A Mongol leader who began as the leader of a group of nomads, and imposed his control over vast areas with cunning and force. One of the descendants of Genghis Khan and the master of the military techniques he developed, Uzbekistan considers him a national hero, while others see him as an example of the butcher leader who represented with his group the successes of nomadic fighters, and sought violence and bloody to He made his city, Samarkand, the most magnificent in Asia, although he had not lived there for a long time since the beginning of his devastating military activity.

Birth and upbringing

Timur Targhai Barkal, known as Tamerlane, was born on April 9, 1336 in the city of Kish, south of Samarkand, in the country beyond the river. His father was the leader of the Turkish Mongolian Barlas tribe, and his mother was the granddaughter of the Mongol leader Genghis Khan.

Tamerlane did not obtain the title of Khan, despite his desire to do so, because he did not descend from the male line of Genghis Khan.

Tamerlane's name consists of two parts;

Timur, which means iron, and Link, which means the lame, was nicknamed "the lame" when he was 27 years old, after a shepherd's arrow hit him in the leg because he tried to steal his sheep.

The Barlas tribe resided in the region beyond the river, which now faces Uzbekistan, after the son of Genghis Khan Chagatai campaigned in that region, and there Timur grew up in the so-called Chagatai Khanate.

After the killing of Kazan Khan, the leader of one of the Mongol tribes of Transoxiana, following internal conflicts in 1358, Tughluq Timur, the leader of Moghulistan, sent an army led by his son Elias Khan to annex Transoxiana, so the Barlas tribe fled before him and killed its leader, Tamerlane's uncle.

Tamerlane declared his allegiance to Togluk Khan, entered his service, and persuaded him to appoint him as ruler of the city of Kish and leader of his tribe, so he was able to gather his followers and form an army of nomads.

Leadership insights

In 1361 Tughluq Timur appointed his son Elias Khoja as governor of Transoxiana, and appointed Tamerlane as his minister, but he fled and joined Amir Hussein and launched an attack on Elias Khoja and defeated him in 1364.

Tamerlane, with Hussein, who became his son-in-law, achieved strong control over the country beyond the river, and after his marriage to the sister of Amir Hussein, he was appointed ruler of Samarkand.

In 1370, Timur turned against Amir Hussein after their relationship was strained, taking advantage of the hatred of the people of Balkh for him, and imposed a two-day siege on the city, so Amir Hussein surrendered after granting him safety, and Timur fulfilled his promise and did not kill him, but he handed him over to one of the tribes that killed him.

Statue of the Mongol leader Timur Link, who is considered the last great invader of Central Asia (Shutterstock)

Tamerlane was titled Prince and married to Saray Malik Khanum, the widow of Amir Hussein, to make his rule legitimate, and she is also one of the granddaughters of Genghis Khan, so he received the title "Gur Khan", which means royal son-in-law.

Tamerlane declared himself king of Samarkand and tightened his control over beyond the river, establishing the Timurid state, and claimed that his goal was to revive the glories of the Mongols once again.

And he formed an army from the Al-Jagtay tribe, and replaced its leaders with members of his family, and he was able to maintain the loyalty of his soldiers through looting and rewarding spoils.

In the next ten years, Tamerlane fought against several sides.

Including the Khanate of Gata (East Turkistan), and conquered Khwarazm 4 times in a row between 1372 and 1379.

Tamerlane provided armed support to the Khan of the Crimean Mongols, Tokhtamash, who was a refugee in his court at the time. Tokhtamysh fought the Russians represented by Mamai's Golden Horde, and his forces occupied Moscow and defeated the Lithuanians near Poltava.

Residents of Uzbekistan consider Tamerlane a national hero and he has several statues in Samarkand (Shutterstock)

Expansion of Persia

Tamerlane began his expansion in Persia by controlling the state of Herat in 1383, and the economic and political situation in Persia was fraught with danger at that time, and Mazandaran surrendered to him in 1384 without a fight.

The leadership in Persia was of rival dynasties, riven by internal strife and thwarting an attempt to mount effective joint resistance, and Khorasan and all of eastern Persia fell to Tamerlane in 1385.

Tamerlane invaded Azerbaijan and Georgia and captured its king in 1386, and overthrew Iraq, Armenia and Mesopotamia. During that period, the leader of the Mongols of the Golden Horde, Tokhtamysh, launched an attack on the country beyond the river, and allied with Mughalstan against the Timurid state.

Tamerlane began responding to this attack by fighting Mughalstan, then by attacking the Golden Horde in the north in the Russian steppes in 1391, and there he defeated Tokhtamysh and deposed him from the throne, but he created a new army with which he invaded the Caucasus in 1395, but he abandoned the struggle after his defeat in the Kur River.

Tamerlane occupied Moscow for a year, then returned to Persia to violently quell the rebellious revolutions in his absence, so he began a brutal military campaign in 1392 that lasted for 5 years, in which he destroyed entire cities, killed huge numbers, and built towers from their skulls.

Tamerlane eliminated the state of the Muzaffar family in Iran and expanded to Iraq, occupying Baghdad, and declared his affiliation to the Shiite sect and his support for Imam Ali, but some historians questioned the veracity of this and considered it a political trick he practiced to win the loyalty of the people.

Tamerlane wanted to make Samarkand the most magnificent Asian city, so he transported stones from India and craftsmen from Damascus (Shutterstock)

Conquest of India and the Islamic world

In September 1398, Tamerlane invaded India after the end of the rule of Firuz Shah and the weakness of his state, and justified this by the fact that the Muslim sultans in Delhi showed excessive tolerance towards their Hindu subjects.

Tamerlane destroyed the city of Delhi and turned it into rubble, and it took a century to rebuild it again.

In April 1399, Tamerlane returned to Samarkand with many spoils, which he transferred to 90 villas, and used stones and marble to build a large mosque in Samarkand.

Toward the end of 1399, Tamerlane embarked on his last great journey, punishing the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt and the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I for their seizure of some of his lands.

He regained control of Azerbaijan and entered the east of the Islamic world in a military campaign called the "Seven Years' Campaign", which he began by storming and looting Aleppo and defeating the Mamluks, then destroying Baghdad and killing 20,000 of its citizens in June 1401.

In the same year, he entered and occupied Damascus, destroyed its landmarks, and betrayed its people who surrendered in exchange for safety. He also burned the Umayyad Mosque and slaughtered all of its inhabitants, except for the craftsmen and skilled people who deported them to Samarkand to decorate and rebuild it.

After his invasion of Damascus;

Anatolia attacked and destroyed Bayazid's army near Ankara on July 20, 1402, and the Sultan of Egypt surrendered to him, and John VII, so he returned to his homeland, Samarkand.

Interview with Ibn Khaldun

The Timurid invasion took place during the rule of Faraj bin Barquq to Egypt, so the latter went to the aid of the Levant, accompanied by judges and scholars, including Ibn Khaldun.

But Sultan Faraj returned to Egypt for fear of a coup against him, but Ibn Khaldun went to Tamerlane's camp near Damascus, and after an agreement with the jurists and notables of Damascus to surrender it in exchange for safety for themselves and their money.

Ibn Khaldun met Tamerlane, who asked him about the most important cities of Morocco, but that did not convince him, so he asked Ibn Khaldun to write a book detailing the geography of the Islamic Maghreb.

Ibn Khaldun witnessed the massacres of Tamerlane in Damascus and his horror of creation, and he returned to meet with him, so he gave him the book he wrote on the history and geography of Morocco. Tamerlane ordered his entourage to translate the book, and Ibn Khaldun’s status rose with him, and he fulfilled his request to return to Egypt, and he gave him a written safety for the souls of scholars, jurists and readers in Damascus.

Death

After Tamerlane's return to Samarkand in 1404, he prepared for a new trip to China, which he decided to invade instead of Europe, which he thought was poor, and he set out for it at the end of December, but he fell ill on his way.

Tamerlane died in February 1405 in the city of Farab, and his body was embalmed and placed in an ebony coffin and sent to Samarkand, where he was buried in a lavish, and he had divided his lands before his death between his sons and grandchildren, and his son Shah Rukh reunited the lands later.