of which are fascinating, but form only a portion of the
endlessly intriguing story of Central Eurasia.
Now, we’d like to present a “snapshot” look at another side of this
ancient region, a brief examination of the career of a man whose name you may
be familiar with, perhaps without knowing why: Timur, usually known in the West
as Tamerlane. He rose from obscurity to
found an enormous empire, stretching from present-day Kyrgyzstan to Turkey; he
also earned, and indeed cultivated, a reputation for brutality not surpassed
until the Nazis arrived.
Tamerlane statue in Samarkand
Timur, or Tamerlane, was born in 1336, the son of a minor
noble belonging to a “Turkified” mongol tribe in what is present-day
Uzbekistan; when a child, he and his family were taken as prisoners by an invading
Mongol army to the city of Samarkand.
Later in life, Timur made Samarkand his capitol. While still young, he and a small band of
followers specialized in raiding, or rustling, livestock, and it was on such a
raid Timur was hit by arrows in his right side, making him lame for the
remainder of his life, and giving rise to the nickname, “Timur the Lame,” by
which he eventually became known to the West, Tamerlane. Eventually, Timur became leader of his tribe
and a commander in the armies of the Chagatai Khans, one of the successor
Mongol regimes in Central Asia that followed the death of Genghis Khan and the
fragmentation of his empire.
Timur was careful to develop his reputation as a successor
to the famed Mongol conquerors of the past, maintaining a descendent of
Chagatai on the throne as a puppet ruler while he himself married a Chagatid
princess, and took the title, “Amir,” meaning “General,” and referred to
himself as the “Sword of Islam.” Thus,
he legitimized his reign in both the eyes of the Mongol tribes, despite not
being descended from Genghis Khan as the Chagatids were, and in the view of the
Islamic population, although he could not claim to be “Caliph,” not being
related to Mohammed. In any event,
Timur’s blend of Mongol tradition and Islamic law proved effective: his military successes allowed him to claim
divine favor in Islamic eyes, and his extreme ruthlessness resulted in crushing
attempted resistance or rebellion.
By around 1370 Timur was secure enough in his power at home
to “take his show on the road,” and began a period of roughly 35 years of
nearly constant campaigning to expand his empire. In so doing, he conquered virtually all of
Persia, or present-day Iran, and all but destroyed the “Golden Horde” Khanate,
another of Genghis’ successor kingdoms in what is now Ukraine and Russia, in
the process. He even occupied Moscow and
got as far as the Baltic area before turning back. In 1398, Timur attacked northern India,
sacking Delhi after subjugating the region on the grounds that its then-current
Muslim rulers were too tolerant of Hinduism.
Prior to the sack of Delhi, Timur reportedly executed 100,000
prisoners. Afterwards, a revolt in Delhi
triggered a retaliatory massacre, following which Timur’s army built structures
of human heads, a tactic showcased earlier suppressing revolts in Persia, the
famous “towers of skulls” which served as a ready warning to any foolish enough
to defy the Amir.
Another statue of Amir Timur in Shakrisabz, Uzbekistan
After conquering northern India, Timur then turned upon the
Mamluk Empire in Egypt and the new power of the Ottomans in Turkey. While he was at it, he invaded Armenia,
Georgia, and Syria, defeating the Christian Knights of Rhodes at Smyrna and
also taking Baghdad, resulting in a massacre of 20,000 people. Having more or less laid waste to the Near
East, he returned to Samarkand and began plans to conquer China. Shortly after starting the expedition,
however, Timur fell ill and died in 1405 at the age of 68, leaving his sons and
grandsons to fight each other over who would inherit his vast domains. One of his descendants, Babur, eventually
founded the famous Mughal dynasty over northern India and Afghanistan.
Map showing the extent of Timur's Empire, overlaying modern day country borders.
Timur’s tomb still stands in Samarkand, a beautiful example
of what has become known as Timurid architecture. Sarmarkand, in the time of Timur, became a
center of learning and the arts, but how much of that came from scholars and
artisans taken there by force after their homes’ sacking? Timur is credited with unifying many of
Central Asia’s Muslim populations at swordpoint, but also is chiefly
responsible for the wholesale destruction of the Church of the East, known in
the West as Nestorian Christianity. His
thorough grasp of Mongol warfare made him the last of the Central Asian
empire-builders, but he built his reputation, literally, on towers of
skulls. Today, he’s officially a
national hero of Uzbekistan, and his monument in Tashkent stands on the former
location of a statute of Marx. Perhaps
somewhat ironically, Tamerlane was also viewed favorably in contemporary
Western Europe, likely because of his war with the Ottomans, who were at the
time generally regarded as a very serious threat to the West. Tamerlane was the subject of Poe’s first
published poem and a play by Marlowe, and there are no less than four operas,
by such luminaries as Handel and Vivaldi, about the Turkic conqueror.
Amir Timur statue in Taskkent, Uzbekistan.
If you’re interested, most of the information in this
posting came from, or I referred to, the Wikipedia and online
Encyclopedia Britannica articles about Timur, the Chagatai Khanate, and the
Knights Hospitaller. There are, of
course, other biographical and historical sources available about him.
