Timur the Lame

Timur the Lame (1336-1405), also known as Tamerlane and Tamburlaine, was one of the great conquerors of history. Born into the Chagatai Khanate at Kesh, near Samarkand and now in Uzbekistan (then known in the west as Transoxiana), he demonstrated through military prowess his Mongol lineage – after all, Chagatai was a son of Genghis Khan and a great warrior in his own right. His early exploits included receiving the arrow that caused him his famous limp and gave him his nickname. Once he had turned against his one time liege Ilyas Khoja and made himself ruler or Khan of Transoxiana, he declared that he had restored the Mongol Empire through his own person and that this, therefore, gave him license to dominate by force of arms all that he could. Moreover, as a Muslim, Timur claimed the right to spread the faith by sword and fire if necessary and also the right to punish those Islamic leaders he judged to have fallen below the requisite standards of faith. That was, for example, the justification that he used to invade India and campaign against the Islamic Sultanate of Delhi, which he claimed was acting in too lenient a way towards the Hindu people of the realm.

Timur fought successfully against Persia, India, the Mongol Khan of Crimea Toktamysh and the Golden Horde of the Mongols. His armies were composed of components from all those lands he conquered or allied with him. Hence, in addition to the tradition of mounted archers derived from the Mongols, he also deployed Indian elephants and infantry, Persian cavalry, Georgians, Syrians and Mamlukes from Egypt. His campaigns, while generally victorious, were marked by inordinate bloodshed, stranding out even in a time of often savage warfare. In western countries, insofar as news from distant Asia could reach those remote and unruly princedoms, the thought of a vicious and victorious Muslim warrior was sufficient to strike fear into the hearts of any who heard the stories.

Timur’s reputation has, of course, been indelibly affected by the plays concerning his life written by Christopher Marlowe. Marlowe’s Tamburlaine is an extraordinary and very powerful figure who celebrates his victory over the mighty Persian army by keeping the Sultan Bajazeth in a cage and tormenting him. Not only that, Tamburlaine is vainglorious beyond conceit, imagining himself to be some kind of force of nature and a creature beyond the ken of humanity: “But Lady, this faire face and heavenly hew,/ Must grace his bed that conquers Asia:/ And meanes to be a terrour to the world,/ Measuring the limits of his Emperie/ By East and west, as Phoebus doth his course (Part I, Act 1 Scene 2).” In reality, Timur was a splendid and awe-inspiring enough figure to stand without this bombast and, indeed, so he is remembered as a great hero in his homeland. In the west, he remains a more mysterious and frightening creature of evil.