Timur and Samarkand
Persia: Empire and AfterwardsThe Last Great Steppe Conqueror
Timur — Tamerlane in Europe, from Timur-i Lang, Timur the Lame — was born near Samarkand around 1336 into a Turco-Mongol tribal world. He was not a descendant of Genghis Khan and never claimed the title of khan, ruling instead through a puppet and the title emir. Between the 1370s and his death in 1405 he campaigned across Iran, the Caucasus, India, Syria and Anatolia.
The Cost
His campaigns were exceptionally destructive even by the standards of the period. Isfahan, Delhi and Aleppo were among the cities that suffered catastrophic sacks, and contemporary accounts describe towers built from the heads of the dead. The figures given in the sources cannot be verified and are probably inflated, but the scale of the killing is not seriously disputed.
What He Took Home
He also systematically deported craftsmen. Architects, tile-workers, weavers, metalworkers and scholars were rounded up in the cities he took and sent to Samarkand. Much of what makes Timurid architecture extraordinary — the vast ribbed domes, the turquoise and cobalt tilework, the muqarnas vaults — was built in his capital by Persian and other craftsmen who had not chosen to be there.
The Timurid Century
What his descendants did with it is the surprise. Fifteenth-century Samarkand and Herat under the Timurids became the greatest centres of Persian painting, poetry and science in the world. His grandson Ulugh Beg was a serious astronomer who built an observatory and compiled a star catalogue of over a thousand entries, most newly measured. The Timurid miniature is one of the high points of Persian art.
And Then India
In 1526 a Timurid prince named Babur, descended from Timur on his father's side and from Genghis on his mother's, took northern India and founded the dynasty Europeans would call the Mughals — a corruption of Mongol. They ruled in Persian, wrote in Persian, and built the Taj Mahal. Persian remained the court language of India into the nineteenth century.
Key Dates to Remember
- c. 1336 — Timur born near Samarkand
- 1370 — Takes power; Samarkand becomes his capital
- 1387 & 1398 — The sacks of Isfahan and Delhi
- 1405 — Dies on campaign toward China
- 1420s — Ulugh Beg's observatory at Samarkand
- 1526 — Babur founds the Mughal dynasty in India