Пт. Ноя 22nd, 2024
Timur's Empire and the Timurids

Timur was not a descendant of Genghis Khan, but he came from the Mongolian tribe of Barlas on his father’s side

So, in the middle of 40th years of XIV century the Chagatai power divided into two separate states — western and eastern.

In the western state — Maverannahr — the actual power in the country was in the hands of Mongol-Turkic noyons (beks), who divided among themselves the area of Western Turkestan.

The first ulus ruler of Maverannahr from the Mongol-Turkish noyons was Emir Kazagan (1346-1356), who, although he remained faithful to the nomadic life (wintered on the banks of the Amu Darya), still did not allow violence against townspeople and villagers.

The most powerful ruler of Maverannahr after Kazagan’s death was his grandson Emir Husayn (early 60s — 1370). He was known as an active and brave man, but at the same time he had a number of shortcomings that defamed him as a ruler. According to the XV century historian al-Musawi, it was avarice and cruelty [2, p. 369-370]. In addition, in the late 60s Husayn decided to switch to a sedentary way of life — to make Balkh the capital, strengthen its citadel, rebuild the walls and move to the city. This initiative caused a revolt of emirs of the main tribes of Maverannahr, in which Emir Timur took an active part.

Emir Timur (Tumer, April 9, 1336, Kesh, modern Uzbekistan — February 19, 1405, Otrar, modern Kazakhstan) came from the Mongolian tribe Barlas, which in the XIII century. moved to Maverannahr from Semirechye. He was born into a simple family, but by 1370 he had become Husayn’s chief assistant.

It should be clarified that Timur (Tumer) was a descendant of Mongolian barlas only on the paternal line, his mother was Central Asian. All barlas of Central Asia originated from Karachar-noyon (for details see Muiz al Ansab). In turn, the paternal tree of Karachar-noyon descended from Bodonchar. However, Timur was not a descendant of Genghis Khan; he was a descendant of Karachar-noyon of the Mongolian tribe of Barlas, who, along with others, was handed over to Chagatai, Genghis Khan’s second son.

Husayn’s policy toward the nomadic tradition caused discontent on the part of the nomadic nobility, and Timur led the opposition. Emir Husayn was captured and executed by the rebels, and on April 9, 1370 Timur was proclaimed the supreme ruler of Maverannahr.

The further history of the western part of the Chagatai state developed in such a way that the Timurid dynasty emerged in Maverannahr and ruled the country until the beginning of the XVI century. At the same time, the region continued to be dominated by a political tradition that defined the supreme power as the power of exclusively representatives of the «golden family» of Genghisids.

Timur was a supporter of Mongol traditions and a zealot of the rights of Mongol khans-Chingizids. Having become the full ruler of the state, he accepted only the title of «emir», he never carried the title of khan, enthroned false Chingizid khans and called himself «the representative of the owner of the throne» (sahib at-takht).

After Timur came to power, the first thing he did was the same thing for which he accused his predecessor: he created for himself a fortified capital in Samarkand, where he built a palace-castle called Kok-Saray, which mainly served as a treasury and a state prison. A conspiracy of disgruntled emirs was brutally suppressed by him, but initially Timur was forced to destroy the previous political system, that is, to supplant local autonomy with state centralization.

The first step in this difficult endeavor was the creation of a loyal corps of nuker commanders subordinate to Timur personally. The new state elite (300-400 people) consisted of Timur’s closest associates and representatives of his family. Gradually, Timur replaced the former tribal aristocracy with these people, removing the latter from real power. The state began to be divided into uluses, which were headed by representatives of the ruling family.

In the mid-70s a series of important campaigns against the nearest neighbors (East Turkestan, Khorasan, etc.) began, and after 1384 Timur undertook a series of grandiose distant campaigns, only rarely returning to Maverannahr.

The area of Timur’s campaigns covers a huge region: in the northeast to the Irtysh, in the southeast to Delhi, in the northwest to Elets, in the west to the Mediterranean Sea. But Timur annexed only Persia, Afghanistan, Mesopotamia and a number of Caspian regions to Maverannahr. The campaigns in Mogolistan, against the Golden Horde, in Syria and India had the character of devastating raids.

Timur spent most of his life on campaigns and did not have time to complete all the transformations in the state system. In general, he used two well-known systems of government — the Mongol-Turkic and Arab-Persian — and adapted them to his purposes. The Mongol-Turkic system was used for the administration of nomadic peoples, while the Arab-Persian system was used for sedentary peoples. Accordingly, the central administration in Timur’s state included two divans: divan-cha’la and divan-i buzurg. The first governed the sedentary community, the second served as a kind of tribunal for the emirs.

Timur died in February 1405 in the city of Otrar during a campaign against China, leaving a huge empire as his legacy. His sons and grandsons immediately began internecine warfare over supreme power. During the years of internecine warfare (1405-1409), some of the countries and regions conquered by Timur fell from the possessions of his descendants, and Timur’s fourth son Shahrukh (1409-1447) was proclaimed the supreme head of the Timurids. The capital during this period became the city of Herat in Khorasan, and Samarkand (the former capital) was given to Shahrukh’s son Ulugbek, who soon became an independent ruler. If Shahrukh patronized Muslims and refused to recognize the Yasa of Genghis Khan as the main law, Ulugbek, on the contrary, tried to comply with all the laws associated with the name of the great ruler, and appointed false khans from among the Genghisids in Samarkand, following Timur’s example.

After the deaths of Shahrukh (in 1447) and Ulugbek (in 1449), a period of more than twenty years of continuous warfare between the Timurids began. Eventually, in the spring of 1469, Timurid Sultan Husayn Baykara (1469-1506) seized the Heratian throne and was nominally proclaimed head of the Timurid state. In fact, it consisted of two independent possessions — Khorasan with the center in the city of Herat and Maverannahr with the center in Samarkand.

At the end of the XV century, the internal situation of the Timurid state deteriorated even more. The power of Sultan Husayn weakened as a result of his struggle with his sons and unruly emirs. In addition, independent, feuding rulers appeared in the major cities of Maverannahr. Each of them appealed for military assistance either to the khans of Mogolistan or to the leaders of the nomadic Uzbeks of Eastern Desht-i-Kipchak. As a result of these strife, the Timurids lost all areas in the northeast of their domains.

The fragmentation of the Timurid state into a number of domains, with rivalry and internal weakness of the appanage rulers, contributed to the fall of the Timurid dynasty and the transfer of power in Maverannahr and Khorasan to the nomadic Uzbeks of Desht-i-Kipchak, led by a representative of the Shibanid dynasty.

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