TAMERLANE (1336–1405). Turkic chieftain and conqueror.
He was not Mongol, but sought to trace Mongol connections through his wife’s
ancestors. His English name is a corruption of the Persian Timür-i Leng, “lame
Timür.” Tamerlane is important not only for his conquests, but for his role in
definitively ending the Mongol era in Turkistanian history, and for his attack
on the Golden Horde in 1395–1396, which began with the Battle of the Terek
River, in which the army of Toqtamysh was decisively defeated, and ended with
the destruction of much of the sedentary base of the Golden Horde along the
lower Volga, including Sarai.
In 1401 the great Islamic historian Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406)
was in the city of Damascus, then under siege by the mighty Tamerlane. Eager to
meet the famous conqueror of the day, he was lowered from the walls in a basket
and received in Tamerlane’s camp. There he had a series of conversations with a
ruler he described (in his autobiography) as ‘one of the greatest and mightiest
of kings . . . addicted to debate and argument about what he knows and does not
know’. Ibn Khaldun may have seen in Tamerlane the saviour of the Arab–Muslim
civilization for whose survival he feared. But four years later Tamerlane died
on the road to China, whose conquest he had planned.
Tamerlane (sometimes Timur, or Timurlenk, ‘Timur the Lame’ –
hence his European name) was a phenomenon who became a legend. He was born,
probably in the 1330s, into a lesser clan of the Turkic-Mongol tribal
confederation the Chagatai, one of the four great divisions into which the
Mongol empire of Genghis (Chinggis) Khan had been split up at his death, in
1227. By 1370 he had made himself master of the Chagatai. Between 1380 and 1390
he embarked upon the conquest of Iran, Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), Armenia and
Georgia. In 1390 he invaded the Russian lands, returning a few years later to
wreck the capital of the Golden Horde, the Mongol regime in modern South
Russia. In 1398 he led a vast plundering raid into North India, crushing its
Muslim rulers and demolishing Delhi. Then in 1400 he returned to the Middle
East to capture Aleppo and Damascus (Ibn Khaldun escaped its massacre), before
defeating and capturing the Ottoman sultan Bayazet at the Battle of Ankara in
1402. It was only after that that he turned east on his final and abortive
campaign.
The Army
Tamerlane’s original army was a hodgepodge of leftover
Chaghatayid units: clans (Barulas, Jalayir, etc.), local soldiery created a
century earlier under the Mongol census (called qa’uchin, old units),
independent KESHIG (guards) tümens (nominally 10,000) that had outlived their
khan, and the Qara’unas, an old TAMMACHI garrison. Tamerlane did not disperse
these traditional units but controlled them by changing their leadership,
removing major cities such as Bukhara from their control, and eventually
recruiting new armies outside the Chaghatay Khanate, especially local units
from the defunct Mongol IL-KHANATE. Foreign troops and craftsmen-Indians,
Persians, Arabs both settled and bedouin, and Turks- were deported and settled
around Samarqand and Bukhara. By 1400 his own companions commanded about 13
tümens, while his sons commanded at least nine. Tamerlane ‘s sons’ tümens were
assembled from troops of all origins. The core of Tamerlane ‘s army was its
Inner Asian cavalry, but he also valued Tajik (Iranian) infantry units. In an
inscription he claims to have attacked Toqtamish in 1391 with 20 tümens, a
statement that at the usual 40 percent nominal strength is plausible.
Attack on the Golden Horde
The subjugation of Khorasan and Mazandaran, completed by
1384, led to the first of his expeditionary campaigns against western Iran and
the Caucasus in 1386-87.
Toqtamish’s father was a descendants of Toqa-Temür, one of
the “princes of the left hand,” or the BLUE HORDE, in modern
Kazakhstan, and his mother was of the QONGGIRAD clan from near KHORAZM. At the
time the Blue Horde was ruled by Urus Khan (d. 1377) and his sons, whose seat
was at Sighnaq (near modern Chiili). By allying with the Chaghatayid conqueror Tamerlane,
Toqtamish succeeded after many reverses in taking control of the Blue Horde (spring
1377). Later, local chronicles speak of Toqtamish as defending four tribes
(el)-Shirin, Baarin, Arghun, and Qipchaq-from the tyranny of Urus Khan. Once
enthroned in Sighnaq, Toqtamish led his four tribes west to defeat Emir Mamaq
(Mamay) of the Qiyat clan (1380) and reestablish GOLDEN HORDE rule over Russia
by sacking Moscow (1382).
Eventually, Toqtamish turned against his old patron, Tamerlane,
to pursue the Golden Horde’s old territorial claims in Azerbaijan (1385 and
1387), Khorazm, and the Syr Dar’ya region down to Bukhara (1388). Tamerlane
responded with a massive punitive expedition into Kazakhstan, which finally
cornered and defeated Toqtamish’s army near Orenburg (June 1391). Tamerlane
also wooed away Emir Edigü, leader of the Manghit (MANGGHUD) clan, from
Toqtamish’s camp. After rebuilding his power in the west, Toqtamish again
invaded Azerbaijan (1394); Tamerlane crushed his army again on the Terek (March
15, 1395) and sacked Saray and Astrakhan.
By now Tamerlane’s chief rival
was a one-time protegé, TOQTAMISH, ruler first of the BLUE HORDE and then of
the reunified GOLDEN HORDE in the northern steppe. First sacking Urganch
(1287), the capital of Toqtamish’s allied country, Khorazm, Timur launched a
“five-year campaign” (1392-96) against Baghdad’s Jalayir dynasty as
well as against western Iranian, Turkmen, and Georgian powers, culminating in
the sack of Toqtamish’s capital, New Saray, on the Volga and crippling
Toqtamish’s power.
Timur marched through the Darband Gates, a narrow pass
between the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus mountains. On 15th April 1395 the
armies of Timur and Toqtamish met near the river Terek, a strategic point where
so many battles had been fought. Timur himself took part until, as the
Zafarnama put it, ‘his arrows were all spent, his spear broken, but his sword
he still brandished’. This time Timur’s victory was complete.
Terek River, 22 April 1395
Abandoning his fortified camp on the banks of the Terek on
bearing of Tamerlane’s approach during a second campaign against him, Tokhtamysh
Khan shadowed the Timurid army until, on 14 April, they finally encamped facing
one another. On the 22nd Tamerlane arranged his forces for battle in 7
divisions, himself commanding the reserve of 27 binliks, and commenced his
attack under the cover of showers of arrows. Then, bearing of an advance
against his left wing, he led the reserve to its support and repelled the
attack but pursued the enemy too far so that, thus disorganised, be in turn was
repulsed and driven back. Disaster was averted by a mere 50 of his men who
dismounted, knelt on one knee and laid down a withering barrage of arrows to
bold back their pursuers while 3 Timurid officers and their men seized 3 of
Tokhtamysh’s wagons and drew them up as a barricade behind which Tamerlane
managed to rally his reserve. The advance guard of his left wing bad meanwhile
broken through between the attacking enemy divisions, while his son Mohammed
Sultan brought up strong reinforcements, positioning them on Tamerlane’s left
so that Tokhtamysb’s advancing right wing was finally forced to take flight.
The Timurid right wing having meanwhile been surrounded, its
commander ordered Ibis men to dismount and crouch behind their shields, under
the cover of which they were repeatedly attacked with lance and sword by
Tokhtamysb’s troops. They were finally rescued from these dire straits by the
division under Jibansha Behadur which, attacking from both flanks, obliged the
enemy left flank to fall back and then drove it from the field. Finally the
centres of both armies joined battle, Tokhtamysb’s giving way after a hard
fight, upon which the khan and his noyons quit the field. The Timurid pursuit
was close and bloody, most of those they captured being hanged.
Aftermath
The shattered remnants of Toqtamish’s army and of his
Russian vassals were pursued as far as Yelets, not far from the Principality of
Moscow. There Timur turned back not, as the terrified Muscovites believed,
because of the miraculous intervention of the Virgin Mary and still less
through fear of Moscow’s military might, but because he had no interest in
conquering the poor and backward Russian principalities.
Despite his reputation as a bloodthirsty tyrant, and the undoubted
savagery of his predatory conquests, Tamerlane was a transitional figure in
Eurasian history. His conquests were an echo of the great Mongol empire forged
by Genghis Khan and his sons. That empire had extended from modern Iran to
China, and as far north as Moscow. It had encouraged a remarkable movement of
people, trade and ideas around the waist of Eurasia, along the great grassy
corridor of steppe, and Mongol rule may have served as the catalyst for
commercial and intellectual change in an age of general economic expansion. The
Mongols even permitted the visits of West European emissaries hoping to build
an anti-Muslim alliance and win Christian converts. But by the early fourteenth
century the effort to preserve a grand imperial confederation had all but
collapsed. The internecine wars between the ‘Ilkhanate’ rulers in Iran, the
Golden Horde and the Chagatai, and the fall of the Yuan in China (by 1368),
marked the end of the Mongol experiment in Eurasian empire.
Tamerlane’s conquests were partly an effort to retrieve this
lost empire. But his methods were different. Much of his warfare seemed mainly
designed to wreck any rivals for control of the great trunk road of Eurasian
commerce, on whose profits his empire was built. Also, his power was pivoted
more on command of the ‘sown’ than on mastery of the steppe: his armies were
made up not just of mounted bowmen (the classic Mongol formula), but of
infantry, artillery, heavy cavalry and even an elephant corps. His system of
rule was a form of absolutism, in which the loyalty of his tribal followers was
balanced against the devotion of his urban and agrarian subjects. Tamerlane
claimed also to be the ‘Shadow of God’ (among his many titles), wreaking
vengeance upon the betrayers and backsliders of the Islamic faith. Into his
chosen imperial capital at Samarkand, close to his birthplace, he poured the
booty of his conquests, and there he fashioned the architectural monuments that
proclaimed the splendour of his reign. The ‘Timurid’ model was to have a lasting
influence upon the idea of empire across the whole breadth of Middle Eurasia.
But, despite his ferocity, his military genius and his
shrewd adaptation of tribal politics to his imperial purpose, Tamerlane’s
system fell apart at his death. As he himself may have grasped intuitively, it
was no longer possible to rule the sown from the steppe and build a Eurasian
empire on the old foundations of Mongol military power. The Ottomans, the
Mamluk state in Egypt and Syria, the Muslim sultanate in northern India, and
above all China were too resilient to be swept away by his lightning campaigns.
Indeed Tamerlane’s death marked in several ways the end of a long phase in
global history. His empire was the last real attempt to challenge the partition
of Eurasia between the states of the Far West, Islamic Middle Eurasia and
Confucian East Asia. Secondly, his political experiments and ultimate failure
revealed that power had begun to shift back decisively from the nomad empires
to the settled states. Thirdly, the collateral damage that Tamerlane inflicted
on Middle Eurasia, and the disproportionate influence that tribal societies
continued to wield there, helped (if only gradually) to tilt the Old World’s
balance in favour of the Far East and Far West, at the expense of the centre.
Lastly, his passing coincided with the first signs of a change in the existing
pattern of long-distance trade, the East–West route that he had fought to
control. Within a few decades of his death, the idea of a world empire ruled
from Samarkand had become fantastic. The discovery of the sea as a global
commons offering maritime access to every part of the world transformed the
economics and geopolitics of empire. It was to take three centuries before that
new world order became plainly visible. But after Tamerlane no world-conqueror
arose to dominate Eurasia, and Tamerlane’s Eurasia no longer encompassed almost
all the known world.
