Tamerlane

by Justin Marozzi

  * Clavijo, though he greatly admired the fabulous silks of Sultaniya, was inconvenienced by the tremendous heat of the region. His comments, which anticipate the complaints of British tourists holidaying abroad by some six hundred years, are particularly interesting from a Spaniard based in Castile. ‘These countries where silk is made are all so hot that any strangers who go there suffer much from sunstroke, which indeed at times may kill; they say that the stroke goes straight to the heart, causing first vomiting and then death. To the sufferers their shoulders will seem to burn, and they say too that those who escape with their lives ever afterwards are yellow in the face or grey, never regaining their natural complexion.’

  * Such figures, as has been noted, are considered exaggerated today.

  5

  The Golden Horde and the Prodigal Son

  1387–1395

  ‘Then Temur came into those parts with a great army, nay, a turbid sea, whose soldiers carried flying arrows, sharp swords and quivering spears and were ravening lions and furious leopards, all of warlike spirit, which takes vengeance on the enemy, stoutly defends its own flag and its allies and homes and its prey and its lairs and covers with the sea of war him who opposes its waves and breakers.

  ‘Therefore Toqtamish sent to the lords of his subjects and the magnates of his peoples and the dwellers in sandy places and inhabitants of the borders and chiefs who were his kinsmen and leaders of the right and left of his army, whom he summoned and called to meet the enemy and wage war and they came clad in the long robe of obedience and hastening from every high mountain; and there assembled hosts and tribes of horse and foot and swordsmen and javelin-throwers and archers and attackers and defenders and warriors and slayers with the sabre and skilled archers and wielders of spears, who would not miss the mark compared with the sons of Tual, skilled spearmen. When they take their weapon and aim at what they need, they strike the mark whether sitting or flying.

  ‘Then Toqtamish rose to fight, ready for onslaught and battle, with an army numerous like the sands and heavy like the mountains.’

  AHMED IBN ARABSHAH, Tamerlane

  Temur, as he hurried back east to Samarkand to protect his homeland, must have cursed his earlier foreign policy in the north. He had used Tokhtamish as a pawn in the succession game against Urus, khan of the White Horde.* A blood feud already existed between those two men. Urus had murdered Tokhtamish’s father and was now concentrating on enlarging his empire, a direct threat to Temur’s dominions immediately to the south. At the time, distracting Urus from these grander designs by keeping him mired in internecine conflict within the White Horde had seemed eminently sensible. For as long as Urus was fighting a domestic rival, he was prevented from reunifying the fragmented Golden Horde under one ruler, and was therefore unlikely to emerge on ambitious campaigns beyond his borders.

  Temur had groomed Tokhtamish, had educated him in the art of warfare and had armed and equipped him time after time in the second half of the 1370s. Repeatedly defeated at the hands of Urus, Tokhtamish had straggled back to Temur’s court, from where, with health and wealth restored, he had returned again and again to the frontline. Temur had even fought alongside him.

  How Temur must have regretted these intrigues as relays of messengers galloped into his camp, bringing more details of the damage suffered during Tokhtamish’s invasion of Mawarannahr. In terms of its immediate objectives, his policy had succeeded. Urus had been emasculated. But Tokhtamish, in his wake, had proved too powerful. By 1378, he had succeeded his arch-rival as khan of the White Horde. By 1380, he was installed as leader of the combined hordes in the flourishing capital of Saray on the Volga. Two years later, his armies overran and torched Moscow. Tokhtamish now presided over the restored Jochi ulus, the Golden Horde, original patrimony of Genghis’s eldest son.

  These lands, the northernmost and westernmost Mongol territories, which stretched from the Danube in the west to the Irtish in the east, were populated by an unruly and exotic cast of nomadic peoples of Turkic origin – Bulgars, Kazaks, Kyrgyz, Alans, Kankalis and Mordovians – known simply as the Kipchaks, the men of the desert, whose steppes formed the centre of this fluid movement of the tribes. The Horde reached as far as Khorezm in the south-east, its south-western borders marked by the northern Caucasus, Crimea and Moldo-Wallachia. In the north-west it included the lands of the Volga Bulgars and Mordovians. A vast swathe of steppe, it boasted well-maintained trade routes and excellent pasturage for the nomads’ animals.

  The fringes of Temur’s empire and those of the Golden Horde were particularly blurred in two areas: Khorezm in the east and, more particularly, Azerbaijan in the west. These spots were potential flashpoints, the more so given the expanding arc of both Temur and Tokhtamish’s ambitions. That Tokhtamish had pushed on farther south into the bosom of Temur’s empire – he had even had the temerity to lay siege to Bukhara – into lands over which he held no conceivable hereditary claim, was an outrage and an intolerable insult.

  When discussing the looming conflict between the two men it is important to remember that Tokhtamish, unlike Temur, could claim the most illustrious descent. He was a prince of royal blood, who traced his lineage back to Genghis through Tokay Temur, son of Jochi. Once he had seized power, therefore, he had the right to style himself khan, a title forever prohibited to Temur by the conventions of the steppe.

  Whatever hospitality he had received from Temur, it would not have been unreasonable for Tokhtamish to regard the Tatar as an impostor on the Asian stage, a minor noble at best. If anyone was to reunite the fragmented Mongol empire, it was he and not his upstart rival in the south. The older enmity between the Jochids and the Hulagid empire of Persia, where Temur had already announced his intentions by making great inroads, merely reinforced this conviction.

  From Temur’s perspective, war with Tokhtamish was now inevitable. For as long as his aggressive northern neighbour was free to launch attacks on Mawarannahr, his empire-building of necessity had to stop. This suited neither his objectives nor those of his Tatar hordes, as predictable as ever in their lust for booty and riches. Tokhtamish had to be neutralised and eliminated. There was no acceptable alternative.

  Before he set about his preparations for this campaign, Temur first wanted to establish how the khan of the Golden Horde had managed to penetrate so far south. His attention to detail and discipline was, as ever, meticulous. Why, he wanted to know, had the imperial armies not driven Tokhtamish away? What explained the shameful defeat of Prince Omar Shaykh’s forces at Otrar on the Sir Darya? How could Tokhtamish have humiliated Temur in the conqueror’s own lands? Bukhara, the heart of Islam, had almost fallen to these enemies of the faith. Temur glowed with fury at the thought of it. An inquiry was held. Temur’s son was found to have led his men bravely, and escaped any charge of cowardice. One warrior, who had fought like a lion, was handsomely rewarded with land and the most distinguished title of tarkhan. Another commander, however, who had fled from the battlefield when the fighting was at its most furious, was forced to suffer a highly unusual and embarrassing punishment. His beard was shaved, his face was painted with rouge and he was forced to put on woman’s clothing. Then, ‘after having received severe reproaches for his cowardice’, he was made to run barefoot through Samarkand, to the general hilarity of the citizens and the more subdued emotions of the soldiery.

  For now, war would wait. More than a year elapsed from Temur’s arrival in Samarkand in the autumn of 1388 to the departure of the imperial armies on their mission to extinguish Tokhtamish. As always, there was the business of empire and family to attend to first. Khorezm, above all, had to be taught the price of rebellion. Urganch was savagely erased from the map, fields of barley planted on its ruins. More happily, a number of marriages were celebrated within the imperial family. Brides were found for Prince Omar Shaykh and the eleven-year-old Shahrukh, later bearer of the Temurid flame, together with the emperor’s cherished grandsons Pir Mohammed and Mohammed Sultan, the heirs of Jahangir, Temur’s
first-born who had predeceased him. In the Paradise Garden pavilions were erected, lined with elaborate carpets and hangings. Amidst this splendour, among pearls and rubies, gold and silver, the royal princes were married to princesses who were, said the chronicle, as fabulously beautiful as the houris of paradise.*

  The amirs were stood down, the soldiers released from duty and instructed to return to their families until the return of spring and another campaigning season. Peace descended on Mawarannahr and the citizens, reassured by the arrival of their emperor after the traumas of invasion, slept soundly once again. And then, just as Samarkand was slumbering through the deep snows of winter, came more chilling news, almost too improbable to believe. Tokhtamish, at the head of a formidable army, was bearing down on Mawarannahr again. His forces had already crossed the Sir Darya and showed no signs of halting despite the vicious conditions. Panic-stricken, Temur’s advisers counselled against retaliation. This was not the time to engage the enemy, they argued. The main body of the imperial army had retired for the winter, out of reach and scattered across the empire. Even with those soldiers who remained at hand, the weather was simply too hostile to contemplate military action. The snow was too deep for the horses. Far better to sit it out in Samarkand until the advent of spring. Tokhtamish, besides, would only be exposing himself and his men to the harsh elements while skirmishing relatively harmlessly in the outlying areas. The losses would be minimal. There was nothing to be gained from attacking now, ill-prepared and motivated by rage.

  There can be no doubt Temur’s pride had been stung. It was not in his nature to let such an attack go unanswered. He would not countenance any delay. Besides, retiring now would contravene his long-held military principle never to fight a defensive war. It was his enemies, not his own men, whom he forced to defend themselves behind walls, and the result was always the same: a devastating rout. He would not subject himself or his armies to such ignominy. The khan of the Golden Horde had attacked at the most unexpected and inhospitable time of year. The Tatar would make him pay for it. The invader would be expecting Temur to act as his most trusted amirs had suggested, by withdrawing to the south and avoiding battle. Ignoring this advice, he assembled an army from Samarkand and Shakhrisabz and moved north by night marches. The horses struggled ahead fitfully, with snow up to their bellies. Temur’s army reached the vanguard of Tokhtamish’s forces and succeeded in driving them back across the Sir Darya. And then the skies whitened and the air was full of stinging snow, hurled at the rival armies by the ferocious winds. Visibility disappeared altogether. Horses lost their way, falling constantly in the drifts. The men shivered within their tents, comforting themselves with already long-distant memories of warm nights at the family hearth. As quickly as it had begun, the expedition ground to a halt.

  The spring of 1389 brought further indecisive skirmishing. Before he could embark on an all-out campaign against his northern adversary, one which would doubtless take many months, Temur first crushed the rebellion that had broken out in Khorasan and then drove back the Jats of Moghulistan, his long-standing enemy to the east. Driven by the time-honoured principle that my enemy’s enemy is my friend, the Moghuls, under their new ruler Khizr Khoja, had done all in their power to assist Tokhtamish against Temur. Pacifying Khorasan – with typical brutality – secured the Tatar’s western flank. The offensive against the Moghuls, pressed home emphatically until Khizr Khoja turned tail and fled into the mountains, removed the eastern threat. The road to Tokhtamish was now clear.

  A qurultay was called near Shakhrisabz in the valley where Temur had been born, at which the amirs and their army officers, from the proud binbashis, commanders of one thousand, to the most junior onbashis, commanders of ten, gathered to hear the emperor’s plans. The scale of the festivities reflected the importance of the campaign. ‘There was another magnificent feast by Temur’s order, the expenses of which were prodigious great,’ Yazdi recorded. ‘The princesses and ladies were all adorned with the richest jewels; the earth was covered with carpets of gold, China brocades, and embroidered pieces of work enriched with pearls, rubies and other precious stones: the cups, which were presented by the most beautiful women in the world, were of pure rock crystal, worked with all the delicacy and fineness which can be expected from the skill and industry of the most ingenious artists of past ages.’

  Orders were given to expand the forces at the leader’s disposal. Temur wanted to put an army of two hundred thousand into the field. The Tatar did not underestimate his former protégé. He already had good grounds to respect his military talents.

  It is clear from the chronicles that of all Temur’s opponents over the years, Tokhtamish was the warrior he most admired. The court records confirm how highly the Tatar valued the victories over him. The two campaigns and great battles against the khan of the Golden Horde are painstakingly detailed by Yazdi. We know more about these expeditions than most of the others: the great hardships faced by Temur’s weary army as it marched north across the barren steppes; the feint and counter-feint of master and disciple, father and son, as the two armies faced each other across the river Terek; the course of the battle as first one side, then the other, snatched advantage; the wild celebrations which concluded the campaign.

  In a sense the khan of the Golden Horde was Temur’s reincarnation, for the younger man had learnt his military skills directly from his more experienced neighbour. Like Temur he was a leader who possessed cunning and guile in abundance. But Tokhtamish’s status as Temur’s arch-enemy was due also to geographical factors. His ambitions represented the most serious challenge to Temur’s supremacy in Central Asia. There were other great contemporary sovereigns, but none breathing down his neck so closely. Their empires were distant: the Ottoman Sultan Bayazid I ruled far to the west, the Ming emperor held sway thousands of miles to the east.

  At Shakhrisabz the qurultay was dismissed and the amirs and tovachis departed to attend to their armies. By the end of 1390, Temur was ready to depart. The Moghuls were no longer an immediate threat in the east. Khorasan had been subdued. The army had been assembled and well supplied for the campaign ahead. As a first step towards his enemy, Temur led his men two hundred miles north. Then he called a halt as the first snows of winter spiralled down from colourless skies. The emperor and his army would winter in Tashkent.

  In the late fourteenth century the city of Tashkent, or Shash as it was then known, was a pale shadow of the modern capital of Uzbekistan, and Temur had very little to do with it. Samarkand was the seat of his empire, Bukhara his religious capital. As his conquests expanded from this nucleus, they incorporated an ever-growing number of cities famed throughout Asia and the rest of the world. Tashkent, by contrast, is mentioned only rarely in the chronicles. There are several references to it in Yazdi, but they say little other than that Temur camped in the pastures outside the city prior to, or on his return from, one of his many campaigns; there is certainly nothing to show that he paid the place any particular regard. Nor is there any record that he left his mark there architecturally, no mosques or madrassahs, parks or palaces.

  Though history reveals the little esteem in which he held the city, in the early twenty-first century Tashkent is at the forefront of a powerfully orchestrated Temur revival. Right in the heart of the capital, in the centre of a cool, tree-lined square, is a life-size statue of a man on horseback. The pose is regal and military. The sculptor has captured the moment of a great leader in action. The warrior wears a beard and a handsome crown. His right arm is raised aloft in a gesture of control, perhaps addressing his troops or surveying the sweep of his empire. His expression is imperious, the look of a man accustomed to command. The loose folds of his cloak catch the wind and billow behind him. With his left hand he reins his horse in tightly, catching the beast in mid-stride, snorting, its head sharply bowed, its left foreleg treadmilling the air. On his left side sits a long, gently curved sword, secured above a circular embossed shield. Massive boots with protective plates rest in huge st
irrups. A richly decorated blanket covers the horse’s back, edged with rows of hanging squares and pendants. Beneath the reins runs an elaborate girdle with matching fringes. Strength is engraved in every sinew of the stallion. In his thunderous chest and powerfully built legs. In his vigorous mane and pricked ears. In his voluminous tail gathered into an ordered bunch. Even in the veins running across his prodigious testicles. At the foot of the marble plinth that bears man and beast lies a tired bunch of flowers, a small donation from an anonymous admirer. On the plinth itself are the words ‘Strength in Justice’, set in bronze. And above them, in larger letters, the name of the man on horseback: Amir Temur.

  Across the square, its blue ribbed dome recalling, though to a much inferior degree, the dazzling Temurid cupolas, is the Amir Temur museum, a relatively new circular building whose crude roof, complete with faux crenellations, is propped up by a series of insubstantial columns. At ground level square doors fill the lower half of tall marble arches set against a background of faded salmon. The upper half of the arches contain plain decorations that pay scant homage to the fine craftsmanship demanded by Temur.

  Looking at the building on a bright September morning, I couldn’t help thinking that if the Tatar’s architects and masons had built it in his honour, they would have lost their heads. ‘If you want to judge our strength, look at our monuments,’ Temur had said. The verdict here would have been entirely unflattering. The museum lacks any sense of solidity or durability. His monuments were of an unparalleled magnificence. Built on a colossal scale, in which monumentality became virtually the official creed, they towered over everyday lives in unearthly splendour. They were built to last, and, with few exceptions, that is precisely what they did.