Timur
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| Timur | |
| Emir of the Timurid Empire | |
 Statue of Timur in Shahrisabz, Uzbekistan |
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| Royal House | Timurid |
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Timur, also written Emir Timur or Amir Temur (Chagatai: تیمور - Tēmōr, "iron") (1336 – 19 February 1405), among his other names,[1] commonly called Tamerlane[2] or Timur the Lame, was a 14th century Turco-Mongol[3] conqueror of much of western and Central Asia, and founder of the Timurid Empire and Timurid dynasty (1370–1405) in Central Asia, which survived until 1857 as the Mughal dynasty of India.[4][5]
Timur belonged to a family of the Turkicized Barlas clan of Mongol origin. Although Timur was not a direct male-line descendant of the great Khan Genghis, he claimed descent from one of Genghis' granddaughters and took two of Genghis's descendants as his wives to link himself to Genghis. He was Turkic in identity and language,[4][3][2][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] and he aspired to restore the Mongol Empire. He was also steeped in Persian culture[10] and in most of the territories which he incorporated, Persian was the primary language of administration and literary culture. Thus the language of the settled diwan was Persian and its scribes had to be adept in Persian culture, regardless of ethnicity.[13]. In addition to this, during his reign Turkic became a state and literary language, and some of the greatest contributions to Turkic literature were made during the Timurid era. Turkic culture was restored from the Mongol expansion and flourished. Major Turkic cultural sites like the Ahmad Yasavi shrine were constructed. Timur's short-lived empire consolidated the Turco-Persian cultural synthesis in Transoxiania: a literary form of Chaghatay Turkish was used alongside Persian as both cultural and official language.[14]
Timur was a military genius and loved to play chess in his spare time to improve his military tactics and skill. His troops were essentially Turkic-speaking.[10][5] He wielded absolute power, yet never called himself more than an emir, and eventually ruled in the name of tamed Chingizid Khans, who were little more than political prisoners. His heaviest blow was against the Mongol Golden Horde, which never recovered after his campaign against Tokhtamysh. Despite wanting to restore the Mongol Empire, Timur was more at home in a city than on a steppe as evidenced by his funding of construction in Samarkand. He thought of himself as a ghazi, but his biggest wars were against Muslim states.[15]
He died during his campaign against the Ming Dynasty, yet records indicate that for part of his life he was a surreptitious Ming vassal, and even his son Shah Rukh visited China in 1420.[16] He ruled over an empire that, in modern times, extends from southeastern Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait and Iran, through Central Asia encompassing part of Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, North-Western India, and even approaching Kashgar in China. Northern Iraq remained predominantly Assyrian Christian until attacked, looted, plundered and destroyed by Timur and its population decimated by systamatic mass slaughters and genocide, Churches were all destroyed and survivors were forcefully converted to Islam by the sword.[17][18][19] This is based on what is written by Christian monks and historians.
Timur's military talents were unique. He is known to have employed what is known nowadays as information warfare. Timur's campaigns were preceded by spies whose tasks included collecting information and spreading horrifying reports about the cruelty, size and might of his armies - eventually weakening the morale of the population and causing panic among enemy forces.
Sources claim that when Timur conquered Persia, Iraq and Syria, the civilian population was decimated and their women and children raped, looted and converted to Islam by force. In the city of Isfahan, he ordered the building of a pyramid of 70,000 human skulls, from those that his army had beheaded,[20][21] and a pyramid of some 20,000 skulls was erected outside of Aleppo.[22] Timur herded thousands of citizens of Damascus into the Cathedral Mosque before setting it aflame,[23] and had 70,000 people beheaded in Tikrit, and 90,000 more in Baghdad.[19][24] As many as 17 million people may have died from his conquests.[25]
Timur is historically considered to be a contradictory and controversial figure, as was the case even during his lifetime. He was a patron of the arts, but also destroyed the great centres of learning during his conquests.
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[edit] Early life
Timur was born in Transoxiana, near Kesh (an area now better known as Shahrisabz, 'the green city,'), situated some 50 miles south of Samarkand in modern Uzbekistan. His father Taraghay was the head of the Barlas, a nomadic Turkic-speaking tribe in the steppes of Central Asia. They were remnants of the original Mongol invaders of Genghis Khan of whom many had embraced Turkic or Iranian languages and customs. Timur means iron in the Turkish language(Demir) Mongolian language (Tomor) and Chagatai language.
The spurious genealogy on his tombstone taking his descent back to Ali, as well as the presence of Shiites in his army, led some observers and scholars to call him a Shiite. However, his official religious counselor was the Hanafite scholar Abd alJabbar Khwarazmi. There is evidence that he had converted to extremist Shia Nusayri sect under the influence of Sayyed Barakah, a Nusayri leader from his mentor, Balkh. He also constructed one of his finest buildings at the tomb of Ahmed Yesevi, an influential Turkic Sufi saint who was doing most to spread Sunni Islam among the nomads.
In his memoirs Timur gave the following information about his ancestry:
My father told me that we were descendants from Abu-al-Atrak (father of the Turks) the son of Japhet. His fifth son, Aljeh Khan, had twin sons, Tatar and Mogul, who placed their feet on the paths of infidelity. Tumene Khan had a son Kabul, whose son, Munga Bahadur, was the father of Temujin, called Gengis Khan. Gengis Khan abandoned the duty of a conqueror by slaughtering the people, and plundering the dominions of God, and he put many thousands of Muslims to death. He bestowed Mawur-ulnaher on his son Zagatai, and appointed my ancestor, Karachar Nevian, to be his minister. "Karacher appointed the plain of Kesh for the residence of the tribe of Berlas (his own tribe), and he subdued the countries of Kashgar, Badakshan, and Andecan. He was succeeded by his son Ayettekuz as Sepah Salar (general). Then followed my grandfather, the Ameer Burkul, who retired from office, and contented himself with the government of his own tribe of Berlas. He possessed an incalculable number of sheep and goats, cattle and servants. On his death my father succeeded, but he also preferred seclusion, and the society of learned men."[26]
[edit] Military leader
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In about 1360 Timur gained prominence as a military leader. He took part in campaigns in Transoxania with the khan of Chagatai, a fellow descendant of Genghis Khan. His career for the next 10 or 11 years may be thus briefly summarized from the Memoirs. Allying himself both in cause and by family connection with Kurgan, the dethroner and destroyer of Volga Bulgaria, he was to invade Khorasan at the head of a thousand horsemen. This was the second military expedition which he led, and its success led to further operations, among them the subjection of Khwarizm and Urganj.
After the murder of Kurgan the disputes which arose among the many claimants to sovereign power were halted by the invasion of the energetic Jagataite Tughlugh 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; but he was defeated in battle by the bold warrior he had replaced at the head of a numerically far inferior force.
[edit] Rise to power
Tughlugh'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. It was in this period that Timur reduced the Jagatai khans to the position of figureheads, who were deferred to in theory but in reality ignored, while Timur ruled in their name. 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. This event was recorded by Marlowe in his famous work Tamburlaine the Great:[27]
Then shall my native city, Samarcanda...
Be famous through the furthest continents,
For there my palace-royal shall be placed,
Whose shining turrets shall dismay the heavens,
And cast the fame of Ilion's tower to hell.
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 sometimes lacking in political sense. He tended not to leave a government apparatus behind in lands he conquered, and was often faced with the need to conquer such lands again after inevitable rebellions.
[edit] Period of expansion
Timur spent the next 35 years in various wars and expeditions. He 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. His conquests to the west and northwest led him among the Mongols of the Caspian Sea and to the banks of the Ural and the Volga. Conquests in the south and south-West encompassed almost every province in Persia, including Baghdad, Karbala and Northern Iraq.
One of the most formidable of his opponents was Tokhtamysh who, after having been a refugee at the court, became ruler both of the eastern Kipchak and the Golden Horde and quarreled with him over the possession of Khwarizm and Azerbaijan. Timur supported Tokhtamysh against Russians and Tokhtamysh, with armed support by Timur, invaded Russia and in 1382 captured Moscow. After the death of Abu Sa'id, ruler of the Ilkhanid Dynasty, in 1335, there was a power vacuum in the Persian Empire. In 1383 Timur started the military conquest of Persia. He captured Herat, Khorasan and all eastern Persia by 1385 and massacred almost all inhabitants of Neishapur and other Iranian cities.
In the meantime, Tokhtamysh, now khan of the Golden Horde, turned against his patron and invaded Azerbaijan in 1385. It was not until 1395, in the battle of Kur River, that Tokhtamysh's power was finally broken after a titanic struggle between the two monarchs. In this war, Timur first led an army of over 100,000 men north for more than 700 miles into the uninhabited steppe, then west about 1000 miles, advancing in a front more than 10 miles wide. The Timurid army almost starved, and Timur organized a great hunt where the army encircled vast areas of steppe to get food. Tokhtamysh's army finally was cornered against the Volga River in the Orenburg region and destroyed. 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. Timur then destroyed Sarai and Astrakhan, and wrecked the Golden Horde's economy based on Silk Road trade.
[edit] Indian Campaign
Informed about civil war in India, Timur began a trek starting in 1398 to invade the reigning <a href="/wiki/Sultan" t