Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World

by Justin Marozzi

A powerful account of the life of Tamerlane the Great (1336-1405), the last master nomadic power, one of history’s most extreme tyrants, and the subject of Marlowe’s famous play. Marozzi travelled in the footsteps of the great Mogul Emperor of Samarkland to write this wonderful combination of history and travelogue.

The name of the last great warlord conjures up images of mystery and romance: medieval warfare on desert plains; the clash of swords on snow-clad mountains; the charge of elephants across the steppes of Asia; the legendary opulence and cruelty of the illiterate, chess-playing nemesis of Asia. He ranks alongside Alexander as one of the world’s great conquerors, yet the details of his life are scarcely known in the West.

He was not born to a distinguished family, nor did he find his apprenticeship easy – at one point his mobile army consisted only of himself, his wife, seven companions and four horses – but his dominion grew with astonishing rapidity. In the last two decades of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth, he blazed through Asia. Cities were razed to the ground, inhabitants tortured without mercy, sometimes enemies were buried alive – more commonly they were decapitated. On the ruins of Baghdad, Tamerlane had his princes erect a pyramid of 90,000 heads.

During his lifetime he sought to foster a personal myth, exaggerating the difficulties of his youth, laying claim to supernatural powers and a connection to Genghis Khan. This myth was maintained after his death in legend, folklore, poetry, drama and even opera, nowhere more powerfully than in Marlowe’s play – he is now as much a literary construct as a historical figure. Justin Marozzi follows in his path and evokes his legacy in telling the tale of this fabulously cruel, magnificent and romantic warrior.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Middle East, Islam, Medieval, Asia

500 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

[Excerpt from http://www.justinmarozzi.com/about/]

Justin is a travel writer, historian, journalist and political risk and security consultant. He has travelled extensively in the Middle East and Muslim world and in recent years has worked in conflict and post-conflict environments such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Darfur. He graduated from Cambridge with a Starred Double First in History in 1993, before studying Broadcast Journalism at Cardiff University and winning a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania to read a Masters in International Relations. After working in the BBC World Service on ‘News Hour’ and BBC Westminster on ‘Today in Parliament’, he joined the Financial Times as a foreign correspondent in Manila, where he also wrote for The Economist. During his time in the Far East, he shared a Winnebago with Imelda Marcos, a helicopter with the Philippine president and his mistress, and a curry with Aung San Suu Kyi whilst under house arrest in Rangoon.

His first book, South from Barbary, was an account of a 1,200-mile expedition by camel along the slave routes of the Libyan Sahara, described by the desert explorer and SAS veteran Michael Asher as “the first significant journey across the Libyan interior for a generation”. His second, Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World, launched in Baghdad in 2004, was the best-selling biography of the world’s greatest Islamic conqueror and a Sunday Telegraph Book of the Year: “Outstanding… Justin Marozzi is the most brilliant of the new generation of travelwriter-historians.”

In 2006, he wrote Faces of Exploration, a collection of profiles of the world’s leading explorers. He has contributed to Meetings with Remarkable Muslims (an interview with the Afghan mujahid hero Ahmed Shah Massoud), The Seventy Greatest Journeys, and most recently The Art of War (essays on Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan and Tamerlane).

His latest book, published in October 2008, is The Man Who Invented History: Travels with Herodotus, based on extensive research in Turkey, Iraq, Egypt and Greece. Apart from a year working for a British security company in Iraq, an encounter with the Grand Mufti of Egypt and an investigation into outwardly religious girls performing oral sex in car-parks in Cairo, one of the many highlights of the Herodotean trail was a retsina-fuelled lunch with the nonagenarian war hero and writer Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Justin is a regular contributor to a wide range of national and international publications, including the Financial Times, Spectator, Times, Sunday Telegraph, Guardian, Evening Standard, Standpoint and Prospect, where he writes on international affairs, the Muslim world and defence and security issues, and has broadcast for the BBC World Service and Radio Four.

Justin is a former member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, where he has also lectured, and an Honorary Travel Member of the Travellers Club.

Reviews

[Sheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd always heard of Tamerlane, but never knew who the heck he was, other than some sort of warrior leader from the Middle Ages. I even thought he was European; maybe French or English. How wrong was I???

Turns out that this guy was the biggest world conqueror ever, other than perhaps Genghis Khan. Unlike Genghis, who was an animist, Tamerlane was Muslim, and called himself the "Sword of Islam," although probably the vast majority of his victims were also Muslim. He started as a minor warlord in what is now Uzbekistan, but gradually increasing the reach of his domain until he was the acknowledged emperor of the middle east, eastern Europe, north Africa, and much of southern Asia (including India). The "capital" of his empire was Samarkand. He died an old man, en route to take on China as his next conquest.

Also fascinating, his name wasn't really Tamerlane (an anglicization). He was really Temur the Lame, and he was known that way because of an injury at an early age that left him with a bum leg, limping, and unable to walk much. But when you're the leader of an unstoppable horse cavalry, you don't have to do much walking. A fascinating although brutal imperialist, to be sure. The whole time I read this I had visions of someone like Conan the Barbarian serving in Temur's vast army.

One of the best things about this book was that it added significantly to my knowledge of Muslim military power during the Middle Ages. By the time of Temur, the Ottomans had conquered swaths of the middle east and southern Europe, much to the consternation of the Catholic & Orthodox church officials who thought they ran those regions. Then enter Temur, who invades, loots, burns, & kills almost everyone in many of the remaining Christian settlements & cities in the region before also booting the Ottomans out of many of their conquered territories. Although Temur built (or rebuilt) much great architecture (little of which survives today), his most well-known constructions were pyramids of skulls, sometimes more than 100 feet high. He seldom had to worry about the vanquished seeking revenge.

My "History of Western Civ" college classes didn't talk much about Islam or the powerful Muslims of that era. Time to catch up on that topic now!

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Temur-i-Leng, aka Tamerlane, doubtlessly led a fascinating - and bloodsoaked - life. He conquered a vast empire by clever military tactics, a pragmatic approach to religion (using whichever religious tradition served him best at any given moment) and an absolute ruthlessness and utter lack of mercy.

I would have loved to read a book devoted to a factual account of his life, with in-depth analysis of what it was that enabled a man of such humble beginnings to rise to absolute power in Central Asia.

... This book is not it.

This book is Justin Marozzi's breathless fan-letter to Temur. Marozzi has an irritating tendency towards self-insertion, breaking off the interesting narrative of Temur's ongoing military conquests with abrupt and far too long sections about his own travels in the region in modern times. These travelogue-interludes are equal parts pompous navel-gazing and scathing criticisms of the exploits of the Soviet union, which feel desperately out of place.

While there is value to attempting to place historical events in context, analysing why they happened and what they ultimately led to, Marozzi's bitterness feel less like an attempt to convey to the reader the consequences of Temur's empire-building and the subsequent unrest in the region, and more like his way of injecting some melodrama in the narrative.

The best thing I can say about this book is that it makes me want to read more about Temur - by someone who isn't Marozzi.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

I, and many others, have been exhausted in recent months by the nonstop political noise machine. So I pulled this book off the shelf, figuring that a biography of the 14th Century warlord Tamerlane would be pretty much non-political. Maybe not as non-political as a coffee table book about, say, flowers, but close, and to me more interesting. I was not disappointed. This book proved an informative escape—depressing at times, certainly, like any tale of violence, but at least I didn’t have to think or talk about 21st Century politics at any time, and won’t in this review. For like all of us, I am weary unto death of all that (though not weary enough to not return to it).

Most of us, to the extent we think of Tamerlane, lump him in with Genghis Khan, into the historical grouping “Mongols who rode horses and killed a lot of people.” I know little about Mongols, except what everyone knows, roughly that they swept out of the steppes beginning with Genghis Khan about 1200 A.D., conquering from China to the Middle East; were stopped by the Mamluks at Ain Jalut in Syria in 1260, preventing further conquest in the Middle East; and dominated much of Asia south of today’s Siberia for several hundred years. This book helped me fill in the gaps.

Tamerlane is popular biographical history, interspersed with travelogues describing the condition today of the stomping grounds of Tamerlane—Temur the Lame. These are centered around what is today’s Uzbekistan, and stretch from Constantinople (nearly) to Delhi. The author, Justin Marozzi, visited many of the places important in Temur’s life. From references to the Taliban being in control of cities he visited, even though the book was published in 2004, he must have traveled prior to 2001. Not that it really matters—most of the areas involved have not changed much since Temur’s death in 1405, and to the extent they have changed, it has almost exclusively been slow devolution and decay, punctuated by aggressive destruction of ancient architecture and ways of life during the Soviet era.

I understand that in the past few years revisionist history about Genghis Khan and the Mongols has been all the rage, led by Jack Weatherford, who claims that the Mongols were wonders of rationality and tolerance, not the casual killers of tens of millions history has told us. Or, cribbing from the blurb for one of Weatherford’s books, “In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization. Vastly more progressive than his European or Asian counterparts, Genghis Khan abolished torture, granted universal religious freedom, and smashed feudal systems of aristocratic privilege.” I don’t know the truth of the matter, although revisionist history is always suspect, since it holds rich rewards for the author, at least if the revision is in the direction approved by the society of the day. Weatherford apparently claims that the European Renaissance was largely based on copying the Mongols, and his latest book apparently tries to not only make the case that Genghis was uniquely religiously tolerant, but that Thomas Jefferson relied heavily on Genghis Khan for his political theory. Like the stupid tale that the American Constitution was founded in any way on Iroquois political organization, those derivations are probably completely false. But maybe I will opine further on that another day, since I know my readers are aching for my opinions on every topic under the sun. Today we will stick to this history, which is not especially revisionist, but it is balanced.

Marozzi uses three main sources. The two “local” ones he identifies as both terribly biased, in opposite directions. One, Ahmed ibn Arabshah, was a Syrian captured as a boy during the destruction of Damascus by Tamerlane in 1401. He loathed Tamerlane—a pretty good idea of his approach can be gotten from his description of Tamerlane’s birth: “The birthplace of this deceiver was a village of a lord named Ilgar in the territory of Kesh—may Allah remove him from the garden of Paradise!” And that’s relatively tame. The second was Sharaf al-din Ali Yazdi, a contemporary and acquaintance of Tamerlane, who became his grandson’s sycophantic court historian. The third source is Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo, a Spanish nobleman sent as ambassador by King Henry III of Castile in 1402. Clavijo spent time at Tamerlane’s court in Samarkand near the end of Tamerlane’s life, at the height of his power, and was a fascinated, objective, generally positive observer. Marozzi does a good job of combining these three sources (and he rejects the supposed autobiographies of Tamerlane “discovered” in the 17th Century as fake).

Tamerlane was born around 1336, the son of a minor nobleman from a Turkic Mongol tribe. Other than that, he had no blood connection to Genghis Khan, even if popular association of the two creates endless confusion in trivia games. He showed boldness early, and rose in local conflicts, receiving in his twenties the two injuries to his right arm and leg that gave him the accurate sobriquet “Lame.” (In the 1940s Russian archaeologists exhumed Tamerlane’s skeleton and confirmed the injuries, though how he received them is obscure.) In the usual manner of Asian nomads, alliances were constantly shifting, betrayal was the norm, customary law was important (such that Tamerlane ruled under a nominally superior puppet khan), and settling down regarded with contempt.

The conqueror’s career then pretty much unfolded as you’d expect. He consolidated power in a small area, then he expanded his power, then he consolidated it again. He campaigned almost every year of his long life, often (but not always) wintering somewhere, and rarely returning for long to his theoretical capital, Samarkand. He conquered all of Persia, much of the Caucusus, and Asia Minor. He defeated the Ottomans and took prisoner the Sultan, Bayazid the Thunderbolt, the first and last time the Ottomans were defeated until World War I. (I always like the descriptive nicknames the Ottomans gave to their Sultans, like Suleiman the Magnificent and Selim the Sot.) Then he conquered northern India, the Levant and Egypt (but not Arabia, probably because there wasn’t enough booty). And he was on the way to China with a massive army, to subdue the (other) Mongols who ruled there, when he died at about the age of seventy—whereupon his empire quickly fragmented.

Tamerlane’s own religious beliefs were a fluid as most men of conquest. He was Muslim, most definitely, but cared little for the details. Sometimes he posed as Shia, sometimes as Sunni. He liked Sufis. He kept court astrologers; when he liked what they said, he agreed with them; when he didn’t, he excoriated them as anti-Muslim. He killed far more Muslims than Christians, although he constantly said he intended to smite the heathen, the Christians and the polytheists, instead he almost always ended up smiting other Muslims, whom he of course characterized as deficient Muslims so he had an excuse. Like most Mongols, religion wasn’t really his thing; he took an opportunistic, instrumentalist approach to it (which, contra Weatherford, is not the same thing as tolerance).

It would be a silly exercise to try to subtly analyze Tamerlane’s motives, and to his credit Marozzi doesn’t try. Tamerlane was a hugely ambitious man driven by raw desires: for conquest, to feed his ego; for booty, to enrich himself and motivate his armies; and for the pleasures of the flesh—alcohol, food, and women. If we’re being honest, that makes him not much different from most men—just more successful and less restrained. In pursuit of these goals, he slaughtered enormous numbers of men, women and children in the most gruesome ways, including frequently live burials, leaving literal towers of skulls all over a vast area. This makes him a bad person, and one of history’s great killers, along with Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan. Romanticizing him would be a mistake, as would be ascribing his atrocities in some fashion to Islam itself (which certainly gave him theological backing for jihad, but he interpreted that in an utterly self-interested fashion, and if he hadn’t had that excuse, as Genghis had not, he would have found another). It was another time, and a long time ago, and the only lesson is that human nature, when unrestrained, does not, whatever Steven Pinker says, lead to good things.

Sure, the book has a few clunkers. Several times in the book Marozzi refers to Tamerlane using Greek Fire, the Byzantine incendiary mixture. I had never heard of Greek Fire being used other than by the Byzantines (its recipe was a state secret and now lost), much less by horse-borne nomads, and a little research showed that while Tamerlane may have used some form of incendiary such as flaming pitch occasionally, it was not Greek Fire. It is not true that Tamerlane’s grandson, Ulug Beg, created star tables “still in use at the time England appointed its first Astronomer-Royal in the seventeenth century,” by which Marozzi apparently means to imply they were used in England at that time. They were still in use in the Muslim world, since Muslim science as a whole had come to a crashing halt centuries before, and Ulug Beg was a rare exception. But the tables were never used in Europe, since Ulug Beg’s star tables were not available in Europe until after Tycho Brahe (who had a telescope, as Ulug Beg did not) had already published vastly more complete and accurate tables, starting in the 1570s. And while Christians appear little in this book, Marozzi is often guilty of the common modern obeisance to political correctness of whitewashing atrocities against Christians by Muslims, such as noting the massive slaughter of Christians at Antioch in 1263 by not mentioning the word Christian at all, thus concealing the slaughter had anything to do with Christians, but highlighting the reverse at every opportunity.

None of these minor errors and foibles really have a significant effect on the book, though. And I was able to escape the 21st Century for a few hours, which is definitely a good thing. Plus, now I am more likely to win at trivia games that ask me to distinguish among Mongol warlords!

[Sleepy Boy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent insight into a man that few in the west truly know about. Goes a long way to fix the common misconceptions that the west does have of him. Fascinating.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I think of a disappointing history book, this one comes to mind. If you're looking for a summary of Tamerlane and his rule, I guess you can read it, if there's no other book you can find. I wouldn't cite it on its own, however, not unless you have supporting evidence.

The first thing that irked me was Marozzis apologetic tone throughout this work. This begins with how he talks down on Ahmad ibn Arabshah, one of the most important sources on Tamerlanes rule, who happened to be rather critical of the man that invaded his homeland. Marozzi takes note of this and kindly excuses some of Arabshahs vitriol. Some of it. More flattering biographers are treated as not just more reliable, but also as more respectable sources.

It's not that Marozzi is silent on Tamerlanes many crimes, and I do mean many: Immuring thousands of Christians alive, torturing an old man who had the audacity to kill one of his soldiers, lining babies up in a row and riding over them, and causing an Indian army to collectively kill their wifes and then themselves. You can find all of that in this book, but Marozzi doesn't seem to care very much. I'm not asking for a historian to be moralizing, especially when the events speak for themselves. I'm not averse to it, either, and think that historians like Lord Acton and Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn didn't sacrifice their objectivity by making ethical judgements. However, Marozzi is not completely objective in his presentation, and he does make ethical judgements. For example, he criticizes Arabshah for his bad manners, Tamerlanes rival Bayazid for insulting Tamerlanes wifes, and Christendom for being uneducated peasants who go on crusades all day, just like in this one movie with Orlando Bloom. On the other hand, he praises Tamerlanes grandiose building projects and his culturedness, to the point where it appears he thinks they make up for his warfaring, cruelty and treachery. He even paints Tamerlane as a pious muslim, when the man never event went on a Haj, wrecked the Umayyad mosque and mainly fought his brothers in faith before realizing, towards the end of his life, that Allah may not be too happy with that. So he started to murder the Georgians, too. It's a similar trajectory as with Salah Ad-Din, but while one can say some very good things about the latter, Tamerlane surpassed him in evil while lacking his good traits. Sure, he had his good sides, but at the end of the day, being great at chess and kind to philosophers does not make up for instigating mass murder on a scale not seen for centuries. He relativizes Tamerlane by comparing him favorably to Baybar and Chinggis Khan, and by pointing out that (supposedly) everyone was so bad:

That Temur was cruel is beyond question. But to accuse him of sadism is to indulge in unfounded speculation which owes more to the prejudices of the twenty-first century than the values of the fourteenth, when human life was held far cheaper than it is today.

Was that so? Then why did Salah Ad-Din pay out of his own pockets to free captured slaves? Why did Richard Lionheart applaud the same rebel soldier that would go on to kill him for his bravery, and then pardon him on his deathbed? Why did Simon de Montfort, a man of considerable brutality, nevertheless abandon the Fourth Crusade? Why did Pierre de Castelnau forgive his killers? Even in brutal times and from brutal men, we hear of such humane moments, but I can't remember a single instance of Tamerlane showing mercy to an enemy, while going out of his way to cause suffering. The sheer scope of his rampage was almost unprecedented. No one before him, besides Chinggis Khan, could rival it, but Chinggis Khan wasn't known for wanton torture, unike Tamerlane. So no, it's not just twenty-first century bias against innocent tyrants speaking here.

The second major thing that annoyed me is Marozzis writing style, which seems to
Every chapter begins with a semi-autobiographical short about modern Uzbekistan.
Christ's Samurai: The True Story of the Shimabara Rebellion did something similar, but far more elegantly. This book runs at close to 500 pages, so the last thing it needs
is padding, and yet padding we receive. Sometimes, it's interesting, like the story of how his bodyguard threw a grenade around for fun or how the Soviets destroyed the Aral Sea. Other times, it's repetitive commentary on the vanity of the state-sponsored Tamerlane fandom. At the worst of times, it's him talking about the bulging veins on the prodigious testicles on the statue of Tamerlanes horse. Seriously. I remember these being his exact words, and while that's the only time he talks in this way about... no comment, it's not the only time he uses bad prose. Take a look at this gem:

Here stood Herat's first great congregational mosque, a monument which married colossal proportions with the most elegant taste, replete with dancing frescoes and arabesques, its exceptionally fine glazed brickwork a lustrous façade against the dreary desert.

Are you trying to teach me history or sell me real estate? Because I'm not interested in the latter, thank you very much! What's worse than annoying prose, however, is prose that distorts the narrative, such as when Marozzi describes Tamerlanes emotions or gestures he made. I have no idea whether these are in the sources or whether he infers them or whether they're pure conjecture. Even if they are in the sources, relaying them uncritically is bad style.

[Joseph Viola · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tamerlane, Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World follows the life of Temur, a man of humble beginnings that rises up to be one of the most feared conquerors in history, right up there with Alexander the Great and Ghengis Khan.

I had wanted to read this book for some time as Temur hails from what is now modern day Uzbekistan, where we were headed on a family trip in March 2020 before COVID cancelled our plans. Having already read “The Great Game” by Peter Hopkirk, I was interested in learning more distant history of Central Asia to supplement what I’d learned from “The Great Game”.

The book follows all of Temur’s conquests, starting in 1362 and ending with his death on route to starting war with China in 1405. While reading about Temur’s life, I also learned a lot about the successor Khanates to the world Ghengis Khan left, specifically the Golden Horde, the Ilkhanate and the Chagatay Khanate. The book covers how Temur methodically conquered them all and brought them under his sway.

Temur’s confrontation with Bayezid I and the Ottomans at the battle of Ankara and then the taking of Smyrna was especially well written, although an interesting pattern emerges. Other than the Christian Georgians and the Knights Hospitallers of Smyrna, the vast majority of blood shed in Temur’s conquests was against fellow Muslims, which is ironic for someone styling themselves the “Sword of Islam”.

I really liked the narrative of Temur’s life, but I felt like book really should have been split in two - the author would frequently disrupt the narrative to insert stories about his travels in Central Asia following in the footsteps of Temur. I would have enjoyed reading this separate travel diary, especially as we were planning a similar trip, but it unnecessarily diverted the flow of the book and created a very Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde feel. Had Justin Marozzi split this into two books, I would probably have read both and enjoyed them both, but when combined, the overall effectiveness was reduced.

[Jeff Lanter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would describe Tamerlane: Sword of Islam as an interesting, but uneven book that is perhaps just a bit too long for its own good. As a historical figure, Temur is easy to respect for his prowess as a general, but is not a particularly likable person. He used religion as an excuse to start wars and mostly killed fellow Muslims (in spite of throwing religion in their faces). He permitted and often encouraged raping and pillaging after victory. Taking the heads of innocent people after a battle was won is not honorable or even acceptable by most people's standards. His actual personality and redeeming qualities don't come across all that well and part of that is that they weren't well recorded during his life.

The author does a fantastic job of describing warfare and the culture of Temur's people. Whenever he focuses on historical events, I was very interested in this book. However, the book also has a travel component where he visits the modern sites of Temur's conquests. Unsurprisingly, many of these places have deteriorated or do not give Temur the tribute he deserves. It could be because a lot of these sections are similar or it could be that they just aren't as interesting as the rest of the book, but whatever the case, every time the book switches from history to travel, I could always feel myself losing interest. In my personal opinion, a good editor should have been able to make these sections flow into each other better and make them more interesting. As it stands now, it feels like this book might have been better as a 250-300 page history book instead of one that is 400 pages with history and travel. There are not many, if any, books about Temur and he is a really important and largely forgotten person. This book is solid and has quite a few interesting moments, just know that your attention may wander as you work your way through it.

[Katherine 黄爱芬 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Timur Leng menapaki karier sbg Penguasa dari tidak memiliki apapun hingga merambah mencapai Eropa hingga Asia Selatan. Membaca buku ini lumayan mengasyikkan karena gambaran kota/negara yg ditaklukkan hingga kisah orang-orang di sekeliling Timur Leng dari anak cucunya hingga sahabat terdekatnya, bahkan musuh-musuhnya.

Sbg pemimpin yg bakal menguasai hampir sebagian dunia, Timur memiliki energi, kharisma, kecerdikan serta kecerdasan luar biasa. Sayangnya Timur juga bukan penguasa sempurna. Dia memiliki kekurangan sama banyaknya dgn kelebihannya. Timur terkenal dgn kekejamannya ketika menaklukkan kota/negara yg dikuasainya (walaupun hal-hal buruk yg dilakukannya termasuk ukuran "jamak" pada zamannya seperti menjarah, memperkosa, membunuh adalah bagian dari dominasi sbg penakluk). Timur juga manipulator ulung yg dgn liciknya menggunakan agama Islam dan budaya stepa bangsa Mongol utk mengesahkan ekspansinya utk merambah kota/negara kaya utk diserbu.

Timur secara tidak langsung mau melebihi pencapaian Jenghis Khan dan keturunannya. Dia berhasil menundukkan wilayah kekuasaan klan Chagatay dan klan Gerombolan Emas (keturunan Jochi dan Hulagu). Bahkan menjelang tahun2 terakhir kehidupannya Timur berhasil mengalahkan kaum Turki Usmani. Namun dinasti Timur tidak sehebat keturunan Jenghis yg mampu melanggengkan kekuasaan hingga ratusan tahun. Sepeninggal Timur, langsung terjadi pembunuhan dan perebutan kekuasaan dari keturunannya yg berambisi.

Tidak ada kekuasaan dan kejayaan abadi. Semua ada batas waktunya. Sehebat apapun diri seorang penguasa, sejarah yg ditorehkannya akan selalu dikenang kehebatannya tapi terutama juga kedurjanaannya.

[Luis Cabrita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok…this is a strange one and I think it warrants a review. Imagine a strange mix of a biography of an aesthetically inclined genocidal maniac and an ad for tourism Uzbekistan.

The book is about Timur (Tamerlane), the Tatar-Turko-Mongolian Warlord who spent much of the late 14th century sacking every urban center east of Izmir, Turkey. The book is arranged in a somewhat chronological manner, tracing the steps of our hero from his humble beginnings as the son of a minor warlord into becoming the self-proclaimed “ruler of the world”. In this the books is pretty compelling; taking us from the steppes of central Asia, through Iran, the Caucasus mountains, southern Russia, Pakistan, India, Turkey, and Syria.

Now, to be honest, I do not quite know why people (including myself) find these sort of historical figures so interesting. Timur (like Genghis Khan, or Attila, or even Alexander at times) is the sort of person that, when presented with a list of potential war crimes, would automatically create a mental to-do list. There is a sort of macabre fascination, a sort of awe, in reading about the immense suffering caused by his marching Timurid Horde. The barbarity of the punishments inflicted on civilians ranges from disgustingly macabre to the cartoonishly evil: the scale ranges from 0) creating pyramids out of the skulls of civilians to 10) riding a cavalry battalion in a field over the bound up children of a captured city (forcing the mothers to watch).

Nevertheless, the author is keen to demonstrate that Timur, despite being a genocidal war criminal, is not a particularly hateful person. He seems to work under the motto “if they are not alive, they won’t rebel”. So his massacres (estimated death toll: 17 million) were not perpetrated out of hatred of the conquered peoples, but merely out of concern for the stability of his realm. So Timur the conqueror, Timur the scourge of God, is presented by the author as a Timur the amoral, pragmatic, Machiavellian ruler who murders millions not because he enjoys it, but because the stability of realm demands it. Nevertheless, even if the massacres are purely pragmatic, and even if Timur is just a normal pre-modern conqueror without any concept of human rights, these are actions that go beyond mere expediency.

The goal was terror, the goal was to make sure that no right-thinking person would even think of contesting his absolute power; but his terror seems to increase in intensity, to become more refined, to become more inventive, as the narrative progresses. It is as though absolute terror requires constant innovation. It is as though Timur believes that to maintain a constant state of terror, the people need to be made aware that their ruler’s infinite imagination is capable of constantly coming up with new and more refined modes of human degradation and humiliation. But the author goes to great lengths to demonstrate to us that Timur was no sadist. Well…maybe he wasn’t, maybe he was just like you and me…maybe one does not need to be maniac to inflict unimaginable human suffering on others. If he was no sadist, he was certainly capable of behaving as though he was one.

By the way, Timur created some of the most beautiful architecture in the world. The Scourge of God was a lover of beauty, the man who sacked every city in the middle-east was responsible for the emergence of one of the most beautiful art styles in human history. Timurid architecture in particular is absolutely astounding; and the author will not relent until that point is firmly established in the reader’s mind. If I were to make a caricature of the book, it would sound something like this:

“After massacring thirty thousand children, women, and men (in this order) in Herat, Timur returned to Samarkand where he oversaw the construction of the great mosque. This mesmerizing, blue-domed structure is still standing in the old city where it acts as a both a tourist trap and a monument of post-Soviet Uzbekistan’s national unity. And, as you look awe-struck at the lapis lazuli domes, you cannot but forget the gallons of children’s blood spilled by the building’s patron.”

In short, this is a book about genocide, beauty, tourism, sadism, Uzbekistan, terror, humanity’s capacity for evil, and a bloodthirsty tyrant’s love for art. And it made me want to visit Uzbekistan which, for a book on the last great steppe conqueror, is not bad at all.

[James (JD) Dittes]

Tamerlane, during his 35-year rampage through Asia, left a trail of blood that would make Hitler blanch. With that said, Marozzi could easily have filled the book with corpses and pyramids of skulls. What makes this book great, though, is that Marozzi finds sympathy--even admiration--for the "Scourge of Islam." He focuses on Tamerlane's strategies, his intellect, even the architecture that he inspired. Marozzi's personal accounts of visits to Asia's fabled forgotten cities--Samarkand, Balkh, Herat and Tashkent--back up the infectious curiosity he lends to his subject. I simply couldn't put this book down.



Yes, there is blood. The streets of Delhi, Damascus and Baghdad run red with it. The foes that oppose him are overrun. NOTHING stopped him, no one--for 35 years.



In the broader context of history, Tamerlane's contribution is vast. I had always seen him as a lone wolf, an aberration. But he is most responsible for checking the Ottomans when they were at the height of their power. Sultan Beyazid went from promising to "stable his horses in St. Peter's" to kneeling before Tamerlane after the Battle of Ankara. Constantinople held out for another 50 years.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This took me forever to finish. It felt like one of the longest books I've ever read and I've read the whole outlander series, most books by James Michener, and many of Sharon Kay Penman's works, in addition to a ton of different historical nonfiction and historical biographies. This still felt like the longest. I think the main issue for me was that it was both a biography of a man who lived to be very old (considering he was in numerous battles and was a ripe target for political assassination) and a travel journal as the author visited the places Timur went. I could easily have done without the travel journal part, as it really slowed down the story of a fascinating life, but there were times it added interesting tidbits to the biography sections. A bit of an edit and the removal of perhaps a fifth of the book, and this could have been a four star read for me. Without that edit, simply too dense and boring for me to consider anything above three stars.

[Marc Brackett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been on a bit of a power trip lately. I can remember turning 30 and thinking that at nearly the same age Alexander the Great was conquering the known world. So as I near 40 I have returned in search of more stable appropriate role models.

This all started with a startling factoid that it is thought that 1 out of every 200 people on the planet is a descendant of Genghis Khan or for sure someone who came from Mongolia in the middle 13th century (based on DNA and populations sampling).

So I read a book on Mr. Khan, not your 9-5 worker who returned home every night. He had quite the little rampage through China, Central Asia,and knocked on the doors of Europe all of which in turn also set the stage for the subject of this book, Tamerlane.

The little that I knew about Tamerlane was not exactly positive, primarily his sacking of Delphi and habit of building pyramids with the heads of local populations he conquered. While I cannot say this book exactly redeemed him it does show another side left unmentioned in most historical accounts.

There is little doubt he was a mastermind when it came to building alliances and directing an army. He also oversaw a most impressive array of building projects that in many cases are still these areas most prominent structures. Had some of his structures survived war and communism perhaps his name would be far better known today.

It's also fascinating to see how this area of Central Asia was once such a productive area and a source of instability and trouble (aside from no longer being a Garden of Eden, nothing appears to have changed in centuries).

This book also included other dimensions that are often left untouched. Tamerlane after defeating the Turks and Egyptians was well situated to have invaded Europe and there is little to suggest he would have been with formidable resistance. A Europe that was subjected to the same treatment as his other conquests would be a much different place today to say nothing how history might have unfolded. Picture St. Peters basilica burning and pyramids of heads reaching 30 feet in height strewn across Europe. It's more than probable many of us today would have different surnames, a different religion, and a whole other side of the family tree.

Luckily for Europe, Tamerlane viewed Europe as being so poor that it was not worth conquering and was on his way to China with his army when he died. Sometimes it appears being poor, backward, and insignificant can be an advantage.

There came a point in this book where the never ending carnage and senseless plunder started to blur- same story, new location, with new people. Our modern wars, even WWII barely compares to the the 13th and 14th centuries. History does however suggest how Central Asia has been successfully pacified in the past. Start by killing about 75% of the population and then kill 75% of the remaining population if you are still having problems (peace is achievable after all!).

On additional interesting note was that on June 22, 1941 the Soviets went ahead and opened the tomb of Tamelane for examination (over the objects of locals who forecast negative consequences). Russia was invaded the same day by Germany, starting a conflict that was probably as close to any campaign Tamerlane ever oversaw in his lifetime. Shortly after he was reburied with full Muslim rituals the Soviets prevailed over the Germans at Stalingrad. Interesting coincidence or not???

This was a most fascinating book that laid out the life and undertakings of an individual who up to now has largely been ignored by history. Yet a very large percentage of our current issues have their roots in the actions of Tamerlane. Given the scarcity of positive we should all be very thankful he died before he could accomplish more.

[Elliott Bignell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found myself wondering how I could possibly have heard so little of Temur before reading this. The name "Tamerlane" or "Tamburlaine" crops up now and again when reading Gibbon or Poole, but more than the name and its derivation from Timur the Lame (Temur-i-leng) one seldom hears. Marozzi's book comes as a welcome corrective, and as a bonus it is a joy to read, written with a truly poetic turn of phrase.

The mongols Cengiz and Khubilai Khan are familiar names. Alexander more so. It comes as a surprise to the reader to discover that Temur comes a close third to Cengiz and Alexander as aspirant conqueror of the world. Perhaps it is that he never penetrated into Europe, but what a career of conquest, butchery and magnificence to lay forgotten! Baghdad, Damascus, Isfahan, Aleppo, Delhi - the list of cities laid waste reads like a tourists' guide to Asia. Temur died undefeated, on the march to repeat his savage triumph in Peking. Cities that defied him were laid waste utterly, their walls and towers replaced with pyramids of skulls and if he felt especially piqued, the ground itself sown with barley to symbolise his ability to erase a city from the map. And yet, unlike Cengiz, Temur also built. Temurid architecture may represent the pinnacle of Islamic architectural grace.

Temur rationalised his conquests by appeal to Islam, but he rates as one of the greatest butchers of Muslims of all time. His forces were hired and kept loyal with generous shares of the spoils of conquest, and the cynical deal was, "No jewels, no jihad." If a city were rich enough to merit plundering, it would qualify as a city of bad Muslims to be blessed with Temur's corrections and a pretext found. If it happened to be filled with Crusaders or Hindus, all the better. The Ottomans themselves, fresh from annihilating the flower of Christian knighthood at Nicopolis, were swept aside almost without effort. Clearly, Temur's blessings to his religion were equivocal. Campaigns against Delhi and Christian enclaves in Asia Minor allowed a slightly more convincing pretext of religious war, and in his later years he directed his energies more consistently against non-Muslims as he felt immortality approach, but his campaigning character seems to have been defined by the lust for conquest. His tactical and strategic acumen appears to have been unparalleled, setting land into production in anticipation of the passage of an army loaded with pillage years in advance and moving with lightning speed to surprise one opponent after another.

Marozzi starts with a battle scene on the eve of victory over the Turks, then works through Temur's life and conquests in strict chronological sequence. He shifts forward now and again to his personal travels while researching Amir Temur, evidently post-Soviet Uzbekistan's defining national hero, and to history's treatment of his architectural legacy and reputation. Temur is still an enigma to me, probably due to no fault of this book. It is simply impossible to put oneself in the place of such a forceful and driven character, unless one also happens to be the kind of person capable of leading an army of 100,000 across murderous terrain to conquer an entire continent and murder 90,000 in a single tantrum. Both the magnificence and the squalor come across with clarity, however, and I devoured this book in no time.

Engagingly written, this book fills a huge hole in my history of Asia which I hadn't realised was there.

[Azimah Othman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am actually re-reading this book. I have a number of recently acquired books on the Mughal Empire and I thought that I should refresh my memory from the time of Tamerlane making plans to march into India. He planned what Alexander the Great and Genghiz Khan had not done. Alexander barely crossed the Indus River, Genghiz turned back from the appalling heat of India.

While a leader got to do what a leader got to do in order to gain loyalty of his people and obedience of the conquered, I am more interested in his technical or tactical acumen.

This book is both a historical journal and a travelogue. Hence the time taken to complete is somewhat doubled.

My search is answered ..... Yes, Temur and his vast army, with much challenge imposed by the freezing and lofty roof of the world that guarded Hindustan in the north, did reach the gates of Delhi. When all was done, he elected a local prince as Governor and returned to Samarkand with the riches of Delhi.

No, Temur did not introduce Islam to India. That was done by the Arabs before his time. He wanted a holy war to gain honour as the three other icons of the Muslim Empire at that time i.e. the Caliph of Cairo, Protector of the faith in Baghdad and the Ottoman Emperor was Sword Arm of the faith. All three regarded him as only a barbaric pagan in spite of his conquest Still, he brought mass conversions in Delhi. His legacy, Sword of Islam.

[Sheffielder · Rating 1 out of 5]

Given its subject matter, this ought to be one of the most exciting books I've ever read, but it goes off on so many tangents that I'm finding it increasingly heavy going. I don't really understand, for example, why we should be subjected to an extended section on Marlowe's play, when we've already been told that early opinions as to Timur's life and character were faulty or one-sided. And why on earth do we suddenly have a description of the Aral Sea's problems under the soviet system, when we're supposed to be discussing events from so many centuries ago?!

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF at 35%. I did not enjoy the author's exaggerated prose and scattered storytelling. Interspersed throughout the book are tales of his modern day travels across the land that was once part of the Temurid empire. Even though the author attempts to prove the argument that Temur was "the greatest man who ever lived," he also covers, in great length, just how forgotten he has been by history, how his legacy has been all but erased, and how the places he once ruled are now areas of direst poverty, thus undermining his own position.

[FatihD · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bugüne kadar okuduğum tarihi biyografiler arasında en iyisi. Justin Marozzi birincil ve ikincil tüm tarihi kaynaklardan faydalanmış. Timur ile ilgili uç aktarımları/değerlendirmeleri olan İbni Arapşah'ın ve Yezdi'nin yaklaşımlarını metodolojik olarak ortaya koymuş. Kitabın niteliğini artıran, okuyucuyu akademik sıkıcılıktan uzak bir yazımla, dönemin/olayların içine dahil eden üslubu.

Timur, Timurlular ve dönemi/coğrafyası hakkında yazılmış en iyi kitap kanımca.

[Andrew Levine · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author is far too sympathetic towards the main character, and writes from a perspective that wants to like him, rather than objectively describing events. He also uses non sequential descriptions of current day locations that take away from the flow of the narrative.

[Peter Corrigan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oddly enough almost everyone has heard of Genghis Khan but almost none of Tamerlane (aka Timur, b, 1320s – d. 1405), his sort-of successor and near equal in many ways. Marozzi repeatedly berates the 'West' for this apparent ignorance. Why he expects the West to care so deeply about the history of a place and time at such a far remove from their own mystifies me. At the height of Tamerlane's romp through Central Asia, Europe was experiencing the height of the Black Death (an export from Central Asia, by the way) that took up to half the population across large swathes of Europe. I don't think the sadistic exploits of Tamerlane were foremost among their concerns. The author however, goes to somewhat desperate lengths to demonstrate that Timur was no sadist but a rather a great benefactor of the arts and other 'progressive' activities. Alongside some of the most barbaric slaughters, torture and pillages you will ever see described you see, he also built a lot of mosques in Central Asia, mostly in what is today Uzbekistan, places like Samarkand, Bukhara, and Tashkent. Murder and more in the service of Islam was then (see p.239 where Tamerlane cites the Koran), as it remains today in large swathes of the planet, seen as 'highest dignity of man and a reason for never ending jihad. However, in a great historical irony, it is undeniable that the invasion of Anatolia in 1402 and Timurid victory (Battle of Ankara, 20 July, 1402) over the Ottomans under Sultan Bayazid (aka 'Thunderbolt') saved Constantinople for another 51 years and perhaps much of Europe beyond.

Actual first-hand accounts of Tamerlane's 'exploits' are apparently few but Marozzi employs three major sources. Two he identifies as very biased, one on each side. The first is from Ahmed ibn Arabshah, a Syrian captured as a boy during the sack of Damascus by Tamerlane in 1401. He despised Tamerlane for generally very fair reasons and his excoriations are informative and almost amusing. Marozzi tries in the end to paint Arabash as a sort of closet fanboy, but that is kind of reach though he does write some good things at the end about Timur. The second source was Sharaf al-din Ali Yazdi, an acquaintance of Tamerlane, who became his grandson’s sycophantic court historian. The third source is Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo, a Spanish nobleman sent as ambassador by King Henry III of Castile in 1402. Clavijo spent time at Tamerlane’s court in Samarkand near the end of Tamerlane’s life, at the height of his power, and was a fascinated, objective, generally positive observer. The description by Clavijo of the big festival (2 months long!) just before the start of the final ill-fated expedition in early 1405 to conquer the Ming Empire is impressive. A few months later Timur was dead as 'General Winter' took the day! Another 'source' given considerable space is the play written by the Christopher Marlowe, 'Tamburlaine the Great' Parts I and II (English, 1563–1594). Marlowe, a contemporary of Shakespeare is given great credit by the author in framing the western view of Tamerlane. Yet if I'd read another time about the evil 'West' forgetting this ghastly ruler I might have screamed, if hadn't already screamed after another explanation about just how 'enlightened' he actually was (after just describing another account of the most savage slaughters of humans imaginable). Marozzi often seemed sad that poor ole' Tamerlane was forced to kill so many good Muslims in his extensive path of conquest and and only occasionally gets to slaughter some Christians usually in Georgia or Armenia. Why not state the truth--he was first-class genocidal maniac. I heard Hitler liked to paint and Stalin improved access to health care too.

Somewhat oddly, Marozzi combines some of this history with a bit of a modern travelogue. As one clever reviewer put it, 'Imagine a strange mix of a biography of an aesthetically inclined genocidal maniac and an ad for tourism Uzbekistan'. Yet even there Marozzi is capable of gross factual error in his descriptions of the region today, stating on p. 81 that the climate of central Asia, specifically southern Uzbekistan, is now 'warm and dry all year round'. This he ascribes to Soviet-era irrigation projects in the Aral Sea area. No doubt there has been an environmental calamity in the region, but a check of local climate data for say, Samarkand or Urgench still shows a cold semi-arid climate (Koppen Bsk) with wide temperature swings between winter and summer.

My biggest complaint is that Marozzi slights the 'panegyrics' of Tamerlane's supporters yet his own account is one of the most panegyric I have read in any biography in some time. It was certainly an interesting topic but I can't be enthusiastic about the overall product, 2.5 stars, rounded down. There are no footnotes at all compromising any claim to serious research, but there are some good maps and a decent bibliography.

[Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly, this book comes across like the dude wanted to write a travelogue of immediately-post-Soviet central Asia, but in order for it to make sense he has to explain to you, the white western audience, why Temur is so important, and then he got carried away. There's the makings in here of a really interesting rumination on Temur's activities as contrasted with Soviet activities--themes of destruction and construction, of the building of nations and empires and the tales of ourselves. But it just doesn't lean into that, instead giving us pretty basic history (I was particularly irritated by the way Marozzi constantly held Temur against Genghis Khan to make him look better in a way that felt rather like minimising the amazing swath of destruction Temur left behind him) interspersed with meandering travel tales that didn't add a lot.

It's not terrible. It did, amidst other stuff, give me a basic rundown on the history and the intersections with other events and places and people. It was annoying in places, but fine.

[Islomjon · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was fascinating adventure to Islamic world of 14-15 centuries grotesquely depicted by Justin Marozzi in his book about Tamerlane.

Primarily, I liked Marozzi's extended research to expalin life of Tamerlane by using different historical sources and chronicles. Furthermore, he compares different views to the biography of Tamerlane that makes this book unique in collecting controversial opinions.

Secondly, Marozzi's technique of writing made me feel that I am living at that times. Merging historical descriptions and his own ideas, we can see the 15th century world instantly. Also, it is easy to understand facts, chronological events and cause-effects to particluar situations in the politics and trade in Silk Road.

All in all, I was satisfied with this book totally and after finishing it left some meloncholy. Prior to this book I did not evaluated my ancestor high enough, and now I see that he was one of the great conqueror as Alexander the Great. Now I know his wide wisdom in politics, trade and art. I wish that everyone would read this book.

When I see Temur's picture, cold blood will run through my veins not because of fear, but for huge respect for this generous and powerful emperor.

[Koeneman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a difficult book to evaluate. “Tamerlane” has both very good and very bad aspects.

Good points: Lots of interesting anecdotes and stories about Timur himself. A good, chronological overview of Timur’s conquests and the writing style suits the book.

Bad points: There are footnotes that take up almost an entire page. Also, the author has personally visited the regions where Timur traveled, made battle and lived and wants to share these experiences firsthand. So just when you’re in the middle of an exciting part, you’re suddenly hit with eight pages about how the city today looks and what you can find there these days. I wanted to read a book about Timur and not a travelblog about all the “stan” countries.

[Asher Burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marozzi seems to have written this book with the opinion that Tamerlane is 'better' than Genghis Khan. What does that mean? Apparently, everything it possibly could mean. Which is ridiculous.

Objectively, Genghis Khan established a larger and longer-lasting empire with a bigger historical and cultural impact. Don't tell me that Tamerlane was a more impressive conqueror.

The idea that Tamerlane was somehow less cruel than Genghis Khan also doesn't hold any water. Both were brutal, ruthless, efficient killers. Marozzi quotes a single random person putting words into Genghis Khan's mouth to try to prove that Genghis was a sadist - it just isn't persuasive. He was a horrible, murderous person, but he wasn't especially cruel compared to other men of his era and standing. Marozzi then tries to defend Tamerlane from the same accusation, with much spirit but little strength. Between the two, only Tamerlane executed people who built buildings too small to please him and only Tamerlane committed genocide on a town by cementing people into a giant brick, among other examples.

Genghis is portrayed by Marozzi as utterly disinterested in culture, philosophy, and art - something he offers no evidence for, because there is none. Tamerlane, on the other hand, is described as some sort of creative genius because he... *checks notes* made other people build buildings?

Now, I know I just spent several paragraphs criticizing the book... but it wasn't that bad. It was actually quite good. This was just a minor thing that bothered me while reading.

[Desi Pilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciate the research that went into chronicling a mostly forgotten ruler (amongst the West). I had never even heard of Timur until I began looking into the history of Central Asia. This book serves as a detailed account of the Timurid Emprie, encompassing the rise, expansion, and beginning of its demise. The one complaint I had with this book was that it ran longer than I felt necessary. The chapter devoted to Marlow’s play was verbose; and many of the European interactions were expanded upon beyond their value. Timur disregarded most of Europe, but our ambassadors received more airtime than any Muslim envoys. Overall though, this book was excellent for understanding the goings-on of 14th century Central Asia.

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating, though a little dry in places. Understandably, you do not get to see the human face of this formidable character.

[Stuart · Rating 2 out of 5]

I plan to look for a better history of Amir Temur.

[Andres Felipe Contreras Buitrago · Rating 4 out of 5]

No suelo leer muchas biografías, pero la verdad la figura de Timur me impresiona mucho. Como libro es facil de leer y te lleva por varios lugares, a veces se pone en contexto muchos acontecimientos, pero faltan más ideas novedosas hablando desde una perspectiva histórica. El principal error del libro definitivamente es como cambia del pasado a la actualidad.

El libro empieza con el nacimiento de Timur en 1336 en un pueblo turco de origen mongol, se pone en contexto geográfico el lugar en el que nació. Allí se hallan dos grandes ríos caudalosos y ciudades muy ricas de Asia central. En el contexto histórico, se encuentra las invasiones mongolas en la que la figura de Gengis kan aún resuenan en la época de Timur.
La vida esteparia se centra en caballos y ganados donde es importante el comercio entre nómadas y ciudades, el lugar donde nació el futuro conquistador es importante porque allí pasaban varias rutas comerciales. Los nómadas también son grandes guerreros que tienen tácticas devastadoras, aprendidas como resultado de ser grandes cazadores.
En los kanatos mongoles, había conflictos internos, así como disputas entre los nómadas y la élite sedentaria islámica, con el tiempo algunos nómadas como la tribu de Tamerlan se convertiría en el islam, para la época en que ascendía al poder el tártaro, los gobernantes sedentarios eran marionetas de gobernantes nómadas con gran poder y autoridad. Sobre la infancia de Tamerlán no hay mucha información, solo se enfatizan sus orígenes humildes, al principio Tamerlan fue un vasallo de un khan mongol siendo líder Timur de su tribu. Posteriormente conseguiría un nuevo aliado, que junto a él se revelaría contra el kan, pero, desde 1362 Timur huyó de estos mongoles por bastante tiempo.
Para 1366 el conquistador toma Samarcanda, donde cada vez era más popular que su aliado, para 1370 marcharía hacia el sur en búsqueda de más poder, conquistaría la rica ciudad de Balkha, y derroto a su antiguo rival, se casaría con una descendiente de Gengis kan para tener mayor legitimidad ante los mongoles, poniendo así también un gobernante títere bajo los mongoles; en 1370 sería el nuevo gobernante imperial de chagatai.
El segundo capítulo, empieza con Timur en 1370 siendo gobernante de una pequeña franja de Asia central, pero su objetivo era la reunificación total del territorio de chagatai, con ello tenía en mente las tierras del noreste y el este, para ello era necesario las guerras como una forma de unir a las tribus y redireccionar sus fuerzas, con el tiempo tendría varias victorias sobre los mongoles de esta región, una de sus mayores ambiciones será conquistar el territorio de Corasmia, con ello empezó una campaña desde 1372 contra este lugar, mientras eso sucedía hacia su territorio Tokhatamish, en búsqueda de ayuda para obtener el poder de la horda dorada ,Tamerlan apoyó esta moción con el objetivo de desestabilizar un enemigo del norte, por lo que esté mongol se convertiría en kan de la horda de oro, aunque Tamerlan había logrado conquistar el territorio de corasmia, la reconquista varias veces ante las rebeliones que estaban sucediendo, por supuesto que cualquier ciudad que sometiera esto era destruida y masacrada.
El tercer capítulo hace una descripción de Tamerlan, empezando con una altura de 1 m 70 y siendo una persona corpulenta, era un hombre valiente que no toleraba las conversaciones sobre saqueos y masacres, le gustaba estar rodeada de mentes brillantes, él era un experto en ajedrez, que combinaba el islam y la cultura nómada para llevar a cabo sus políticas, era ante todo un musulmán devoto que quería llevar la yihad contra otros no musulmanes, sus ataques contra otros musulmanes se hacían bajo la lógica de que estos atacaba al sunismo, pero en últimas, esta religión era usada más para efectos pragmáticos,
El conquistador tenía su propia mezquita y hacía las 5 oraciones al día, tenía astrólogos para consultar, celebraba con alcohol sus victorias pese a que en el islam era prohibido. Imponía una férrea disciplina con sus guerreros, siendo generosos con estos últimos en lo que respecta al saqueo y regalos, era posible el ascenso militar según los logros. En el ámbito militar Timur contaba con guerreros montados, infantería, redes de inteligencia e información de primera mano. El uso del terror por parte de Tamerlan era para sembrar terror y evitar futuras rebeliones, esté siempre lideraba sus batallas.
El cuarto capítulo es sobre las campañas de Tamerlan hacia Occidente en el que su primer objetivo será la ciudad de Herat, la cual era una muy rica contando con grandes textiles, en la región que conquistaría Timur, el Ilkanato persa había terminado y había una lucha por el control de este, al final conseguiría conquistar la ciudad ya antes mencionada, siempre era mejor la rendición para conseguir los tesoros de la ciudad, con esta rápida victoria se iniciaría toda una campaña por Persia, donde caerían otras ciudades como Mazandaran en 1382, llevaría a cabo también otras conquistas por Afganistán, en todas estas campañas uso el elemento sorpresa Timur así como un papel más político, una de los momentos más importantes fue la traición de Tokhtamish, al tomar la ciudad de Tabriz, una ciudad que era muy importante en las rutas comerciales y muy rica, por lo que también la debió reconquistarla rápidamente, un elemento importante a destacar es que siempre se respetaban edificios importantes en las conquistas de las ciudades y muchas veces se iniciaba rápidamente la reconstrucción de varios edificios, posteriormente pasaría a Georgia para tomar Tiflis, con ella, mostrándose como un Guerrero del islam al atacar un reino Cristiano, en su regreso hacia Samarcanda, se conquistaría la ciudad de Isfahán, una vez conquistada el siguiente objetivo sería la horda de oro.
El objetivo de Timur respecto a su aliado era distraer a la horda de oro el problema es que este ya había adquirido gran poder y tenía mayor legitimidad al ser un descendiente de Gengis Kan, por ello empieza una campaña del conquistador donde se lleva a cabo una represión contra los pueblos de corasmia que se rebelan contra Tamerlan, esto a causa de los ataques de Tokhtamish, lo cual ven otros pueblos como una señal de debilidad de los timúridas. Los mongoles de la horda dorada atacaron en invierno algo que tomó con cierta sorpresa a Tamerlan, con ello en mente era necesario llevar a cabo una campaña contra estos territorios y esto se hizo durante el invierno, dicha empresa empezó desde 1391, era necesario usar el factor sorpresa del clima y la promesa de un rico botín de las ricas ciudades qué había en la horda, al final en las batallas Tamerlan triunfo haciendo que huyera su antiguo rival y se saquearon todas las ciudades desde 1395, Saray, por ejemplo era una ciudad muy rica gracias al comercio de pieles y joyas, con esto ahora las rutas comerciales pasaban por el territorio central de Timur y no por el norte de su antiguo rival.
El capítulo sexto nos describe las grandes riquezas de Samarcanda, en esta ciudad había parques y viñedos, sobre los aspectos políticos del imperio este tenía un problema y es que estaba centrado solo en la figura de él ,había un sistema de gobierno turco mongol y otro de administración persa, el conquistador no tenía gran interés en la vida sedentaria aunque a veces se quedaba en las ciudades, la ciudad de Tamerlan contaba con murallas fortificadas, tenía en su haber a los mejores intelectuales de la época, se podían encontrar Palacios, árboles frutales, pastos para el ganado y centros comerciales, habían fábricas de telas y sedas, también se podía hallar una gran mezquita.
Timur sabía gracias a su red de inteligencia que el sultanato de Delhi estaba débil y en una guerra civil, conocía muy bien de las grandes riquezas de este territorio y el atacarlo también lo haría mostrarse como un Guerrero del islam que lucha contra los infieles de este lugar, el problema es que llegar hacia este territorio no sería nada fácil debido a las complicaciones del terreno, en las ciudades por las que avanzaba hacia llegar hacia la ciudad de Delhi, se encontraba con importantes lugares comerciales de la ruta de la seda, cuando habían ríos se construían puentes temporales, en su paso por Kabul, consigue importantes tesoros, la forma de combatir a los poderosos elefantes de la India fue con trincheras y estacas, al final conseguiría su gran victoria Tamerlan y conseguiría entrar a la ciudad de Delhi, haciéndose también de sus riquezas y poderosos elefantes, se llevaría artesanos y albañiles para su ciudad, y también se llevó a cabo una masacre y conversión contra los indios no musulmanes.
Tamerlan tenía malas relaciones con un poderoso vecino islámico el Egipto del sultanato mameluco, necesitaba llevar a cabo una campaña para asegurar sus fronteras y vengar un embajador que fue asesinado, durante ese trayecto en esta nueva campaña que iniciará en 1399 saqueo otra vez el territorio de Georgia, como siempre era propio del conquistador aprovecharía la inestabilidad que tenía Egipto, el problema de este territorio es que las regiones de Siria estaban bien defendidas y tenían poderosos fuertes, para 1400 llegaría a Alepo y tomaría sus riquezas, llevando a cabo una masacre en la que se harían pilas de cabezas. El siguiente objetivo era Damasco la cual era una ciudad muy rica donde llegaban caravanas comerciales y tenía grandes trabajadores del arte de la orfebrería y la herrería, pese a que se hicieron negociaciones en Damasco esta decidió optar por la resistencia, el conquistador saqueó la ciudad, al final Timur no marcharía hacia la capital de Egipto El Cairo, debido a que tenía otros asuntos más importantes que atender, reconquistará Bagdad que seguía rebelándose y dejó una torre de cráneos como recordatorio.
El capítulo 9 tenemos la gran campaña de Timur en 1402 contra los otomanos, todo esto empezó debido a que el sultán Bayezid, tenía rivales del conquistador timúrida dentro de sus territorios y no quería entregarlos, con ello a principios de 1402 se llevarían a cabo los primeros asedios hacia fortalezas otomanas, ambos rivales estarán seguros de sus victorias, Tamerlán, Por su parte trajo elefantes desde la India hacia su batalla y marcharía hacia la ciudad de Ankara, Timur tenía la ventaja de tener a sus hombres descansados y tener una fuente de agua potable, el factor que lo cambiaría todo sería que muchas tribus tártaras que estaban a manos de los otomanos traicionaron al sultán y se unirían a los timúridas, sumados que también los otomanos se encontraban mal preparados y agotados, al final, Timur apresaría a bayezid y se haría de los tesoros de Anatolia, con esta gran victoria los cristianos europeos buscaron entablar relaciones con el conquistador, que pese a eso, destruiría la fortaleza cristiana de los caballeros hospitalarios de Esmirna, todo esto resulta en la división del imperio otomano que se convertiría en un vasallo más, y el gran conquistador no se dirigiría Hacia Europa debió que no habían grandes riquezas comparadas con las de su siguiente objetivo, China.
Timur sabía de las grandes riquezas que tenía China, debía llevar a cabo una campaña militar para emular los grandes logros de los mongoles, sabía muy bien que la nueva dinastía Ming perseguía a los musulmanes, aunque al principio había tratado cordialmente la nueva dinastía solo estaba haciendo eso para obtener los recursos necesarios para conquistar este territorio, el problema es que se enfrentaba al Ejército más grande del planeta, por ello mandó a hacer mapas para reconocer muy bien el territorio que conquistaría, para 1404 Timur llegaría a Samarcanda para iniciar sus preparativos para esta campaña, durante esta época llegaría una embajada española que escribiría mucho de la ciudad y en las prácticas timúridas, que en pocas palabras refleja la gran riqueza de estos gobernantes.
Para la campaña de conquista de la China ming, se llevó mucho ganado y suministros para la travesía el problema es que al final moriría el gran conquistador, y como se podía prever se llevo a cabo una lucha por el poder donde había varios golpes de Estado y asesinatos, había una pequeña edad de oro de la ciudad a manos de su Nieto Ulugh Beg, pero luego el imperio timúrida vería su fin. Su gran legado se vería en la arquitectura y en el futuro imperio mogol de la India.

[Tripp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great overall history of this vital figure. Marozzi can be discursive, but it works here!

[Dеnnis]

I'm sure the narration, addressed to the wider world audience won't lose anything should the long portion dedicated to Marlowe's Tamburlaine play was absent. It's a different class altogether (History of Early Modern English Literature, perhaps?) to consider this piece in Tamerlane's biography, no doubt overburdened with details more pertinent to the book's title. Marlowe's book is not a primary source to be trusted (he never been anywhere close to Asia) let alone to spread over dozens of pages (which is achievable if you start profoundly quoting Middle English verses verbatim).

Flashbacks to author's personal visits to modern Uzbekistan and surrounding countries? Some references are interesting, whilst majority reads like travelogue. Isn't it another genre again? The whole idea of returning to modern Uzbekistan and chewing current attitudes of power and ordinary people, the historical treatment of the memory of Tamerlane, to me lies without the limits of pure biography. Or maybe I opened an altogether wrong book? I just wanted to learn about the ruler/warrior and his time, sorry.

[Anubis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book about Tamerlane.

While it's mostly a history book, it's also a book about the travels of the author in the places where the story he writes about took place. And it's a fascinating read, you can really immerse yourself in how Samarkand, Herat, and other great cities of the 14th century Central Asia looked.

It does sometimes stop the narrative a bit too much for my taste; you are ready to hear about Timurs next campaign, but it's stopped to give a long description of a place that the author visited. In itself it would be a great read, but i found myself fast reading it to get to the campaigns again.

Still, it deserves a full 5 star rating from me, because it's overall an excellent read, and i will be reading it again for sure.