It is tempting to infer from this long and arduous march the strength of Temur’s ill feeling against Tokhtamish. It is reasonable to assume that he was motivated by a profound desire to avenge his former protégé’s disloyal behaviour – for that is how he would have seen it, notwithstanding his own highly pragmatic attitude towards alliances – but that is only part of the story.
In fact, the direct pursuit of Tokhtamish did not last long. Chasing the royal prince, the Tatars first followed the Volga river north until the khan vanished for good into the Bulgar forests. After his disappearance the priority switched to razing the main urban centres of the Horde, and pillaging without mercy. The last time Tokhtamish had been defeated, within three years he had rebounded strongly. If it was not possible for Temur to lay hands on his troublesome adversary, then at least his kingdom must be brought to ruin to ensure that this could never happen again.
The Tatars roamed at will, laying waste the surrounding countryside. Yazdi had Temur marching as far as the Russian capital, Moscow, ‘which his soldiers pillaged, as they had done all the neighbouring places dependent upon it, defeating and cutting in pieces the governors and princes of these parts. The Russians and Muscovites never beheld their kingdom in so bad a condition, their plains being covered with dead bodies.’ This is inaccurate: Temur did not reach Moscow, for he had richer prizes in his sights.* First, Tana, where the Don river feeds into the Black Sea, a thriving commercial centre with a substantial population of merchants from Europe, particularly Venice and Genoa. Reneging on his promise not to harm the population, Temur ordered the Muslims, who were spared, to be separated from the Christians, who were slaughtered.
Tana was a succulent hors d’oeuvre, preparing ‘Temur’s palate for the main feast which lay several hundred miles east on the southern Volga. When he thought of Saray, capital of the Golden Horde, he remembered the ultimate ignominy Tokhtamish had wrought on Mawarannahr in 1387, when the khan had burned to the ground the famous Chaghatay palace at Qarshi, in the valley where Temur had grown up as a boy.
Saray, reported Ibn Battutah, several decades before the ruin inflicted by Temur, was a city ‘of boundless size … choked with its inhabitants’. The bazaars thronged with metalware, leather, wool, grain, furs, timber and slaves. Now it was summarily torched, its citizens left to freeze in the snow. Under licence from their leader, the hungry Tatar hordes helped themselves to the contents of the city while Temur seized ingots of gold and silver, great quantities of weapons and slaves, flax from Antioch, Russian cloth, silks and sables black as jet, ermine, fox and furs of all description. Such was the quantity that ‘it would be tedious to give a detail of all the booty they obtained in this great country’, wrote Yazdi.
It was not just the personal vendetta that drove Temur to ravage the Golden Horde so utterly. Apart from the need to sate his exhausted soldiers’ appetite for booty, self-interest required him to do so. Determined to ensure that Tokhtamish would never again represent a military threat, Temur understood the need to wipe out his commercial cities and centres of production. A large army required domestic prosperity, and this in turn was dependent on trade. Almost overnight, Saray and Tana, both important centres on the caravan routes leading from the Black Sea through Central Asia to the Ming empire of China, ceased to exist. Urganch, a third stop on the northern trade route, had been razed in 1388. Henceforth, the northern trade route that bypassed Temur’s empire was forced into disuse. The caravans diverted south instead, through Persia and Afghanistan into Mawarannahr, thereby transferring the wealth that was once accumulated by Tokhtamish directly to Temur. It was a masterstroke of brutal efficacy.
As his armies eased south towards warmer, more comfortable climes, Temur left behind a devastated Horde. Just as he had planned, and thanks to his support of rival princes, it now fell victim to self-destructive infighting. Arabshah described how the once magnificent khanate became ‘a desert and a waste, the inhabitants scattered, dispersed, routed and destroyed’. In the century after Temur’s death, the Golden Horde collapsed into independent kingdoms, its splendour gone forever. Defeating his northern rival must have been particularly satisfying for Temur, not least because it was righteous punishment of a man who had sought refuge with him, taken his money and accepted his military supplies and support on the battlefield, only to later turn on his former protector in what was, even in the fluid world of Central Asian alliances, the height of opportunism.
As for Tokhtamish, his ambitions remained as great as they had always been. Only now, his ability to prosecute them had been crushed. It never returned. For the rest of his life he roamed across the windy Kipchak steppes in a futile bid to regain power. His days of conquest were over. He had pitted himself against one of the greatest conquerors the world had ever seen, and he had lost. Temur’s stiffest challenge had been overcome. The Unconquered Lord of the Seven Climes, now at the zenith of his glory, remained undefeated.
* * *
* From the mid-fourteenth century, the Golden Horde had started disintegrating under internal pressures. The province of Khorezm had been reunited under the Sufi dynasty, while in the south-east, Urus, descended from Genghis Khan’s eldest son, Jochi, presided over the regions bordering on Moghulistan, known as the White Horde.
* The houris are the stunning dark-eyed virgins who await every Muslim man in the heavenly afterlife. Their youth and celestial good looks are everlasting, their virginity renewable at pleasure. They are referred to in the Koran in a number of suras: ‘As for the righteous, they shall be lodged in peace together amid gardens and fountains, arrayed in rich silks and fine brocade. Even thus: and We shall wed them to dark-eyed houris’ (Sura 44: 51–54).
* In September 2000, I interviewed Professor Omonullo Boriyev, a specialist on Temur, in Tashkent. He told me that in 1968 Ibrahim Muminov, president of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences, had published a book on Temur. Although the publication coincided with UNESCO’s celebrations of Temurid culture in Samarkand, its timing proved disastrous. ‘Of course, he was fired immediately. The Central Communist Committee of Uzbekistan issued a resolution removing all copies of his book. Everything he had written about Temur and his role in Central Asia was censored and ridiculed. The Soviets mobilised other historians to destroy his career, and that was the end of that. There was no way for any Uzbek writer or historian to celebrate Temur. Instead, all that was published were books and articles in which you saw Temur the barbarian, Temur the destroyer, Temur the tyrant and so on.’ Muminov’s treatise, a revisionist attempt to set the record straight by questioning Temur’s official pariah status, dropped like a bombshell on the platitudinous world of Uzbek academe. Professor Boriyev’s views, however, were typical of the new, equally rigorously enforced, orthodoxy. ‘Temur was without equal in history,’ he told me. ‘Now we are independent there is great interest in him in Uzbekistan. The people respect him very much. Streets, schools and villages are named after him, there are more and more statues of him erected across the country. School pupils and university students can now learn the truth about our hero through the conferences arranged by the Amir Temur Fund.’ I asked him what he thought about President Karimov comparing himself with the peerless Tatar. He looked uncomfortable. ‘If the president compares himself with the best, and aspires to that, can that be a bad thing?’ What of Uzbekistan’s neighbours? The Uzbek rehabilitation of Temur as national hero must have been somewhat unsettling for those countries – Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan – whose lands had once fallen under his sway. ‘That is a question for the politicians,’ he replied.
† The case of award-winning Uzbek poet and writer Mamadali Makhmudov provides an insight into what ‘Strength in justice’ means in practice for some people under Karimov’s government. Like Temur, the Uzbek president does not tolerate opposition on any level. Makhmudov was arrested on 19 February 1999, three days after a series of bomb explosions aimed at Karimov rocked Tashkent. He was charged with threatening the president a
nd the constitutional order, and sentenced to fourteen years in prison. His chief crime appears to have been links to the Erk opposition party, outlawed by the government since 1993. The following are excerpts from his testimony smuggled out of court in 2000: ‘I was taken for interrogation by men in disguise. They put a mask on me and [kept me] handcuffed. After questioning, they dragged me across the floor half dead, back to my prison cell … They hit me with batons and kicked me until my body was covered with blood. There was no healthy part left on me. My body turned black and blue and swelled up. My hands and legs were burnt. My nails turned black and fell off. I was hung for hours with my hands tied behind my back. I was given some kind of injection and 1 was forced to take some kind of syrup. In the cold of the winter, there were times when I lost consciousness – then they poured cold water over me. They stuffed something smelly up my nose. In wet clothing, in my icy prison cell, I spent the days and nights all alone in unbearable suffering … They told me they were holding my wife and daughters and threatened to rape them in front of my eyes.’
* Temur could even be invoked in the war on terror, held up as a paragon of statesmanship and guarantor of law and order. As one member of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences wrote: ‘That which Amir Temur valued most – well-being, prosperity and, above all, peace and harmony – has been placed at the head of our independent republic’s agenda to safeguard against disorder and disturbance.’
* The battle was fought east of the Volga river between Samara and Chistopol in what is now the republic of Tatarstan.
* In seeking a treaty with Barquq, Tokhtamish was observing the well-established tradition of the Golden Horde khans by which they allied themselves with the Egyptian sultans and made common cause against the dynasties ruling Persia.
* According to the Yermolinski chronicles, Muscovites were spared Temur’s invasion in large part by the arrival in their city of an icon of the Holy Virgin which worked miracles. Although Grand Prince Vassili I of Muscovy made preparations for a defence of the city, there can be little doubt that had Temur wanted to press on to Moscow, he would have faced little opposition from this comparatively feeble Russian army.
6
Samarkand, the ‘Pearl of the East’
1396–1398
‘The richness and abundance of this great capital and its district is such as is indeed a wonder to behold: and it is for this reason that it bears the name of Samarkand: for this name would be more exactly written Semiz-kent, two words which signify “Rich-Town”, for Semiz in Turkish is fat or rich and Kent means city or township: in time these two words having been corrupted into Samarkand.’
RUY GONZALEZ DE CLAVIJO, Embassy to Tamerlane 1403–1406
‘Samarkand, the most beautiful face the Earth has ever turned towards the sun.’
AMIN MAALOUF, Samarkand
Samarkand roared its welcome as Temur rode into his beloved capital after an absence of four years. The streets heaved with 150,000 citizens, all curious to catch a glimpse of ‘this great emperor in triumph’. For several seasons, they had heard only rumours. Temur was sick; he was on his deathbed; he had recovered and was marching north; he had been defeated and Tokhtamish was heading south to ravage Mawarannahr.
With her great parks and vineyards, her gardens and orchards in full bloom, Samarkand arranged the most sumptuous decorations to greet the emperor at the head of his army. It was a reception designed to reflect the magnificence of Temur’s triumphal procession, when it seemed that half the world trooped into town carrying before it the booty of all Asia. ‘On all sides were to be seen garlands of flowers with crowns, amphitheatres, and musicians performing the newest pieces of music to the honour of his majesty,’ wrote Yazdi. ‘The walls of the houses were hung with carpets, the roofs covered with stuffs, and the shops set off with curious pieces. There was a vast multitude of people, and the streets were covered with velvet, satin, silk and carpets, which the horses trampled underfoot.’ Through this gorgeous tableau walked slaves with bowed heads, scarcely knowing where to look as they moved through the astoundingly opulent city of dazzling domes. Behind them rode the mounted archers, endless columns of them streaming into the city in their most luxurious livery, drunk with the tumultuous celebrations whose din seemed to touch the heavens. The rapturous reception was crowned with Temur’s proclamation of a three-year tax exemption for his subjects.
Temur had good reason to feel pleased with his achievements. The Five-Year Campaign had been completed in four. Persia had been brought back into line, recalcitrant Georgia had been reconquered, and Iraq had folded weakly before him. Above all, his deadliest enemy, Tokhtamish, had been trounced and the Golden Horde exterminated. Mawarannahr now faced no external threats. With the immense treasures plundered from the campaign being carried into Samarkand on the backs of exhausted horses and camels, the empire was at its zenith.
Temur was now in his sixty-first year. For more than half a century he had braved the elements of Asia on horseback. He had endured the fiercest summers and the most brutal winters, constantly on the move. There were signs that his age was starting to steal up on him. In the summer of 1392 he had been dangerously ill for a month, confined to his bed at the outset of his campaign in the west. Mawarannahr had trembled at his sickness, only too aware that the fate of the empire rested on the shoulders of one man. However great and noble his sons and grandsons – two sons, Jahangir and, more recently, Omar Shaykh, had predeceased him*– none possessed his indomitable will, his fearless leadership and his brilliance on the battlefield. None, surely, could bear the weight of empire alone. During that previous illness, Allah in all His wisdom, grace and compassion had intervened to save Temur, but looking into the years ahead, who could fathom the wishes of the Almighty? The emperor’s upright frame was starting to stiffen, his limp was becoming more pronounced and his eyesight less keen. Izrail, the Angel of Death, could not spare him forever.
Such intimations of mortality were to be expected in a man of Temur’s years. Many, if not most, men entering their seventh decade would have been starting to withdraw from active life, looking forward to a time of greater ease and comfort during their autumn years. Temur, inevitably, was different. His career of conquest already marked him out from other men. From humble beginnings he had seized control over vast territories of Asia, retaking the former empires bequeathed by Genghis one by one. First he had risen to power at the head of the reunited Chaghatay ulus. Then he had cast his net out to the west, ransacking the Hulagid dominions and hauling them into his empire. Lastly, he had turned to the north and stamped his authority over the great Jochi ulus of the Golden Horde. Even in the rarefied world of great Asian leaders, he was without equal. Though he was now in his sixties, he betrayed no hint that he had any wish to relinquish the burdens – physical, intellectual, emotional – of empire-building. On the contrary, he was more assertive than ever. He seemed positively to thrive on the business of empire.
Historians have traditionally faulted Temur for his failure to bequeath a long-lasting empire to his successors. Though Babur, his great-great-great-grandson, founded the Mughal dynasty in India – which survived until the nineteenth century – it is true the Temurid empire was short-lived. Within a century of Temur’s death, it had ceased to exist. This impermanence owed itself to the highly autocratic system of rule he instituted. In a word, the system was Temur. As Beatrice Forbes Manz explained in her scholarly study of his life, ‘His government was that of an individual, who interfered at will in the affairs of his subordinates and demanded direct and complete loyalty from his subjects – loyalty not to his office, nor to his government, but to his person. For the period of his life this administration served its purpose well.’
Temur was able to draw on two parallel structures for the administration of his empire. First there was the Turco-Mongolian system of government, with its hereditary official positions, common to the nomadic empires of his neighbours such as the Golden Horde and the Ilkhanids. Then there was the Persian bur
eaucracy in the settled lands of the west. The former was tasked with the administration of the court and military affairs, the latter took charge of financial matters, most notably tax collection, though there was considerable overlap between the two.
Persian scribes and Chaghatay amirs worked side by side supervising the provincial courts – or diwans – which operated throughout the empire. Their inspections of local government occasionally unearthed instances of embezzlement and corruption, which could be punishable by death. Both could work together, too, in collecting ransom money from defeated cities and registering the contents of their treasuries. Temur retained the military Mongol office of darugha – regional governor – and usually granted it to the Chaghatays. At times, however, he appointed religious figures or Persian scribes to the post. These governors were by no means stationary officials bound to stay in their capitals. Instead, they were required to rove widely with the army on Temur’s campaigns. As Forbes Manz has underscored, what is most striking about a study of Temur’s administration is the vagueness and imprecision of official posts and the duties associated with them. For instance, though it was traditionally the duty of tovachis to conscript the emperor’s armies – as well as to ensure that they had all the proper equipment in decent order – this prestigious role was not exclusive. Amirs could equally be used for the same task.
In practice, the structure of Temur’s government was less important than the fact that power was exercised personally, rather than through institutions. Temur’s life was spent in the saddle campaigning. His energies were not given over to formalising the mechanics of government. The authority of the darughas and diwans, the princes and amirs, all depended directly on the emperor.
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