Tamerlane

by Justin Marozzi

  4

  Conquest in the West

  1379–1387

  ‘The world is like an ocean and in the ocean is a pearl, and the pearl is Herat.’

  ANCIENT PERSIAN PROVERB

  ‘In Herat if you stretch out your feet you are sure to kick a poet.’

  ALI SHER NAWAI

  Five hundred miles south-west of Samarkand, a forest of slim minarets rose from the drab desert plain. Herat was, with Merv, Balkh and Nishapur, one of the four great capitals of Khorasan, the Country of the Rising Sun.* Straddling a branch of one of Asia’s busiest trade routes, it was a city of antiquity, culture and riches. The Herat river, snaking down from the Hindu Kush mountains of central Afghanistan, wended its way westwards past the throng of mosques and minarets before turning north and petering out in the sands of the Qara Kum desert. Little rain fell in this part of the world, and irrigation was provided by an ancient network of canals. East of the city, the Paropamisus range, an extension of the Hindu Kush, was virtually impassable. In practical terms this meant that Herat lay on the first route running north and south through the mountains west of Kabul.

  The city’s fortifications reflected its strategic location. The walls were nine thousand paces in circuit, according to Hamd Allah Mustawfi al Qazwini, the fourteenth-century geographer and historian, and around them stretched a suburban girdle of eighteen villages. The powerfully reinforced citadel on a hilltop two leagues north of the city offered further protection from attack. The city reached its apogee in the twelfth century, al Qazwini wrote, when there were twelve thousand shops in the markets, six thousand hot baths and 659 colleges. The population was 444,000.* Apart from the dervish convent, a Zoroastrian fire temple and numerous caravanserais, the many mills ‘turned by wind, not by water’ particularly impressed him.

  More impressive still were Herat’s many treasures, admired and envied throughout the region. Most famous were the textiles – fabulous silks, tapestries, hangings, cottons, cushions, cloaks and carpets. The markets thronged with dealers selling metalwork and precious stones – gold, silver, rubies, turquoise, lapis lazuli – and fruit – melons, grapes, pomegranates, apricots and apples. Slaves could be found in plenty. The indefatigable traveller Ibn Battutah found Heratis ‘religious, sincere and chaste’ when he visited in the early 1330s. It was, he reported, ‘the largest inhabited city in Khorasan’, a centre of commerce and culture at a time when Merv and Balkh still lay in ruins after the Mongol invasion of 1221.

  In fact, Herat was one of the finest cities in the empire which had been carved out by Genghis Khan’s grandson Hulagu, the Buddhist founder of the Ilkhanid dynasty, in Persia, Mesopotamia and Syria during the 1250s, the high point of Mongol expansion. As their name, Ilkhans (‘subordinate khans’), suggested, they owed their authority to the Great Khans in Mongolia and China until the close of the thirteenth century.

  Moving west from Mongolia at the behest of his brother, Great Khan Mönke, in 1253, Hulagu was given the task of destroying two powerful enemies, both of them Muslim. First were the Ismailis, a radical Shi’ite sect also known as the Assassins, who had established themselves in mountain strongholds south of the Caspian, centred in Alamut, ‘The Eagle’s Nest’. Mönke’s hostility to the Ismailis, according to the missionary William of Rubruck, who was sent to Karakorum by Louis IX of France, derived from the unsuccessful attempt by four hundred Assassins in disguise to kill him in his imperial capital. There is more than a whiff of revenge about Hulagu’s subsequent campaign during 1256 and 1257, in which he utterly destroyed the Ismailis, who had terrorised Persia’s Sunni leaders for almost two centuries, with consummate ease. As Gibbon dryly remarked, the Mongols’ crushing of the Ismailis was a ‘service to mankind’.

  The second enemy Hulagu was sent to defeat was the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad, which for five centuries had been the beating heart of Sunni Islam. He arrived before the walls of the venerable city in 1258. After it refused to surrender, it was besieged, stormed and sacked. The numbers of those killed in the onslaught range from Hulagu’s estimate of two hundred thousand to the eight hundred thousand suggested by al Qazwini. Either way, the bloodshed was devastating. When it finally came, the caliph’s surrender was too late. Though it was the Mongols’ custom not to shed the blood of noble enemies, as the caliph discovered to his cost, this did not mean they were spared. The distinguished leader of the Sunni Islamic world was wrapped up in a carpet and trampled to death by horses.

  Fresh from this impromptu execution, in 1260 Hulagu continued west into Syria, then ruled by the Ayubid dynasty founded by Saladin the previous century. The ancient cities of Damascus and Aleppo quickly fell, and the Crusader authorities of Antioch and Tripoli lost little time in kneeling before the Mongol invaders. But Syria was destined to remain beyond the boundaries of the Hulagid empire. Once again the momentous death of the Great Khan was to shape world history, as that of Ogedey in 1241 had spared Europe the horrors of the Mongol advance. Hulagu learnt of his brother Mönke’s demise in the same year he conquered Syria. The news prompted the inevitable struggle for succession to the Mongol throne between his brothers, and Hulagu withdrew from Syria, leaving only a nominal force behind. Later in 1260, a Mamluk army defeated the Mongols at the famous battle of Ain Jalut in Galilee, a date which in retrospect looks like the pinnacle of Mongol conquest. Though there were repeated attempts to retake Syria, the Ilkhanid territories had by this time reached their limits. To the west, their lands ranged as far as the Euphrates, to the north up to the Caucasus mountains running from the Black Sea to the Caspian, with the Oxus and Punjab rivers marking their easternmost boundaries. Hulagu reigned until his death in 1265, but the Ilkhanid dynasty, a hybrid of Buddhist, Christian and latterly Islamic leaders, lasted until the 1350s (ever since Ghazan’s renunciation of Buddhism in favour of Islam in 1295, Persia has been governed by a Muslim ruler).

  In sum, Mongol rule was an exceptionally traumatic experience for Persia. According to al Qazwini, a thousand years would not have been enough to repair the damage done by Genghis’s initial massacres. Juvayni, one of the most distinguished official historians of the Mongol period, wrote that ‘every town and every village’ had fallen victim to repeated pillage and slaughter so severe that the population would never reach even 10 per cent of its former total again. The civilian population of cities such as Merv, Balkh, Nishapur, Hamadan, Tus, Ray, Qazwin, and Herat were systematically put to the sword. In many areas of Persia agriculture was obliterated as peasants fled their land, irrigation channels fell into ruin and the desert reclaimed the once fertile land. This process was only accelerated with the arrival of nomadic Mongol hordes who gravitated towards the best lands as pasturage for their animals.

  Historians have judged Ilkhanid rule as a time of cultural efflorescence, when communications between East and West improved through increased trade. Religious barriers were similarly taken down with the steady assimilation of the Mongols – led by their rulers – into the Islamic fold. From this time Persia started to replace Arabic as the language of high culture. Mongol rule also witnessed the birth of official histories of Persia with the writings of Rashid ad-din, chief minister of the Ilkhanate for two decades, Juvayni and Wassaf. With these strengthening cultural cross-currents, Chinese landscape painting began to influence the Persian school of miniaturists, which now embarked on its golden age.

  Such cultural benefits to Persia of Mongol rule were all very well. But, as David Morgan concluded in a recent study of medieval Persia: ‘We may justly have our doubts over how impressed the Persian peasants, as they did their best to avoid the Mongol tax-collectors, would have been by developments in miniature painting. For Persia, the Mongol period was a disaster on a grand and unparalleled scale.’ It is difficult to disagree.

  As for Herat, the city proved remarkably resilient, as evidenced by its renewed prosperity by the time of Temur’s campaign. This despite the fact that it had been one of the centres worst affected by the Mongol depredations. Infuriated
by an uprising of Heratis after the city had surrendered in 1221, Genghis had issued orders to his general Aljigidey to return and spare no one. Saifi, the fourteenth-century historian of Herat, recorded his command: ‘The dead have come to life again. This time you must cut the people’s heads off. You must execute the whole population of Herat.’ For a week Aljigidey cut down the inhabitants until none remained. Several days later, after he had withdrawn, he despatched a force of two thousand horsemen back to the city to make sure anyone who had gone into hiding was put to death. Another two thousand were killed. Only sixteen survived the final slaughter, Saifi wrote. Such was the devastation about them that they were forced to eat the corpses of men and animals. For four years they found food only by raiding occasional caravans.

  With the disintegration of the Ilkhanid dynasty in 1335, Persia fell victim to vicious infighting once more, crumbling into competing kingdoms for the most part disputed by rival princes of the powerful Muzaffarid family. Their control was by no means absolute, however, as other dynasties reasserted themselves in the absence of the Mongols. In Baghdad, the Jalayirid clan held sway, while in Sabzawar (in the north-eastern Iranian province of Khorasan) the Sarbadars clung on to power.

  Three hundred miles to the south-east, the city of Herat remained under the control of Malik Ghiyas ad-din Pir Ali, leader of the Kart dynasty which had governed the city and much of modern Afghanistan as vassals of the Mongols since the middle of the thirteenth century. Great patrons of literature and the arts, lavish builders of mosques and fine public buildings, the Karts were largely responsible for creating the wealth and opulence of the city amid the ruins of the Mongol conquests.

  This, then, was the city Temur now resolved to conquer.

  Galloping across the steppe, fording rivers and threading his way through rocky passes, Temur’s envoy delivered a portentous summons to Ghiyas ad-din Pir Ali in 1379. The letter requested his attendance at one of the Tatar’s qurultays, a formal notification that Temur now regarded the head of the Kart dynasty as a vassal. This would come to be a typical device prior to the invasion of new lands, invariably giving him the casus belli he was looking for.

  It was an ominous, as well as a galling, message to receive. In former, less auspicious times as a roving mercenary, Temur had been taken into the service of Ghiyas ad-din’s father, Malik Muizz ad-din Husayn. When he died, Ghiyas ad-din had continued the cordial relations, marrying off his eldest son to Temur’s niece. Now he was being asked to acknowledge the authority of the man who only a few years before had been his father’s liege. Stalling for time, he replied that he would freely come to Samarkand, and only required an escort to guide him. Temur’s trusted amir Sayf ad-din Nukuz duly set out to accompany him to Mawarannahr, but arrived instead to discover the ruler of Herat fortifying his walls in preparation for the defence of his city. He had no intention of giving up his kingdom.

  Temur’s course was set. The tovachis sprang into action, assembling an army for the first campaign outside its own provinces. Each soldier’s equipment was inspected by his commanding officer, who reported in turn to his superior. The amirs, gorgeously turned out in their bright armour, finely embossed shields, long lances and bows, stood out from the dark ranks of their tumans, the bodies of ten thousand soldiers. Preparations were meticulous, for like Genghis, Temur planned to the last detail. Spies were sent ahead to scout the lie of the land and assess the strength of enemy lines. Provender was packed and loaded for the horses. Women and families collected their belongings for the weeks and months that lay ahead. Supplies were checked and double-checked until, at last, the army was ready to march. Then the amirs lifted their horse-tail standards and the trumpets and kettle-drums sounded the deafening call to war. The Three-Year Campaign was under way.

  South-west the army rode to the garrison town of Fushanj, reinforced to guard the approach to Herat. Under all-out assault, it fell as soon as the hordes had breached its defences through an aqueduct. The garrison was cut down where it stood. Blood ran through the streets.

  Learning of the disastrous news, Ghiyas ad-din retreated behind his city walls, much to the contempt of Arabshah. ‘He shut himself in the fortress, thinking that in this way he would be inaccessible – because of the weakness of his counsel and the stupidity and folly which were his ruin,’ the Syrian wrote. The city was under siege. Frantically, he tried to muster a defence but the inhabitants of Herat, having heard of the precipitate collapse of Fushanj and the slaughter of its garrison, were in no mood to take on Temur. He had ‘encircled the perimeter of the city and its suburbs like the bezel around the stone of a ring, like the halo around the moon, and like flies on sugar’, and was not going to release his grip until his demands had been met. A master of psychological warfare, the Tatar offered an incentive to the besieged by letting it be known that all those who refused to fight him would be spared. The proposal was eagerly accepted from within the walls. Only by surrendering promptly would their expensive properties be safeguarded, the Heratis reasoned. Resistance against the Tatar’s superior forces was futile. It would only be met by the sword and the flame. Swayed by these considerations and mindful of the marauding hordes who were already undermining his walls, the Kart prince capitulated. Accompanied by the notables of Herat, he offered his submission in a humiliating public ceremony. ‘Temur pardoned him and caressed him,’ wrote Yazdi, ‘gave him a belt of honour, and a belt set with precious stones, and then dismissed him.’ The city paid for the lives of its inhabitants with a punitive ransom.

  The vast treasures of Herat now belonged to Temur. A carefully established system, intended to minimise losses to his treasury, specified precisely how they were to be taken. It was generally observed with the same rigorous discipline which characterised the command of his armies. First, all the gates in the city walls bar one were sealed – on occasions they were even walled up – to prevent both premature plundering by his soldiers and the smuggling away of portable property by the citizens. Once this had been completed, the torturers and the tax collectors marched in, confiscating property, searching houses, extracting confessions from those suspected of having hidden wealth or knowing other families who had yet to detail their belongings. All goods surrendered were taken to collection centres, where they were registered by the amirs, among whom the ransom money was distributed. The houses of the local aristocracy, which had contributed most of this payment, were generally spared. A military cordon was thrown around their neighbourhood. Only when Temur’s officials had completed their requisitions were his soldiers allowed to plunder. If they acted prematurely and were caught in the act, they paid with their lives. Like Genghis, Temur preferred to take a city by ransom, not out of any reticence about shedding the blood of innocents, but from purely economic considerations. Seizing it by force inevitably led to outbreaks of unlicensed plunder and a sharp loss of revenue.

  In the case of Herat, the massive operation to extract anything and everything of value went smoothly, and the coffers of the most opulent metropolis in Khorasan were opened to reveal wonderful riches. ‘It is remarkable that there were in this city all sorts of treasures, as silver money, unpolished precious stones, the richest thrones, crowns of gold, silver vessels, gold and silver brocades, and curiosities of all kinds,’ wrote Yazdi. ‘The soldiers, according to the imperial order, carried away all these riches upon camels.’ The monumental iron-clad Darvazaya Malik, the King’s Gate of Herat, adorned with sculptures and inscriptions, was cut down and taken to Shakhrisabz. Just as their counterparts in Urganch had been taken prisoner after that city’s fall, the intellectuals and artisans of Herat – the scholars and churchmen, artists and craftsmen – were rounded up and sent to Samarkand, the second in a lifelong series of forced expulsions intended to glorify Temur’s capital with the intellectual and artistic fruits of their labour. Ghiyas ad-din, the defeated Kart prince, was permitted to remain in office as Temur’s vassal. Determined that neither he nor the city should ever resist him again, Temur had the defensive wa
lls pulled down.*

  Herat had fallen to him with hardly a murmur. A city long revered by the poets, prosperous from trade and rich in culture, had slipped into the net of his empire so easily it must have given Temur pause for thought. Having harnessed the loyalties of the competing tribes of the Chaghatay ulus, he had rewarded them with the plunder of the fallen city, establishing his leadership and expanding his territorial sway in the process. It was the beginning of a long-standing equation, in which the confederation of steppe tribes exchanged their loyalty and military service in return for the fruits of Temur’s campaigns. Once united, the soldiers offered Temur the opportunity to win new lands by the sword. He offered them the chance to enrich themselves and to win distinction and lucrative promotion on the battlefield. This coalescence of interests was the central pillar sustaining Temur’s long career. Herat offered other lessons, too. If he could achieve such success beyond his borders without even engaging his men in battle, what greater trophies awaited when they were put to the test? There was time to contemplate this question during the hard winter months that followed, when the Amu Darya and Sir Darya rivers turned to ice and Temur and his men encamped in the snowy pastures around Bukhara.

  Spring, the beginning of the campaigning season, would bring the answers. The push west, scarcely started, would continue. Herat was no isolated event. In the words of the German historian H.R. Roemer, it was instead ‘the prelude to one of the greatest catastrophes in the history of Iran’.