In brief, it sank and disintegrated. Tamerlane, to all appearances, sought to abandon the Mongolian method of transferring power and establish a strict majorate — a system of succession from eldest to eldest. At first, his firstborn son Jahangir was considered the heir, but he died before his father as a result of illness.
Then Jahangir’s eldest son Muhammad Sultan-Mirza, a talented administrator and commander, was given the status of prince. But during the campaign against the Ottoman Empire, he died of his wounds. Therefore, there was no choice: already sensing his end, Timur appointed Pir Muhammad, the second son of Jahangir, as his successor.
However, no one began to recognize the decision of the man who not so long ago owned half of Asia. Pir Muhammad could not set foot in Samarkand, whose governor was his cousin, another of Timur’s grandsons, Khalil Sultan. They exhausted each other in battles, and then a new challenger came into play — the last surviving son of Tamerlane, Shahrukh.
He did not enjoy the favor of his overbearing pope, for he was not born of a Mongol or Turkic princess, but of an ignorant Tajik concubine. In addition, the great conqueror considered his junior too meek and humble, not suitable for the management of a huge empire.
Nevertheless, even one of the best generals in history was sometimes wrong. Shahrukh took Samarkand without a fight, and eliminated his main rivals. But he decided to rule not from his father’s capital, but from the familiar Herat, where he had been governor for many years. This man abandoned the practice of appointing puppet khans-chingizids, and ruled not as a successor to the Mongol Empire, but as an Islamic sovereign.
Immediately after his accession, he faced numerous cases of separatism — in one or another part of the power rebelled grandsons and great-grandsons of Tamerlane who sat there. In addition, the Jalairid state conquered by Timur in Western Iran and Iraq again declared independence.
Thus, Shahrukh was subject only to the core of the empire — eastern Iran and Central Asia. But for forty years of sitting on the throne, he managed to return most of his father’s possessions — except for Iraq, Azerbaijan and the Caucasus, where the Turkmen confederation Kara-Koyunlu rose. The whole second part of his reign was spent in wars with it.
After Shahrukh’s passing, a new series of feuds began. His son Ulugbek, a famous scientist, ruled for such a short time and was sent to heaven by his own son, so it is not even desirable to write about it. But both his son and the Timurid prince who succeeded him also ruled the state for a short time.
Tamerlane, Shahrukh, Ulugbek.
Shahrukh’s line was removed from power, when in 1451 Abu Said Mirza, a descendant of Timur’s third son, took the throne. He did not have large estates and stood rather low in the hierarchy of his dynasty, but he showed himself as a good politician and military commander. He returned the capital to Samarkand and ruled quite firmly for almost twenty years. But he was unable to restore the empire to all its splendor, as the powerful state of Ak-Koyunlu came to succeed in western Persia.
After his departure from life in 1469, the Timurids resigned themselves to the fact that the heritage of their ancestors should be divided into several principalities. However, all the same continued to exhaust themselves with constant wars. At the end of the century, the most talented of them was the ruler of Fergana, Abu Said’s grandson Babur.
At that time, the Timurids were inbred with the nomadic Uzbeks, a people who had founded a khanate in the east of the former Golden Horde. Therefore, various pretenders to power used them as allies and mercenaries, and eventually the foreigners decided to conquer Maverannahr already for themselves.
Babur left for Kabul and after several unsuccessful attempts, he was never able to return. In the end, he had only one way. He took advantage of the infighting in the Delhi Sultanate, invaded India and founded the Mughal dynasty there.