Tamerlane

by Justin Marozzi

  Conflict between the Mongol khanates of Genghis’s successors, which held the lion’s share of Asia in an unforgiving grip, was the harbinger of conflict within them. In the late thirteenth century, serious strains began to emerge in the Chaghatay ulus. There were tensions between the settled nobility in the towns and villages, largely in Mawarannahr, which had embraced Islam, and the nomadic, military aristocracy to the east, which rejected it and clung on to their pagan beliefs. These aristocrats, for whom the settled life of the conquered peoples was anathema, came to refer scornfully to their neighbours as qurannas (half-breeds or mongrels), an insult returned by the western Chaghatays, who called them jete (robbers), or Jats. Within the ulus, the geographical divide between east and west – the Tien Shan, or Celestial Mountains, whose peaks soar more than twenty-three thousand feet – was as dramatic as the ideological gulf which separated them. Increasingly, both sides stared across it with hatred in their hearts. Tensions were further escalated by the system of privileges granted to the military by the khan. These imposed crippling burdens on the poorer members of the local population, who were forced to feed, clothe and arm the warriors.

  In 1266, the Chaghatay khan Mubarak chose to be enthroned in Mawarannahr, rather than in the nomad camp established by Chaghatay on the river Ili in south-eastern Kazakhstan, several hundred miles to the east, as was customary. For the military aristocracy, this symbolic ceremony, which expressed a preference for one way of life over another, represented a direct challenge to their traditions and authority. Worse, Mubarak was subsequently seduced by the siren calls of Islam, a conversion which sent seismic shocks across the heart of Central Asia and opened a growing chasm between East and West. A qurultay, an assembly of Mongol notables, was called in 1269 to determine the future of the ulus. In it, the warrior horsemen of the steppe prevailed, ruling against both settlement in the towns and the use of their cattle to tend agricultural land. Instead, the hordes would roam across the steppe and the mountains, grazing their hardy mounts on the pastures in accordance with the ancient ways. Mubarak was summarily dethroned. For the next fifty years, the pagan aristocrats held the ground.

  But the seeds of change planted by Mubarak continued to take root even after his ousting. The soil was fertile. The Mongol warlords who had accompanied Mubarak to Mawarannahr, who included the Barlas clan, Temur’s tribe, had by the opening of the fourteenth century converted to Islam and been Turkicised. The qurultay of 1269, however clear its conclusions, had not proved decisive. The old divisions between East and West, paganism and Islam, pastoralism and a more settled existence, remained, tearing at the fabric of the sprawling Chaghatay ulus.

  In time, such pressures told. By the 1330s, the internecine disputes, simmering for several generations, finally boiled over until the fault-line cleft the ulus in two. To the west, Mawarannahr. To the east, ruled by a separate branch of the Chaghatay family, Moghulistan – land of the Moghuls – a mountainous territory extending south from Lake Issykul in Kyrgyzstan to the Tarim basin. Though this hostile split occurred at around the time of Temur’s birth, its consequences occupied him throughout his career. In fact, with only a few intervals, the Moghuls were his lifelong enemy.

  In the early fourteenth century, Mawarannahr enjoyed a brief period of prosperity under Kebek Khan (ruled 1318–26). Echoing the sedentary style of his predecessor Mubarak, he shifted his seat to the fertile Qashka Darya valley and introduced a range of administrative reforms, including his own coinage and, for the first time, a well-ordered tax system. Such behaviour did little to endear him to the nomadic elements within Mawarannahr, who chafed against this imposition of authority. His construction of a palace at Qarshi, in the heart of the Qashka Darya valley, only added to their sense of grievance, but Kebek did not back down.

  The strains between the rival sedentary and nomadic populations resurfaced aggressively during the reign of his weaker successor, his brother Tarmashirin. The conflict which had ripped Chaghatay asunder now threatened to engulf Mawarannahr. Still hankering for a return to the old way of life, the nomad aristocracy urged Tarmashirin to honour the policies agreed at the qurultay of 1269. To no avail. Rather than compromise, the new khan chose instead to convert to Islam. This provocative act, coming at a time of profound instability, sealed his fate. Like Mubarak before him, he was stripped of power.

  Tarmashirin’s overthrow by the nomadic clans was an important landmark. It marked the end of real power for the Chaghatay khans of Mawarannahr. From this time they became no more than puppet rulers, installed in office as a nod to the customs of Genghis by the nomadic warlords who replaced them as the true source of power and authority. The battle for the soul of Mawarannahr, for the supremacy of a way of life made famous by the Mongol conqueror, had at last been decided. The settled nobility in the towns and villages had been confronted and overcome. Henceforth, power would reside among the men of the saddle, the bearded warriors whose strength and stamina was legendary.

  In 1347, Amir Qazaghan overthrew the Chaghatay khan and seized the reins of power. For a decade he led his warriors into neighbouring territories, plundering and sacking with repeated success. Then, in 1358, on the orders of the khan of Moghulistan, he was assassinated, plunging Mawarannahr into turmoil. The collapse of central control was devastating. The vacuum left by Qazaghan was quickly filled by ambitious local warlords and religious leaders. Mawarannahr was riven by petty rivalries and division. Tughluk Temur, the Moghul khan, prepared to invade.

  It was into this maelstrom of feuding fiefdoms, high among the shadows cast by the roof of the world, that Temur was born.

  A brick kern in the roadside village of Khoja Ilgar, eight miles to the south of the historic Uzbek city of Shakhrisabz, the Green City, marks the birthplace of the Scourge of God. As memorials go, it is an unprepossessing sight, a pile of bricks on a concrete base topped by an inscribed plaque, more like a poorly built barbecue than a monument to one of the world’s greatest conquerors. A traveller might expect this to be an important tourism site in Uzbekistan, a young country which has, since independence in 1991, resurrected Temur from the dustbin of Soviet historiography and championed him as its new nationalist figurehead, invincible hero of the Motherland. But this being the heartland of a nation still shaking off the ideological dust of communism and singularly uncomfortable with the new ethos of capitalism, there are no signs of commercialism here. No car park teeming with tour buses. No shops selling Temur T-shirts, key-rings or pens.

  The site, instead, is exquisitely rural, as it was when the Spanish ambassador Clavijo arrived in Kesh, as Shakhrisabz was then known, on 28 August 1404. The ‘great city … stands in the plain, and on all sides the land is well irrigated by streams and water channels, while round and about the city there are orchards with many homesteads’, he observed. ‘Beyond stretches the level country where there are many villages and well-peopled hamlets lying among meadows and waterlands; indeed it is all a sight most beautiful in this the summer season of the year. On these lands five crops yearly of corn are grown, vines also, and there is much cotton cultivated for the irrigation is abundant. Melon yards here abound with fruit-bearing trees.’

  This is an appropriate place from which to start on the trail of Temur, to stop and listen for distant echoes of the world conqueror borne across six centuries on the autumnal zephyrs. Already, there are unexpected hints of continuity bridging the historical divide. A small vineyard suggests that though this is a Muslim country, the pleasures of the grape are still observed here, taking one back to Temur’s lavish, bacchanalian feasts.

  Here in the alternately serene and savage Qashka Darya valley, next to a brick kern and an amiable peasant boy fretting over pilfered melons, it is possible to imagine Temur’s early years. This was the rugged terrain in which he grew up, learning the skills of the steppe without which his dreams of world domination would amount to nothing. A local proverb would have been in his mind from an early age: ‘Only a hand that can grasp a sword may hold a sceptre.’ Se
lf-advancement in this brutal world was inconceivable without excelling in the martial arts.

  Surrounded by the snow-capped Zarafshan mountains, he would have galloped wildly across these winter-frozen steppes, accompanied by his band of ruffian friends, sharpening his skills on horseback, imagining great battle charges, lightning raids on an enemy camp, heroic victories and headlong flight. In this fertile valley and among the broad meadows which eased into the lower reaches of the mountains, he would have learnt how to hunt bears and stags. Half a century later, these skills saved his army from certain starvation during one of his most difficult campaigns against the Golden Horde, travelling across what is today a thick slice of Kazakhstan and the southern belly of Russia.

  Toughened by the bone-chilling grip of winter and the skin-cracking heat of summer, the young Temur would have learnt to fight like a man in this valley, over the steppes and among the mountains, skirmishing on increasingly daring night-time missions to steal sheep from unwary herdsmen, gathering around him an entourage of like-minded brigands, steadily developing a reputation for courage and leadership which brought him to the attention of the tribal elders.

  The sources are generally quiet on Temur’s childhood. We can only imagine the vicissitudes of life on the steppes in the early fourteenth century, a world governed by tribal traditions and family relationships, the unending rhythm of the seasons and a fierce struggle to survive amid the unpredictable flux of constantly shifting alliances. Temur himself did little to illuminate the darkness surrounding his early years, taking care only to exaggerate his humble origins, thereby emphasising the glory of his later achievements. Perhaps, as has been suggested, there were signs that the young Temur was destined to be a leader of men. ‘At twelve years of age, I fancied that I perceived in myself all the signs of greatness and wisdom, and whoever came to visit me, I received with great hauteur and dignity,’ he is supposed to have said.*

  Arabshah provides us with another fascinating, though probably overblown, glimpse of Temur as a young man emerging as an inspirational leader among his contemporaries. Again, the value of the description arises from the hostility of the writer, a man less willing than most to acknowledge Temur’s qualities.

  As a youth he grew up brave, great-hearted, active, strong, urbane, and won the friendship of the Viziers’ sons of his own age and entered into company with his contemporaries among the young Amirs to such a degree, that when one night they had gathered in a lonely place and were enjoying familiarity and hilarity among themselves, having removed the curtains of secrecy and spread the carpet for cheerful intercourse, he said to them, ‘My grandmother, who was skilled in augury and divination, saw in sleep a vision, which she expounded as foreshadowing to her one among her sons and grandsons who would conquer territories and bring men into subjection and be Lord of the Stars and master of the Kings of the age. And I am that man and now the fit time is at hand and has come near. Pledge yourselves therefore to be my back, arms, flank and hands and never to desert me.’

  Whatever the harbingers of greatness, however tough his childhood, Temur vaulted out of obscurity, and into the official histories, in 1360 with a move which exemplified his flair for timing. It was characteristically astute and audacious. Taking advantage of the chaos into which Mawarannahr had fallen after Amir Qazaghan’s assassination in 1358, the Moghul khan invaded from the east with a view to reuniting the fractured Chaghatay ulus under his rule. Haji Beg, chief of the Barlas clan that ruled the Qashka Darya valley where Temur lived, decided to flee rather than fight. The youthful Temur accompanied his leader as far as the Oxus, where he asked to be allowed to return home. He himself, with a body of men, would prevent the invading Moghuls from seizing more land, he assured his chief.

  To judge by what happened next, it is unlikely he ever had such an intention. Contrary to what he had told Haji Beg, he did not lift a sword against the Moghul invaders. Recognising their superior force, he did something infinitely more pragmatic, offering his services to the Moghul khan instead. It was a supremely audacious volte-face, but his offer was accepted. Henceforth, he would be the Moghul khan’s vassal ruler. At the age of twenty-four, Temur had successfully claimed leadership of the entire Barlas tribe.

  To capitalise on his newfound position, he contracted an alliance with Amir Husayn, the grandson of Qazaghan who had emerged as regional strongman and aristocratic ruler of Balkh, northern Afghanistan. Husayn was leader of the Qara’unas tribe. Secretly the two men were pledged to rid Mawarannahr of the Moghuls. Their relationship was cemented with the marriage of Temur to Husayn’s sister, Aljai Turkhan-agha. In any event, Temur’s submission to the Moghul khan did not last long, for after a bloody purge of local leaders the khan appointed his son Ilyas Khoja governor of Mawarannahr. Temur was not content to be second in command (perhaps Husayn never understood this important distinction). His response was immediate. He and Husayn turned outlaw and went underground.

  For the next few years the two partners became highwaymen, bandits and mercenaries, roaming across high Asia with greedy intent. Sometimes they were fortunate and the plunder was rich. More often than not, life was difficult as they found themselves constantly on the move to avoid detection by the vengeful Moghul khan. At one time, said the chronicles, Temur’s entire entourage was reduced to his wife and one follower. He reached his nadir in 1362, when he and his wife were imprisoned for two months in a vermin-infested cowshed. These were ignoble beginnings for the man who one day would hold sway from Moscow to the Mediterranean, from Delhi to Damascus.

  At some point during this period, probably in 1363, Temur received the injury which left him lame in both right limbs, an affliction which gave rise among his enemies to the scornful nickname Temur the Lame. Most likely he was injured while serving as a mercenary in the pay of the khan of Sistan in Khorasan, in the midst of what is today known as the Dasht-i-Margo (Desert of Death) in south-west Afghanistan. Differing explanations abound. Arabshah, generally the most malicious of the sources, says Temur was a sheep-stealer who stole one sheep too many. Spying the thief prowling about his flock, a particularly watchful shepherd smashed his shoulder with a well-directed arrow, loosing off another into Temur’s hip for good measure. ‘So mutilation was added to his poverty and a blemish to his wickedness and fury.’

  Clavijo, whom we have less reason to doubt as an impartial witness, records how Temur was caught in an ambush:

  At this time Timur had with him a following of some five hundred horsemen only; seeing which the men of Sistan came together in force to fight him, and one night that he was engaged carrying off a flock of sheep they all fell on him suddenly and slew a great number of his men. Him too they knocked off his horse, wounding him in the right leg, of which wound he has remained lame all his life (whence his name of Temur the Lame); further he received a wound in his right hand, so that he has lost the little finger and the next finger to it.*

  He was left for dead, the Spaniard recounted, but managed to crawl to the safety of some welcoming nomads.

  Tales grew of his brilliantly inventive tactics in battle during this time, as he struggled both for personal glory and an end to the Moghul occupation of Mawarannahr. Yazdi’s Zafarnama (Book of Victory), whose honeyed paean is the perfect counterbalance to Arabshah’s bitter polemic, repeatedly stresses Temur’s military acumen.* In one encounter with his enemy, the Persian wrote, Temur had his soldiers light hundreds of campfires on the hills around the far larger forces of his enemy to convince them they were surrounded. When his adversaries fled, he ordered his men to fasten leafy branches to the side of their saddles to stir up clouds of dust as they gave chase, thereby giving the impression of a huge army on the move. The ruse worked superbly. The Moghuls fled, Mawarannahr was liberated and Shakhrisabz was his. ‘Thus fortune, which was always favourable to Temur, caused him to triumph over an army by fire, and to conquer a city by dust.’

  To this day, the jewel of Shakhrisabz, the monument whose size and beauty so startled Clavijo in 1404
, is the Ak Sarai or White Palace. It was, Yazdi reported, ‘built so exquisitely fine and beautiful, that no other could compare with it’. Nowhere else is Temur’s comment, ‘Let he who doubts our power look upon our buildings,’ so emphatically confirmed. With twin entrance towers rising two hundred feet from the ground, flanking a grand portal arch 130 feet high, this was his greatest palace. Masons and thousands of other craftsmen had been toiling on its construction for twenty years by the time Clavijo arrived, and the building continued daily.

  From the fabulous entrance several archways, encased in brickwork and blue patterned tiles, gave onto a series of small waiting chambers for those granted an audience with Temur. Beyond these galleries another gateway led to a courtyard a hundred yards wide, bordered by stately two-tiered arcades and paved with white marble flagstones, at the centre of which stood an ornate water tank. Through the next archway lay the heart of the palace, the domed reception hall where ambassadors craned their necks to admire the magnificence of the craftsmanship and swallowed nervously before they met the Terror of the World.

  ‘The walls are panelled with gold and blue tiles, and the ceiling is entirely of gold work,’ noted the incredulous Clavijo. It is clear from his breathless narrative that the Spanish envoy was not expecting anything like this untold splendour. Nor at this time would any other European, for whom the Orient was a dark, barbaric world. ‘From this room we were taken up into the galleries, and in these likewise everywhere the walls were of gilt tiles,’ Clavijo continued.