• Timur was born in 1336 in Kesh (now Shakhrisabz), a city south of Samarkand (the region of modern Uzbekistan).
• Timur's father, Taragai, most likely was the leader of the Mongol-Turkic tribe of Barlas and descended from Genghis Khan.
• In his youth, Timur served in the army of Kazgan, the ruler of Mesopotamia.
• Around 1361 - Timur becomes the son-in-law of Kazgan's grandson, Emir Hussein.
• Throughout his life, Tamerlane will have several dozen wives and a corresponding number of children. The sons of the conqueror became governors in the occupied lands.
• 1361 - 1370 - Timur and Hussein fight in Mesopotamia, trying to conquer it.
• Around 1370 - Timur revolts against Hussein and takes him prisoner. After that, he announces that he is a descendant of Genghis Khan and intends to revive the Mongol empire. Timur made Samarkand the capital of his empire.
• Famous for his extraordinary cruelty, Timur strives for the equally extraordinary grandeur and beauty of his capital. The beauty and luxury of Samarkand have been enthusiastically described by travelers of that time more than once.
• 1370 - 1380 - Tamerlane goes to his goal. He fights against numerous khans, conquers Khorezm. Timur is known as an extremely cruel conqueror, and many cities themselves open their gates for him, solemnly meeting their own conquerors.
• 1380 - Timur intervenes in the conflict between the Golden Horde and Russia. He helps Khan Tokhtamysh defeat the ruling khan Mamai and take the throne. Thanks to this, Moscow was captured in 1382 in revenge for the defeat at the Kulikovo field.
• 1381 Timur conquers Persia.
• 1382 - 1385 - Khorasan and Eastern Persia are conquered.
• 1386 - 1387 - Tamerlane conquers Fars, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Armenia.
• 1389 - a campaign in the Mongol possessions. In the northern direction Timur then reaches the Irtysh.
• 1389 - 1395 - during this period Timur periodically and with varying success fights with Tokhtamysh.
• 1391 - during a campaign against the Golden Horde, Timur reaches the Volga.
• 1394 - Mesopotamia and Georgia come under the rule of Timur.
• 1395 - Tokhtamysh brings his troops to the Caucasus. Timur finally defeats him on the Kura River and pursues him through the territory of Russia. Here the conqueror invades Ryazan lands, ravages Yelets. After that, his army stood motionless for two weeks.
• Realizing the threat to Moscow, the Grand Duke of Moscow Vasily I Dmitrievich leads his army to the banks of the Oka near Kolomna. In terms of numbers, the Moscow detachments are smaller than the Mongol ones, and many fear that the Russians will not survive the first battle. Then Metropolitan Cyprian orders to bring the miraculous Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God from Vladimir. On August 26, the icon is brought to Moscow, and on the same day (according to legend) Tamerlane's army turns back. Since then, the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God has been considered the patroness of Moscow, and August 26 is the Orthodox church holiday of the Meeting of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God. This case is described in the Russian epic; Timur is called "Temir Aksak-tsar" in these sources.
• A more official version that Tamerlane did not go to Moscow is the need to return to Persia, where uprisings are constantly breaking out, and therefore the presence of a tyrant is required. On the way, Timur burns the cities of Saray, Azak (Azov), Astrakhan, Kafu (modern Feodosia). In one of the battles, he was seriously wounded in the leg and remains lame forever. Hence his nickname Tamerlane ("Iron Lame").
• The brutality with which Timur suppresses the uprisings in Persia has become legendary. The cities were completely destroyed. The inhabitants were exterminated without exception, and their heads were embedded in the walls of the towers.
• 1396 Tamerlane returns to Samarkand.
• 1398 - the beginning of the campaign to India. On September 24, Timur's army enters Delhi. After that, the city was rebuilt for over 100 years ... In April of the following year, Tamerlane returned to his capital with rich booty.
• 1399 - the beginning of the "Seven Years" campaign. In one of the previously conquered areas, where Timur's son was the governor, riots are taking place, which the heir to the conqueror is unable to cope with. The father comes to the aid of his son, dethrones him and knocks enemies out of his area.
• 1400 - war with the Ottoman Sultan Bayazet and at the same time with the Egyptian Sultan Faraj. Both wars end well for Tamerlane. It passes through all the cities of Asia Minor, robbing them and killing their inhabitants.
• 1401 - Timur regains power in Baghdad, killing just under 90,000 of his population.
• 1404 - Timur begins a campaign against China, for which he has been preparing for several years.
• January 1405 - the army arrives in the city of Otrar.
• February 15 or 18, 1405 - Tamerlane dies of illness in Orar.

TIMUR, TAMERLAN, TIMURLENG (TIMUR-CHROMETS) 1336 - 1405

Central Asian military leader-conqueror. Emir.

Timur, the son of a bek from the Turkized Mongol tribe Barlas, was born in Kesh (modern Shakhrisabz, Uzbekistan), southwest of Bukhara. His father had a small ulus. The name of the Central Asian conqueror comes from the nickname Timur Leng (Lame Timur), which was associated with his limp on his left leg. From childhood, he persistently engaged in military exercises and from the age of 12 began to go with his father on hikes. He was a zealous Mohammedan, which played a significant role in his struggle against the Uzbeks.

Timur early showed his military abilities and ability not only to command people, but also to subordinate them to his will. In 1361 he entered the service of Khan Togluk, a direct descendant of Genghis Khan. He owned large territories in Central Asia. Pretty soon Timur became an advisor to the khan's son Ilyas Khoja and the ruler (governor) of the Kashkadarya vilayet in the domain of Khan Togluk. By that time, the son of a bek from the Barlas tribe already had his own detachment of mounted warriors.

But after a while, falling into disgrace, Timur with his military detachment of 60 people fled across the Amu Darya River to the Badakhshan Mountains. There his squad was replenished. Khan Togluk sent a thousandth detachment in pursuit of Timur, but he, falling into a well-arranged ambush, was almost completely exterminated in battle by Timur's warriors.

Gathering his strength, Timur entered into a military alliance with the ruler of Balkh and Samarkand, Emir Hussein, and began a war with Khan Togluk and his heir son Ilyas Khodja, whose army consisted mainly of Uzbek soldiers. On the side of Timur, the Turkmen tribes came out, giving him numerous cavalry. Soon he declared war on his ally Samarkand emir Hussein and defeated him.

Timur captured Samarkand, one of the largest cities in Central Asia and intensified military operations against the son of Khan Togluk, whose army, according to exaggerated estimates, numbered about 100 thousand people, but 80 thousand of them were garrisons of fortresses and almost did not participate in field battles. The equestrian detachment of Timur numbered only about 2 thousand people, but these were tried and tested warriors. In a number of battles, Timur defeated the Khan's troops, and by 1370 their remnants retreated across the Syr River.

After these successes, Timur went for a military trick, which he succeeded brilliantly. On behalf of the khan's son, who commanded the troops of Togluk, he sent the commandants of the fortresses an order to leave the fortresses entrusted to them and with the garrison troops to withdraw across the Syr River. So, with the help of military cunning, Timur cleared all the enemy's fortresses from the khan's troops.

In 1370, a kurultai was convened, at which the wealthy and noble Mongolian owners elected Kobul Shah Aglan, a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, as khan. However, Timur soon removed him from his path. By that time, he had significantly replenished his military forces, primarily at the expense of the Mongols, and now he could lay claim to an independent khan's power.

In the same 1370, Timur became emir in the Maverannahr region between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers and ruled on behalf of the descendants of Genghis Khan, relying on the army, the nomadic nobility and the Muslim clergy. He made the city of Samarkand his capital.

Timur began to prepare for big campaigns of conquest by organizing a strong army. At the same time, he was guided by the combat experience of the Mongols and the rules of the great conqueror Genghis Khan, which his descendants had by that time managed to completely forget.

Timur began his struggle for power with a detachment of 313 soldiers loyal to him. It was they who made up the backbone of the commanding staff of the army he created: 100 people began to command dozens of soldiers, 100 hundreds and the last 100 thousand. The closest and most trusted associates of Timur received the highest military posts.

He paid special attention to the selection of military leaders. In his army, the foremen were chosen by a dozen soldiers themselves, but Timur personally appointed centurions, thousand and higher commanders. A leader whose power is weaker than a stick and a stick is not worthy of the title, said the Central Asian conqueror.

His army, in contrast to the troops of Genghis Khan and Khan Batu, received a salary. An ordinary soldier received from two to four prices for horses. The amount of such a salary was determined by the serviceability of a soldier. The ten's manager received the salary of his ten and therefore was personally interested in the proper performance of service by his subordinates. The centurion received a salary of six foremen and so on.

There was also a system of awards for military distinctions. This could be the praise of the emir himself, an increase in salary, valuable gifts, the awarding of expensive weapons, new ranks and honorary titles such as, for example, Brave or Bogatyr. The most common punishment was withholding a tenth of the salary for a specific disciplinary offense.

Timur's cavalry, which formed the basis of his army, was divided into light and heavy. Simple light-skinned warriors were required to have a bow, 18-20 arrows, 10 arrowheads, an ax, a saw, an awl, an igloo, a lasso, a tursuk bag (water bag) and a horse. For 19 such warriors in the campaign, one wagon was relied on. Selected Mongol warriors served in the heavy cavalry. Each of her warriors had a helmet, iron protective armor, a sword, a bow and two horses. One wagon was relied on for five such horsemen. In addition to the obligatory armament, there were pikes, maces, sabers and other weapons. The Mongols carried everything necessary for the marching life on spare horses.

Light infantry appeared in the Mongol army under Timur. These were horse-drawn archers (carrying 30 arrows) who dismounted before the battle. Thanks to this, the accuracy of shooting increased. Such horse-drawn arrows were very effective in ambushes, during military operations in the mountains and during the siege of fortresses.

Timur's army was distinguished by a well-thought-out organization and a strictly defined order of formation. Each warrior knew his place in the ten, ten in a hundred, a hundred in a thousand. Individual units of the army differed in the colors of the horses, the color of clothing and banners, and military equipment. According to the laws of Genghis Khan, before the campaign, the soldiers were examined with all the severity.

During the campaigns, Timur took care of a reliable outpost in order to avoid a surprise attack by the enemy. On the way or in a parking lot, security detachments were separated from the main forces at a distance of up to five kilometers. From them, sentinel posts were dispatched even further, which, in turn, sent horse sentries ahead.

As an experienced commander, Timur chose for the battles of his mainly cavalry army flat terrain, with sources of water and vegetation. He lined up the troops for the battle so that the sun did not shine in the eyes and thus did not blind the archers. He always had strong reserves and flanks to encircle the enemy involved in the battle.

Timur began the battle with light cavalry, which bombarded the enemy with a cloud of arrows. After that, horse attacks began, which followed one after another. When the opposing side began to weaken, a strong reserve was brought into battle, consisting of heavy armored cavalry. Timur said: ".. The ninth attack gives victory .." This was one of his main rules in the war.

Timur began his campaigns of conquest outside his original possessions in 1371. By 1380, he made 9 military campaigns, and soon all neighboring regions inhabited by Uzbeks and most of the territory of modern Afghanistan came under his rule. Any resistance to the Mongol army was severely punished. After himself, the commander Timur left enormous destruction and erected pyramids from the heads of the defeated enemy soldiers.

In 1376, Emir Timur provided military assistance to the descendant of Genghis Khan Tokhtamysh, as a result of which the latter became one of the khans of the Golden Horde. However, Tokhtamysh soon repaid his patron with black ingratitude.

The Emir's Palace in Samarkand was constantly replenished with treasures. It is believed that Timur brought to his capital up to 150 thousand of the best artisans from the conquered countries, who built numerous palaces for the emir, decorating them with paintings depicting the conquest campaigns of the Mongol army.

In 1386, Emir Timur undertook a campaign of conquest in the Caucasus. Near Tiflis, the Mongol army fought with the Georgian and won a complete victory. The capital of Georgia was destroyed. The defenders of the Vardzia fortress, the entrance to which led through the dungeon, showed courageous resistance to the conquerors. Georgian soldiers repulsed all enemy attempts to break into the fortress through an underground passage. The Mongols managed to take Vardzia with the help of wooden platforms, which they lowered on ropes from the neighboring mountains. Simultaneously with Georgia, neighboring Armenia was conquered.

In 1388, after a long resistance, Khorezm fell, and its capital Urgench was destroyed. Now all the lands along the course of the Jeyhun (Amu Darya) River from the Pamir Mountains to the Aral Sea have become the possessions of Emir Timur.

In 1389, the cavalry army of the Samarkand emir made a campaign in the steppe to Lake Balkhash, to the territory of Semirechye? south of modern Kazakhstan.

When Timur fought in Persia, Tokhtamysh, who became the khan of the Golden Horde, attacked the emir’s possessions and plundered their northern part. Timur hastily returned to Samarkand and began to carefully prepare for a big war with the Golden Horde. Timur's cavalry had to cover 2,500 kilometers across the arid steppes. Timur made three large campaigns in 1389, 1391 and 1394 -1395. In the last campaign, the Samarkand emir went to the Golden Horde along the western coast of the Caspian through Azerbaijan and the fortress of Derbent.

In July 1391, the largest battle between the armies of Emir Timur and Khan Tokhtamysh took place near Lake Kergel. The forces of the parties were approximately equal to 300 thousand mounted soldiers, but these figures in the sources are clearly overestimated. The battle began at dawn with a mutual skirmish of archers, followed by horse attacks on each other. By noon, the army of the Golden Horde was defeated and put to flight. The winners got the khan's marching camp and numerous herds.

Timur successfully waged a war against Tokhtamysh, but did not begin to annex his possessions. Emir Mongolian troops plundered the Golden Horde capital Saray-Berke. Tokhtamysh with his troops and nomads fled to the most remote corners of his possessions more than once.

In the campaign of 1395, after another pogrom of the Volga territories of the Golden Horde, Timur's army reached the southern borders of the Russian land and laid siege to the border fortress city of Yelets. Its few defenders could not resist the enemy, and Yelets was burned. After that Timur unexpectedly turned back.

The Mongol conquests of Persia and neighboring Transcaucasia lasted from 1392 to 1398. The decisive battle between the army of Emir Timur and the Persian army of Shah Mansur took place near Patila in 1394. The Persians vigorously attacked the enemy center and almost broke his resistance. Assessing the situation, Timur strengthened his reserve of heavy armored cavalry with troops that had not yet joined the battle, and he himself led a counterattack, which was victorious. The Persian army in the battle of Patil was utterly defeated. This victory allowed Timur to completely subjugate Persia.

When an anti-Mongol uprising broke out in a number of cities and regions of Persia, Timur again set out on a campaign there at the head of his army. All the cities that rebelled against him were subjected to destruction, and their inhabitants were ruthlessly exterminated. In the same way, the Samarkand ruler suppressed resentments against Mongol rule in other countries he conquered.

In 1398, a great conqueror invades India. In the same year, Timur's army laid siege to the fortress city of Meratkh, which the Indians themselves considered impregnable. After inspecting the city fortifications, the emir ordered to dig. However, underground work progressed very slowly, and then the besiegers took the city by storm with the help of ladders. Bursting into Meratkh, the Mongols killed all of its inhabitants. After that, Timur ordered the destruction of the Meratkh fortress walls.

One of the battles took place on the Ganges River. Here the Mongolian cavalry fought with the Indian military flotilla, which consisted of 48 large river ships. Mongol warriors rushed with their horses to the Ganges and swam attacked the enemy ships, hitting their crews with well-aimed archery.

At the end of 1398, Timur's army approached the city of Delhi. Under its walls on December 17, a battle took place between the Mongol army and the army of the Delhi Muslims under the command of Mahmud Tughlak. The battle began with the fact that Timur with a detachment of 700 horsemen, having crossed the Jamma River to reconnoitre the city fortifications, was attacked by the 5,000-strong cavalry of Mahmud Tughlak. Timur repulsed the first attack, and soon the main forces of the Mongol army entered the battle, and the Delhi Muslims were driven behind the city walls.

Timur captured Delhi from the battle, betraying this large and rich Indian city to plunder, and its inhabitants to massacre. The conquerors left Delhi, burdened with huge booty. Everything that could not be taken to Samarkand, Timur ordered to be destroyed or to the ground destroyed. It took a century for Delhi to recover from the Mongol pogrom.

The following fact is the best evidence of Timur's cruelty on Indian soil. After the battle of Panipat in 1398, he ordered to kill 100 thousand Indian soldiers who surrendered to him.

In 1400, Timur began a campaign of conquest in Syria, moving there through Mesopotamia, which he had previously conquered. On November 11, near the city of Aleppo (present-day Aleppo), a battle took place between the Mongol army and the Turkish troops commanded by the Syrian emirs. They did not want to sit under siege outside the fortress walls and went to battle in the open field. The Mongols inflicted a crushing defeat on the opponents, and they retreated to Aleppo, losing several thousand people killed. After that, Timur took and plundered the city, seizing its citadel by storm.

The Mongol conquerors behaved in Syria in the same way as in other conquered countries. All the most valuable things were to be sent to Samarkand. In the Syrian capital Damascus, which was captured on January 25, 1401, the Mongols killed 20 thousand inhabitants.

After the conquest of Syria, a war began against the Turkish Sultan Bayazid I. The Mongols captured the border fortress of Kemak and the city of Sivas. When the Sultan's ambassadors arrived there, Timur inspected his huge, according to some information, 800 thousand army to intimidate them. After that, he ordered to seize the crossings across the Kizil-Irmak river and laid siege to the Ottoman capital Ankara. This forced the Turkish army to accept a general battle with the Mongols near the camps of Ankara, it happened on June 20, 1402.

According to eastern sources, the Mongol army numbered from 250 to 350 thousand warriors and 32 war elephants brought to Anatolia from India. The Sultan's army, which consisted of Ottoman Turks, hired Crimean Tatars, Serbs and other peoples of the Ottoman Empire, numbered 120-200 thousand people.

Timur won a victory largely thanks to the successful actions of his cavalry on the flanks and the transition of the bribed 18 thousand mounted Crimean Tatars to his side. In the Turkish army, the Serbs, who were on the left flank, were the most staunchly held. Sultan Bayezid I was taken prisoner, and the infantrymen, the Janissaries, who were surrounded, were completely killed. Those who fled were pursued by the emir's 30-thousandth light cavalry.

After a convincing victory at Ankara, Timur laid siege to the large seaside city of Smyrna and, after a two-week siege, took and plundered it. Then the Mongol army turned back to Central Asia, once again plundering Georgia on the way.

After these events, even those neighboring countries that managed to avoid the aggressive campaigns of Timur the lame, recognized his power and began to pay tribute to him, just to avoid the invasion of his troops. In 1404 he received a large tribute from the Egyptian sultan and the Byzantine emperor John.

By the end of Timur's reign, his vast state in terms of territory included Maverannahr, Khorezm, Transcaucasia, Persia (Iran), Punjab and other lands. All of them were united together artificially, through the strong military power of the conquering ruler.

Timur, as a conqueror and a great commander, reached the heights of power thanks to the skillful organization of his numerous army, built according to the decimal system and continuing the tradition of the military organization of Genghis Khan.

According to the will of Timur, who died in 1405 and was preparing a big campaign of conquest in China, his power was divided between his sons and grandsons. They immediately began a bloody internecine war and in 1420 Sharuk, who remained the only one among Timur's heirs, received power over his father's possessions and the emir's throne in Samarkand.

Perhaps the largest amount of information about the glorious past of the great Tartary has come down to us thanks to such a bright personality as. Without a doubt, he was an outstanding person, one of the greatest rulers in world history. That is why so many medieval authors have written about the period of his reign. And one of the most significant works, containing a great many amazing details about the socio-political and, as well as the customs and manners of its inhabitants, was left by the ambassador of the King of Castile, Ruy Gonzalez De Clavijo. But let's start in order.

... Christophan Del Altissimo. (1568)

A lot of information has been preserved about the personality of this person, and, as is usually the case when it comes to those whose deeds have changed the course of history, conjectures and fabrications contained in this information are much more than truth. Take his name. In western Europe he is known as Tamerlane, in Russia he is called Timur. Reference books usually contain both of these names:

"Tamerlane (Timur; April 9, 1336, Khoja-Ilgar village, modern Shakhrisabz, Uzbekistan - February 18, 1405, Otrar, modern Kazakhstan; Chagatai تیمور (Temür, Tēmōr) -" iron ") - Central Asian conqueror who played role in the history of Central, South and Western Asia, as well as the Caucasus, the Volga region and Russia. Outstanding military leader, emir (since 1370). Founder of the empire and the Timurid dynasty, with the capital in Samarkand. " (Wikipedia)

However, from the Arabic-language sources left to us by the descendants of Tamerlane-Timur himself, it turns out that his true lifetime name and title sounded like Tamurbek-Khan Ruler of Turan, Turkestan, Khorassan and further on the list of lands that were part of Great Tartary. Therefore, he was briefly called the Ruler of Great Tartary. The fact that today people with external features of the Mongoloid type live on these lands misleads not only the layman, but also orthodox historians.

Everyone is now convinced that Tamerlane was like the average Uzbek. And the Uzbeks themselves have no doubt that it is Tamerlane who is their distant ancestor and founder of the nation. But this is not the case either.

From the genealogy of the Great Khans, confirmed by chronicle sources, it is clear that the ancestor of the Uzbeks is another descendant of Chinggis Khan, Uzbek-Khan. And, of course, he is not the father of all living Uzbeks, who were so named according to the territorial principle.

Let's start from the end. Here is what is known from official sources about the death of the “Great Lame”: “As soon as the Egyptian Sultan and John VII (later co-ruler of Manuel II Palaeologus) stopped their resistance. Timur returned to Samarkand and immediately began to prepare for an expedition to China. He spoke at the end of December, but in Otrar on the Syr Darya river he fell ill and died on January 19, 1405 (other sources indicate a different date of death - 02/18/1405 - my comment).

Tamerlane's body was embalmed and sent in an ebony coffin to Samarkand, where he was buried in a magnificent mausoleum called Gur-Emir. Before his death, Timur divided his territories between his two surviving sons and grandchildren. After many years of war and enmity over the left will, the descendants of Tamerlane were united by the youngest son of the khan, Shahruk. "

The first thing that raises doubts is the different dating of Tamerlane's death. When trying to find more reliable information, you inevitably come across one single "true" source of all the myths about the "Uzbek" clone of Alexander the Great - the memoirs of Tamerlane himself, which he personally titled "Tamerlane, or Timur, the Great Emir." Sounds challenging, right? This contradicts the basic principles of the worldview inherent in the representatives of the Eastern civilization, which reveres modesty as one of the highest virtues. Asian etiquette prescribes in every possible way to praise your friends and even enemies, but not yourself.

The suspicion immediately arises that this "work" was titled by a person who has the most distant concepts of the culture, customs and traditions of the East. And the validity of this suspicion is confirmed immediately, as soon as you ask yourself the question of who became the publisher of Tamerlane's memoirs. This is a certain John Herne Sanders.

I believe that this fact is already enough in order not to take seriously the "memoirs of the Great Emir." One gets the impression that everything in this world was created by British and French Masons, intelligence agents. This is no longer surprising, not even annoying. Egyptology was invented by Champillon, Sumerology by Layard, Tamerlaneology by Sanders.

And if everything is extremely clear with the first two, then no one knows who Sanders is. There is fragmentary information that he was in the service of the King of Great Britain and regulated complex diplomatic issues in India and Persia. And it is he who is referred to as an authoritative specialist - "tamerlanologist".

Then it becomes clear that it is time to stop puzzling over the question of why the Uzbek leader disinterestedly saved the alien country of unfaithful Christian-Russ from the yoke of the Golden Horde and crushed it (the horde) utterly.

Now is the time to remember the legendary opening of the tomb of Tamerlane in June 1941. I will not go into the description of all the "mystical" signs and strange events, they are probably known to everyone. This is me about the prophecies on the tomb and in the old book, that if you disturb Timur's ashes, then a terrible war will certainly break out. The tomb was opened on June 21, 1941, and on June 22, the next day, something happened that is known to every inhabitant of Russia and the republics of the former USSR.

Much more interesting is another "mystical" circumstance: the reasons that prompted Soviet scientists to open the tomb — this is where you need to start. On the one hand, everything is very clear, the goal was to study the historical material. On the other hand, what if it was done to refute or, conversely, to confirm historical myths? I think the main motive was just this - to prove to the whole world the greatness and antiquity of the great Uzbek people, which is part of the great Soviet people.

And then mysticism begins. Something went wrong. First, the clothes. The emir was dressed like a medieval Russian prince, the second - a light red beard and hair and fair skin. The famous anthropologist Gerasimov, a well-known specialist in the reconstruction of the appearance from skulls, was amazed: Tamerlane did not at all resemble those of his rare images that have come down to us. The fact is that it would be a stretch to call them portraits. They were written after the death of the "Iron Lamer" by Persian masters who had never seen the conqueror.

So later artists portrayed a typical representative of Central Asian peoples, completely forgetting that Timur was not a Mongol. He was a descendant of a distant relative of Genghis Khan, who was from a clan of the great Mughals, or Moghulls, as Genghis Khan himself said. But the Mogulls have nothing to do with the Mongols, just as the province of Turana Katay has nothing to do with modern China.

Outwardly, the Moguls were no different from the Slavs and Europeans. Everyone who managed to live in the USSR knows that in every union republic, local artists painted portraits of Lenin, endowing him with the outward features of their own people. So in Georgia, on large street posters, Lenin looked exactly like a Georgian, and in Kyrgyzstan, Lenin was portrayed, well, too "Mongolian". So this is all very clear. The story with the conclusion about the causes of death is incomprehensible.

There are testimonies of contemporaries who claimed that Gerasimov had repeatedly stated orally that his first reconstruction of Tamerlane's appearance was not approved by the leadership, and he was "recommended" to bring the portrait to the generally accepted standard: Tamerlane is an Uzbek, a descendant of Genghis Khan. I had to make him a Mongoloid. Against a saber, a bare heel is a dubious argument.

Further, it is necessary to mention the undisguised facts of the study of the tomb. So, everyone knows that despite the old age of the deceased, he had fine strong teeth, very strong smooth bones. That is, Timur was a fairly tall (172 cm.), Strong, healthy man. Discovered injuries of the hand and patella could not play a fatal role. If so, what caused the death? The answer may lie in the fact that for some reason someone separated Timur's head from the body. It is clear that the members of the expedition would not disassemble the body for "spare parts" without good reason.

The first probable reason for this barbarism, desecration of the ashes is the replacement of the head. It is possible that the original white head was replaced by the head of a representative of the Mongoloid race. The second version - he was already decapitated in the coffin. Then the question arises about the possible murder of Timur. And now the time has come to recall the long-neglected "canard" about the causes of Timur's death.

I don’t even remember now the edition that published the “secret” confession of the pathologist who took part in the study of Tamerlane's body. According to rumors, allegedly, Tamerlane was shot with a firearm! I would not like to replicate false sensations, but what if it's true? Then such secrecy of this "archaeological enterprise" becomes clear.

Is Tamerlane a Mongol? In my opinion, a very European-looking man, with a rod symbolizing Rarog, who is also the Slavic god Khors. One of the incarnations of Ra is a solar half-man, half-falcon. Perhaps the European artist did not know what "wild tartars" looked like?

But we translate the inscription from Latin into Russian:

"Tamerlane, the ruler of Tartaria, the sovereign of the wrath of God and the forces of the Universe and the blessed country, was killed in 1402". The main word here is "Killed". It follows from the inscription that the author has the utmost respect for Tamerlane, and for sure, when creating the engraving, he relied on the well-known lifetime images of Tamerlane, and not on his own fantasies. However, the number of famous portraits painted in the Middle Ages leaves no doubt that this is exactly what "The Lord of God's Wrath ..." looked like.

This is the reason for the emergence of all the myths. Discarding later fantasies about Timur, looking at this evidence with an unclouded glance, we come to the following conclusions:

• Tamerlane is the Ruler of Great Tartary, of which Russia was a part, therefore, the symbolism of the "Mongol" is quite understandable to the Russian people.
• Power is given to him by higher powers.
• In 402 from Jesus (I.402) he was killed. Possibly shot.
• Tamerlane, judging by the symbolism (Magendavid with a crescent), belonged to the same diaspora as Sultan Bayezid, who commanded the horde of Anatolia and ruled Constantinople. But let's not forget that the overwhelming number of the Russian aristocracy, including the own mother of Peter I, had the same symbols on the family crests.

But that's not all. Noteworthy is the sign on Tamerlane's cap. If he is the Ruler, then the version that this is an ordinary ornament does not stand up to criticism. On the headdresses of monarchs there is always a symbol of the state religion.

Distinctive signs on headdresses are not the most ancient tradition, but firmly entrenched even before Tamerlane's accession to the throne. And it became law after the introduction of the uniform, which first appeared in the world in medieval Russia.

And the guardsmen wore a black uniform:

Almost the following sign was embroidered on their sleeves:

Why did the boyars cry so much when the oprichnina was introduced? I believe that everything that we are told about Ivan the Terrible's "National Guard" is an analogue of the modern indignation of human rights defenders and dishonest officials. Hence the myths about the cruelty of the monarch.

Previously, soldiers, tax collectors and other sovereign people dressed for the service, whatever they had to. Fashion, as such, appeared only after the emergence of manufactory production, therefore, attempts to study "ancient fashion" by modern scientists, who are trying to identify the differences in the national costumes of the Middle Ages, look rather amusing. There were no "national" costumes. Our ancestors had a completely different attitude to clothes than we did, and therefore they dressed almost the same in Persipol, and in Tobolsk, and in Moscow.

Any piece of clothing was strictly individual, sewn on a specific person, and putting on someone else's was just suicide. This meant taking on all the ailments and ailments of the real owner of the clothes. In addition, people understood that they could harm the owner of a dress that they would decide to try on. The clothes of each person were considered part of the spirit of its owner, that is why it was considered an honor to receive a fur coat from the royal shoulder. Thus, the person being gifted, as it were, was connected to the higher, the royal, and therefore to the divine. And vice versa. Anyone caught in the fact that he tried on the royal clothes, was considered as encroaching on the health and life of the monarch, and, accordingly, was executed on the place of execution.

And to imitate the clothes of others was considered the height of folly. Each nobleman tried to stand out with his clothes both from the commoners and from his classmates, therefore, as many people existed, there were so many costumes. Of course, there were general tendencies, this is natural, just like the fact that all cars have round wheels.

That is why I think the surprised remarks of medieval travelers about the similarity of European and Russian costumes are absurd. We live in approximately the same climatic conditions, we have approximately the same level of technology, it is absolutely normal that all people of the white race dressed in the same way. Except for the details, of course. Even on the everyday clothes of the peasants, there were individual signs in the form of embroidery. It is interesting that the main thing in the clothes was the belt. It had an individual ornament, and only the owner could touch it.

The belt was tied at the place where the chakra is located, called in Russia "hara" (hence the origin of the concept "character"), which is responsible for human life. That is why, they used to say "not sparing their belly", which was synonymous with the expression "not sparing their life."

So maybe Tamerlane's headdress is just an ornament? He meant his own unique personality, which means he was unique, and there is no point in looking for similar images? May be. Or maybe not. Here is an engraving from the book of Adam Olearius with views of Russia:

I don't know if you can even call it crosses? This does not in any way fit with the objects that we see on the modern domes of modern religious buildings. Although in Western Ukraine there are still churches with such crosses. But the analogy with Tamerlane's "cockade" is too obvious to be a simple coincidence.

It remains only to figure out what all this can mean.

By and large, there is absolutely nothing to be surprised at. The tradition of decorating royal headdresses with crosses is not new.

However, it may well be that the very meaning of this is not completely clear to us. Yes, we found out that Tamerlane was depicted with a symbol of royal power - a cross, and the shape of the cross on his cap corresponds to the era in which the crosses on the temples were of exactly this shape, but questions remain. Were these Christian crosses? Did they have any connection with religion at all? And why did such hats replace those that were previously used?

At first glance, the most ordinary-looking documents are of great help in the reconstruction of true historical events. More information can be gleaned from a cookbook, for example, than from a dozen scientific papers written by the most eminent historians. It never occurred to destroy or counterfeit cookbooks. The same is true of various traveller's notes that have not become widely known. In our digital age, publications have become open access that were not even considered as historical sources, but they often contain sensational information.

One of these, undoubtedly, is the report of Ruy Gonzalez De Clavijo, Ambassador of the King of Castile, on his journey to the court of the Ruler of Great Tartary Tamerlane in Samarkand. 1403-1406 from the incarnation of God the Word.

A very curious report, which can be considered documentary, despite the fact that it was translated into Russian and published for the first time already at the end of the nineteenth century. Based on the well-known facts, about which today we already know with a high degree of certainty, in what exactly they were distorted, it is possible to draw up a very realistic picture of the era in which the legendary Timur ruled Tartary.

The initial version of the reconstruction of Tamerlane's appearance based on his remains, made by Academician M.M. Gerasimov in 1941, but which was rejected by the leadership of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, after which the appearance of Timur was given the typical facial features characteristic of modern Uzbeks.

The report contains a lot of truly amazing information that characterizes the peculiarities of the history of the medieval Mediterranean and Asia Minor. When I began to study this work, the first thing that surprised me was that the official document, which meticulously recorded all dates, geographical names, names of not only nobles and priests, but even the captains of ships, was presented in a vivid, vivid literary language. Therefore, the document is perceived as an adventure novel in the spirit of R. Stevenson or J. Verne.

From the first pages, the reader is immersed in the outlandish world of the Middle Ages, and it is incredibly difficult to break away from reading, while, unlike “Treasure Island”, de Clavijo's Diary leaves no doubt about the authenticity of the events described. In great detail, with all the details and reference to dates, he describes his journey in such a way that a person who knows the geography of Eurasia well enough can trace the entire route of the embassy from Seville to Samarkand and back, without resorting to reconciliation with geographical maps.

First, the royal ambassador describes a trip to the Carrak in the Mediterranean. And unlike the officially accepted version about the properties of this type of ship, it becomes clear that Spanish historians greatly exaggerated the achievements of their ancestors in shipbuilding and navigation. From the descriptions it is clear that the karraka is no different from the Russian planes or boats. Carraca was not adapted for travel on the seas and oceans, it is exclusively a coaster capable of moving within sight of the coastline only if there is a favorable wind, making "throws" from island to island.

The description of these islands attracts attention. Many of them at the beginning of the century had the remains of ancient buildings and were uninhabited at the same time. The names of the islands mostly coincide with the modern ones, until travelers find themselves off the coast of Turkey. Further, all the place names have to be restored in order to understand which city or island we are talking about.

And here we come across the first great discovery. It turns out that the existence of which is not considered unconditional by historians to this day, at the beginning of the fifteenth century did not raise any questions. We are still looking for the "legendary" Troy, and De Clavijo describes it simply and casually. She is as real to him as his native Seville.

This is the place today:

By the way, little has changed now. There is a continuous ferry service between Tenio (now Bozcaada) and Ilion (Geyikli). Probably, in the past, large ships moored the island, and between the port and Troy there was only a boat and small ship traffic. The island was a natural fort that protected the city from the sea from the attack of the enemy fleet.

A natural question arises: where did the ruins go? There is only one answer: they were dismantled for building materials. A common practice for builders. The Ambassador himself mentions in the Diary that Constantinople is being built at a rapid pace, and ships with marble and granite flock to the berths from many islands. Therefore, it is completely logical to assume that instead of chopping the material in a quarry, it was much easier to take it ready-made, especially since hundreds and thousands of finished products in the form of columns, blocks, and slabs are wasted in the open air.

So Schliemann “discovered” his Troy in the wrong place, and tourists in Turkey are taken to the wrong place. Well ... Absolutely the same thing happens with us with the place of the Kulikovo battle. All scientists have already agreed that the Kulikovskoye field is a district of Moscow called Kulishki. There is a Donskoy monastery there, and Krasnaya Gorka, an oak grove in which an ambush regiment was hiding, but tourists are still taken to the Tula region, and in all textbooks no one is in a hurry to correct the mistake of 19th century historians.

The second question that needs to be resolved is how did the seaside Troy end up so far from the surf line? I suggest adding some water to the Mediterranean. Why? Because its level is constantly falling. On the frozen lines on the coastal land areas, it is perfectly visible at what mark the sea level was in what period of time. Since the days of the De Clavijo embassy, ​​the sea level has dropped by several meters. And if the Trojan War actually took place thousands of years ago, then you can safely add 25 meters, and this is the picture:

Full hit! Geyikli is ideally becoming a seaside town! And the mountains behind, exactly as described in the Diary, and a vast bay, like Homer's.

Agree, it is very easy to imagine the city walls on this hill. And the moat in front of him was filled with water. It seems that further Troy can no longer be searched. It's a pity about one thing: no traces have survived, because Turkish peasants have been plowing the land there for centuries, and even an arrowhead cannot be found in it.

Until the nineteenth century, there were no states in the modern sense. The relationship had a pronounced criminal nature on the principle "I cover you - you pay." Moreover, citizenship therefore has the root "tribute", which is not associated with origin or location. A lot of castles in Turkey belonged to Armenians, Greeks, Genoese and Venetians. But they paid tribute to Tamerlane, like the court of the Turkish Sultan. It is now clear why Tamerlane named the largest peninsula in the Sea of ​​Marmara from Asia, "Turan". This is colonization. The large country Turan, which stretched from the Bering Strait to the Urals, which was owned by Tamerlane, gave the name to the newly conquered land in Anatolia opposite the Mramorny Island, where there were quarries.

Then the embassy passed Sinop, which at that time was called Sinopol. And it arrived at Trebizond, which is now called Trobzon. There they were met by a chakatai, a messenger of Tamurbek. De Clavijo explains that in fact "Tamerlane" is a contemptuous nickname meaning "cripple, lame," and the real name of the Tsar, whom his subjects called him, was TAMUR (iron) BEK (Tsar) - Tamurbek.

And all the warriors from the native tribe of Tamurbek Khan were called chakatays. He himself was a Chakotay and brought his fellow tribesmen to the Samarkand kingdom from the north. More precisely, from the coast of the Caspian Sea, where to this day live chakatai and arbals, tribesmen of Tamerlane, fair-haired, white-skinned and blue-eyed. True, they themselves do not remember that they are descendants of the Moghulls. They are confident that they are Russian. There are no external differences.

But, by the way, after Tamurbek defeated Bayazet and conquered Turkey, the peoples of Kurdistan and southern Armenia breathed more freely, because in exchange for an acceptable tribute, they received freedom and the right to exist. If history develops in a spiral, then, probably, the Kurds again have hope for liberation from the Turkish yoke with the help of their neighbors from the east.

The next discovery for me was the description of the city of Bayazet. It would seem that what else can be learned about this city of military Russian glory, but no. See:

At first I could not understand what I was talking about, but only after I converted the leagues into kilometers (6 leagues - 39 kilometers), I was finally convinced that Bayazet was called "Kalmarin" in the time of Tamurbek.

And here is the castle, which was visited during the embassy of Ruy Gonzales De Clavijo. Today it is called the Iskhak-Pash Palace.

The local knight tried to force the ambassadors to pay tribute, they say, the castle exists only due to the taxes of the passing merchants, to which the chakatai noticed that these were the guests of himself ... The conflict was settled.

By the way, De Clavijo calls knights not only the owners of castles, but also chakatai - officers of Tamurbek's army.

During the trip, the ambassadors visited many castles, and from their descriptions their purpose and meaning becomes clear. It is generally accepted that these are exclusively fortifications. In fact, their military significance is greatly exaggerated. First of all, it is a house that can withstand the efforts of any "burglar-burglar". Therefore, "castle" and "castle" are cognate words. The castle is a storehouse of valuables, a reliable safe and a fortress for the owner. A very expensive pleasure available to very wealthy people who had something to protect from robbers. Its main purpose is to hold out until the arrival of reinforcements, the squads of the one to whom the tribute is paid.

A very curious fact: even at the time of the described embassy, ​​wild wheat grew in abundance at the foot of Mount Ararat, which, according to De Clavijo, was completely unsuitable, because it had no grains in the ears. Whatever one may say, this fact indicates that Noah's ark, as a repository of DNA samples, could well exist in reality and contributed to the revival of life from Ararat.

And from Bayazet, the expedition went to Azerbaijan and to the north of Persia, where they were met by the messenger Tamurbek, who ordered them to go south to meet with the royal mission. And the travelers were forced to get acquainted with the sights of Syria. On the way, sometimes amazing events happened to them. What, for example, is this:

Did you understand? A hundred years before the discovery of America in Azerbaijan and Persia, people calmly ate corn, and did not even suspect that it had not yet been “discovered”. They did not even suspect that it was the Chinese who first invented silk and began to grow rice. The fact is that according to the testimony of the ambassadors, rice and barley were the main food products, both in Turkey and in Persia and Central Asia.

I immediately remembered that when I lived in a small seaside village not far from Baku, I was surprised that in each house of local residents one room was allocated for growing silkworms. Yes! In the same place, mulberry, or “here” as the Azerbaijanis call it, grows at every step! And the boys had such a responsibility around the house, every day to climb a tree, and to pick leaves for silkworm caterpillars.

And what? Half an hour a day is not difficult. At the same time, you will eat plenty of berries. Then the leaves scattered into newspapers, over the netting of an armored bed, and hundreds of thousands of voracious green worms begin to actively chew this mass. Caterpillars grow by leaps and bounds. A week or two, and the silkworm pupae are ready. Then they were handed over to a silk-breeding state farm, and on this they had a significant additional income. Nothing changes. Azerbaijan was the world center for the production of silk fabrics, not Chin. Probably until the very moment the oil fields were opened.

In parallel with the description of the trip to Shiraz, De Clavijo tells in detail the story of Tamurbek himself, and in a picturesque form tells about all his exploits. Some of the details are striking. For example, I remembered an anecdote about how in a Jewish family a boy asks: "Grandfather, was there really nothing to eat during the war?"

True granddaughters. There was no bread even. I had to spread butter directly on the sausage.

Rui writes about the same: "In times of famine, the inhabitants were forced to eat only meat and sour milk." So that I am so hungry!

Indeed, the description of the food of ordinary Tartar subjects is breathtaking. Rice, barley, corn, melons, grapes, flat cakes, mare's milk with sugar, sour milk (here is kefir, and yogurt, and cottage cheese, and cheese, as I understand it), wine, and just mountains of meat. Horse meat and lamb in huge quantities, in a variety of dishes. Boiled, fried, steamed, salted, dried. In general, the Castilian ambassadors, at least for the first time in their lives, ate humanly during a business trip.

But then the travelers arrived in Shiraz, where a few days later they were joined by the mission of Tamurbek to accompany them to Samarkand. Here, for the first time, I had identification difficulties with the geography of the campaign. Let's say Sultania and Orazania are parts of modern Iran and Syria. What then did he mean by "Little India"? And why is Hormuz a city if it is an island now?

Suppose that Hormuz broke away from the land. But what about India? According to all descriptions, India itself falls under this concept. Its capital is Delies. Tamurbek conquered it in a very original way: against the fighting elephants, he released a herd of camels with burning bales of straw on their backs, and the elephants, terribly afraid of fire by nature, trampled the Indian army in panic, and ours won. But if so, what then is "Greater India"? Maybe the modern researcher I. Gusev is right when he claims that Greater India is America? Moreover, the presence of corn in this region makes us think about it again.

Then questions about the presence of traces of cocaine in the tissues of Egyptian mummies disappear by themselves. They did not fly across the ocean on vimanas. Cocaine was one of the spices, along with cinnamon and pepper, that merchants brought from India Minor. Of course? will sadden fans of the work of Erich von Deniken, but what to do if in fact everything is much simpler and without the participation of aliens.

OK. Let's go further. In parallel with the detailed description of the path from Shiraz to Orasania, which bordered on the Samarkand kingdom along the Amu Darya, De Clavijo continues to pay much attention to the description of the deeds of Tamurbek, which the envoys told him about. There is something to be horrified at. Perhaps this is part of the information war against Tamerlane, but hardly. Everything is described in too much detail.

For example, Timur's zeal for justice is striking. He himself, being a pagan, never touched either Christians, Muslims or Jews. For the time being. Until the Christians showed their deceitful, greedy face.

During the war with Turkey, Greeks from the European part of Constantinople promised help and support to Tamurbek's army in exchange for loyalty to them in the future. But instead, they supplied Bayazit's army with a fleet. Tamurbek Bayazit defeated just brilliantly, in the best traditions of the Russian army, with small losses, defeating many times superior forces. And then he drove the captive Sultan with his son in a golden cage installed on a cart, like an animal in a zoo.

But he did not forgive the vile Greeks and since then he has persecuted Christians mercilessly. Just as the tribe of White Tartars, who also betrayed him, did not forgive. In one of the castles they were surrounded by Tamurbek's squad, and they, seeing that they could not escape the reckoning, tried to pay off. Then the wise, just, but vindictive king, in order to save the lives of his soldiers, promised the traitors that if they themselves brought him money, he would not shed their blood. They left the castle.

Well? I promised you that I will not shed your blood?
- I promised! - White tartars began to shout in unison.
- And I, unlike you, keep my word. Your blood will not be spilled. Bury them alive! - he ordered his "commander-in-chief of the Tartarguards."

And then a decree was issued stating that every subject of Tamurbek is obliged to kill all white tartars whom he meets on the way. And if he does not kill, he will be killed himself. And the repression of the Timurov reform began. For several years, this people was completely exterminated. Only about six hundred thousand.

Rui recalls how they encountered four towers on the way, "so high that you can't throw a stone." Two still stood, and two collapsed. They were composed of the skulls of the White Tartars, held together with mud as mortar. These are the customs of the fifteenth century.

Another curious fact is described by De Clavijo. This is what I described in detail in the previous chapter - the presence of a logistics service in Tartary. Tamerlane substantially reformed it, and some of the details of this reform may serve as a clue to another mystery, what kind of mythical Mongols, together with the Tatars, "mocked unhappy Russia for three hundred years":

Thus, we are again convinced that "Tatar-Mongolia", in fact, is not Tataria and not Mongolia at all. - Yes. Mogulia - yes! Just an analogue of the modern "Russian Post".

Further we will focus on the "Iron Gates". Here the author most likely got confused. He confuses Derbent with the "Iron Gate" on the way from Bukhara to Samarkand. But not the point. Using this excerpt as an example, I highlighted the keywords in the Russian text with markers of different colors, and the same words I highlighted in the original text. This clearly shows what sophistication historians went to to hide the truth about Tartary:

It is possible that I am as wrong as the translator who translated the book from Spanish. And "Derbent" has nothing to do with it, but "Darbante" is something, the meaning of which has been lost, because there is no such word in the Spanish dictionary. And here is the original "Iron Gate", which, along with the Amu Darya, served as a natural defense of Samarkand from a sudden invasion from the west:

And now about the chakatai. The first thought I had was that this tribe could somehow be connected with Katai, who was in Siberian Tartary. Moreover, it is known that Tamurbek paid tribute to Katai for a long time, until he took possession of him with the help of diplomacy.

But later another thought came up. It is possible that the author simply did not know how to spell the name of the tribe, and wrote it down by ear. And in fact, not "chakatai", but "chegodai". After all, this is one of the Slavic pagan nicknames, such as chelubey, nogai, mamai, run away, catch up, guess, etc. And Chegoday is in other words "Beggar" (give me something?). An indirect confirmation of the fact that such a version has the right to life is the following find:

"Chegodayev is a Russian surname, derived from the male name Chegodai (in the Russian pronunciation Chaadai). The surname is based on a proper male name of Mongolian origin, but widely known among the Turkic peoples. It is also known as the historical name of Chagatai (Jagatai), the second son of Chingiz -khana, meaning brave, honest, sincere. This name is known as an ethnonym - the name of the Turkic-Mongol tribe Jagatai-Chagatai, from which Tamerlane came. The surname sometimes changed to Chaadaev and Cheodaev. The surname Chegodaev is a Russian princely family. "

In general, the statement that Tamerlane is the founder of the Timurid dynasty is not true, because he himself was a representative of the Chingizids, which means that all his descendants are also Chingizids.

It was also interesting to understand the origin of the toponym "Samarkand". In my opinion, too many city names contain the root "samar". This is biblical Samaria, and our metropolis on the Volga, Samara, and before the revolution Khanty-Mansiysk was called Samarov, and Samarkand itself, of course. We have forgotten the meaning of the word "samar". But the ending of "kand" fits well into the education system of toponyms in Tartary. These are Astrakh (k) an, and Tmu-cockroach, and many different "kans" and "vats" (Srednekan, Kadykchan) in the north-east of the country.

Perhaps all these endings are associated with the word "ham" or "khan". And we could have inherited from the Great Tartary. Surely, in the east, the cities were named after their founders. As Prince Slovens founded Slovensk, and Prince Rus founded Russa (now Staraya Russa), so Belichan could have been the city of Bilyk Khan, and Kadykchan - Sadyk Khan.

And further. Do not forget about how the Magi actually named the pagan Ivan the Terrible at birth:

"Ivan IV Vasilyevich, nicknamed the Terrible, by the direct name Titus and Smaragd, in the tonsure of Jonah (August 25, 1530, the village of Kolomenskoye near Moscow - March 18 (28), 1584, Moscow) - sovereign, Grand Duke of Moscow and All Russia since 1533, the first king of all Russia ".

Yes. Smaragd is his name. Almost SAMARA-gd. And this may not be a coincidence. Why? Because when describing Samarkand, the word "emerald" is repeated dozens of times. There were huge emeralds on the cap of Tamurbek and on the diadem of his eldest wife. Clothes and even numerous palaces of Tamurbek and his relatives were decorated with emeralds. Therefore, I would venture to suggest that "samara" and "smara" are one and the same. Then it turns out that the person in the title picture is the wizard of the Emerald City?

But this is a retreat. Let's go back to medieval Samarkand.

The description of the splendor of this city makes your head dizzy. For Europeans, it was a miracle of miracles. They did not even suspect that what they previously considered a luxury, in Samarkand, even the poor are considered "jewelry".

Let me remind you that we were all taught from childhood that the summit of civilization was the magnificent Constituency. But what a discrepancy ... The author devoted several pages to the description of this Constantinople, of which only the temple of John the Baptist is remembered. And in order to express the shock of what he saw in the "wild steppes", it took him fifty pages. Weird? Obviously, historians are not telling us something.

Everything was perfect in Samarkand. Powerful fortresses, castles, temples, canals, pools in the courtyards of houses, thousands of fountains, and much, much more.

The travelers were amazed by the wealth of the city. Descriptions of feasts and holidays merge into one continuous series of grandeur and splendor. The Castilians have never seen so much wine and meat in one place in such a short period of time in their entire previous life. The description of the rituals, traditions and customs of the tartars is noteworthy. One of them, at least, has come down to us in full. Drink until you collapse. And mountains of meat and tons of wine from the palaces were taken to the streets to distribute to ordinary townspeople. And the Festival in the palace has always become a public festivities.

Separately, I would like to say about the fight against corruption in the kingdom of Tamurbek. De Clavijo tells about one case when, during the absence of the Emperor in the capital, an official who remained I.O. The king, abused his power and offended someone. As a result, I tried on a "hemp tie". More precisely, the paper one, because in Samarkand everyone wore a natural cotton dress. Probably, the ropes were also made of cotton.

Another official was also hanged, who was convicted of embezzling horses from the giant herd of Tamurbek. Moreover, capital punishment was always accompanied under Timur by confiscation in favor of the state treasury.

People of non-boyar origin were executed by beheading. It was scarier than death. By separating the head from the body, the executioner deprived the convict of something more important than just life. De Clavijo witnessed the trial and the beheading of a shoemaker and a merchant who unreasonably raised the price during the Tsar's absence from the city. This is what I understand, an effective fight against monopolies!

And here is another little discovery. For those who think Homer invented the Amazons. Here, in black and white:

Witch? No, Queen! And that was the name of one of Timur's eight wives. The youngest, and probably the most beautiful. That was how he was ... The Wizard of the Emerald City.

Modern finds of archaeologists confirm that Samarkand was actually an emerald city during the time of Tamerlane. Today these masterpieces are called so: “Emeralds of the Great Mughals. India".

The description of the ambassadors' return journey through Georgia is interesting, of course, but only from the point of view of a fiction writer. Too many dangers and severe trials fell to the lot of travelers. I was especially struck by the description of how they ended up in a snow captivity in the mountains of Georgia. Interestingly, today it happens that snow falls for several days and sweeps houses over the roofs?

Piszoni is perhaps a profession, not a surname.

Feats of Tamerlane, and not quite feats

The story of the exploits of Tamurbek Khan would be incomplete if we did not turn to other sources telling about the epoch-making events that occurred during his reign. One such source is the document known as Ivan Schiltberger's Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa from 1394 to 1427. I will omit the descriptions of Europe and Africa, since within the framework of this topic my goal was initially only to describe the past of our country in its most ancient period, when it was called Scythia, and then Tartaria.

Why does it make sense to dwell on this issue in more detail? The fact is that this is also our story. An attempt by historians to separate the history of Russia from the history of Great Tartary led to what we have today. And we have a huge number of fellow citizens who question even the very existence of such a country in the past, not to mention the fact that Russia was its integral part.

This is the strategy aimed at splitting up a great country. Having shattered it into pieces in the past, it is very easy to shatter it in the present. Therefore, every inhabitant of all countries that until recently was a single state - the Soviet Union, it is vital to know their history so as not to repeat mistakes in the future.

Today one cannot find a person who would not know the name of Tamerlane. But try asking a bystander about what a great politician and commander became famous for, and about ninety percent of the time, you will not hear anything beyond what was told in a commercial for a commercial bank. People will say that, they say, there was such a fierce Mongol who only did what he conquered everyone, and at the same time did not spare either his own or strangers.

This is partly true. Timur was harsh and merciless. But he was fair. He took care of his people, defended the peoples who submitted to him, and at the same time he was not bloodthirsty. This was the time when the death penalty was the most effective management tool. But Timur ruled not for the sake of his own ambitions, but for the good of the people, who considered him their father and protector. He even took the title of Khan shortly before his death.

Therefore, it is not enough to know that Tamerlane existed. You need to know well what exactly he did and how. We need to fully realize that along with Ogus Khan, Chinggis Khan, Batu Khan, Prophetic Oleg and Tsar Smaragd (Ivan the Terrible), Tamurbek Khan, we owe the existence of our modern country - Russia. So, let us turn to the facts stated by Ivan Shiltberger, which in many respects confirm and supplement the information presented by Abulgazi-Bayadur-Khan.

About the war of Tamerlane with the king-sultan

Upon his return from a happy campaign against Bayazit, Tamerlane began a war with the king-sultan, who ranks first among the pagan rulers. With an army of one million two hundred thousand people, he invaded the sultan's possessions and began a siege of the city of Galeb, which numbered up to four hundred thousand houses. It's hard to believe, but Schiltberger got such numbers from somewhere.

The commander of the beleaguered garrison made a sortie with eighty thousand men, but was forced to return and lost many soldiers. Four days later, Tamerlane took possession of the suburb and ordered to throw its inhabitants into the city ditch, and on them logs and manure so that this ditch was filled up in four places, although it had twelve fathoms deep. If this is true, and Tamerlane actually did this to innocent civilians, then undoubtedly he is one of the greatest villains of all times and peoples. However, one should not forget that information warfare was not invented today or yesterday.

To this day, fables are written about all the great rulers of Tartaria, and this is normal. The more merit the ruler has, the more myths about his bloodthirstiness are added. So the tales of the cruelty of Ivan the Terrible have long been exposed, but no one is in a hurry to rewrite textbooks. The same, I think, is the case with the myths about Tamerlane.

Then Tamerlane proceeded to another city, called Urum-Kola, which did not offer resistance, and to the inhabitants of which Tamerlane showed mercy. From there he went to the city of Aintab, whose garrison refused to obey the sovereign, and the city was taken after a nine-day siege. According to the customs of the war of those times, the unconquered city was given over to the plundering of the soldiers. Then the army moved to the city of Begesna, which fell after a fifteen-day siege, and where the garrison was left.

The mentioned cities were considered the main ones in Syria after Damascus, where Tamerlane then went. Upon learning of this, the king-sultan ordered to ask him to spare this city or, at least, the temple located in it, to which Tamerlane agreed. The temple in question was so large that it had forty gates on the outside. Inside, it was lit by twelve thousand lamps, which were lit on Fridays. On other days of the week, only nine thousand were lit. Among the lamps there were many gold and silver, dedicated by the kings-sultans and nobles.

Tamerlane laid siege to Damascus, and the Sultan sent from his capital Cairo, where he was, an army of twelve thousand people. Tamerlane, of course, defeated this detachment and sent in pursuit of the enemy soldiers who had escaped from the battlefield. But after each night, they poisoned the water and the terrain before leaving, so due to heavy losses, the chase had to be returned. This appears to be one of the oldest descriptions of the use of chemical weapons.

After several months of siege, Damascus fell. One of the cunning kadis fell on his face before the conqueror and asked to bargain pardon for himself and other nobles. Tamerlane pretended to believe the priest and allowed all those who, in the opinion of the qadi, were better than other civilians, to hide in the temple. When they took refuge in the temple, Tamerlane ordered to lock the gates from the outside and burn the traitors of his people. Such is natural selection. Is it cruel? - Yes! Fair? Again - Yes!

He also ordered his soldiers to each present him on the head of an enemy soldier, and after the three days used to carry out this order, ordered to erect three towers from these heads.

Then he went to another land called Shurki, which did not have a military garrison. The inhabitants of the city, famous for its spices and spices, supplied the army with everything necessary, and Tamerlane, leaving garrisons in the conquered cities, returned to his lands.

Tamerlane's conquest of Babylon

Upon his return from the possessions of the king-sultan, Tamerlane with a million troops marched against Babylon.

By the way, if you think that the ancient city of Babylon is mythical, you are deeply mistaken. Saddam Hussein's palace is on the edge of this city.

Upon learning of his approach, the king left the city, leaving a garrison in it. After a siege that lasted a whole month, Tamerlane, who ordered the digging of mines under the wall, took possession of him and put him on fire. He ordered to sow barley on the ashes, for he swore that he would destroy the city completely, so that in the future no one could even find the place where Babylon stood. However, the citadel of Babylon, located on a high hill and surrounded by a moat filled with water, remained impregnable. It also contained the Sultan's treasury. Then Tamerlane ordered to divert water from the ditch, in which three lead chests were found, filled with gold and silver, each two fathoms in length and one fathom in width.

The kings in this way hoped to save their treasures in the event of the capture of the city. Having ordered to take these chests, Tamerlane also took possession of the castle, where there were no more than fifteen people who were hanged. However, four chests filled with gold were also found in the castle, which were taken away by Tamerlane. Then, having seized three more cities, he, on the occasion of the onset of a sultry summer, had to leave this land.

Tamerlane's conquest of Little India

Upon returning to Samarkand, Tamerlane ordered all his subjects that after four months they were ready to march to Little India, which was a four-month journey from his capital. Having set out on a campaign with an army of four hundred thousand, he had to pass through the waterless desert, which had a twenty-day transition. From there he arrived in a mountainous country, through which he made his way only in eight days with great difficulty, where he often had to tie camels and horses to boards in order to lower them from the mountains.

Schiltberger goes on to describe the mysterious valley "which was so dark that the soldiers could not see each other at noon." What it was, one can only guess now. However, most likely the matter is not in the valley itself, but in a certain natural phenomenon that coincided in time with the arrival of Tamerlane's troops in this area. Perhaps the cause of the long eclipse was a volcanic ash cloud, or perhaps some more formidable natural phenomenon.

Then the army arrived in a mountainous country of three days in length, and from there it got to the plain, where the capital of India Minor was located. Having set up his camp in this plain at the foot of the mountain covered with forest, Tamerlane ordered the messenger to tell the Governor of the Indian capital: "Peace, Timur geldi", that is, "Surrender, sovereign Tamerlane has come."

The ruler preferred to oppose Tamerlane with four hundred thousand warriors and forty elephants trained to fight, carrying a tower on his back with ten archers inside. Tamerlane came forward to meet him and would gladly begin the battle, but the horses did not want to go forward, because they were afraid of the elephants placed in front of the formation. Tamerlane retreated and arranged a council of war. Then one of his generals named Soliman Shah (a salty man, probably Suleiman, and he is also Solomon) advised to collect the required number of camels, load them with wood, set them on fire and send them to the fighting elephants of the Indians.

Tamerlane, following this advice, ordered twenty thousand camels to be prepared and the firewood imposed on them to be lit. When they appeared at the sight of the enemy system with elephants, the latter, frightened by the fire and shouts of the camels, fled and were partially killed by the soldiers of Tamerlane, and partially captured as trophies.

Tamerlane besieged the city for ten days. Then the king began negotiations with him and promised to pay two centners of Indian gold, which is better than Arabian gold. In addition, he gave him many more diamonds and promised to send thirty thousand auxiliary troops at his request. Upon the conclusion of peace on these conditions, the king remained in his state, and Tamerlane returned home with a hundred war elephants and riches received from the king of India Minor.

How the governor steals great treasures from Tamerlane

On his return from the campaign, Tamerlane sent one of his nobles named Shebak with a corps of ten thousand to the city of Sultania to bring back the five-year taxes stored there, collected in Persia and Armenia. Shebak, upon accepting this contribution, imposed it on a thousand carts and wrote about this to his friend, the ruler of Mazanderan, who did not hesitate to appear with a fifty thousand army, and together with his friend and with money returned to Mazanderan. Upon learning of this, Tamerlane sent a large army in pursuit of them, which, however, could not take Mazanderan because of the dense forests that covered it. Here we are once again convinced that the eastern part of the Caspian lowland was once covered with lush vegetation. Looking at these places today, one can hardly believe it, but several medieval authors could not be so cruelly wrong at once.

Then Tamerlane sent seventy thousand more people with the order to pave his way through the forests. They, in fact, cut down the forest for a mile, but they won nothing, so they were recalled by the sovereign back to Samarkand. For some reason, Schiltberger is silent about the further fate of the stolen treasures. It is hard to believe that embezzlement on such a scale could go unpunished. And most likely, the author simply did not know the end of this incident.

How Tamerlane ordered to kill 7000 children.

Then Tamerlane bloodlessly annexed the kingdom of Ispahan with the capital of the same name to his state. He treated the residents graciously and favorably. He left Ispahan, taking with him his king, Shahinshah, leaving a garrison of six thousand people in the city. But soon after the departure of Tamerlane's army, the inhabitants attacked his soldiers and killed everyone. Tamerlane had to return to Ispahan and offer the inhabitants peace on the condition that they dispatched twelve thousand riflemen to him. When these soldiers were sent to him, he ordered each of them to cut off their thumb on their hand and in this form sent them back to the city, which was soon taken by him by attack.

Gathering residents in the central square, he ordered to kill everyone over the age of fourteen, thus sparing those who were younger. The heads of those killed were piled up in towers in the center of the city. Then he ordered the women and children to be taken to the field outside the city and children under seven years old should be placed separately. Then he ordered the cavalry to trample them with the hooves of horses. They say that Tamerlane's own comrades-in-arms begged him on his knees not to do this. But he stood his ground and repeated the order, which, however, none of the soldiers could dare to carry out. Angry, Tamerlane himself ran into the children and said that he would like to know who would dare not follow him. The warriors were then forced to imitate his example and trample the children with the hooves of their horses. In total, they were counted about seven thousand.

Of course, this could be in reality, but in order to demonize a person, there is still no more effective method than to accuse her of killing innocent children. The most famous of these legends also entered the Bible as a chilling tale of the beating of infants by King Herod. However, now we already understand where the “ears grow” from in this legend. Herod did not give the order to destroy all the babies. He sent his archers in search of only one boy, who, having become an adult, could claim his throne, since he was his blood son from Mary, the wife of Herod, who was in exile before it became clear that she was pregnant by the monarch.

Tamerlane proposes to fight the Great Ham

Around the same time, the ruler of Cataya sent ambassadors to the court of Tamerlane with a demand to pay tribute for five years. Tamerlane sent the envoy back to Karakurum with the answer that he considered the khan not the supreme ruler, but his tributary, and that he would visit him personally. Then he ordered to notify all his subjects so that they prepare for the march to Turan, where he went with an army of eight hundred thousand people. After a month's march, he arrived in a desert that stretched for seventy days, but after a ten-day march, he had to return, losing many soldiers and animals due to the lack of water and the extremely cold climate of this country. Probably, Tamerlane planned to enter Katay through modern Tuva and Khakassia by the western route, along the Chinggis Khan Road. But in the northern steppes of modern Kazakhstan, the campaign had to be interrupted and stopped in Otrar, where Tamerlane was killed by conspirators, who, no doubt, were bribed by the people of the Great Ham.

About the death of Tamerlane

This part of the narrative is more like a script for a television series. I quote from the author:

“It can be noted that three troubles were the causes of Tamerlane's illness, which hastened his death. First, he was upset that his governor had stolen the tax from him; then you need to know that the youngest of his three wives, whom he loved very much, in his absence, contacted one of his nobles. Having learned, upon his return, from the elder wife about the behavior of the younger, Tamerlane did not want to believe her words. Therefore, she told him to go to her and make her open the chest, where he would find a precious ring and a letter from her lover. Tamerlane did what she advised him, found a ring and a letter and wanted to find out from his wife who she received them from. She then threw herself at his feet and begged him not to be angry, since these things were given to her by one of his entourage, but without bad intent.

Tamerlane, however, left her room and ordered her to be beheaded; then he sent five thousand horsemen in pursuit of the dignitary suspected of treason; but this last one, warned in time by the leader of the detachment sent after him, escaped with their wives and children, accompanied by five hundred people, to Mazandaran, where he was out of the persecution of Tamerlane. The latter took to heart the death of his wife and the flight of his vassal to such an extent that he died. His funeral was celebrated all over the region with great celebration; but it is remarkable that the priests who were in the temple heard his groans at night for a whole year.

In vain did his friends hoped to put an end to these cries by giving much alms to the poor. Therefore, the priests, after consulting, asked his son to release to his homeland the people brought by his father from different countries, especially to Samarkand, where they were sent many artisans who were forced to work there for him. They were all really set free and the screams stopped immediately. Everything I have described so far happened during my six-year service with Tamerlane. "

Golubev Andrey Viktorovich Born on July 29, 1969 in the village of Kadykchan, Susuman region, Magadan region. Graduated from the Vyborg Aviation Technical School and the Russian Customs Academy. He worked in the 2nd Kuibyshev United Air Squadron. He served in the Pskov customs. Lawyer, writer, historian.

Tamerlane is one of history's most famous conquerors. He was born into a family of a military man, a small landowner. His family came from the ancient and powerful Mongolian tribe of Barlas. The date of his birth in different sources is the same for the year and month, but the date is different everywhere. Having come to a general conclusion, historians settled on March 11, 1336.

Tamerlane's hometown was Keshe, which was located in Central Asia. Its immediate surroundings were Turkified by the Mongol tribe. The full name given to Tamerlane at birth was Timur ibn Taragay Barlas. Giving such names was the oldest Arab tradition. Translated from the Mongolian language, the name is listed as "iron" or "iron"

Tamerlane's political activities are quite similar to the biography of the great historical personality of the commander Genghis Khan. Both were unique individuals, commanders of personally recruited squads of warriors. Tamerlane was well aware of all the details of the organization of the military forces. Numerous troops were the mainstay of the power of Tamerlane.

After the reign of the great khan, a large number of cultural values ​​of that time remained. He cared about the prosperity not only of the capital of the state, but also of his hometown. Conquering a large number of lands, Timur brought in standing masters, masters of their craft, jewelers, builders and architects from there. With their help, he tried to rebuild and raise the capital of his khanate, Samarkan.

It is worth noting that in the biography of Tamerlane, there were a very large number of amazing moments. Since his youth, the khan was fond of hunting, equestrian competitions, archery and javelin throwing. His skills served as an example and support to many of the soldiers of his army. Everyone could envy the restraint and courage of the commander, because the sobriety of his judgments played into the hands of the invaders. Positive character traits helped to surround myself with a large number of wise people.

The first information about Timur appeared in 1361 from reliable sources. It was during these years that he began his political activities. Until that time, Timur was not a Chingizid and officially could not bear the title of Great Khan. He called himself "emir", that is, a leader, a leader. Only in 1370 the khan became related to the house of the Chingizids and adopted a new name Timur Gurkan, the latter being listed as “son-in-law”. After rapprochement with the khans, he could live in peace and rule in their homes.

It is worth noting that the great khan died at an advanced age. But when his grave was opened, scientists of our time discovered quite interesting facts. Death overtook Tamerlane at the age of 69, but the structure of his remains indicates that he was no more than 50. The appearance of the conqueror is striking. He was beautifully built, tall, and well muscled. A slight dryness of the forms indicated a complete absence of obesity, but this is not surprising, because he spent his whole life on hikes sitting in the saddle.

The most important external difference from other Muslims was the preservation of the Mongol-kos custom by Tamerlane and his army. Numerous drawings of that time and many manuscripts can confirm this. The khan had a beard, which, having earned the title, he, according to custom, did not have to cut it. Some sources indicate that the leader may have dyed his hair with henna to give it a light shade.

Tamerlane's education was commendable. He spoke Persian, Turkic, Arabic and Mongolian. This is confirmed by numerous documents and orders of that time found in excavations. A great confirmation is the stone on which orders were given during the offensive against the Golden Horde in 1391. This historical value has been preserved to this day, it is located in the Hermitage and is presented in St. Petersburg.

Timur had 18 wives. This was the custom of the day. The most beloved of them was the daughter of Kazan Khan and was the patroness of art and science. It was in honor of her mother that a large madrasah and mausoleum were built in the capital of the country, Samarkand. In addition to the large number of wives, the khan also had 21 concubines drawn from many countries and tribes. Thanks to his wives, who were the daughters of neighboring khans, Timur gained great power and respect for his person.

Tamerlane's ascent to the throne was long and very thorny. After the overthrow of Khan Kazagan from the throne, his son began to rule the country, who was later killed. The region was engulfed in political anarchy. It was during these years that Timur entered the service of the ruler of Kesh. Later, the khan appointed him as the governor of the entire Kesh region and was dethroned from his throne. After a while, Khan Khadzhi returned to his conquered place, and Timur had to flee.

The great ruler suffered a lot of betrayal, dirt, offensives during his life. He was in captivity more than once, they were going to sell him, despite this, he did not despair. Thanks to all the wounds he received and physical pain in his life, the khan was a very strong character, calculating and stern. Unfortunately, his actions did not find a continuation in his children, grandchildren and followers.

To this day, the personal belongings of the great khan Tamerlane have survived, but are scattered throughout the continent. They are kept in museums in many countries and are the heritage of historical culture. Tamerlane died on February 18, 1405 at the age of 69. His burial ground was opened in June 1941. The great khan, the conqueror Timur, was one of the most majestic people who will forever remain in the history of many countries.

Timur. Reconstruction on the skull of M. Gerasimov

The value of Timur in world history

It is a well-known fact that almost all great conquerors, who did not stop at trifles, but tirelessly pursued the limitless expansion of their power, were fatalists; they felt like instruments of either a vengeful deity or a mysterious fate, carried away by an irresistible current through streams of blood, through heaps of corpses, all onward and onward. These were: Attila, Genghis Khan, Napoleon in our historical era; such was Tamerlane, a formidable warrior, whose name throughout the centuries the whole West repeated with horror and amazement, although this time he himself escaped danger. This common feature is not accidental. The conquest of half the world in the absence of such very special circumstances as during the time of Alexander the Great can only succeed when the forces of the peoples are already half paralyzed by the horror of the approaching enemy; and an individual person, if he does not just stand on the level of development of an animal, is hardly capable of accepting on his only personal conscience all the calamities that a merciless war causes in the world, which has been striving from one battlefield to another for decades. This means that where it is not about a war for the faith, in which much is already allowed in advance, since it first of all seeks to achieve the lofty religious goal ad majorem Dei gloriam, only he will be at the height of the necessary insensitivity and inhumanity, whose mind is absorbed in an unrelenting idea about a divine mission or about his "star" and is closed to everything that does not serve his exclusive purpose. A person who has not lost all understanding of moral responsibility and universal human obligations will therefore marvel at these most terrible phenomena of the entire world history, just as one can marvel at a majestic thunderstorm until the thunder strikes too dangerously close. The above consideration can, perhaps, serve to explain the special contradictions encountered in such characters, in none of them, perhaps, more than in Tamerlane or, to use a more accurate form of his name, Timurenka. It cannot be said that any of the leaders of the second Mongol-Tatar migration of peoples differed from the leaders of the first in a lesser degree of savagery and ferocity. It is known that Timur especially loved, after winning a battle or conquering a city, to build as high pyramids as possible, now from heads alone, now from the whole bodies of killed enemies; and where he found it useful or necessary to make a lasting impression or set an example, he forced his hordes to crack down no better than Genghis Khan himself. And along with this, there are still features that, in comparison with such ferocity, seem no less strange than Napoleon's addiction to Goethe's Werther, next to his brutal ruthlessness. I do not deduce this from the fact that under the name of Timur, rather voluminous notes have reached us, partly war stories, partly reasoning of a military-political nature, from the content of which it is often hardly possible to conclude that in the person of their author we have before us one of the greatest monsters of all times: even if their reliability was fully proven, one must still remember that paper endures everything, and an example is the wise legislation of Genghis Khan. Also, there is no need to attach too much importance to the saying carved on Timur's ring: grow-rusti (in Persian: “right is power”); that it was not a simple hypocrisy, it was revealed, for example, in one remarkable case, during the Armenian campaign in 796 (1394). A local chronicler describes it as follows: “He encamped in front of the Pakran fortress and took possession of it. He ordered to put in two separate crowds, on the one side three hundred Muslims, on the other - three hundred Christians. After that, they were told: we will kill Christians and release Muslims. There were also two brothers of the bishop of this city, who intervened in the crowd of infidels. But then the Mongols raised their swords, killed the Muslims and freed the Christians. Those two Christians immediately began to shout: we are servants of Christ, we are Orthodox. The Mongols exclaimed: you lied, so we will not let you out. And they killed both brothers. This caused the bishop deep grief, although they both died confessing the true faith. " This case is all the more worthy of note because, generally speaking, Christians could hardly count on Timur to be gentle; he was a Muslim himself and although inclined towards Shiism, but above all, he passionately pursued the strict implementation of the laws of the Koran and the extermination of the Gentiles, unless they deserved mercy for themselves by refusing any attempt to resist. True, his fellow believers usually had a little better: “like predatory wolves on abundant herds” the Tatar hordes attacked, now, as 50 years before, the inhabitants of cities and countries that aroused the displeasure of this terrible man; even peaceful surrender did not always save from murder and robbery, especially in cases where the poor were suspected of disrespect for Allah's law. This time the East Persian provinces got off the best of all, at least where they did not arouse Timur's anger with subsequent uprisings, simply because they were to be annexed to the direct possessions of the new conqueror of the world; the worse he ordered to devastate Armenia, Syria and Asia Minor. In general, his invasion was the completion of the devastation of the Muslim countries. When he died, in a purely political sense, everything was again the same as it was before him; nowhere did the circumstances unfold differently than, in all likelihood, if it had not been for the momentary creation of his great kingdom: but his pyramids of skulls could not contribute to the restoration of devastated cities and villages, and his "right" did not have power in any case awaken life from death; otherwise, it was, as the proverb says, that summum jus, which is summa injuri. Indeed, Timur was only, so to speak, "a great organizer of victories"; the art with which he knew how to make up his troops, train military leaders, defeat opponents, no matter how little we learn about him, is in any case a manifestation of as much bold and strong as a thoughtful mind and out of the ranks of the knowledge of people. Thus, with his thirty-five campaigns, he once again spread the horror of the Mongol name from the borders of China to the Volga, from the Ganges to the gates of Constantinople and Cairo.

The origin of Timur

Timur - his name means iron - was born on 25 Shaban 736 (8-9 April 1336), on the outskirts of the Traxoxan Kesh (now Shakhrisabz, south of Samarkand) or in one of the neighboring villages. His father, Taragai, was the leader of the Tatar tribe Barlas (or Barulas) and, as such, the chief chief of the Kesha district they occupied, that is, he owned one of the countless small regions into which the Jagatai state had long since disintegrated; since the death of Barak, one or the other of Genghis Khan's successors or other ambitious leaders tried to unite them into large communities, but until then without real results. The Barlas tribe is officially ranked as purely Mongolian, Timur's origin is from one of the closest confidants of Genghis Khan, and on the other hand from the daughter of his son, Jagatai. But he was by no means a Mongol; since Genghis Khan was considered a Mongol, the flatterers of his powerful successor considered it their duty to establish a possibly close connection between him in the first founder of the world domination of the Tatars, and the genealogies necessary for this purpose were drawn up only later.

Timur's appearance

Already Timur's appearance did not correspond to the Mongolian type. “He was,” says his Arab biographer, slender and great, tall, like a descendant of ancient giants, with a mighty head and forehead, dense in body and strong ... skin color is white and blush, without a dark shade; broad-shouldered, with strong limbs, strong fingers and long thighs, proportionate physique, long-bearded, but lacking in the right leg and arm, with eyes full of dark fire and a loud voice. He did not know the fear of death: already being close to 80 years old, he retained spiritually complete self-confidence, bodily - strength and elasticity. In terms of hardness and ability to resist, it was like a stone rock. He did not like ridicule and lies, was inaccessible to jokes and fun, but he always wanted to hear one truth, even if it was unpleasant to him; failure never saddened him, and success never made him happy. " This image, the inner side of which seems to be completely consistent with reality, only in its outer features does not quite agree with the portrait that later images give us; nevertheless, in the main, it may have a claim to some certainty, as a transmission of a tradition based on deep impressions, where stylistic considerations did not greatly influence the author, who was obviously excellently considering the elegance and symmetry of his presentation. There is no doubt the existence of a physical defect, to which he owes his Persian nickname Timurlenka, "lame Timur" (in Turkish - Aksak Timur); This shortcoming, however, could not be a significant obstacle in his movements, since his ability to go around horses and wield weapons was especially glorified. In those days, it could be especially useful to him.

Central Asia in Timur's youth

In the vast areas of the former kingdom of Jagatai, everything was again the same as 150 years earlier, in the days of the disintegration of the Karakitai state. Where a brave leader was looking for, who knew how to gather around himself several tribes for horse riding and battles, a new principality quickly arose, and if another, stronger one appeared after it, it found an equally quick end. - The rulers of Kesh suffered a similar fate when, after Taragai's death, his brother, Haji Seyfaddin, took his place. Just at this time (760 = 1359), in Kashgar [the region to the north and east of the Syr Darya], one of the members of the house of Jagatai, the successor of Barak, by the name of Tughluk-Timur, managed to proclaim himself a khan and persuade many tribes of Turkestan to recognize their dignity ... With them he set out to re-conquer the rest of the provinces of the kingdom [that is, Central Asia], of which the most significant and still the most flourishing was the Oks [Amu Darya] region. The little prince Kesha, with his weak forces, was unable to resist the attack; but while he turned towards Khorasan, his nephew Timur went to the enemy camp and declared his submission to the rule of Tughluk (761 = 1360). Understandably, he was received with joy and granted by the Kesh region; but as soon as the khan had time to be convinced of the possession of Transoxania [the area between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya], new disagreements flared up between the leaders of the tribes in his army, which led to various small wars and forced Tugluk to temporarily return to Kashgar. While he was there trying to attract new and, if possible, more reliable forces, his emirs fought among themselves, and Timur constantly intervened in their feuds, taking care first of all to keep his uncle Haji Sayfeddin Keshsky at a distance, who appeared again on the horizon. Finally, they made up; but when the khan again approached (763 = 1362), who in the meantime had managed to recruit new troops, Seyfaddin did not trust the world and went through the Oaks to Khorasan, where he died shortly thereafter.

Timur's participation in Central Asian civil strife

With the new distribution of possessions, which Tugluk made after the shortly then completed conquest of Transoxania and the region between Herat and the Hindu Kush, he appointed his son Ilyas viceroy in Samarkand; at his court Timur also gained great importance, since the death of his uncle he became the undisputed ruler of Kesh; then the khan went back to Kashgar. Meanwhile, discord soon arose between Timur and the vizier of Ilyas; the first was, as they say, to leave the capital after the plot he had conceived was discovered, and fled to Hussein, one of the emirs hostile to Tughluk and his house, who retired to the steppe with few adherents after the defeat of his party. Meanwhile, his small army was scattered by government troops, and a period full of adventures began in Timur's life. He either wandered between Oks and Yaksart [Amu Darya and Syr Darya], then he hid in Kesh or Samarkand, once he was held captive for several months by one of the minor rulers, then released almost without any means, until he finally managed to gather around take a few riders from Kesh and the surrounding area for new ventures and with them fight their way south. There, since the collapse of the kingdom of Jagatai, Sejestan again became independent under the control of its own prince, who was not a little troubled by the neighboring mountain peoples of Gura and Afghanistan itself, of course, long since freed from any foreign influence, and sometimes also the rulers of neighboring Kerman. At Prince Sejestan, according to a prearranged condition, Timur met Hussein again and for some time helped him in military affairs; then they left Sejestan and, apparently reinforced by new hordes of wandering Tatars, of whom there were many everywhere, set off for the area near Balkh and Tokharistan, where they, partly peacefully, partly by strong attacks, subjugated region after region, and their troops grew rapidly as they succeeded ... The army approaching against them from Samarkand, despite its numerical superiority, was defeated by them on the banks of the Oks, thanks to a successful cunning; The Oaks was crossed, and then the population of Transoxania, already not very happy with the dominion of the Kashghar people, flocked to both emirs in droves. To what extent Timur's inventive mind also did not miss any means of harming opponents and spreading everywhere fear and horror of his, still moderate forces, can be seen from one story about this time. When he, sending his troops in all directions, also wanted to occupy Kesh again, then, in order to achieve the performance of a significant detachment of enemies standing there, he ordered 200 horsemen to be sent into the city, each of whom had to tie a large, spreading branch to the tail of his horse. The extraordinary clouds of dust raised in this way give the garrison the impression that an uncountable army is approaching; he hastily cleared Kesh, and Timur could again set up his camp in his native place.

Timur and Hussein take possession of Central Asia

But he did not remain idle for long. The news was received that Tughluk-Khan had died; even before the approach of the brave rebels, Ilyas decided to return to Kashgar in order to ascend his father's throne there, and was already preparing to set off with his army. It was assumed that even if he did not have time to return immediately, he would nevertheless appear again after a short time to take the province away from the rebellious emirs. Therefore, Timur and Hussein considered it best to strike another blow to the retreating, taking advantage of the fact that just at that time new troops were flocking to them, as to the liberators of the country, from all sides; in fact, they succeeded in overtaking the Kashgar army on the way, defeating it in spite of stubborn defense, and pursuing beyond Jaxart (765 = 1363). Transoxania was again provided by one of its emirs. One of the descendants of Jaghatay, Kabul-Shah, was elected to the khans, of course, with the implied condition that he remained silent; but before things could be settled, new troops from Kashgar had already approached under the personal leadership of Ilyas. The Transoxans under the command of Timur and Hussein opposed them east of Yaksart near Shash (Tashkent); but this time the victory after a two-day battle remained on the side of the opponents (766 = 1365), Timur himself had to retreat to Kesh, and then back through the Oaks, since Hussein did not have the courage to hold the line of the river; everything gained in the past year seemed lost. But the spirit of courage and self-confidence, which Timur apparently already knew how to instill in his subordinates, gave the inhabitants of Samarkand the strength to successfully defend the city, which Ilyas began to siege soon after. At the decisive moment, when further protection seemed impossible, the horses of the enemies suddenly began to fall in whole masses from the plague; the enemies had to lift the siege, and its unsuccessful outcome was apparently fatal for the very dominion of Ilyas. Rumor says, at least, that after a short time one of the emirs, Kamaraddin Duglat, treacherously deprived him of the throne in life and it can be assumed that the resulting confusion in Kashgar made it impossible to further attempts against Transoxania. In any case, further legends tell only about completely random attacks by small detachments from border tribes, during new civil strife, which still considered it necessary to lead the Transoxan leaders among themselves in order to eliminate external danger.

Hussein's assassination by Timur

The relationship between the ambitious Timur and his former accomplice Hussein soon became especially unbearable, hardly so exclusively through the latter's fault, as Timur's panegyrists want to assert. In the war that quickly broke out between them (767 = 1366), the native emirs, as usual, hesitated here and there, and once again Timur had such a bad time that he had only two hundred people left. He saved himself with an act of unheard-of courage. With his 243 horsemen, he approached at night the fortress of Nakhsheb (now Karshi in Transoxania); 43 of them were to remain with the horses, with one hundred he lined up in front of one of the gates, and the last 100 were to climb over the city wall, kill the sentries who had fallen asleep at the gate, and then let him in. The enterprise succeeded; before the inhabitants knew about the proximity of the enemy, the fortress was in his power - most of the garrison, in the amount of 12,000 people, was located in the vicinity and too late noticed that the very center of their position had been taken away from them. With repeated short sorties, Timur disturbed here and there those who returned to re-occupy the city of enemies, so that they, again exaggerating the number of his troops, finally withdrew (768 = 1366). Success, of course, attracted a large army to him again; but similar changes occurred several more times before the final victory smiled at him. This happened in 771 (1369), when he managed to arrange a general alliance of the emirs against Hussein, with whom he had allied again in 769 (1367) over the division of the country. Apparently, he has already set out here as a warrior of Allah; at least he forced one dervish to utter a prophecy to himself, authorizing him to this nickname, the influence of which greatly contributed to the increase in his party. Hussein, whose residence was in Balkh, after the lost battle did not hope to keep the city behind him; he surrendered, but was still killed by two of his personal enemies, if not by order of Timur, then still with his consent. Timur became the sovereign ruler of all Transoxania and the country south to the Hindu Kush.

Unification of Central Asia by Timur

Timur during the siege of Balkh. Miniature

The position he took was, no doubt, rather unclear. The Turk is always ready, as we have seen in many examples, to cut off the head of his lawful sovereign if he does not like his rule; but he is extremely conservative in all religious and political relations, and with difficulty he dares to recognize as the new ruler someone who does not belong to the family of the former. Timur knew people too well not to take into account this mood of his people; he decided to present himself simply as an atabeg (in order to use the Western Turkish expression already known to us) of one of the Genghis Khanids: a sure sign that, let us say in passing, that he himself was not related to the legitimate reigning dynasty. So, the kurultai, the council of transoxan ancestors, convened to confirm the changes that have taken place, had to elect one of the descendants of Jaghatai to Khakans or Kaans, as the title of the Supreme Great Khan said, Timur himself appropriated the lower title of Gur-Khan, which was worn by the former sovereigns of Kashgar and Samarkand and orders to officially call himself not Timur Khan, but only Timur Beg or Emir Timur. It's like Napoleon, who settled on the title of first consul; his successors only stopped the election of the Great Khan, but they themselves also never accepted this title, but were content with the title of run or shah. It is true that they had no reason to be especially dignified, since immediately after Timur's death the kingdom forcibly assembled by him fell apart, just as before him it was composed of pieces and scraps. More than once we could clearly see that among these, still half of the nomadic peoples, the power of the ruler was based solely on the influence that he knew how to acquire with his personality. Endless labor, what it cost Timur to rise from a minor boss to the highest run of the whole Transoxania during ten-year wars, during which, almost until the moment of his final success, he often had to see himself in the position of a commander without an army; on the other hand, the complete impossibility of preserving the unity of his combined state after his death is such a sharp contrast with the unquestioning obedience that all his unbridled fellow tribesmen, without exception, had shown him for twenty-six years, from the very recognition of him as a universal ruler, that we would think to have a riddle in front of oneself, if the mentioned main feature of the Turkish character did not give a simple and satisfactory explanation; namely: the Turks, and not the Mongols proper, played with Timur the main role in the second invasion of Western Asia; since, even if individual Mongol tribes remained from the time of Genghis Khan in the lands of Jagatai, the overwhelming majority of the population, excluding the Persian Tajiks, consisted of Turks in the broad sense of the word, and the Mongol minority had long since disappeared in it. In essence, it certainly didn't make much of a difference; not quite as bloodthirsty and barbaric as the hordes of Genghis Khan, but also quite bloodthirsty and barbaric were the troops of Timur in all countries to which the great conqueror sent them from the minute he got power into his own hands in Transoxania, in the sad result of his great military activity was and remains the final fall of the eastern civilization of the Middle Ages.

Not without further troubles, the new sovereign of Transoxania managed to keep in his power those who had completely lost the habit of obedience and obedience. More than once in the following years, it is told about the arrogant emirs and noyons who refused to tolerate a boss, no matter how strong he was; but these were always separate and disconnected uprisings, which could be suppressed without much difficulty. In such cases, the gentleness is noteworthy, in fact, unusual for Timur, which he showed to people who did not want to admit the exaltation of his comrade, who was once barely equal with them: it is clear that he was concerned about the restoration of unity, which would not be disturbed by the feelings of revenge of individual childbirth, and only then hoped, by the strength of his personality and his external successes, victories and prey, which he delivered to his own, to gradually turn any contradiction into animated devotion. He was now thirty-four years old; his knowledge of the people, the military ability and the talents of the ruler had developed to full maturity over a long time of testing, and after two decades he was able to achieve his goal. Namely, until 781 (1379), the entire space of the old kingdom of Jagatai was conquered by almost annual campaigns, at the same time the revolts that were often mixed with these wars were pacified, finally, the influence of the new power was extended to the northwest. In addition to Kamaraddin of Kashgar, the pacification of the emir of the city of Khorezm, which for a long time enjoyed quite a lot of independence in its side oasis, caused a lot of trouble; as soon as a peace treaty was concluded, and Timur arrived again in his capital, as usual the news came soon that Yusuf-Bek - that was the name of the ruler of Khorezm - revolted again under some pretext. Finally, in 781 (1379), this stubborn man died, while his capital was again under siege; the inhabitants continued the defense for some time, until the city was taken by force, and then a thorough punishment befell him. The country came into the direct possession of Timur, while in the remote and far to the east stretching Kashgar region, the conqueror was content with the fact that after several victories in 776-777 (1375-1376) he forced Kamaraddin to flee to the Central Asian steppes and took the oath of loyalty to himself from the tribes, until then subject to him. A significant part of them probably increased the army of Timur.

Timur's intervention in the affairs of the Golden Horde. Tokhtamysh

Already upon our return from the east, we find Timur strong enough to intervene in the affairs of a much larger state, albeit undoubtedly weakened by internal troubles of the state, namely Kipchak, which since the death of Uzbek, the son of Jani-Bek (758 = 1357), has been shaken by prolonged palace revolutions and disintegrated into several separate states, just like the kingdom of Jagatai, with the difference that until then it had not found for itself such a strong restorer as Timur. About 776 (1375), the western part of Kipchak, the region of the “Golden Horde” proper, was in the power of one tributary of the local khan, Mamai, while in the east of the Yaik (Ural River), after numerous quarrels between various descendants of Jochi, at that time Urus Khan prevailed. He waged war with one rival, Tyluy, who resisted his plans to unite all the tribes of the eastern Kipchak; when Tului died in one battle, his son Tokhtamysh fled to Timur, who had just returned from Kashgar to Transoxania (777 = 1376). The Kipchak region between Khorezm and Yaksart directly touched the Transoxan border, and Timur, without hesitation, took the opportunity to extend his influence in this direction, supporting the applicant. Tokhtamysh, who, of course, from the very beginning had to declare himself a vassal of his patron, received a small army, with which he went down the Yaksart and took possession of the regions of Otrar and the surrounding area; but since at the same time, until the middle of 778 (end of 1376), he repeatedly gave himself to be beaten by the sons of Urus, Timur finally came out against them himself. Winter prevented decisive success, but in the meantime Urus died, and against his son, incapable, devoted to only sense gratification, Timur-Melik, prejudice soon reigned among his own subjects; therefore Tokhtamysh with the Transoxanian army entrusted to him for the second time was finally able to defeat the enemy troops (end 778 = 1377) and, in the second clash, take Timur Melik himself prisoner. He ordered to kill him and now he soon achieved his recognition in the entire eastern half of the Kipchak kingdom; from that time until 1381 (783) he completed the conquest of the kingdom of the Golden Horde in Russia, already strongly shaken by the defeat of Mamai by the Grand Duke Dmitry in 1380 (782), and with this he completed the restoration of the state unity of all the former Kipchak possessions. By this, they nominally came under the supreme dominion of Timur; but we will soon see that Tokhtamysh was only expecting an opportunity to refuse the service of his former patron.

Central Asia ruled by Timur

As soon as the success of Tokhtamysh in Kipchak became a matter of decision, Timur could calmly provide him with the further management of his enterprise for a while, but when in 781 (1379) the last resistance of the inhabitants of Khorezm was broken and thus the whole north and east became subject to him, Timur could think about making a conqueror also to the west and south. The Persian, Arab and Turkish lands, despite all the devastation that they had been subjected to for centuries, were still a promised land for the wandering crowd of meager Central Asia, full of extraordinary treasures and pleasures, and once again thoroughly robbing it seemed far from ungrateful to them. ... It is all the more understandable that from the moment Timur crossed the Oxus, almost all attempts by the emirs of Transoxania and the regions directly belonging to it cease to question his dominion; his domination over the army, which he got himself, becomes unlimited. In the regions of Khorezm and Kashgar, which had a long independence behind them, we, however, still meet later separate attempts to overthrow the yoke, when the great conqueror is hundreds of miles away from some ambitious leader or exiled prince; but in general, from the beginning of his first Persian campaign, Timur enjoyed without the slightest difficulty the unconditional obedience of those hundreds of thousands, to which his troops soon grew. The severity of the duties that he placed on them and on himself is unparalleled and far surpasses everything that happened under Genghis Khan: he was in charge of a whole multitude of large regiments, which he sent out like a beam under the leadership of different commanders; Timur usually personally led all his campaigns, if it was not about very insignificant raids, and more than once made transitions from Transox / pany directly to Asia Minor and Syria, or vice versa. For a correct assessment of his military activities, one should also not ignore the fact that in Western Asia he had to deal with less pitiful opponents than in most cases the generals of Genghis Khan: the Mongols and Tatars gradually ceased to be something new; the panic fear that preceded them at their first appearance could not be repeated; now it was necessary to withstand battles of a different kind, to overcome much more courageous resistance, and quite often the departure of the fierce victor was followed by an uprising of the vanquished, requiring a new war to pacify itself. Thus, Samarkand, which Timur made the capital of his kingdom, and Kesh, abandoned as a summer residence, were rarely honored to receive a formidable flight within their walls; the large palaces and parks that he ordered to build and erect in both these places according to the Tatar custom, as later in many other large cities of the increasingly vast state, were mostly empty: his homeland was a military camp.

Timur at the feast. Miniature, 1628

The conquest of Afghanistan by Timur and the fight against the Serbedars (1380-1383)

Timur was not the kind of person to stop for lack of a pretext for war, when in 782 (1380) he prepared to attack the Herat emir, his closest neighbor to the west. Just as Genghis Khan once demanded that the Shah of Khorezm Muhammad acknowledge his dominion in that flattering form that he asked him to consider himself his son, so Timur no less politely asked Kurtid Giyasaddin, who then reigned in Herat, to visit him in order to take part in the kuriltai, at which a select circle of emirs, that is, inviting vassals, was going to Samarkand. Giyasaddin understood the purpose of the invitation, and although he apparently did not show his embarrassment, but on the contrary, very kindly promised to come later at an opportunity, he nevertheless considered it necessary to put in order the fortifications of Herat, while he himself had to devote himself yet another task. His restless neighbors, dangerous Serbedars from Sebzevar again forced him to punish them for some kind of violation of order. The shamelessness of these interesting thugs grew worse over the years, so that they became burdensome for the whole neighborhood, in spite of their almost incessant quarrels among themselves. Their most daring trick already at the end of 753 (beginning of 1353) astounded the whole world: their then ruler, Khoja Yahya Kerraviy, cut off the head of the last Ilkhan Togai-Timur, who demanded an oath of allegiance from him a href =, in his own residence in Gurgan, where Khoja appeared as if to fulfill this demand with a retinue of 300 people; “Everyone,” the Persian historian remarks, “whoever finds out about this reckless bravery of theirs, will gnaw his finger of amazement with the tooth of surprise.” In any case, their further attempts to appropriate the area that Togai-Timur still possessed - she hugged mainly Gurgan and Mazanderan - did not succeed; one of the officers of the murdered prince, emir Vali, proclaimed himself sovereign there and held out against the Serbedars; but, in spite of this, they remained a sore spot of the Eastern Persian princes, and the rulers of Herat had to constantly have a lot of trouble with them. So it is now: while Giyasaddin took Nishapur from the Serbedars, which they had long ago appropriated for themselves, on the other hand, Timur's son, Miran-Shah, broke into the possession of Herat with an army from Balkh (late 782 = early 1381). Soon his father followed him with the main army: Serakhs, where Giyasaddin's brother commanded, had to surrender, Bushendzh was taken by assault, Herat himself was heavily besieged. The city defended itself well; then Timur began to threaten Giyasaddin that if the city did not surrender voluntarily, he would level it to the ground and ordered to kill everything living in it. The little prince, who alone could not resist such an excellent force for a long time and did not dare to count on help from the west, lost heart; instead of leading an army to the rescue, he decided to surrender. Likewise, the daredevils of Sebzevar this time did not support the honor of their name: they immediately showed their readiness to greet the dangerous conqueror as obedient servants; only later, when the oppression of foreign rule became burdensome for them, did they show, in a few more indignations, their old courage. In one respect, however, the great commander himself followed the example of the communist gangs: he made friends wherever he could with the dervishes in order to benefit from the great influence of these wandering saints or holy vagrants on the lower popular classes, as he already tried to do at the beginning of his career. This was also consistent with the fact that he adhered to Shiism, although the Turkish element dominated in his troops: his rule that there is only one God in heaven, and only one ruler should exist on earth, the Dyuzhinnik dogmas were more suitable than the Sunni doctrine, still who recognized the Egyptian Caliphs Abbasids as the true head of Islam. - Of course, for a short time everything continued to go as smoothly as at first. The fortress of Emir Vali, Isfarain, had to be taken by storm, and only then did he decide to obey; but no sooner had the Transoxans left his land than he again showed his desire to go on the offensive himself. The Serbedars also revolted, and in Herat and the surrounding area, several brave leaders refused to obey, despite the concluded peace. The responsibility for the latter was attributed to Giyasaddin, and he was sent with his son to the fortress, where they were later killed; at the same time, the Transoxans with fire and sword in the course of 783–785 (end of 1381–1383) eliminated all resistance in these areas. How this happened, you can imagine, if you know that during the second capture of Sebzevar. already partly ruined before, 2,000 prisoners served as material for the construction of towers, and they were laid in rows between layers of stone and lime and so walled up alive. Almost also terribly raged were the hordes of Timur in Sejestan, whose ruler Qutbaddin, although surrendered, could not force his troops, more eager for battle, to lay down their arms. It took an even heated battle until these 20,000 or 30,000 men were driven back to the main city of Zerenge; for this, the annoyed winner, upon entering the city, ordered to kill all the inhabitants "until the child in the cradle" (785 = 1383). Then the conquest went further into the mountains of Afghanistan: Kabul and Kandahar were taken, the whole land was conquered up to the Punjab, and thus the border of Genghis Khan's dominion was again reached in the southeast.

Trekking to Kashgar in 1383

In the meantime, it became necessary to invade the area of ​​the former Kashgar Khanate for the second time. Between the tribes that owned it, from the time of Tughluk-Timur, the jets that roamed in the east, north of the upper Yaksart, to the other side of Lake Issyk-Kul, have come to the fore. They appear under the leadership of either Kamaraddin or Khizr Khoja, the son of Ilyas, who, no matter how many times they were expelled from their lands, always returned after some time to restore the tribes of the Kashgar kingdom against Timur. So now, the mutinous unrest between the jets has caused the campaign; in 785 (1383) the Transoxanian army made its way across the whole country beyond the Issyk-Kul Lake, but did not catch Kamaraddin himself anywhere. The news of this found Timur in Samarkand, where he hesitated in 786 (1384) for several months, after the happy end of the Afghan campaign, decorating his residence with looted treasures and Herat and other cities to instill crafts in their homeland.

The conquest of the southern coast of the Caspian Sea by Timur (1384)

Since calm was still established in the east, he could now go himself again to Persia, where the brave and indefatigable emir of Bali again set out at the head of the army, despite the defeats of the previous year. From the very first appearance of Timur in Khorasan, this capable and perceptive man tried in vain to unite the princes of southern and western Persia into a common alliance against a threatening conqueror: the one who had the greatest political meaning, Muzaffarid Shah Shuja, considered, according to old legends of his principality, it is most prudent from the very beginning to renounce all resistance, and shortly before his death he sent precious gifts to Timur and asked for his protection for his sons and relatives, between whom he wanted to divide his provinces; the rest followed the policy of the ostrich, even more beloved in the East than even in England, and did not think about coming to the aid of the ruler of Gurgan and Mazandaran. This latter, when Timur approached him in 786 (1384), fought like a desperate one; he contested every inch of the land with the enemy, but it was impossible for such a strong enemy to resist for a long time. Finally, he had to leave his capital, Asterabad; while all the horrors of Tatar ferocity broke out over the unfortunate population, Vali rushed through Damegan to Rey, from there, as they say, to the Tabaristan mountains. The indications about its end are at variance; it is only true that soon afterwards he suffered death in the midst of the confusion that Timur's further offensive to the west caused in the rest of Persia as well.

State of Jelairids in the era of Timur

First of all, Timur moved to the country between Ray himself and Tabriz, the capital of the former Ilkhanov. We remember that before the peace treaty between Small and Big Khasans, Media and Azerbaijan went to the former, and the latter was content with Arab Iraq. But Little Khasan did not have to use his finally strengthened dominion for long; already in 744 (1343) he was killed by his own wife, who thought that her husband had come to the knowledge of her love relationship with one of the emirs. Khulagid, in whose name Hassan ruled, made a feeble attempt to rule on his own, but was eliminated by the brother of the slain, Ashraf, who hastened to arrive from Asia Minor. The winner located his residence in Tabriz; but if Little Hasan could not be considered a man with a very delicate conscience, then Ashraf was just the most disgusting tyrant. In the end, he was so thoroughly bored with many of their own emirs that they called to the country Janibek, the khan of the Golden Horde, who in 757 (1356) actually invaded Azerbaijan and killed Ashraf. With him came to an end the short-term dominion of the Chobanids. The Kipchak princes, of course, had to immediately abandon their newly acquired property: already in 758 (1357) Dzhanibek was killed by his own son Berdibek, and the decline of the dynasty that naturally followed such violence made further ventures against the South Caucasus impossible for a long time. This made it possible for Jelairid Uweis, the son of Big Khasan, who also died in 757 (1356), to seize, after several intermediate changes, Azerbaijan and Media to Rhea, so that now the Ilkhans united Iraq and Azerbaijan under their scepter.

But the life they led in their residence in Tabriz was far from calm. Uweis (757–776 = 1356–1375) was undoubtedly a strong prince; he immediately pacified (767 = 1366) an accidental uprising of his governor in Baghdad, and also made the princes of Shirvan and the Mazandaran emir of Bali feel his strength, with whose possessions his own bordering at Rhea. But with his death, the prosperity of the Jelairids had already ended. His next son, Hussein (776–783 = 1375–1381), no longer succeeded in curbing the successive uprisings of his relatives and other emirs, which mixed in the most difficult way with the attacks of the Muzaffarid Shah Shuja on Baghdad and northern Media; in the end, his brother Ahmed attacked him in Tabriz, killed him and seized power, which he enjoyed with many changes and interruptions until 813 (1410). He was a willful and cruel, even a fierce prince, but cunning and a stubborn man who never let misfortune break him, and withstood all the storms that broke out around him from the time of Timur's invasion until the death of the terrible conqueror of the world, in order, in the end, to become a victim of his own ambition. Moreover, he was an educated person, loved poetry and music; he himself was a good poet, as well as an excellent painter and calligrapher; in short, in many respects a remarkable man: it is a pity that he indulged in the use of opium, at that time more and more spread among dervishes, as well as among laymen, as a result of which he often became completely insane - in this state he, apparently, and did the worst of his bloody deeds. It was the same Ahmed who, amid various quarrels with his brothers, who also claimed the throne, ignored the cry for help from Emir Vali, and who now had to feel the claws of the tiger himself, the minute the brave emir was defeated.

Timur's war in Azerbaijan (1386)

At the end of 786 and until the fall of 787 (1385), Timur was, however, busy with only one concern - to destroy Vali: although he pursued him across the border, when he retired to Rey, that is, to the possession of Ahmed, and although he easily took even Sultania at Dzhelairid, whose position in this country was not strong, as soon as Vali, meanwhile, had disappeared, the Tatars turned again, in order, first of all, to secure Tabaristan, which lay on their flank. After the cities of this country subdued without a fight, Timur, satisfied so far with the success of this campaign, returned to Samarkand to prepare even greater forces for the next. Tokhtamysh, the khan of the Golden Horde appointed by him, made sure that he did not need a pretext for a new invasion of the Akhmed province. He began to feel his own strength from the time he once again subdued the Russians under the Tatar yoke, treacherously conquering and terribly devastating Moscow (784 = 1382), and for some time was provided from any danger from this side; the more keenly he felt the desire to evade the supreme dominion of Timur and had already sent ambassadors to Tabriz to Ahmed to offer him an alliance against the common enemy. We cannot guess why Jelairid, who could hardly hide from himself the likelihood of an imminent repetition of the attack from the east, refused the ambassadors of Tokhtamysh, moreover, in a rather insulting form; probably he was of that view, and, of course, it is true that once the Kipchaks had established themselves in his lands, they would have bypassed him in everything no less than Timur himself; but Tokhtamysh looked askance at this matter, and during the winter of 787 (1385-1386) made a devastating raid on Azerbaijan, from which the capital itself suffered greatly. One can imagine the noble indignation that shook Timur's heart when he received the news that the Muslim-populated country was raided and plundered by the hordes of his tributary, unfortunately still mostly unconverted. He immediately announced that he had to come to the aid of a fellow believer, who was not able to defend his possessions himself, and immediately in 788 (1386) he carried out this benevolent intention with the disinterestedness already familiar to us. Having entered at the head of his army in Azerbaijan, he took possession of Tabriz without any obstacles: Ahmed, as his subsequent behavior shows, considered it most prudent, whenever possible, to evade whenever he was faced with superior forces, and to keep his own in case of future favorable circumstances. He had no lack of courage, which, incidentally, he quite often proved in his life, although his behavior towards Timur undoubtedly resembles the well-known phrase that "even life is sweet for the fatherland." Meanwhile, the conqueror soon saw that not all the emirs of the provinces he had just joined were thinking of making it easier for him to play his role as patron, as the cautious Jelairid had done. Behind Azerbaijan itself, the Persian-Tatar population has already disappeared from the time of the Ilkhanov; here a new and strong element had to be encountered, which should have caused Timur no less trouble than Hulagu had before - with real Turks of Guz and Turkmen origin, who, with all their kinship with their more eastern brothers, had no intention of letting them disturb their peace ...

Asia Minor in the era of Timur, the Ottomans

At that time, Asia Minor was completely Turkified long ago, excluding certain coastal strips that were still in the possession of the Byzantines. More than three hundred years have passed since the Seljuks first took possession of the eastern half of the peninsula, and from the beginning of the great popular movements until the beginning of the 7th (13th) century, the flow of Turkish settlers continued to flow into the country. At that time, whole tribes, disturbed from their places by the Mongols of Genghis Khan, fled through Khorasan and Persia to Armenia and Asia Minor; They were followed by the hordes of the last shahs of Khorezm, who, after their defeats, moved to foreign lands, both to Syria and further to the north, and also quite a few Turkmens were in the very hordes of Mongol conquerors, the commanders of Genghis Khan, as well as Hulagu and his successors. Until the order was finally overthrown in the Seljuk state, Ruma, of course, they tried to place new elements, if possible without prejudice to the permanent population, and therefore they were sent to the Byzantine border, where they could get themselves new dwellings at the expense of the Greeks. The freshness of these popular forces, still intact in the history of the West, explains to us how, in the midst of the decline of the Seljuk dynasty in Iconium, the spread of Turkish rule to the shores of the Aegean Sea here hardly stops; how the emirs of individual tribes, all multiplying and spreading, under the purely nominal supremacy of the last miserable sultans of Rum, can remain virtually independent, even in Mongol times, and how several tens of thousands of Tatar troops, who are at the services of the governor Ilkhan on the right bank of the Euphrates, rarely can do something against the western principalities and are not at all able to win a decisive victory over them. On the contrary, with the disintegration of the Mongol-Persian kingdom, the influence of its former defenders in Asia Minor, which had long been undermined, also disappeared immediately. Chobanid Ashraf, who received several districts of the country at the conclusion of peace in 741 (1341), had already left them in 744 (1344); we learn the same thing in the same year about Arten, who then owned the rest. In his place, the ruler of Caesarea, Sivas and Tokat is about the time of Timur Kazi Burhanaddin, the head of a purely Turkish community, which acted here on equal rights along with the emirs of the West. Between these last - there were ten of them - the Ottoman state, striving for the rise, has long come to the fore. My task here cannot be a secondary consideration of the remarkable development that brought the descendants of Ertogrul and Osman from an insignificant initial state to the height of world power; for this I can refer to Hertzberg's description in one of the previous parts of the General History. Here I must only recall that in the same 788 (1386) year, when Timur, after the capture of Tabriz, was preparing to seize Armenia and Asia Minor, Osman Murad I defeated at Kony (Iconium) his most powerful rival among the other emirs, Ali-Bek from Karamania, and by this made it possible for himself or his successor Bayazid I (from 791 = 1389) to increase the new kingdom by further movement towards Armenia, as soon as they would give this time a war with the Bulgarians, Serbs and other Christian states of the Balkan Peninsula. A clash between Timur and Bayazid, moving along the same line, one from the east, the other from the west, was inevitable.

The states of Black and White rams (lambs) in the era of Timur

So far, in any case, it was still slowed down by a whole series of other cases, which in various ways delayed Timur's successes. Not all Turks, who gradually settled since the time of the Seljuks in Armenia, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, obeyed any of the eleven emirs. The entire wide strip of land to the east of the Kazi Burkhanaddin region and the northern possessions of the Egyptian Mamluks, on the one hand, to Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, on the other, has long been inhabited by numerous Turkish tribes, mostly Turkmens, who gradually began to take over the Armenian Christians and Kurdish Bedouins. An important step in this direction was marked by the arrival of two new Turkmen tribes who came under Ilkhan Argun (683–690 = 1284–1291) from Turkestan through the Oaks and settled along the Upper Euphrates and the Tigris, where the terrible devastation of the times of Genghis Khan and his first successors liberated places for new residents. They were called Kara-Koyunlu and Ak-Koyunlu, which means people of a black or white lamb, because they had an image of this animal in the form of a coat of arms on their banners. But we would fall into a dangerous mistake if, on the basis of the family coat of arms, we wanted to draw a conclusion about the corresponding peaceful inclinations of both tribes. On the contrary, they were lambs of the same kind as those wild English troops, which three hundred years later, by a remarkable coincidence, acquired the same name "Lambs" for the same reason. In strength, courage and rudeness, these were true Turks of their time, who did not miss the opportunity to cause as much trouble to their neighbors as possible. At first, the Black Lambs are reported to have lived in the north, near Erzingan and Sivas; to the south, between Amid and Mosul, the White ones; but at the time when they begin to interfere more strongly in political circumstances, around 765 (1364), Mosul is in the power of the leader of the Blacks, Beyram Khoja, later his son, Kara Muhammad, who, although he has been paying since 776 (1375). tribute to the Jelairids in Baghdad, but otherwise quite independent; Whites at that time lived on both banks of the Euphrates, from Amides to Sivas, and were in a somewhat dependent position on the ruler of this latter, Kazi Burkhanaddin, but before the coming of Timur they are somewhat in the background in comparison with the Black ones. In any case, both tribes owned at that time most of Mesopotamia - the Orthokid princes of Maridin played a very insignificant role in comparison with them - and western Armenia, especially the districts of Van, Bayazid (or Aydin, as he was then called) and Erzerum. This did not exclude the fact that other Muslim or Armenian-Christian princes had small holdings in the same areas: the Turkmen hordes were precisely scattered among the old sedentary inhabitants, who were forced to obey the taxes imposed by them and too often cruel treatment, who now found themselves in the most disastrous situation between these stern gentlemen and the advancing barbarians of Timur. If they began to defend themselves, the Tatars would cut them off, if they surrendered to them, the Turkmens would look at them as enemies: even this population, accustomed to all calamities and hardships, was rarely in such a terrible situation.

Timur's campaign in Transcaucasia (1386-1387)

Throughout the entire summer and autumn of 788 (1386) and spring 789 (1387), Timur's troops devastated the valleys of the large provinces of Armenia and Georgia with fire and sword in all directions, fighting either against the warlike Caucasians, or against Kara Muhammad and his son Kara Yusuf. and, of course, they had to suffer more than one defeat in difficult mountainous terrain. Then, of course, the poor Christians had to be paid for this, the persecution of whom such a pious Muslim as Timur took special credit for. “The Tatars,” says the native chronicler, “tortured the masses of believers with all sorts of torments, hunger, sword, imprisonment, unbearable torture and the most inhuman treatment. Thus, they turned one, once very flourishing, province of Armenia into a desert, where only silence reigned. Many people suffered martyrdom and proved themselves worthy to receive this crown. Only the giver Christ, our God, who will crown them on the day of vengeance prepared for the assembly of the righteous, can know them. Timur took away a huge booty, took numerous prisoners, so that no one was able to either tell or describe all the misfortunes and sorrows of our people. Then, having made his way with a significant army to Tiflis, he took possession of the latter and took many prisoners: it is calculated that the number of those killed exceeded the number of those who came out alive. " For a moment it might seem that in the Tatar torturer himself the consciousness of the horror with which he disgraced the human name was trying to rise. Our chronicler tells further: “Timur laid siege to the fortress of Van; its defenders spent forty days full of fear and killed a large number of warriors of the godless descendant of Jagatai, but finally, suffering a shortage of bread and water, they could not withstand the siege and betrayed the fortress into the hands of enemies. Then came the order of a wild tyrant to take women and children into slavery, and men indiscriminately, faithful and unbelievers, to throw off the fortifications in the ditches from the battlements. The soldiers immediately carried out this fierce order; they began to ruthlessly throw all the inhabitants into the abyss surrounding the city. The piles of bodies rose so high that the last ones that were dropped were not killed instantly. We saw this with our own eyes and heard with our ears from the lips of the holy and venerable archbishop, lord Zachey, as well as father and vartabed (i.e. deacon) Paul, who both escaped from the fortress where they were imprisoned, because one Jagatai leader, leaving the department assigned to him, he released his prisoners to freedom, and this was an opportunity to save several. Meanwhile, the entire area around the fortress was flooded with the innocent blood of Christians, as well as foreigners. Then it happened that one reader went to the minaret in the city of Pegri and in a loud voice began the prayer of the last day: "He has come, the day of the last judgment!" The godless tyrant, whose soul knew no pity, immediately asked: "What is this cry?" Those around him answered: “The day of the last judgment has come; Jesus had to proclaim it; but thanks to you it came today. Because the voice of the crying is terrible, like a trumpet (1, 213) voice! " “Let these lips be shattered!” Timur exclaimed: “If they had spoken earlier, not a single person would have been killed!” And he immediately gave the order not to overthrow anyone else into the abyss, and to release all the people still remaining. " But too soon it should have turned out that Timur's unusual order of mercy was not caused by the impulse of mercy, but only by superstition, which makes all the inhabitants of the East fear every word with a bad omen. Hardly had Timur, whose troops came out not without damage from the difficult mountain war, to turn back to the Caspian Sea, postponing the completion of his devastating activities for the future, as he found a reason to surpass the Armenian scenes of horror on a different basis. The place of action for these new bloody deeds was to be the southern Persian possessions of the Muzaffarids.

Timur's war with the Muzaffarids (1387), massacre in Isfahan

The sons and other relatives of Shah Shuja, who, after the death of this prince in 786 (1384), divided his significant possessions among themselves - they embraced Kerman, Fars and part of Khuzistan - as usual, the eastern sovereigns lived far from peace between themselves; a sufficient reason - if it was impossible to organize a friendly and strong resistance, and even against a conqueror superior to them in his own strength - in order to continue the peace policy begun by the selfish but clever Shah Shuja. Despite this, Zayn al-Abidin, the son of Shuja and the ruler of Fars, was so careless that in the summer of 789 (1387), despite the invitation he received from Timur, he refused to appear in the camp of the latter. More, of course, was not required to provoke an attack by the Tatar army; in the autumn of that year, Timur appeared before Isfahan. The city, under the rule of one uncle Zayn al-Abidin, was surrendered without bloodshed: but one accident is said to have led to a disaster that remains unparalleled even in this terrible time. Although the inhabitants deigned to grant mercy for the payment of a significant indemnity, the troops nevertheless behaved with the usual unbridledness, so that general despair took possession of the people; when at night in one of the outskirts of the city a noise arose for some reason, everyone fled and, in a sudden outbreak of indignation, attacked the weak garrison set up here by Timur, and killed it. It was self-evident that an exemplary punishment should have followed for such a dangerous indignation. The army, which was outnumbered, did not have much difficulty in immediately re-conquering the city; but so that none of his people, prompted by untimely mercy, would not let any of the captive townspeople escape, as happened in Armenia according to the above story, the detachments were ordered to submit a known number of heads to each squad, for a total of 70,000. Here the Tatars themselves were fed up with murders. It is said that many tried to obey the order by buying heads that had already been chopped off by less sensitive comrades. At first, the head cost one gold: when the supply increased from this, the price fell by half. In any case, Timur received his 70,000; as usual, he ordered them to be built towers in various parts of the city.

I do not want to demand either from the reader or from myself that we delve into such disgusting details more than is necessary to get the correct impression of the horror of this terrible catastrophe; From now on, it will be enough to simply follow the campaigns and conquests of the Samarkand run, and give justice to one or another of his enemies. Between them, in courage and heroism, one of the Muzaffarids, Shah Mancyp, stands in front of all. While Timur, following the punishment of Isfahan in the same year (789 = 1387), took Shiraz and other places of the Fars region, the rest of the members of the house of Muzaffar fled trembling from all over to pay their respects and prove their obedience to the terrible commander, Shah Mansur , like a true cousin of Shah Shuja, kept aloof in his possessions near Tuster, in Khuzistan, deciding to sell his dominion and life dearly. He was just as little sensitive to the more subtle promptings of conscience, like any prince at this time of violence: when his uncle (in the second generation), Zayn al-Abidin, fled to him after the loss of Isfahan, he managed to lure his troops to him, imprisoned him into custody, and when he escaped after a while, and then was caught again, without hesitation, he ordered to blind him. But those who wanted to fight Timur could not be picky in their means; it was necessary first of all to gather such a force with which one could resist such a rival on the battlefield; and under any circumstances, what the energetic Mansur achieved is surprising if “the war that conquered Persian Iraq and Fars under the rule of Timur was not without danger for the victor and not without glory for the brave prince who achieved that that made the scales of victory shake. "

Tokhtamysh's raids in Central Asia (1387-1389)

At the beginning, Mansur, however, did not have a lack of favorable circumstances, without which it would hardly have been possible in reality to encroach on something like that. While Timur was still busy accepting expressions of loyalty from the rest of the Muzaffarids. unexpected news came to him that the center of his kingdom, Transoxania itself, was in grave danger by surprise attacks from two different sides. Tokhtamysh, who in the winter of 787–788 (1385–1386) was defeated in one invasion of Azerbaijan, and the still rebellious jets took advantage of Timur’s long absence from the east to attack in 789 (1387). on the province of Jaxart. These latter, of course, were not defenseless; in Samarkand, one of Timur's sons remained, Omar Sheikh, with a sufficient army, and although he was defeated by Tokhtamysh at Otra, and when he met the jets at Andijan, he only with great effort retained the battlefield, the opponents still were not able to their sorties to penetrate close to the capital. Meanwhile, the danger that the next summer attacks would resume with more numerous forces was too close that the prince of war himself did not feel compelled to thoroughly restore order here before continuing the conquest of Persia. So, in the winter of 789–90 (1387–1388), Timur turned back to Transoxania, during the summer of 790 (1388) he devastated the province of Khopezm, whose chiefs entered into a treasonable alliance with foreigners, and prepared for the next year further vengeful campaigns, when in the middle of winter (end of 790 = 1388) Tokhtamysh again invaded through the upper Yaksart near Khokand. Timur hurried to meet him, defeated him, the next spring (791 = 1389) again seized the northern regions around Otrar and drove the Kipchaks back to their steppe. Meanwhile, he became convinced that if he wanted to have any lasting calm in the northeast, then both his former tributary and the rebellious jets should be punished more sensitively. Therefore, while Miran Shakh, in response to a new uprising of the Serbedars in Khorasan, surrounded and completely destroyed these daredevils, Timur himself with Omar Sheikh and other of his most capable commanders went to the east.

Timur's campaign to Kashgar in 1390

The Jet region and the rest of the provinces of the Kashgar Khanate between the Tibetan border and Altai, Yaksart and Irtysh were completely devastated by troops sent out in a beam in all directions, all the tribes that met along the road were scattered and exterminated or driven into Mongolia and Siberia. True, Kamaraddin succeeded now, as in the next year (792 = 1390), when Timur's commanders had to repeat the enterprise for greater strength, to escape with their closest retinue through the Irtysh: but soon after that he apparently died, and Khizr Khoja , whom we meet later as the khan of Kashgar and the provinces belonging here, after the experiments made, he considered it prudent to finally submit to the winner. The matter ended - we do not know when - with the conclusion of peace, which ensured for a long time after Timur's death tolerable relations between the two tribes of the waters with the de facto supreme power of the Samarkand sovereign.

Timur's first campaign against Tokhtamysh (1391)

All that remained was to end Tokhtamysh. The rumor about the last successes of Timur and about the immediately undertaken new armaments soon penetrated into the interior of the vast Kipchak kingdom, and when at the beginning of 793 (1391) the Transoxan troops set out on a campaign, already in Kara Saman, even on this side of the border - north of Tashkent , the former assembly point of the army, ambassadors from the Khan of the Golden Horde arrived to begin negotiations. But the time for that has already passed; Countless wars of Timur in Azerbaijan (1386) Timur's regiments rushed uncontrollably into the steppe. Tokhtamysh did not stay where he was: he wanted to use the space as a weapon in the way of the northern peoples. The fugitives and their pursuers rushed one after another, first to the northeast, deep into the Kyrgyz land, then again to the west through the Urals (Yaik), through the present Orenburg province to the Volga, in total for about three hundred German miles of travel; Finally Tokhtamysh stopped at Kandurchi. Here he was in the center of his kingdom, he could not cross the Volga without leaving his capital Sarai unprotected. The long journey through the deserts, whose meager supplies of life were mostly depleted by the previous Kipchaks, did not go without sensible losses for the Transoxans, despite the abundant provisions taken with them; Tokhtamysh's army far outnumbered them, so a decisive battle began for him with auspicious omens. It happened on 15 Rajab 793 = June 19, 1391; Despite all the courage with which Timur's regiments fought, Tokhtamysh nevertheless managed to penetrate the left flank of the enemy commanded by Omar Sheikh with a strong onslaught and take a position in the rear near the center. But it was not at all part of the habits of the cunning conqueror to have only one bowstring at his bow. Among the Mongols and the peoples allied with them, even more than in other armies, the highly fluttering banner of the leader was important, as a sign that guided all the movements of the remaining regiments; his fall usually meant the death of the leader. Timur, in whose camp there was no shortage of disgruntled Kipchaks, managed to bribe the standard-bearer of his enemy; This latter at the decisive moment lowered the banner, and Tokhtamysh, cut off in the enemy's rear from his main forces, on whose firmness he could no longer count, personally immediately set an example for flight. His hordes scattered, he himself escaped through the Volga, but his entire camp, his treasures, his harem, wives and children of his soldiers fell into the hands of the victors, who, pursuing the fugitives, threw whole detachments into the river. After that, they scattered across the eastern and middle Kipchak, killing and plundering everywhere, also devastating and devastating Sarai and all other cities of the south up to Azov. The number of prisoners was so great that for the ruler alone it was possible to select 5,000 young people and beautiful girls and, although the officers and soldiers also received as much as they wanted, countless others had to be released, since it was impossible to drag all of them with him. Eleven months after the army set out from Tashkent, around the end of 793 (1391), the victorious lord "returned joy and happiness to his capital Samarkand, honoring it with his presence again."

Timur's campaign against the Golden Horde in 1391. (Map Creator - Stuntelaar)

End of the struggle with the Muzaffarids (1392-1393)

In general, the campaign against Tokhtamysh was perhaps Timur's most brilliant military action. In any case, the continuation of the campaign to Southwest Asia, so abruptly interrupted four years earlier, did not proceed so quickly, although the troops of the minor West Asian princes could not bear any comparison with the troops of the Kipchaks, at least in number. But in many areas, the nature of the mountainous terrain came to their aid, on which the Tatar riders could not move well, and in courage and perseverance, neither the Turkmen, nor Muzaffarid Mansur were inferior to their terrible enemy. Mansur made good use of the respite given to him by Timur, in order to quickly take away their possessions from most of his relatives, and now he ruled from Shiraz over Khuzistan, Fars and southern Media with Isfahan, when the Tatars, who during 794 (1392) had still pacify the uprisings in Tabaristan, approached his state at the beginning of 795 (1392-1393). So that Shah Mansur could not find refuge in the hard-to-reach mountains of upper Khuzistan, as in the first war with Muzaffarid, the side to Kurdistan and southern Iraq was pre-occupied by flying detachments, while Timur himself set out from Sultania right through the mountains to Tuster, the main the city of Khuzistan. Further, the army marched first through a comfortable hilly country, which slopes down to the Persian Gulf, to the entrance to the transverse valleys leading to the mountains surrounding Shiraz; after the storming of one mountain fortress, which was considered impregnable, the road to the capital of Mansur was free. As they say, Mansur deliberately allowed Timur to go so far as to wage an indefatigable partisan war with him between the mountains of the Persian mountainous country; finally, besieged by the requests of the inhabitants of Shiraz, he considered it his duty to make at least an attempt to cover the city. So it came one afternoon to the battle in the valley in front of Shiraz. But Timur again sent bribery ahead of his riders: the chief of the emirs, Mansur, left his master in the middle of the battle with most of the army, the battle could no longer be stopped. everything seemed lost. Mansur still managed to hold out until nightfall, and while the Tatars, tired of the battle, were badly guarding, he, with a small detachment of his last loyalists - they said there were only 500 of them left - attacked the enemy camp in the morning twilight. In the first turmoil, he succeeded, chopping right and left around him, to produce a great bloodshed and make his way to Timur himself. But the strong helmet of the Tatar, invulnerable to the misfortune of the world, withstood the blow of the sword of the brave Muzaffarid; meanwhile, new crowds of enemies rushed in, and the fearless hero fell in hand-to-hand combat, and with him the last hope of the dynasty. It did not help the rest of its members that they humbly submitted to the conqueror; so that none of them would think of playing Mansur again, they were imprisoned and later killed.

Mamluk Egypt in the era of Timur

From Shiraz, Timur then turned to Baghdad, where Ahmed Ibn Uweis lived, since the loss of Tabriz, and now anxiously awaited the outcome of the war in Shiraz. His attempt to come to a peace treaty with an adversary, with whom he did not feel able to match, met with little encouragement from the latter; then Jelairid decided to flee with his treasures to Egypt, which now again, as in the days of Hulagu, seemed to become the rescue anchor of the fragile ship, which was likened to Muslim western Asia in the midst of the storm of the Tatar invasion. In Cairo, by this time, the descendants of Keelaun had long ceased to dispose of. During the continuous unrest and palace revolutions under the last Bakhrites, the emir of Barkuk, one of the Circassian Mamluks, who now played the main role on the Nile, rose to the throne; his first attempt to deprive the minor Sultan of Khadzhia of power after seven years of wars between the country's nobles led all the same to the second accession of the eliminated one, but six months later Barkuk finally seized power and reigned from 792 (1390) in Egypt, and from 794 (1392) also in Syria, whose most energetic emir, Timurbeg Mintash, was defeated and killed only with the help of treason and after stubborn resistance. Barkuk was not at all an ordinary man: brave and cunning, like all Mamluks, he, however, as a politician, was far from being able to compete with his great predecessor Baybars. Although he understood that the successes of Timur himself in the west require the unification of all the forces of Egypt and Syria with the warlike Turkmens of the tribes of the Black and White Lamb, as well as with the omnipotent Ottomans in Asia Minor and, finally, with Tokhtamysh, who little by little gathered his strength after his defeat, he nevertheless believed that he had done enough, putting these useful allies against the Tatars in turn and not actively intervening in the war himself. As long as he lived, his intention seemed to succeed him; but when he died in 801 (1399), his heir and son Faraj (801–815 = 1399–1412) had to redeem his father’s short-sighted selfishness with the loss of Syria, and only thanks to the death of Timur did he ultimately remain inviolable at least least in Egypt.

Capture of Baghdad by Timur (1393)

Barkuk, however, had enough discernment to show a benevolent welcome to Ahmed Ibn Uweis, who had fled from the Tatars, when he arrived in Cairo through Aleppo and Damascus in 795 (1393), and to keep him as a guest at his court until a favorable opportunity presented itself for re-conquest of his kingdom. He didn't have to wait long for this. True, Baghdad surrendered without resistance to the approaching Timur, and during the years 795, 796 (1393, 1394) all of Iraq and Mesopotamia were conquered, and the newly manifested disobedience of the Black Lambs was punished by secondary terrible devastations in Armenia and Georgia under Kara Yusuf, the successor of the deceased in 791 (1389) Kara Muhammad.

Timur's second campaign against Tokhtamysh (1395)

But before Timur, who had already exchanged rude letters with Barkuk after the capture of Baghdad, had time to oppose Syria, he was again summoned to the north by the attack of Tokhtamysh, who again gathered all his forces, on Shirvan, whose ruler had earlier come under the auspices of the world conqueror. Near the present Yekaterinograd, south of the Terek River, Tokhtamysh suffered a defeat in 797 (1395), even worse than under Kandurcha. he could never recover from it. Timur's gangs raged as usual, this time in their own area of ​​the Golden Horde between the Volga, Don and Dnieper, and from there far into the depths of the Russian state [Timur reached Yelets]; then he appointed Koyridjak Oglan, the son of Urus-Khan, as khan there, who relied on a strong party in the horde. The intended goal, to completely eliminate the ungrateful Tokhtamysh in this way, was achieved: first escaping with a fugitive wanderer from the Lithuanian prince Vitovt, then wandering in the depths of inner Asia, he, they say, was killed seven years later.

Wars of Timur with Tokhtamysh in 1392-1396. (Map Creator - Stuntelaar)

A new fight against the Black Sheep, the conquest of Baghdad by Ahmed Gelairid

In the winter of 798 (1395–1396), Timur, in order to prove his zeal for Islam, took up the devastation in Christian Georgia and made another campaign to the mouth of the Volga; then in the summer of the same year (1396) he returned back to Samarkand to recruit new troops there for his further enterprises; in the west, he left Miranshah with part of the army to guard the conquests made. He managed to accomplish this, however, far from brilliantly. Hardly had Timur left when the Black Lambs under the leadership of Kara Yusuf began to remind of themselves in a very unpleasant way in Mesopotamia; Arab Bedouins also invaded from the Syrian desert, and with the help of both of them, Ahmed Ibn Uweis, who was already waiting in Syria, managed to seize Baghdad again, in which he reigned for several years as a vassal of the Egyptian sultan. Miranshah had to fight Kara Yusuf at Mosul and was not able to come to a decisive result, so even the Maridin Ortokids, who before that, as usual, submitted to Timur without great difficulty, considered it prudent to enter into friendship with the Turkmens and Egyptians. About four years passed in this way, during which Miranshah showed very little of his former abilities (as the panegyrists of his surname assure, as a result of falling on his head); however, the uprising of the conquered did not capture Persia, and Timur, before returning to Iraq, could, without great care, turn his attention to another country, which had not yet been the subject of his beneficial efforts.

India in the era of Timur

In order to correctly understand the course of action of the conqueror of the world, Timur, one must not forget that he, and his Tatars, was exclusively concerned with the seizure of prey. Persia and the lands of the Caucasus were pretty much plundered during repeated wars, the future struggle against the Mamluks and Ottomans was promised to be more difficult than profitable; it is not surprising, therefore, that he, without hesitation, followed the bait, which suddenly carried him away in a completely different direction. India, which we have long lost sight of, and whose fate over the past two hundred years we can only review in general connection later, also did not completely avoid further Mongol invasions since the retreat of Genghis Khan. The passages of Kabul and Ghazna, these gateways for sorties from Afghanistan, served as the passage of the Jaghatay hordes into the Punjab eleven times during this period of time, and the three or four Turkish dynasties, reigning one after the other in Delhi, were often at a loss as to how to avoid this calamity. But these attacks never met with lasting success; due to the fragmentation that so quickly overtook the kingdom of Jagatai, only comparatively insignificant forces of the provinces of Balkh and Ghazna always appeared here, which could not succeed in the perfect conquest of a large country, although they could enjoy considerable freedom of action between the Khulagids and the khans of the east; but the Indian rulers had an impressive military force until the middle of the fourteenth century. It was different at the time mentioned; the Delhi sultans were more and more deprived of their influence over the distant provinces; from the previous governorships of Bengal and the Deccan new independent states were formed; and when, after the death of Firuz Shah (790 = 1388), his children and grandchildren, or rather the nobles, who raised one or the other on the shield, wasted their strength in quarrels and frequent changes of the throne, the indigenous provinces of the Upper Ganges and Punjab also began to come to extreme frustration.

Timur's campaign to India, the devastation of Delhi (1398)

The news of this that reached Timur sounded very tempting; and so he resolved, before going west, to undertake a predatory raid on a large scale across the Indus. The decision was carried out in 800 (1398). That in fact the question here was not about acquiring the country for a long time, is evident from the very way of its implementation. Most of the campaign coincided with the hot season, which naturally forced the Tatar army to keep as far north as possible. Multan, which already the previous year had been besieged by Pir Muhammad, Timur's grandson, and Delhi itself were the southernmost points to which they reached; but the districts between these two cities and the Himalayas were all the more subjected to all the horrors of war. Timur himself, or the one who composed a story about this campaign on his behalf, tells with great composure that little by little it became painful to drag after the army numerous prisoners taken in battles with the warlike population of Punjab; therefore, when approaching the capital, all of them together, numbering 100,000 people, were killed in one day. The fate of Delhi itself was no less terrible. Already under the last Turkish sultans, this capital, which once competed with old Baghdad in splendor and wealth, suffered greatly as a result of the erroneous orders of its rulers; despite the fact it was still the first city in India in terms of population and treasures. After her Sultan Mahmud and her Mayor Mellu Iqbal-Khan lost the battle at the gates of Delhi and with difficulty escaped to Gujerat, the inhabitants immediately surrendered; but a few fights between the invading regiments of Timur and the few remaining Turkish-Indian soldiers or Indians served as an excuse enough to allow robbery, murder and fire to rage everywhere with the usual barbarism. It is characteristic, as Timur’s story is expressed about this: “By the will of God,” says Timur, “not as a result of my desire or order, all three districts of Delhi, called Siri, Jehan Penah and Old Delhi, were plundered. The khutbah of my dominion, which provides security and protection, was recited in the city. Therefore, it was my ardent desire that no misfortune should befall the local population. But God determined that the city was to be devastated. Therefore, he instilled in the unfaithful inhabitants a spirit of perseverance, so that they themselves incurred the fate that was inevitable. " So that this disgusting hypocrisy does not seem too monstrous, it must be remembered that even today, very often God is held responsible for those heinous deeds that a person commits. In any case, December 18, 1398 (8 Rabi 801) marks the end of Delhi as the brilliant and far-famous capital of Muslim India; under subsequent sultans, even before the last Afghan kings for a long time reduced it to virtually the level of a provincial city, it is only a shadow of itself. After Timur achieved his goal, that is, provided himself and his people with treasures and captives, he immediately set off on the return journey. The fact that after the departure of Timur, one traitor, the emir from Multan, named Khizr-Khan, who helped foreign robbers against his fellow tribesmen, gradually expanded his possessions and, finally, took dominion over Delhi, gave rise to the erroneous thinking that the Timur dynasty for some time she ruled India through Khizr and several subsequent governors. This is completely wrong: the Tatars appeared just like the clouds of locusts, and just as they left the country after they had devastated it clean, and here bringing only death and destruction, without the slightest attempt to create anything new.

Timur's campaign to India 1398-1399. (Map Creator - Stuntelaar)

Timur and Bayezid I Ottoman

Having barely returned to Samarkand, the conqueror with zeal set about to take up the affairs of the West again. The circumstances looked somewhat ominous there. True, in Egypt the Sultan Barkuk had just died (801 = 1399), Ahmed Ibn Uweis only held out with difficulty in Baghdad, where he was hated for his cruelty, with the help of the Black Lambs of Kara Yusuf, and this latter could be hoped to cope with, as happened already often. Around the same time, the Turkmen of the White Lamb, under the leadership of Kara Yelek (or Osman, if you call him by his Mohammedan name), deprived the power and life of Burkhanaddin Sivassky, whom they persecuted; earlier this might have seemed favorable to Timur: but now another adversary appeared in the same scene of action, who seemed more equal to the formidable prince of war than all the previous ones. In 792–795 (1390–1393), Sultan Bayazid joined most of the small Turkish emirates to the Ottoman state, which rose after the Battle of Amselfeld (791 = 1389) to the value of a power and on European soil; and when Bayazid, at the request of the inhabitants of Sivas, who could not be too pleased with the treatment of the rude Turkmens, about 801 (1399) also took possession of the country up to the Euphrates between Erzingan and Malatia, he became a direct border neighbor of the provinces of Armenia and Mesopotamia, to which he claimed claims Timur. This was a direct challenge to Timur, who had earlier taken under his protection Erzingan, which already belonged to Armenia itself. To this was added the fact that when Timur approached, who in 802 (1400) entered Azerbaijan with large crowds and after one of his usual predatory raids on Georgia was going to go to Baghdad, Ahmed Ibn Uweis and his ally Kara Yusuf fled from there to Bayazid and found him a benevolent welcome, while, on the contrary, many of the emirs of Asia Minor, debunked by the latter, appeared in Timur's camp and buzzed his ears with loud complaints about the violence done against them. The tone of the diplomatic negotiations that followed on these issues between both almost equally powerful and, at any rate, equally arrogant sovereigns, was more than clear; in spite of this, in Timur's behavior one could notice a slowness unusual for him in other cases. He did not hide from himself that here he faced the most serious struggle in his life. Bayezid had at his disposal the forces of all of Asia Minor and most of the Balkan Peninsula, whose Serbs were one of the most excellent parts of the Ottoman army; Bayazid himself was hardly inferior to Timur in courage and energy, and this latter was on the extreme western border of his huge kingdom, in the midst of enslaved and oppressed peoples, which could easily have turned into final death the very first defeat inflicted on him by the Ottomans. But Bayazid lacked one quality, especially precious for a commander, and which Timur possessed in the highest degree: prudence, which allows everything in the world rather than contempt for the enemy. Confident in his army, always victorious, as he believed, he did not consider it necessary to make special preparations in Asia Minor to meet the mighty enemy, and remained quietly in Europe, so that, if possible, to finish the siege of Constantinople, with which he was occupied with some time. There he heard the news that Timur at the beginning of 803 (1400) crossed the Euphrates and took Sivas by storm. Even one of Bayezid's sons was allegedly taken prisoner and killed shortly thereafter; but even without that, he had enough reasons to gather all his forces now against a dangerous opponent.

Timur's campaign in Syria, the burning of Damascus (1400)

While Bayezid's regiments were recruited in Europe and Asia. Timur decided, before moving further into Asia Minor, to secure first his left flank, which could easily be threatened by the Mamluks from Syria; also Baghdad was still in the hands of one governor who had been abandoned by Ahmed Ibn Uweis, and, as we have already seen, it was impossible to rely on the small Mesopotamian princes. In order to keep the latter at bay, he took advantage of the Turkmen White Lamb under the leadership of Kara Yelek, who, of course, was extremely rebuilt against Bayezid and willingly undertook to protect the fortress on the Euphrates, Malatia, easily conquered by the Tatars; Timur himself set himself the task in the fall of 803 (1400) to start a war with Syria. It turned out to be easier for him than he could have guessed. Barkouk's son, Faraj, was only fifteen years old, and his emirs had just quarreled to such an extent that the entire state was threatened to shatter through it, and Syria almost freed itself from Egyptian rule. Although at this moment the internal agreement was somehow restored, but between the leaders of the troops there were still various troubles and mutual hostility; there was nothing to think about in general, guided by one strong will, resistance to the Tatar attack. Only the Syrian emirs dared to meet the enemy at Aleppo, however, they did not collectively accept the firm intention to risk the latter; thus Timur was victorious; Aleppo was terribly ruined, the rest of the cities of northern Syria were occupied without any significant difficulties, and already in the second half of 1400 (end of 803) the conqueror stood in front of Damascus, where the languid Egyptians finally found their way, accompanied by their too young sultan. They could just as well have stayed at home: while there were clashes here and there, strife among the emirs again prevailed; many started a plan - understandable under the circumstances - to replace the royal youth with a man capable of action, and when Faraj's associates and himself found out about this, it was all over. They managed to return safely to Cairo, leaving the Syrians to cope as best they could with the enemy. It turned out that things were bad. Although there was nothing to think about an active defense, and the city of Damascus soon surrendered voluntarily, and only the castle continued to resist for some time, but hardly even Timur himself raged anywhere worse than here and then again in northern Syria. The purpose of this is clear: Timur wanted to give such a convincing example to the Mamluks and their subjects, so that they would not dare in any way to interfere with his further offensive into Asia Minor.

In Damascus itself, there was no shortage of religious pretexts to justify the worst treatment of the inhabitants. Timur, who here played the role of a Shiite, indignant at the imperfections of the faithful, took particular pleasure in frightening the unfortunate defenders of the Sunni clergy with insidious questions about the relationship between Aliy and the legitimate caliphs that preceded him; then, in a hypocritical indignation at the depravity of the Damasceans - who were, in any case, no worse than the rest of the Turks or even the Persians of that time - and at the atheism of the Umayyads, who almost always lived there, Timur ordered his Tatars to deal with them in the same way as between Christians in Georgia and Armenia. In the end, the city was “mistakenly” set on fire, and for the most part burned out; in any case, it is difficult to believe that there was no intent in the destruction of the Umayyad mosque. The ancient venerable church of St. John, which the Arabs only adapted for their worship, and later the Turks also spared, was still one of the first temples of Islam, despite the damage caused earlier by one fire; now she was deliberately devastated and again betrayed by the flame, from which this time she suffered much worse - the later restoration could only partially return her to her former beauty. Despite the concluded terms of surrender, Timur's soldiers massacred the inhabitants of the city, the survivors were robbed in the most shameless way, and in the same way the whole country was devastated to the border of Asia Minor. With such decisive measures, Timur, of course, achieved his goal completely: the Syrian and Egyptian emirs, who already found it appropriate to take advantage of the government's weakness, which had only increased as a result of the shameful flight of Sultan Faraj, for new mutual quarrels, of course, were careful not to stand in the future across the road to the conqueror of the world, and the helpless ghostly sovereign himself, who soon after (808 = 1405) had to cede power to one of his brothers for a year, remained completely submissive until Timur's death; it can be assumed - this, of course, is not completely proven - that he even unquestioningly obeyed the demand addressed to him in 805 (1402), to mint coins with the name of Timur, so as not to cause an invasion of Egypt itself.

Second capture of Baghdad by Timur (1401)

After the Tatars restored calm in Syria in their own way, their crowds pulled back across the Euphrates to also master Mesopotamia and Baghdad again. This did not cost them much work, since the White Lambs represented a reliable support under Malatia, and the Black ones were significantly weakened by the long absence of their leader Kara Yusuf in Asia Minor. Yet it seemed necessary to once again bring order to their crowds that were in Armenia by sending a separate detachment there, while Ortokides was punished for his betrayal by the destruction of Maridin. Although he himself held out in his fortified castle, it was not found necessary to spend much time capturing it: Orthocides was not dangerous enough for this. Baghdad was a different matter; although its head, Jelairid Akhmed, also did not want to give up the safety of staying under the protection of Bayezid, but the governor Faraj, who ruled there instead of him, had only one name in common with the Egyptian sultan; he was a brave man, and at the head of the Arab and Turkmen Bedouins, whom he commanded, he was not afraid of the devil himself in human form. The detachment sent by Timur against the ancient city of the caliphs was not admitted. Timur had to go there personally with the main forces, and the resistance shown to him also turned out to be so strong that he vainly besieged the city for forty days, until the old fox managed to catch the defenders by surprise at a moment of oversight. As they say, Timur invaded the city on the most sacred day of the Muslim church year, on the great feast of sacrifice (Dhu'l-Hidja 803 = July 22, 1401) and then only too accurately fulfilled the terrible vow, as if given to him, to slaughter people instead of the usual sacrifices sheep. On this day, each warrior of Timur had to present not one head, as in Isfahan, but two, in order to build the favorite pyramids of skulls with the luxury corresponding to the holiday, and since it turned out to be difficult to hastily collect the entire number of heads, extending to 90,000, they killed not only some of the prisoners brought with them from Syria, but many more women. The brave Farage died with many of his men while trying to make his way in boats down the Tigris.

Howl / h2 title = on Timur with the Ottomans (1402)

But we have refused to give more detailed information about the horrors of this warrior; therefore, we will rather turn to the last great success, which laid the most brilliant crown for the deeds of the terrible warrior Timur already at the end of his too long life. Now he no longer left a single enemy worthy of attention, either in the rear or on both flanks; although after Timur's retreat to a winter apartment in Karabakh (Azerbaijan), Ahmed Ibn Uweis, probably in the hope of advancing Bayazid's preparations and trying to distract the enemy from him to the east, suddenly appeared again on the ruins of Baghdad and began to gather around him the scattered remnants of his former army , however, so far there was nothing to fear serious difficulties from these weak raids, and preparations for a decisive strike against Bayezid could go on in complete calm. No doubt we are informed that Timur made another last attempt at reaching a peace agreement with the Turks. Despite the fact that now approaching seventy years, he still possessed the same self-confident energy to the same extent, he could hardly with a very light heart fight the Ottoman Sultan, who was not without reason called Ildirim ("lightning" ), and whose forces, if in general and less significant than those of Timur, could be fully assembled and ready in a short time, while his own troops were scattered throughout Asia Minor from the Euphrates to the Indus and Jaxartes. The recent wars in Syria and Mesopotamia have also cost many people; besides, one could notice signs of a lesser readiness in the emirs, who would rather drown in pleasant peace on the looted treasures, than to constantly again be subjected to the burdens of war. In a word, Timur could wish to first replenish his army on the native soil of Transoxania and refresh it with new forces, as he had done many times already in previous years; therefore, for the first time in his life, he calmly endured the challenge that Bayezid again took possession of the long disputed border fortress Erzingan while the Tatar army was occupied by Baghdad. Although he again appointed Tahert as his governor, the same prince who actually belonged to the city and who coped with his task of maneuvering between the two powers with great pleasure, but Timur nevertheless needed brilliant satisfaction if he did not want the whole world bow before Osman. That he even now began to seek him through diplomatic negotiations bears little resemblance to his former manner; but in any case nothing came of it. Bayazid left his embassy unanswered for several months without a response, in which he, by the way, insistently demanded the extradition of the leader of the Black Lambs, Kara Yusuf; when the return news finally arrived, negative and at the same time rather impolite, it found the conqueror of the world already west of the Euphrates, on the way from Sivas to Caesarea, after the capture of a Turkish border town by assault. Bayazid's army really stood to the right of Timur near Tokat; but he knew that she would have to follow him if he went to the main city, Brussa.

Battle of Angora (1402)

The armies of both sides met at Angora; but while the sultan, not paying attention to some discontent that arose in his troops, with some boasting went hunting in the sight of the enemy and hesitated there too long to have time to take care of tactical details, Timur secured the benefits of the situation and sowed the possibility of discontent in the ranks of the Turks, which he never missed to do with respect to powerful enemies. In addition to the Ottoman troops, janissaries, and reliable Serbs, Bayezid's army consisted of soldiers from small states, which he had abolished ten years earlier, and some detachments of Tatar riders who had been in Asia Minor since the first Mongol times. The latter willingly succumbed to insinuations that invited them to go over to the side of their fellow tribesmen; the first were still loyal to their former sovereigns, who were also in the camp of enemies, and besides, they were irritated against Bayazid because of all his behavior: in this way, too, those sent by the cunning Timur found a favorable reception for their proposals. When the decisive battle began near the end of 804 (mid 1402), at a critical moment most of the Asia Minor and all Tatars went over to Timur: the entire right flank of Bayazid was upset by this, and his defeat was decided. But while everything around him turned to flight, the Sultan stood unshakably in the center of the army with his janissaries. He had no intention of admitting that he was defeated; so he endured, until his loyal bodyguards were completely exterminated. When, at nightfall, he finally agreed to leave the battlefield, it was too late: the fall of his horse betrayed him into the hands of pursuing enemies, and like the once Greek emperor before the Seljuk Alp Arslan, so now the Ottoman sultan, with one name not long ago trembled Byzantium, was a prisoner before the Tatar run Timur. Whether the widespread story that Timur carried him with him in an iron cage during his further march through Asia Minor is based on truth, whether this cage was then a cage, or rather a stretcher surrounded by bars, in the end, is just as indifferent as the reliability of many anecdotes transmitted about a personal meeting and further intercourse between the winner and the loser: it is enough that Bayezid did not endure for a long time the tearing torment of deeply struck pride. While the troops of his jailer devastated Asia Minor with fire and sword in all directions, half destroyed Brussa, the cradle of Ottoman greatness, finally took even Smyrna from the Rhodian knights John and brutally dealt with her, while his own daughter was forced to give his hand to Timur's grandson, the crushed sultan was apparently fading away, and before the tamer of his violent head set out on his way back to the east, Bayazid died in his confinement (14 Sha "bana 804 = 9 March 1403).

Timur's state towards the end of his life

Middle East after the Battle of Angora

Timur, of course, could not think of extending his conquests to the Ottoman state and on the other side of the Bosphorus; the consciousness of the weakest side of his great kingdom should have kept him from such a thought in advance: that the actual root part of it lay on the eastern border. In addition, even before the war with Bayezid, the Byzantine sovereigns of Trebizond and Constantinople entered into negotiations with the Tatars in order to get rid of the dangerous Ottoman enemy with their help and pledged to pay them tribute; by this, according to Eastern concepts, they became vassals of Timur, for whom, without further efforts, the glory of submission to their scepter of these implacable enemies of Islam was ensured. Therefore, distributing again Asia Minor to the emirs expelled by the Ottomans as their vassals, he left the rest of the Ottoman state, which was exclusively on European soil, to himself, which he could do with all the great dignity that Bayezid's son, Suleiman, who managed to escape from Angora to Rumelia, very humbly asked from there for peace. In addition, it remained for Timur, as we remember, to eliminate another old and restless enemy, who was in his rear, in Baghdad. Ahmed Ibn Uweis not without difficulty - his own son rebelled against him - held Baghdad during the events of Asia Minor, mainly with the help of his old friend Kara Yusuf, who, when Timur approached, again appeared from the west to his Black Lambs. Later, disagreements arose between the allies themselves; Ahmed had to flee to Syria from the Turkmen leader, and this latter played the role of sovereign in Baghdad, while Timur found it convenient to allow him this pleasure. It wasn't long. After the whole of Asia Minor was conquered and the conqueror of Bayazid again installed the emirs expelled by him in their principalities as his vassals, he went to Armenia and made those who had shown themselves obstinate in the last dangerous time feel the weight of his hand. Orthokides from Maridin, who trembling personally with many gifts, was still graciously received, but the Georgians, who also turned out to be rebellious again, were sensitively punished, and Kara Yusuf was defeated at Hill (806 = 1403) by an army sent to the south. Now he, too, fled to Syria, but was imprisoned in a castle in Cairo along with his former ally Ahmed, but on the orders of Sultan Faraj, who feared the wrath of his master. Now nothing prevented Timur from returning to his homeland, after four years spent in wars in Persia and Western countries: on the way, some rebels were still destroyed in the Caspian lands, and in Muharram 807 (July 1404). victorious commander (again entered his capital Samarkand at the head of his army.

Preparation of the campaign to China and the death of Timur (1405)

But the indefatigable conqueror intended to give himself only a few months, not to rest, but to prepare for a new, gigantic enterprise. From Moscow to Delhi, from the Irtysh to the Mediterranean Sea, not a single province remained whose land would not have to groan under the hooves of its horses; now his gaze turned to the east. The Kashgar Khanate, which since the campaign of 792 (1390) lay unquestioningly at its feet, was already adjacent to the border of China. The excuse to invade the Middle Empire now was easy to find. Already in 1368 (769 - 70), the Genghis Khanids of the Kublai clan, who reigned there until this year, had to give way to the founder of the national Minsk dynasty, this was a sufficient reason for Timur, who held himself until his death, as a major-lord of the descendants of the Mongol ruler of the world , in order to present to their emirs as an undeniable need to re-attach this lost member to the kingdom.

The kurultai convened by him immediately approved this praiseworthy idea with an enthusiasm that could somewhat compare with the feelings of the French Senate towards the great Napoleon. They immediately began to carry it out: the seventy-year-old man, in essence, could not waste much time. Already in the fifth month after entering Samarkand, the army, with incredible speed again supplemented to 200,000 people, set out through Yaksart. But too soon she had to stop. In Otrar, still on the right bank of the river, Timur fell ill with a fever, so strong that almost from the first moment a fatal outcome could be foreseen.

On 17 Shaban 807 (February 18, 1405), the hand fell, the clock stopped, and time triumphed over the most powerful and illustrious Muslim king who ever lived. It was all over, and here the words really apply: "Everything passed as if it never happened."

Gur-Emir - Timur's mausoleum in Samarkand

Assessment of Timur's activities

They are applicable here, at least with respect to everything that is worthy of constituting the content of a ruler's life. Of course, in historical reflections, one should not take a too lofty point of view of abstract idealism, or a too low point of view of philistinism striving to be humane: on one occasion we have already figured out to ourselves that it is useless to cry about the scourge of war if the human race is still such that without strong shocks, it remains sluggish and untenable in relation to its true tasks. Therefore, we will evaluate as carriers of historical necessity even terrible oppressors such as Caesar, Omar or Napoleon, whose task was to destroy the decrepit world to pieces in order to clear a place for new, viable formations. Very remarkable, in any case, is the similarity that the no less sharply outlined figure of Timur represents with the image of Napoleon. The same military genius, as much organizational as tactical and strategic; the same combination of stubbornness in pursuit of a once accepted thought with a lightning-like onslaught in a minute of execution; the same steadfastness of internal equilibrium in the most dangerous and difficult undertakings; the same indefatigable energy, which provided as little independence as possible to secondary leaders, who personally found every important measure; the same ability to penetrately recognize the weaknesses of the opponent, without falling into the error of too low a value or despise; the same cold-blooded inattention to the human material required for the fulfillment of great plans, also the immense ambition and grandeur of conquering plans alongside the art of using the smallest impulses of human nature and with outright virtuoso hypocrisy; finally, the same combination of selfless courage with cunning cunning in the Tatar, as in his Corsican follower. Of course, there is no shortage of unimportant differences: it is necessary to give justice to the soldier emperor that he won almost all of his battles with his genius commander, while the main successes of Timur, the victory over Tokhtamysh, over Muzaffarid Mansur, over the Delhi kingdom, over Bayazid, were always resolved by contentions skillfully introduced into the ranks of enemies or by bribery of despicable traitors - but such deviations still do not violate the general impression of striking similarity.

And yet it would be unfair to Napoleon to put him on the same level with Timur. The code of laws and government given to France by them, even now, after eighty years, remain the only connecting links that restrain this as restless as the gifted people in the state system necessary, in spite of everything, for modern civilization; and no matter how harshly he commanded from Spain to Russia, the iron broom with which he swept the soil of Europe never carried away good seeds along with the litter and chaff. And the most fatal thing in Timur's actions was precisely the fact that he never thought about creating any lasting order, but everywhere he strove only to destroy. If one decides to leave aside his sterile and cold-blooded inhumanity, he personally is the most stately outlined of all Mohammedan sovereigns, his life is a real epic, the direct romantic appeal of which, in a detailed description of the artist-historian, would have to act with irresistible force. All the other great Islamic caliphs and sultans - Genghis Khan was a pagan - no matter how significant their own deeds were, most of their successes were due to outside forces. Muawiya had his Ziyad, Abd al-Melik and Walid had their Hajaj, Mansur had the Barmekids, Alp Arslan had Nizam al-mulk: Timur's only weapon, his army ready for battle, was his own creation, and not in on one really important march, they were not commanded by anyone but himself. There was one person who was equal to Timur in inner strength, namely Omar; True, he only sent orders to his troops from afar, but by the strength of his personality he completely dominated over each of his generals and showed all his greatness in another area, creating a state out of barely organized gangs of Bedouins and upset foreign provinces, whose foundations served for eight centuries framework for the development of the people, despite all the changes, to a certain extent, uniform and continuous. The destruction of these foundations has long been prepared by the Turks, then hastened by the Mongols and Tatars, with the exception of only the unfinished attempt of the valiant Gazan Khan to create a new organism. To end this destruction forever became the sad merit of Timur, when he created chaos from all of Forward Asia, in which the forces needed to restore a new Islamic unity no longer lurked. If, in a purely political sense, his appearance is so ephemeral that after his disappearance we see how the same elements that were in action before him are again accepted almost unchanged for their activity where he interrupted it, then all the same after what he did the general destruction of the last remnants of the material and mental civilization left behind by his predecessors, none of those elements that could lead to the revival of the Islamic spirit and state could no longer powerfully develop. Thus, of the two greatest rulers of Islam, Omar stands at the beginning of the actual Mohammedan state life, as its creator, and at the end, as its destroyer, stands Timur, nicknamed Tamerlane.

Literature about Timur

Timur. An article in the Brockhaus-Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary. Author - V. Bartold

Giyasaddin Ali. Diary of Timur's campaign to India. M., 1958.

Nizam ad-Din Shami. Zafar-name. Materials on the history of the Kirghiz and Kirghizia. Issue I. M., 1973.

Ibn Arabshah. Miracles of the fate of Timur's history. Tashkent., 2007.

Yazdi Sharaf ad-Din Ali. Zafar-name. Tashkent, 2008.

Clavijo, Rui Gonzalez de. Travel diary to Samarkand to the court of Timur (1403-1406). M., 1990.

F. Nev. Description of the wars of Timur and Shakhrukh in Western Asia based on the unpublished Armenian chronicle of Thomas of Madzofsky. Brussels, 1859

Marlowe, Christopher. Tamerlane the Great

Poe, Edgar Allan. Tamerlane

Lucien Keren. Tamerlane - Empire of the Iron Lord, 1978

Javid, Huseyn. Lame Timur

N. Ostroumov. Timur's Code. Kazan, 1894

Borodin, S. Stars over Samarkand.

Segen, A. Tamerlane

Popov, M. Tamerlane

They are not considered outright fake, but it remains doubtful how the only surviving Persian translation of them matches the original written in Eastern Turkish, and even how much this original was personally written or dictated by Timur himself.

One expert in military affairs, Jahns (Geschichte des Kriegswesens, Leipzig. 1880, p. 708 et seq.) Finds especially remarkable the methodological character of the instructions to military leaders contained in Timur's notes, but quite rightly notes that “the strategic and tactical connection of his military exploits yet it is not historically clear enough to be instructive. " A good example of what can happen with less caution can be borrowed from Hammer-Purgstа1l, who undertakes to report a lot of information about Timur's army (Gesch.d. Osman. Reichs I, 309, cf. 316): after reporting on the uniforms introduced in him, he continues: "there were also two regiments completely covered with cuirassiers, the oldest cuirassier regiments mentioned in military history." Why the Mongolian jiba (which, incidentally, can mean any kind of weaponry) should correspond to our cuirass more than the shell, which has been used in the East for many centuries, not only for infantry, but also for horsemen, there is no indication of this; with the same or with greater right, this very phrase could be used, for example, to decorate the description of the Persian troops at Qadisiyah (I, 264).

The figures here are again greatly exaggerated by historians. This is especially evident in the following examples: in the testimony that 800,000 Timur's soldiers fought at Angora against Bayazid's 400,000, and in the even more daring statement of the Armenian chronicler that 700,000 people took part in the capture of Damascus (Neve, Expose des guerres de Tamerlan et de Schаh- Rokh; Brussels 1860, p. 72).

This is what Muslim historians say. However, one should not remain silent about the fact that according to the testimony of one Western traveler who penetrated to the court of Timur, his behavior was far from the behavior of a zealous Muslim. Wheleer's conclusions “but cannot be considered certain, since he drew his information mainly from the Mongolian history of Father Katru, the reliability of the sources of which has not been proven; the strong opinion expressed in this note seems to me doubtful in its reliability. Therefore, I adhered to the generally accepted story.

Xizp is the Persian-Turkish pronunciation of the Arabic name Khidr. The relationship of this prince to Kamaraddin, his father's murderer, is unclear; after the campaign of Timur's generals in 792 (1390), Kamaraddin is no longer mentioned, and according to Hader-Razi (Notices et extrаits XIV, Paris 1843, p. 479), Khidr, upon the death of this usurper, achieved dominance over the tribes of the former Kashgar Khanate. But in Shepefaddin (Deguignes, Allgemeine Geschichte der Hunnen und Turken, ubers, v. Dalmert, Bd. IV, Greifswald 1771, p. 32,35) the leader of the jets and tribes belonging to them is already Khidr in 791 (1389), and in 792 (1390) again Kamaraddin; it means that between these tribes there should have been a division for some time, and some obeyed the young Khidr, and others to Kamaraddin. The details are still unknown; later Khidr Khoja is the sovereign ruler in peaceful relations with Timur (according to Hondemir, transl. Defromery, Journ. as. IV Serie, t. 19, Paris 1852, p. 282).

Of course, Berke had already officially accepted Islam, which in the tribes of the Golden Horde proper at that time also prevailed everywhere. But especially east of the Volga, most are called that. the Tatars were probably pagans, as now the Chuvash in the provinces of Orenburg and Kazan.

Kazi is the Persian-Turkish pronunciation of the Arabic qadi for "judge." His father was a judge at Arten and enjoyed great influence at the court of this latter; after his death, he, together with several other dignitaries, elevated his young son Muhammad to the throne, and then he himself died, leaving his post to Burkhanaddin. When then Muhammad died without leaving any descendants, the cunning Qadi was able little by little to subjugate the rest of the nobles of the country, and in the end he even assumed the title of Sultan.

Osman is a Persian-Turkish pronunciation of the Arabic name Usman, in which the letter "c" is the pronunciation of the English th. 15 Rajab on the ordinary calendar corresponds to 18 June; but since Monday is given as the day of the week, it means that the Arabic account, as it often happens, is incorrect, and the real number is 19. However, according to one story, the battle lasted three days, which means that from here it is possible, perhaps, to explain the inaccuracy of the date.

Details about this are conveyed differently and should be considered highly dubious until further notice.

We do not know anything definite about the immediate circumstances of his death. That Timur's son, then seventeen-year-old Shakhrukh, cut off his head with his own hand, is the insolent invention of his courtier, Sherefaddin; also the story of Ibn Arabshah is not very believable.

That is, prayer in mosques for the winner, which included the recognition of his new ruler by the population.

S. Thoms (The Chronicles of the Pаthаn Kings of Dehli, London 1871), p. 328. We are really told that Khizr-Khan sent in 814 (1411) a deputation to Timur's son, Shahrukh, to take the oath of allegiance (see Notices et Extrаits, XIV, 1, Paris 1843, p. 19b); meanwhile, this also contains little contradiction to what was said in the text, as the fact that many of the other Indian princes tried to deflect the attacks of Timur from themselves by declaring themselves to be his vassals; this meant that the kings would have obeyed if only he, for other reasons, did not thirst for war at any cost. The Timurid panegyrists, of course, always try to give a deeper meaning to purely formal expressions of politeness than they really have. A similar aspiration is also found in Abd ar-Razzak's story in Notices et Extrаits, op. v. p. 437 et seq.

This is how Weil writes this name, at least following the testimony of his Arabic sources. In the only original in my possession, Ibn Arabshah's Vita Timur, ed. Manger, I, 522, I find Ilyuk or Eiluk; in Hammer "a, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches I, 293, there is Kara Yuluk, which he translates as" black leech ", while leech in Turkish means not yuluk, but suluk. I am not able to establish exactly the form and meaning of this name.

Hertzberg decree. Op. p. 526; Eastern sources, in any case, do not give any information about this. this fact is doubtful, cf. with Hаmmer, Geschichte des osmаnischen Reiches I, 618, Weil, Geschichte des Аbbаsidenchаlifats in Egypten II, 81, np. 4. The name Ertogrul, in any case, is only an assumption v. Hammer "a.

Although according to Weil (Geschichte des Аbbаsidenchаlifats in Egypten, 97) only Persian historiographers tell about this demand and obedience of the Sultan, both are quite plausible in the general state of affairs. Timur, who at that moment had already taken Smyrna, hardly returned to the east, without reaching the formal conquest of the Mamluks.

The 14th of Shabana corresponds to the 9th, and not the 8th, as v leads. Hammer, op. Op. p. 335. It should be noted that the day of the week given is Thursday, which comes title = Xia opposite the 13th of Shaban, corresponding in any case to the 8th of March, so the latter may still be considered the correct number.

When writing the material, the chapter "Tamerlane" from the book "History of Islam" by August Müller was used. In many places of the material before the dates from the Nativity of Christ, the Muslim dating according to the Hijri is given