In 1340s for Central Asia it seemed to be the happiest time — Ulus Chagatai, created by Mongol conquerors, safely collapsed, foreign yoke finally ended, but the joy was short-lived — for 120 years of their rule Mongols left only ruins in Central Asia, on which all sorts of khans, emirs, batyrs, bai and simply philanderers of unknown kind and tribe, who managed to gather around themselves a bunch of bandits ready to do anything for the sake of their master, were brutally slaughtered. But even more terrible were the mental wounds inflicted by the Mongol yoke: The will of the peoples of Central Asia for these years were broken at the root, they turned into an amorphous mass, allowing to do anything with it and in this difficult time on the political arena appeared the leader of the Barlagas tribe Timur, who not only raised Central Asia on the fringes, returning its peoples to the state in which they were before the Mongol invasion, but also took full revenge on all their offenders.
Timur (Tamerlane) (1336-1405).
On the night of April 9, 1336 in the family of a small landowner from the Turkic-Mongolian tribe of Barlas was born a son, who was given the meaningful name Timur («iron»). Much later, court flatterers will spread rumors that he was born with gray hair and a piece of blood in his hand, but much more important was the fact that Timur was a descendant of Genghis Khan, though not in a direct line, which deprived him of the right to the Khan’s throne, but from his great ancestor Timur inherited both in appearance (red hair color) and in character traits — he was a man of courage and at the same time restrained, a talented organizer, like Genghis Khan, he could not tolerate lies and flattery. These qualities were of great use to him in his early youth, when he led a gang that brought fear to the Chagatai and Turkmen emirs. Fighting against them, Timur gained wealth and influence, although there were dangers along the way: Thus, during the raid on Khiva Timur was captured and almost sold into slavery, he was saved only by the fact that for 2 months, which he spent in a Khiva zindan, no caravan passed through the city, which allowed him to escape, and in 1362 in the battle with the Turkmen in Seistan Timur lost two fingers on his right hand and was wounded by an arrow in the kneecap of his right leg, because of which he became permanently lame, receiving such a feature of appearance that gave him the European name «Tamerlane» (from the Persian «Timur Leng» — «Lame Timur»).
Timur at the head of his warriors.
By 1370 Timur has swept under himself all Central Asian nobility which has proclaimed it the supreme governor, in fact formally it had no rights on a throne of united by it Chagataisky ulus, but Timur has found a way out of a situation, having declared khan the willless tsarevich Suyurgatmysh under the cover of which it was going to restore empire of Genghis Khan, but for the beginning it was necessary to put in order the rear. Timur began by restoring the system of higher education and law, only in Timur’s capital Samarkand 20 madrasas with several hundred students were built. Timur highly valued art, especially miniature painting and architecture, the monuments of which have been preserved in large numbers both in Samarkand and beyond.
The mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yassawi, built in Turkestan in 1396 by order of Timur.
Having established the rear, Timur started conquering campaigns, starting with Khorezm in the lower reaches of the Amu Darya, whose rulers did not recognize Timur’s authority, for which they paid the price: starting from 1371 Timur made 5 campaigns to Khorezm, turning it into a desert and destroying its capital Urgench. The next object of Timur’s campaigns was Mogulistan, which raided the eastern part of the state of Timur, who in 1371 defeated his army near Taraz, and in the following 7 campaigns pushed the border of Mogulistan so far to the east that he came into contact with the Chinese Ming Empire, restoring the Great Silk Road. Then it was the turn of the Golden Horde actively helping Moghulistan, the troops of which Tamerlane defeated on April 15, 1395 on the Terek River, after which he moved on the Russian principalities and even burned Elets, but later he had a vision of the Vladimir Mother of God, who threatened him with death if he went further to Moscow, after which Timur (although there is a funnier version that the Virgin showed Timur modern Moscow and he, so as not to starve his descendants, ordered to retreat).
Battle on Terek on April 13, 1395.
Tamerlane’s army at borders of Russia.
Failures in the west Timur compensated for victories in the east, in 1398-1399, ruining the Delhi Sultanate, where the animal side of his nature was fully manifested (towers of human heads, pyramids of buried alive people, etc.). Then it was the turn of the Ottoman Empire, whose army Timur defeated on July 20, 1402 at Ankara, after which it temporarily ceased to exist. In 1405 Timur went on another military campaign, now on China, but on the way he caught a severe cold and died on February 19, 1405 in Otrar.
Vasily Vereshchagin, «Apotheosis of War» (1871, State Tretyakov Gallery), inspired, among other things, by Timur’s conquests.
A troubled fate awaited Timur’s remains as well. Although he strictly forbade to disturb him after his death, leaving a curse on his tombstone in the Gur-Emir mausoleum in Samarkand, his grave was ransacked at least three times. The first grave digger was Timur’s native son Shahrukh, who urgently needed money to fight internecine wars and as a result his reign was very unsuccessful, by its end he did not control most of the Timurid Empire. The second was the leader of nomadic Uzbeks Mukhammed Sheibani, who not only opened the tomb, but also broke the tombstone, for which he paid in the fall of 1510 near Merv, dying with his army in battle with the Persians. The third, most famous, time occurred in 1941, the remains of Timur were raised on June 22, the day of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, which saw a mystical connection, although the directive to attack the USSR was signed in December 1940, and the final date of the attack was announced on June 10, when the archaeological expedition has not yet left Moscow. Now we can say that Emir Timur left such a deep trace in history that he managed to surpass even his ancestor Genghis Khan, becoming a god of war for a good part of Eurasia.