Timur (8 April 1336-18 February 1405), also called Temur, Timur Lenk, or Tamerlane, was a Turco-Mongol conqueror who founded the Timurid Empire and reigned as its Amir from 9 April 1370 to 18 February 1405 (preceding Khalil Sultan). Claiming descent from Genghis Khan, he sought to emulate him, creating a vast empire in Central Asia. He died before he embarked on the conquest of China, apparently of drinking too much iced water.
Biography[]
Timur in battle
Timur was born into a tribe of Turco-Mongol horsemen in Transoxiana, an area of Central Asia roughly equivaent to present-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. As a young man, he was the leader of a lawless band of fighters engaged in endemic sirmishing between rival tribes and preying upon traveling merchants. He became known as Timur Lenk (Timur the Lame) because of an arrow wound that left his right arm and leg partially paralyzed.
Timur rose to prominence through an ambitious emir (Muslim ruler), Husayn of Balkh, who used the muscle provided by Timur's band to rise to power. Husayn was then supplanted by his erstwhile supporter. As ruler of Balkh and Samarkand, Timur continued to campaign, but by the age of 50, there was nothing to suggest he was destined for a major role on the world stage.
Asian Conquest[]
Timur's wider career of military aggression was triggered by rivalry with his fellow nomadic warrior, Tokhtamysh, who had reconstituted the Mongol Golden Horde. After Tokhtamysh plundered northern Persia in 1385, Timur responded with his own destructive campaigns, destroying Shiraz and eventually taking Baghdad. The two warrior leaders soon engaged in an epic struggle for controil of Central Asia. The outcome was decided at the Terek River in 1395. Timur defeated Tokhtamysh in battle and then laid waste his former territory with such efficiency that the Golden Horde ceased to exist. Far from satisfying Timur's thurst for warfare and conquest, total victory in central Asia was followed by a series of breathtaking campaigns that ranged from Delhi to Ankara in less than a decade.
Timur's Horde[]
The instrument of these campaigns, Timur's army, was at heart the traditional steppe nomad force, or horde, of tough mounted bowmen. Within this highly organized force, each tuman (ten thousand men) was subdivided into thousands, hundreds, and tens. Timur controlled every detail of his army's operations, from the method of constructing a temporary camp on the march to the technique for building pontoon bridges. He was always on the lookout for intelligence about his enemies and distant lands he might later invade. When the met the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun at Damascus in 1401, for example, he obtained a detailed description of Egypt, a likely future victim state. As well as the steppe warfare style of rapid movement and tactical trickery, Timur mastered siege warfare, using experts from settled populations to make and man battering rams and catapults, or provide incendiary and gunpowder devices. He was adept at psychological warfare, cunningly playing on his enemies' hopes and fears to weaken their resolve and divide them. To those peoples he defeated, he was no less than a nightmare of terror.
Opportunist[]
Timur did not plan a grand strategy for his campaigns, but was a raider, striking in whichever direction a challenge or an opening appeared. In 1398, he invaded northern India, where the death of a long-ruling Sultan of Delhi had left a temporary weakness of political leadership. The forces of the new sultan were destroyed, as was the city. His next target was the Mameluke state of Egypt, where another young, weak ruler had recently come to power. Devastating Georgia en route, Timur marched into Syria, a territory owing allegiance to the Mamelukes. Defeating an army of Syrian emirs at Aleppo, he reduced the city to ruins. Damascus fared no better. The Mameluke sultan led an army to defend the city, but fled precipitately, unnerved by the size and ferocity of Timur's forces. The city surrendered, amid scenes of looting and massacre.
Instead of pursuing the Mamelukes down to their capital of Cairo, Timur now took on the only rival worthy of his own military prestiege. The aggressive campaigns of Bayezid I, sultan of the Ottoman Turks, had won him the nickname Thunderbolt. He destroyed a powerful Christian army at Nicopolis in 1396 and besieged the Byzantine capital, Constantinople. In summer 1402, Timur advanced deep into Anatolia, evading Bayezid's army marching east to meet him. When Bayezid realized that the enemy was behind him, he had to turn back. By this time his soldiers found Timur's army near the fortress of Angora (Ankara), they were hot, thirsty, and exhausted. Timur controlled the scarce sources of water on the dry plain, forcing Bayezid to attack. The battle was hard fought, but many Ottomans changed sides or fled. Bayezid was imprisoned and died in captivity. Timur advanced to the Aegean, seizing a Christian crusader castle at Izmir, before returning to Samarkand in triumph. He died two years later, having never fulfilled his final ambition to invade China.