Tamerlane

by Justin Marozzi

  Buildings have always been windows onto a nation’s soul, an indication of strength and style, imagination, sense of beauty and financial muscle. They are direct expressions of the values of the cultures and civilisations which design and produce them. They speak of everything from scale and proportion to vision and technology. In their various forms they suggest concepts of harmony and comfort, the desire to please or impress, shock or inspire. It is no coincidence that some of man’s greatest monuments are those that reach out to the heavens and pay tribute to his God. Religion has produced masterpieces as utterly diverse as the Aztec Templo Mayor, Canterbury Cathedral, the Parthenon, Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem, the Shwe Dagon Pagoda in Rangoon and the Great Mosque at Samarra, Iraq. Many of the finest architectural creations are possessed of a permanence that marks them out from the ordinary. There is a monumentality about, say, the Pyramids of Giza or the Coliseum in Rome, the Great Wall of China or even, in more modern times, some of the financial institutions of London and Wall Street, that bespeaks power, confidence and prosperity, man revelling in his abilities to create. In the Muslim world, one thinks of the many glories of Islamic architecture, buildings like the Alhambra in Granada, Isfahan’s Imam Mosque, the Ibn Tulun Mosque in Cairo, the Taj Mahal, the medinas of Meshed, Fes, Damascus, Aleppo and Bukhara, all designed and built with painstaking care by the most talented craftsmen using the richest materials available, in the service of often cruel but culturally and artistically enlightened rulers.

  In any assessment of Temur it is vital to stress his contribution in this field, if only because he gave birth to one of the most glorious architectural epochs in history, which lasted more than a hundred years after his death. It says much about him as a man, about his understanding, all but unique in an unlettered nomad of the steppe, of the possibilities of art and architecture in a settled urban centre. Genghis, by contrast, is remembered today only for his legendary destructive powers. He flattened, but he did not build. This museum in the heart of Tashkent, though it celebrates a leader who bequeathed Asia this rich architectural legacy, though it stands in a corner of the square which bears his name, is in a very different and inferior league from its more illustrious Islamic predecessors. Even Temur’s plainest and most humble mausoleum would have put it to shame.

  Inside, the centrepiece on the ground floor is a panel in which Temur is holding a diwan or council. Beneath the dais on which he sits are several courtiers humbly prostrated before him. A host of domes and great monuments stand behind him, next to a lion, a stylised sun and Temur’s arms, consisting of three circles arranged thus:

  Together with the motto ‘Rasti Rusti’ – ‘Strength in Justice’ – this symbol may have represented Temur’s power encircling south, west and north. Clavijo was told that it ‘signifies that he Temur is lord of all Three Quarters of the World’. A more likely explanation is that Temur simply appropriated it from Persian heraldry, in which rings representing strength and unity were engraved on the tombs of the Sassanids. The panel is illuminated by a bright gold chandelier of impressive size, suspended from the great dome above. Around the base of the cupola are a number of Temur’s sayings, some of which have been inexpertly translated into English:

  Honesty and faithfulness people and army strengthen the state.

  The work which can’t be done by hundred thousand cavalries can be done by one correct arrangement.

  But the best clue to understanding this museum and how it fits into the broader question of Temur’s contemporary renaissance comes at the top of a grand marble staircase, where the following words have been written alongside a portrait of the pudgy Uzbek president, Islam Karimov:

  If someone wants to understand who the Uzbeks are, if somebody wants to comprehend all the power, might, justice and unlimited abilities of the Uzbek people, their contribution to the global development, their belief in future, he should recall the image of Amir Temur.

  It was Karimov, supported by suppliant academics, who effected Temur’s resurrection. On 1 September 1993, as part of the second anniversary of Uzbekistan’s independence, the president unveiled the statue of Temur in the centre of Tashkent. ‘Today, thanks to the return of independence and sovereignty, the great Amir Temur has returned to his Motherland,’ he told the crowd. ‘The Uzbek people, trapped for so many years in the clutches of the colonial vice, are no longer deprived of the opportunity to honour our great compatriot and render to him his historical due.’

  It was a long, revealing dedication speech. ‘For many years,’ Karimov continued, ‘the name of Amir Temur was degraded and blacked out from the pages of our history in order to remove the self-awareness from the soul of the Uzbek people, in order to destroy the people’s sense of national pride and increase its sense of dependence and subordination. But the Uzbeks have not forgotten their ancestors and heroes – they have guarded them in their soul like sacred objects … There is no doubt that this image of our great ancestor, erected in the very heart of our beautiful capital – beloved, ancient Tashkent – will forever evoke a feeling of immense pride in our people.’

  The museum had been hastily constructed three years later, in time for the celebrations of the conqueror’s 660th anniversary in 1996. Temur had ridden to the rescue of a communist leadership swaying in the wind after the rapid unravelling of the Soviet Union. The liberating storm had spread from Moscow, engulfing the Soviet republics one by one. In 1991, independence gusted into Tashkent, foisted on a bewildered leadership by events beyond its borders and entirely beyond its control. The solid ground on which Karimov had stood throughout his career was suddenly torn from beneath his feet. For years a communist supremo, he now needed repackaging. He and his henchmen cast about for new symbols of power and legitimacy. Who better to bolster his claim to leadership than Temur, rebranded as an Uzbek hero, the irresistible warrior whose name had been alternately suppressed and vilified for seven decades by the Soviets? He was no longer the destructive tyrant the Soviets had labelled him in their implacable determination to erase any nationalist symbols that might undermine the union. Temur was now the glorious saviour of Uzbekistan, and the answer to all of the challenges facing an emerging regional power.

  He took his place, then, on the marble plinth in Tashkent’s central square as the latest in a succession of ideological or nationalist symbols. Before Temur, Marx had scowled down on passers-by. Before Marx, it had been Stalin. Before Stalin, Lenin. Before Lenin, Konstantin Kaufmann, governor-general of Russian Turkestan. The Scourge of the World was in good company.

  The irony of this rehabilitation of Temur was that in its heavy-handed crudeness and utter intolerance of dissent it bore all the hallmarks of a Soviet-era campaign. Take this, for example, from Khalq sozi, the official organ of Karimov’s People’s Democratic Party.

  His Highness Amir Temur is a symbol of national greatness. One of the fundamental slogans of our independence, one of the bases of our national unity … is‘Uzbekistan – the future great state’. For a nation with a great past, the future also can only be great. The deeds of the great Amir Temur in state-building, his political wisdom and fearlessness are reflected in the principles of today’s policies. It is well known that this dignified and just ruler always dealt with the world with good and kind intentions. And our independent republic, from its very first steps, has announced the very same goals – to conduct itself in the world with kindness and goodwill … The policies of our President, directed at giving due respect to the spirit of our ancestors, teach us all to be worthy of these qualities embodied by Amir Temur.

  State-sponsored academics published encomiums on the hero of the motherland. Where once the Soviet establishment had humiliated and ruined those Uzbek academics who dared question the official picture of Temur as savage barbarian, now Karimov’s government leaned heavily on anyone casting doubt on the new, sanitised orthodoxy of Temur as symbol of the state.* Streets and squares were named after him. Throughout the country young couples celebrated their marriages in front
of statues of him, laid wreaths of flowers before him. His picture appeared on the highest-denomination banknotes, on newspaper mastheads and street hoardings. The president appeared in portraits alongside him, and encouraged favourable comparisons with him. ‘Strength in justice’ was the new government mantra.† The proliferation of Temurabilia in Tashkent and throughout Uzbekistan, albeit hijacked by the state, was a heartening discovery. Six hundred years after his death and in the unlikeliest of circumstances, Temur was back.*

  If you take the underground to Chorsu, the old city of Tashkent, and walk down a winding lane, past rows of mud-baked houses from where the myriad sounds of family life filter out into the gloaming – a mother reprimanding her shrieking child, a man repairing his ancient Lada, saucepans clattering – eventually the lane becomes a street and the street becomes a road and you find yourself in Khast Imam Square, the heart of Muslim Tashkent. On your left is the sixteenth-century Barak Khan Madrassah, a religious school founded by a Shaybanid ruler of Tashkent and descendant of Temur. It is a towering edifice with Koranic inscriptions running across its fine façade amid a medley of blue-tiled mosaics, and it is home to the Mufti of Uzbekistan, spiritual leader of the country’s Muslims. Directly opposite the madrassah is the Tillya Sheikh Mosque, which dates from the same era and, although a less notable building from the outside, is Tashkent’s chief Friday mosque.

  Inside, after you have passed through the open courtyard, opened the door directly opposite you, walked down a carpeted corridor past the library, which holds a collection of eighty-five thousand books and manuscripts dating back to the earliest days of Islam in this part of the world, you reach a small room which contains the mosque’s greatest treasure, one of the most remarkable and famous books in the world and one of Temur’s most enduring gifts to posterity.

  In a climate-controlled glass case, its ancient pages opened like the wings of a butterfly, sits the Holy Koran of Othman, an encyclopaedia-sized volume. It is the oldest Koran in the world. The librarian, a diminutive middle-aged man with glasses who, were it not for the absence of a beard, would look the archetypal Islamic scholar, will tell you it was written in 646 by the third caliph, Othman, son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed. Well over thirteen hundred years old, the pages of gazelle skin are worn beyond measure by the passage of time. But despite the attrition of the centuries, the verses of the Koran, written in a strong and elegant hand, still dance across the ancient leather.

  The librarian, if you press him, will tell you that before Othman, the Koran had been committed to memory by early Muslims and recorded variously on scraps of wood, camel bones, leaves, odd pieces of leather, even rocks. After Mohammed’s death in 632, Abubakr, the first caliph, arranged for all the known suras (verses) to be written down by scribes. It was Othman who summoned the four most distinguished Koranic scholars of his time and ordered them to be collected together and written down in one volume. This book, prepared in the holy city of Medina, became the definitive version of the Koran, superseding anything that had gone before. Othman used it as his personal Koran. Other copies were made, but none of them survives in its complete form.

  The history of the Othman Koran is a tale of piety and politics, intrigue, murder, conquest and greed. The first half of Othman’s twelve-year reign as caliph was marked by peace and administrative reform. The dar al Islam, the realm of Islam, stretched from Morocco in the west to Afghanistan in the east, and in the north the call to prayer was heard as far as Armenia and Azerbaijan. During the second half of his reign, a rebellion arose and there were calls for Othman to resign. Reluctant to shed Muslim blood, he did not crush the uprising although he had the power to do so. Eventually the rebels surrounded his house in Medina and, after a long siege, on 17 June 656, a mob broke in and murdered him at the age of eighty-two. Othman, so the story goes, was reading a verse from his copy of the Koran at the time: ‘And if they believe even as ye believe, then are they rightly guided. But if they turn away, then are they in schism, and Allah will be thy protection against them,’ a verse that neatly anticipated the seismic split within the Muslim community which arose on Othman’s murder and in due course resulted in the rival Sunni and Shi’a communities. Deep in the Othman Koran, a dark stain spreads across the pages. ‘This is the blood of Othman,’ says the librarian in a hushed whisper. ‘His throat was cut while he was reading the holy book.’

  Othman’s life was over, but the adventures of the book he had laboured so hard to produce were only just beginning. There are many versions of what happened next. According to one of the most popular, Othman’s successor, Ali, took the Koran to Kufa in Iraq, where it remained for several hundred years. In the fourteenth century, Temur retrieved it after his conquests in the region and brought it to the Nur Madrassah in Samarkand. There it lay for half a millennium, if you believe the librarian, until the nineteenth century and the advent of the Great Game, the elegant but deadly war between Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia for supremacy in Central Asia, a conflict fought by the bravest, most brilliant spies and military officers on both sides amid the high mountain passes and the brutal, opulent courts of local potentates. Russia expanded south (by the end of the Great Game, the British and Russian frontiers, originally two thousand miles apart, separated by tracts of desert and the world’s highest mountains, lay only twenty miles from each other), and in 1868 the Othman Koran was delivered to Tsar Alexander II by General von Kaufmann, governor of Turkestan, and added to the imperial library in St Petersburg. But the Muslims of Turkestan petitioned Lenin to return the book to them, and after many attempts they were successful. The Othman Koran arrived in Tashkent, where it spent much of the twentieth century in the history museum. In 1989 it was transferred to the Tillya Sheikh Mosque, where it remains to this day.

  It is kept in a tiny room in a humble mosque in a forgotten country, but the Othman Koran still attracts an impressive cast of international VIPs. ‘Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton, Vladimir Putin, the leaders of Iran, Turkey, Egypt and the Emirates, have all been to see the Koran recently,’ the librarian will tell you proudly. ‘And without Amir Temur, it wouldn’t be here today.’

  Still the snows fell from leaden skies. Soldiers pulled their black sheepskins tightly round their throats against the invading cold. There was nothing to be done. It was just a matter of sitting out the dreadful winter. No one expected any action until spring. But in January 1391, without warning and at the coldest time of the year, instructions were issued from the imperial tent. The Lord of the Fortunate Conjunction had ordered the army to march north. Tokhtamish was to be found and engaged. So far there had been only indecisive skirmishes. Now Temur was resolved to settle the issue in battle.

  There were mutterings of discontent in the ranks. Many could scarcely believe the reports running through the camp. What was the emperor thinking of? Moving an army of two hundred thousand halfway across Asia in these conditions was suicidal. But these murmurings remained subdued and discreet. The army knew better than to question Temur’s commands. The emperor’s will was law.

  The decision to hunt out the khan of the Golden Horde amid a raging winter, and in some of the most inhospitable terrain imaginable, looked like sheer folly. In terms of logistics alone, it beggared belief. There was no way of knowing where or when Temur would happen on Tokhtamish’s army. All he could be certain of was that it was bigger than his own. The route ahead was famously barren, so much so that once you had crossed the Sir Darya river, north of Tashkent, you entered a vast tract of land called the Hunger Steppe. There were sandy deserts, empty plains, rivers and mountains to cross. The main army and the long supply convoy would be struggling in deep snow and dangerous ice from the start. How could this great body of men and women be provisioned for a campaign that might require it to operate in such inauspicious country for months on end? The plans invited disaster.

  But as Temur viewed the situation, he felt he had no choice. Twice Tokhtamish had invaded, first Temur’s western dominions and, more recently,
the centre of his empire in Mawarannahr. In so doing he had announced his intentions all too clearly. Until he was removed from the field, he would remain a threat to the empire. As for the most appropriate strategy for dealing with him, if Temur were to strike from the west, as he had started to do in the Caucasus, he would merely open the way for Tokhtamish to attack in the east, bearing down on Mawarannahr once again, only this time with far worse consequences. In the event of another invasion of his lands, Temur stood to lose both his seat of empire and his army to his rival. Far better to regain the offensive, however difficult the expedition might prove, than to fight a defensive and unpopular war on his own territory, where the damage would be great. There were no treasures for the army, bedrock of his authority, to gain by staying at home. The prizes awaited, as ever, beyond his borders. There was also the added element of surprise, always a favourite weapon in Temur’s armoury, to take into consideration. The khan of the Golden Horde had attacked Temur where and when he least expected it. Now, in the snowbound depths of winter, Temur intended to return the compliment.

  Stealing up on Tokhtamish, catching him unawares in the sloth of winter, would be a formidable undertaking. He had his spies, too, and there is little reason to believe they were any less effective than those of Temur. Certainly they must have given him timely intelligence of his adversary’s movement north, for not long after the Tatar army had left behind the Sir Darya, envoys arrived from the court at Saray, presenting Temur with nine magnificent horses – this was considered an auspicious number – and a royal falcon, beautifully bejewelled. The talk was of forgiveness and mercy, not war. Tokhtamish, the emerging warlord, was now a humble model of contrition: ‘Your majesty has always acted the part of a father towards me; you have always nourished and brought me up as your son, and the favours I have received from you are innumerable. If my wicked proceedings and the war I have carried on by the instigation of some malicious persons, which has been my misfortune, and of which I repent and am ashamed, can once more find pardon from the clemency of my lord, this will be an addition to the obligations I owe to him.’ In short, Tokhtamish was ready to be ‘a submissive and obedient servant’ to his former mentor.