Titans of History

By 1370, as the undisputed leader of an ever-expanding domain centered on Samarkand—where he had opulent temples and beautiful gardens constructed behind new defensive walls and a moat—Tamerlane began to dream of greatness. Claiming descent from Genghis Khan (though he was probably Turkic), he announced his goal of re-establishing the Mongol empire. First, though, he had to bring stability to his new regime, so he married Hussein’s widow, Sarai Khanum, and used only the title emir—commander, ruling through Genghizid puppets. He re-established and monopolized the Silk Road, by which trade had once passed from China to Europe. Through this strategy of war abroad and peace at home, he could satisfy those who longed for new conquests as well as those who wanted prosperous stability.

Tamerlane presided over a highly efficient war machine, divided into tumen, units of 10,000 men, a skilled cavalry—including, eventually, an elephant corps from India—equipped with supplies for lengthy campaigns and heavily armed with bows and swords, as well as catapults and battering rams for siege warfare. His soldiers—whose livelihoods depended on conquest—were composed of an eclectic ethnic mix, including Turks, Georgians, Arabs and Indians. Between 1380 and 1389 Timur embarked on a series of campaigns in which he conquered a colossal empire, embracing Persia, Iraq, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, Anatolia, Syria, all of central Asia, northern India, the approaches to China and much of southern Russia: his longest struggle was against Tokhtamysh, khan of the Golden Horde, whom he finally defeated and destroyed in 1391.

Terror was a key weapon in Tamerlane’s armory. He sent secret agents ahead of his troops to spread rumors about the atrocities he had committed—such as the vast pyramids of decapitated heads constructed by his soldiers to celebrate victories in battle or the mass killing of around 70,000 citizens in Ifshahan, 20,000 at Aleppo, the beheading of 70,000 in Tikrit and 90,000 in Baghdad, the incineration of a mosque full of people in Damascus and wholesale destruction of cities in Persia following a revolt there in 1392. Fear alone was often sufficient to ensure compliance—though many millions were killed in his campaigns. Yet he beautified Samarkand, created the game of Tamerlane chess, practiced religious tolerance and engaged scholars in learned debates on philosophy and faith. He was altogether an extraordinary man, contradictory, a force of nature.

In 1398—extending his empire further than either Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan had achieved—Tamerlane invaded India and captured Delhi. A hundred thousand civilians were massacred there, and a similar number of Indian soldiers murdered in cold blood after their surrender following the Battle of Panipat. Still Tamerlane pressed on. In 1401, his men conquered Syria, rampaging through Damascus; in July 1402, after a huge and bloody battle near Ankara, Tamerlane defeated the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I, looting, among other treasures, the famous gates from the Ottoman palace of Brusa; and later the same year he annihilated the Christian city of Smyrna, floating the severed heads of his victims out to sea on candlelit dishes. By 1404, even the Byzantine emperor John I was paying him tribute in return for a guarantee of safety.

In his late sixties, Tamerlane embarked on his final adventure—an attempted invasion of China—but he became ill on the march and died in January 1405. His body was returned to Samarkand, where a mausoleum was erected to him. After his death, his sons and grandsons fought for control of the empire, before his younger son, Shahrukh, finally assumed power in 1420 as the sole survivor of the family. His most illustrious descendant was Babur, founder of the Timurid dynasty that ruled India as the Mughals until 1857. A ruthless killer, whose armies were responsible for unrivaled pillage and brutality, Tamerlane was equally a shrewd statesman, brilliant general and sophisticated patron of the arts. Revered in Uzbekistan to this day—his monument in Tashkent standing where Marx’s statue once presided—Tamerlane was buried in a beautiful simple tomb in Samarkand. Legend said that the disturber of his tomb would be cursed: in June 1941, a Soviet historian opened the tomb. Days later, Hitler attacked Soviet Russia.

RICHARD II

1367–1400

He threw down all who violated the royal prerogative; he destroyed heretics and scattered their friends.

Richard II’s chosen epitaph for his tomb in Westminster Abbey