This is an excerpt from Author Adan Makina’s upcoming book: “The
Tatar Invasions of Muslim Lands: from Islamic and secular perspectives.”
This chapter
is exclusive to Tamerlane who is considered the toughest and the last of the
Turco-Mongol Sunni-Muslim conquerors who broke the ranks of the Mongols and
finally sent their remnants to Manchuria to face the volatile Manchus who
finally splintered them by sending them to the mountains and deserts of Mongolia.
His right name is Timur-i lang in Persian while Tamerlane is French. At a
tender age, according to legend, he was shot with an arrow on one leg and arm,
thus, he got injured and was known to limp when walking. Timur the Great rose
to prominence in the 14th century and considered himself the “Sword
of Islam.” In 1398, he captured India such that he left death and destruction
after his departure. He is known as the inventor of the Tamerlane Chess.
Tamerlane’s
father was called Og and he was the descendant of the famous kingdom of Sechatay
whose main capital was Samarkand or Samarqand that was located along a
historic river.[1] He
was born in 1336 near the city of Kesh, currently known as Shahrisabz in Uzbekistan. The Muslim
military tactician who remained famous in European history for centuries for
embodying romance and horror, kept his forces together, divided and dispersed
them at times along the countryside during peacetimes and war. From 1382 to
1405, he was known for conquering and reconquering regions stretching from
Delhi to Moscow in Eurasia, while in Central Asia, he swept regions from T’ien
Shan Mountains to as far as the Taurus Mountains of Anatolia.[2] Throughout his reign,
Gur-i-Timur remained on the move with his army of confederated tribes who were
drawn from almost every region he captured.
Admiring sown
lands over the Steppe, he avoided Dzungaria or Zungaria that was the lands of
the Golden Horde, and instead, focused on the Middle Eastern territories that
combined Iran, Afghanistan, and Khorezm.[3] Corresponding to the
northern half of Xinjiang, Dzungaria is a
geographical subregion in Northwest China. Also known as
Beijiang, it is a portmanteau of the Mandarin language, for “Bei” that implies
north and Xinjiang for “Northern Zinjiang.”[4] While other conquerors established themselves fully in the
Steppe, Gur-i-Timur simply swept it and crossed it over with lightning speed.
Distinct from Southern Nanjiang that is in the Tarim Basim and the major
economic power of Zinjiang, Dzungaria remains the major economic powerhouse
that is known as GDP.[5] To this day, there is the
Dzungarian Gate that is a significant pass between China and Central Asia.[6]
While some researchers portend that he was
from a family of shepherds, to the contrary, he was not, because he hailed from
a family that was engaged in revenues and other special minerals such as silver
and gold extraction and commerce.[7] Born to a royal and loyal family,
Tamerlane’s father was a wealthy landlord while his mother was the daughter of
a famous honorable religious man.[8] However, according to some historians,
roughly 17 million people died in his conquests.
As per
Marlowe’s quote, “The Uzbek literary theorist U. Tuychiyev describes it as
following: “... actually, the real facts can be the foundation stone of any
work, but they are not enough to make the work of fiction.”[9]
The most advanced elements of fiction are the real facts and imaginative power
of mind.” At times called Amir Temur, as per Christopher Marlowe (1564 - 1593),
the English Renaissance poet and dramatist who lived only 29 years, his poetry
differs from the Muslim Turco-Mongol conqueror Tamerlane, and that his main
character is “Tamburlaine the Great”–a Scythian shepherd and nomadic bandit who
suffered at the hands of Mycetes, a Persian Emperor who dispatched his troops
to conquer Tamburlaine. Using a foreign writer’s language as a reference,
Marlowe describes Tamburlaine as “…a tall, broad shouldered person with long
arms and golden hair. Clearly, he looks like Europeans.”[10]
Thus, to the writer of this book, he concurs with Marlowe’s dramatization of
Tamburlaine–a man who is contrary in character to the Turco-Muslim conqueror
Tamerlane. To Marlowe, Tamburlaine resembled a faithless man who fought with
his own soul or his life and as well considered himself superior to God for, he
gave instructions to his people to burn the Qur’an. Regarding revenging upon
his life Marlowe dramatizes in the following lines:
Theridamas
Tamburlaine!
A Scythian shepherd so embellished;
With
nature’s pride and richest furniture! His looks do menace heaven and dare the
gods;
His
fiery eyes are fix’d upon the earth,
Here
Tamburlaine is described as Scythian shepherd with fiery eyes, who rebels
against God and Heaven.
As
dramatized by Marlowe, at the height of his power, Tamburlaine claims superior
to God after capturing Babylon and thus he orders the burning of the Qur’an–an
order that contravenes Islamic doctrines and creeds. Below is Marlowe’s
dramatic injunctions:
Now,
Casane, where’s the Turkish Alcoran
And all the heaps of
superstitious books
Found in the temples of that
Mahomet
Whom I have thought a god?
They shall be burnt.[11]
Tamburlaine
was not Tamerlane because, at no time did Timur order the desecration or
burning of the Qur’an or the Turkish Alcoran mentioned in the poem
above.
Tamerlane’s
War Expansion
While his total
empire stretched from Russia to India, and from the Mediterranean Sea to Mongolia,
his expansive land domain included Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Azerbaijan,
Georgia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and parts of Turkey,
Syria and India.[12] Born to a royal and loyal family, Tamerlane’s
father was a wealthy landlord while his mother was the daughter of a famous
honorable religious man.[13]
However, according to some historians, roughly 17 million people died in his
conquests. To prove that he was not the killer of the largest human population
in history, the opening of his tomb in Samarkand, Uzbekistan under the
instructions of Stalin of the former USSR in 1941, whether a heresay or a real
testimony, a reflection of the two curses inscribed in his tomb, clearly define
the kind of person he was. The two curses will appear to the reader at the end
of the chapter.
After the
decline of the powerful Timurid Dynasty, smaller but powerful empires evolved
such as “the Qing and Ming in present day China, the Vijayanagara and Mughal in
India, the Safavid in Iran and the Ottoman in Turkey.”[14]
John Darwin’s masterpiece After Tamerlane covers 600 years of global
history especially on empires. From 1382 to 1405 his thousands of well-armed
soldiers crisscrossed Eurasia. The terminology Eurasia is a combination of
Europe and Asia and are divided by the Ural Mountains. Russia and Kazakhstan
straddle both continents and the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres. The never
tiring Tamerlane who moved with speed undeterred by foreign enemies, traveled
with ease from Delhi to Moscow and from the Central Asian Tien Shan Mountains
to the Anatolian Mountains known historically as the Taurus Mountains. His
destruction of Damascus on 24
March 1401 and his smashing of the Golden Horde could be irrefutable and
deserving of further research endeavors, because, Christopher Marlowe’s dramatic character Tamburlaine the Great on
the viciousness of Timur, could be out of context and an exaggeration as
earlier noted.
One struggle
aspect that distinguished Tamerlane from the past Mongol conquests was that he
stumbled upon nations that had already been captured by his previous
conquerors. The Timurid realm coincided with the Turkic Islamic traditions and
institutions. He is regarded undefeated military tactician and brutal in his
military conquests. On the other hand, he was a patron of architecture and arts
because of his interaction with famous intellectuals like Ibn Khaldun, Hafez,
and Hafiz -i-Abru while his reign introduced the Timurid Renaissance.[15]
The Timurid Renaissance was a period in Islamic and Asian history spanning from
the 13th century to the 16th century. It rose to
prominence in the 13th century after the demise of the Islamic
Golden Age of the 8th to the 13th centuries.[16]
It was also an era when the mamluks played significant role in the advancement
of Astronomy.[17]
The Timurid Dynasty originated from the
remnants of the Barlas Mongol tribe of Genghis Khan’s army[18]
and thereafter settled in Central Asia. Due to intermingling with the Turkish
people, they became Turkicized in terms of habits and language such that there
was an era they had a strong force and were generally known as Moghulistan for
“Land of Mongols” in Persian. After adopting Islam, the Mongols and the Turks
of central Asia both embraced Persianate societal influence that injected
Persian arts, culture, literature, and language.[19]
Also known as Islamic Persosphere, historical Persianate started with the Bavandid (651–1349) in
Western, specifically in Central Asia it ended with the Pahlavi (1925–1979). In Eastern, especially Central Asia to the
Indian Subcontinent, it started with the Qarakhanid (840–1212) and ended with the Jammu and Kashmir (1846–1952). The
terminologies persianization and persification are newly-crafted sociological
terminologies that remain unique to Persian culture, language, arts,
literature, and music. It is a type of cultural shift or assimilation.
Persianized or Persified applies to individual and social inclination or
acclimation to Persian influence. Such Iranian cultural influences that started
during the early and middle Islamic periods had great impact on non-Iranian
people such as Arabs and different Caucasian societies like the Georgians and
Armenians plus Daghestani and Turkic peoples. Likewise, it infiltrated Seljuks,
Ghaznavids, and the Ottomans.[20] There are two types of
inequality: man-made and natural. Terms like inferiority complex and
superiority complex have been with us for a long time. Regardless of whether it
refers to “the Good (Clint Eastwood), the Bad (Lee Van Cleef), and the Ugly (Eli
Wallach)”[21]–a
movie that first came to fore in 1966 and known as “Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo” in Italian, inequality
exists to this day.
The
Timurid Realm and the Turkic Traditions and Institutions
After reaching its greatest realm
and covering expansive stretch of lands, the Timurid intermixed with Turkic
traditions and institutions just like the previous succession of empires that
dominated Turkey in the past. The Timurid gained a lot from the people and
lands that it captured drawing considerable knowledge for most of the Timurid
followers accepted Islamic traditions and culture while creating new
institutions that helped elevate the living conditions of both parties.
Regardless of Timur Lan killing millions of his opponents in different wars,
his victorious amalgamation of lands and people of [22]different
steppe traditions created a new form of advanced governance and leadership that
are worth celebrating. What started as a nomadic Mongolian scattered tribal
confederation finally transformed into a formidable respected dynasty under
Timur Lan. Despite the deformity of his right arm and leg, Timur Lan challenged
every leader, leaving behind death and destruction in his paths. His main
headquarter was Samarkand. Born in Shahrisabz, he rose to power in 1370. The
limping Timur, passed away February 1405, at Otrar, Shymkent,
Kazakhstan while his place of burial was
Amir Temur Mausoleum Gur-i
Amir Complex, Samarkand, Uzbekistan. He died while on his way to capture China.[23]
If there is any truth to the inscriptions found inside the
mausoleum of Timur Lan after being opened at the instructions of the former
USSR leader Stalin a few years before the breakout of the World War II in
Samarkand, Uzbekistan, they were dire warnings in the form of imprecations.
Upon opening the articulately crafted mausoleum, the message found was
startling, even though, Stalin, the Communist leader, took it seriously. To
paraphrase, the message forewarned that any attempt to open it would have dire
consequences. Regardless of the surviving victims’ assumption that he was a
killer with bloodstained hands who would go to hell after his departure for the
Afterlife, his message revealed a contradictory forewarning. It revealed that a
more ferocious and brutal leader would emerge who would kill more
than the numbers he was thought to have killed. The leader Timur Lan foretold
was Germany’s Hitler who killed 26 million people.
In the late periodic rule of
Timur’s leadership, Tamerlane established a centralized government for his
opponents.[24]
His reformation of fine arts creativities and historical sources some of which
exist to this day especially in Uzbekistan are well known.[25]
Persians played great roles in the elevation of carpets making and it is not a
hidden secret that Iran is the leading maker of the best carpets in the world
in contemporary world. Some of the Timurid successors also continued to enhance
arts creativities one which was, a woman who deserves praise for her advanced
architectural engineering. She was the wife of Timurid ruler Shahrukh
(r. 1405–47). She was the de-facto ruler of the Timurid Empire for almost
a decade until she arranged the coronation of her grandson for the takeover
upon the death of her husband. Even though the name Afghanistan evolved in the
19th century, the city of Herat was the capital of the Timurid
dynasty between 1405 and 1507.[26]
To Muslims and from secular perspectives, Hitler was a totalitarian
ruler who killed innocent people for personal and worldly gains while Timur Lan
was a true believer and a martyr.
References
[1]
Du Bec, J.
(1753). The History of the Life of Tamerlane the Great: Giving an Exact
and Authentic Account of His Birth and Family, His Wars with the Muscovites,
the King of China, the Famous Bajazet Emperor of the Turks, and the Soldan of
Egypt, His Conquest of Persia, and the Other Remarkable Actions of His Life.
W. Owen, near Temple-Bar.
[2]
Manz, B. F. (1999). The rise and rule of Tamerlane.
Cambridge University Press.
[8]
Temirovna, M. P.
(2021). THE CORRELATION OF HISTORICAL TRUTH AND IMAGINATION IN CHRISTOPHER
MARLOWE’S TRAGEDY “TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT”. Web of Scientist:
International Scientific Research Journal, 2(12), 455-457.
[9] Тўйчиев У. Ўзбек адабиётида бадиийлик. –Тошкент: Янги
аср авлоди, 2011. 364 – б.
[10]Парфёнов А. Кристофер Марло. – Москва: Худлит, 1964 –
С. 14.
[11]
Christopher Marlow. Tamburlaine the Great. -
London: Dover Publication, 2002, –128P
[13]
Temirovna, M. P.
(2021). THE CORRELATION OF HISTORICAL TRUTH AND IMAGINATION IN CHRISTOPHER
MARLOWE’S TRAGEDY “TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT”. Web of Scientist:
International Scientific Research Journal, 2(12), 455-457.
[14]
Darwin, J.
(2008). After Tamerlane: the global history of empire since 1405.
Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
[15]
Marozzi, Justin (2004). Tamerlane: Sword of
Islam: Conqueror of the World. HarperCollins.
[16]
Saliba, George (1994). A History of Arabic
Astronomy: Planetary Theories During the Golden Age of Islam. New York
University Press. Pp. 245,250, 256-257. ISBN 0-8147-8023-7.
[17]
King, David A. (1983). “The Astronomy of the
Mamluks”, Isis, 74 (4): 531-55. Doi:10 1086/353360.
[20]
Bhatia, Tej K. (2004). The handbook of bilingualism,
p.788-9.
[23]
Manz, B. F.
(1999). The rise and rule of Tamerlane. Cambridge University Press.
[24]
Subtelny, M. E. (1988). Centralizing reform and its opponents in the
late Timurid period. Iranian Studies, 21(1-2), 123-151.
[25]
Rovshanbekovich, M. R. (2023, March). AMIR TIMUR AND THE TIMURID PERIOD
LITERARY ENVIRONMENT AND SOME ASPECTS OF THE FINE ARTS ARE IN HISTORICAL
SOURCES. In E Conference Zone (pp. 9-12).
[26]
Arbabzadah, N. (2017). Women and religious patronage in the Timurid
Empire. Afghanistan’s Islam, 56-70.
