Tamerlane

by Justin Marozzi

We saw indeed here so many apartments and separate chambers, all of which were adorned in tile work of blue and gold with many other colours … Next they showed us the various apartments where Temur was wont to be and to occupy when he came here with his wives; all of which were very sumptuously adorned as to floors and walls and ceilings … we visited a great banqueting hall which Temur was having built wherein to feast with the princesses, and this was gorgeously adorned, being very spacious, while beyond the same they were laying out a great orchard in which were planted many and diverse fruit trees, with others to give shade. These stood round water basins beside which there were laid out fine lawns of turf. This orchard was of such an extent that a very great company might conveniently assemble here, and in the summer heat enjoy the cool air beside that water in the shade of these trees.

  These were the opulent gardens of an emperor maintaining a self-consciously Mongol court in the tradition of Genghis Khan. Shakhrisabz, the Green City, was entering its golden age. In 1379, said Yazdi, ‘The emperor, charmed with the beauties of this city, the purity of the air in its plains, the deliciousness of its gardens, and the goodness of the waters, made it his ordinary residence in summer and declared it the second seat of his empire.’

  Ak Sarai palace, more than any other built by Temur, was designed to impress, to demonstrate, in the words of the Kufic inscription on the eastern tower, that ‘the Sultan is the shadow of Allah [on earth]’. Legend describes how Temur, infuriated by the curtailed inscription ‘the Sultan is a shadow’ on the western tower, flung the craftsman responsible from the top of the palace. Other inscriptions paid elaborate tribute to the Tatar’s shining qualities. ‘Oh Benefactor of the People, long may you rule like Sulayman. May you be like Nuh in longevity! May this palace bring felicity [to its tenant]. The Heavens are astonished at its beauty,’ read one. ‘The Sultan binds his enemies with [the chains of] his good deeds,’ thundered another. ‘Whosoever turns to him gains satisfaction. The fame of his good deeds, like a sweet odour, is ubiquitous. His goodness is evident. His face is clear and his motion agreeable.’ How tiny visitors would have felt as they passed through the portal. What a way to put one’s visitors in their place, to make them aware, if any doubts remained, that they were in the company of one of the greatest leaders on earth.

  The portal towers one sees today have been trimmed down to 120 feet by a combination of war, greed and the passage of time. Yet, even at less than 60 per cent of their original height, they rise majestically, dominating their immediate surroundings in an architectural creation that marries strength with finesse, elegance with simplicity. Towards the top of the towers, above the turquoise and navy-blue Kufic inscriptions of ‘Allah’ and ‘Mohammed’ – which to the untrained eye appear only as pretty geometric patterns – the devastating curve of the arch begins. No sooner has it begun its sweep across the heavens than it is instantly cut off by a chasm of sky. Each tower stands in dramatic isolation.

  The scale is overwhelming. But what must it have looked like in its full fantastically decadent glory, when the gold-encrusted roof reached to the stars, when Temur’s various wives – Clavijo counted eight during his stay – sashayed through the banqueting hall in their rustling silk dresses to take their places reclining among sumptuous cushions and brocades in a garden of pristine lawns and fruit trees, amid the streams and fountains? Here among the luxurious tents and awnings, lined with silk in summer and fur in winter, illuminated at night by the soft flicker of lamps, the song of their voices would have floated up towards the stars.

  The restorers have been at work here, and new tiles have replaced those which have not survived, but the essentially ruined state of the palace has been maintained. Temur’s most lavish monument is now little more than two foreshortened towers, sunk in the earth like the tusks of a giant beast brought to ground. But it is this very ruination that adds to the grandeur of the impression, a reminder that the original building was of a size and splendour beyond our imagination. Or, as an unusually flummoxed Clavijo put it, as workmen milled around him, still busy after all those years working on the palace, ‘such indeed was the richness and beauty of the adornment displayed in all these palaces that it would be impossible for us to describe’.

  It is still possible, sweating and panting in the streaming heat, to climb to the top for a vantage point over Shakhrisabz. (How much harder it would have been in Temur’s time, when the towers stood at their full height.) Farther afield to the south, the monumental blue dome of the Kok Gumbaz Mosque, built by Temur’s grandson Ulugh Beg in 1435–36, interrupts the leafy skyline. Another, smaller blue dome, a junior member of the family, sits next to it. Corrugated-iron roofs, pockets of blinding light, sizzle in the sun. Birds wheel and soar overhead on the thermals.

  Directly in front of the Ak Sarai palace, halfway down Victory Park, stands a statue of Temur. He stares into time with a far-off gaze, a symbol of strength and authority, protector of Shakhrisabz. He wears a simple crown. A large belt with a circular embossed buckle is fastened across a calf-length tunic trimmed with paisley patterns. A curved sword is fastened to his left side. A flowing gown hangs from his shoulders. The solid boots emphasise the sense of permanence and power.

  Nowadays, dwarfed by the statue and monumental plinth, regularly-spaced processions of bridal parties make their way towards it, laying flowers at Temur’s feet and having themselves photographed beneath the Father of the State. The end of each ceremony is marked by the popping of a bottle of Uzbek champagne. No sooner does one party depart than another arrives. It is a pleasant picture: young couples standing respectfully in front of the giant figure of Temur, framed by the ruined towers of his palace in the background. The women seem joyful, however nervous their smiles. But the men without fail look deadly serious, scowling into the cameras as though they would rather be somewhere else.

  Late on a sun-spattered October afternoon, several hundred yards away from Temur along the sprawling Ipak Yuli street which cleaves Shakhrisabz in two, a throng of elderly men adjourn to a local chaikhana (tea-house), where they sit languidly on cushions on a raised topchan (wooden platform), away from their wives and families. All wear the traditional chapan gown, some striped in bright purples and indigos, others black and faded. Some wear them as capes, with the distinctive long sleeves hanging down empty almost to their knees. Others have rolled up the sleeves. White, grey or black turbans or the more elaborate embroidered doppes perch on their heads like decorative nests. Most have beards, long manes of silver that they stroke from time to time, as unhurried as the passing of the seasons. Clustered together around glasses of kok chai (green tea), these men in their ancient costumes are remnants from another era, guardians of history, surrounded on all sides by a younger generation – clad in shell-suits, baseball caps and trainers – which has no time for the sartorial traditions of old.

  The tea-house is a fitting place for the elders to make their stand, for this is where the past – and the trail of Temur – begins in Shakhrisabz. Ipak Yuli street is a historical feast which begins with the delicate appetiser of the fourteenth-century Malik Azhdar Khanaqah, originally a refuge for wandering Sufi dervishes, later one of the town’s Friday mosques, and in Soviet times a simple museum. The procession of dishes continues with the fifteenth-century baths nearby, now under restoration. Next comes the Koba Madrassah (religious college), formerly a seat of learning teeming with rows of boys learning the Koran. Sometime in the last few years it careered into capitalism and evolved into a courtyard crammed with market stalls selling fake designer jeans, cheap shoes and trainers. Farther down the principal street, thrusting into the skyline with the arrogance of beauty, is the Dorut Tilovat, Seat of Respect and Consideration, whose centrepiece is the most extravagant dish of all, the Kok Gumbaz Mosque visible from the Ak Sarai palace, built by Ulugh Beg, Temur’s grandson, the astronomer king.

  This was the first place to which Clavijo was taken on his arrival in Shakhrisabz, when the mosque was still unfinished. ‘Here daily
by the special order of Temur the meat of twenty sheep is cooked and distributed in alms, this being done in memory of his father and of his son who lie here in those chapels,’ he noted. Plied with vast quantities of meat and fruit, the Spaniard heard how Temur’s cherished son Jahangir had been buried there, together with the emperor’s father Taraghay. Temur himself was going to be laid to rest beneath this dome, Clavijo was told.

  The restorers have been at work here too, and the portal is ablaze with glimmering blue tiles. Local legend says Temur’s father and his spiritual Sufi adviser Shaykh Shams ad-din Kulya are buried beneath ancient onyx carvings in one of the surviving mausolea from the Barlas funeral grounds. Nearby is a small domed chamber which houses four tombstones belonging to Ulugh Beg’s kinsmen. A hollow has been worn into the Kok Tash (blue stone) from centuries of parents pouring water onto it for sick children or relatives to drink. The stone contains medicinal salts.

  After this tombstone calm, the main market is an explosion of activity. Farmers have come to town with their wives and children to sell their produce. They squat in the dust over wooden crates and metal buckets crammed with tomatoes, onions and apples. Peasant women in cheap patterned dresses and bright headscarves dust off their produce and arrange it in neat piles. Shaven-headed boys stand by makeshift trolleys, ready to cart off loads for anyone who requires a porter. Large awnings have been erected to shade mountains of melons the size of cannonballs. This, at least, has not changed, for Clavijo remarked on exactly the same phenomenon. ‘The water melons there are as large as a horse’s head … the very best and biggest that may be found in the whole world,’ he wrote. Some are being loaded onto the back of a lorry, thrown carefully by a man on the ground to a boy in the vehicle. Wrinkled women hold forth behind a stone counter selling soft cheese, scooping their products into pretty pyramids and vying with each other to attract customers. Long counters are given over to sweets, nuts and piles of pasta, biscuits and exotic spices. Sacks of semechka sunflower seeds lie open, delved into at will by passing strangers. Men, women and children pick up handfuls, expertly bite down the middle of the seed, spit out the outer covering and chew the tiny kernels as though they are the choicest delicacies rather than the poor man’s snack. Fruit and vegetables lie on the ground and on counters, wherever there is space. Here, as in Temur’s time, there are peaches, pears and pomegranates, plums, apricots, apples, grapes and figs, potatoes, peppers and onions. Some stalls specialise in plastic bags of pre-cut carrots for use in plov, an oily dish of rice, meat and vegetables. Butchers with huge cleavers chop away at cuts of meat that would be consigned to the rubbish bin in wealthier countries. Carcasses hang from hooks, dripping pools of blood into the dust. It is a place of perpetual motion. People come and go on foot, on bicycles, on trolleys, carts, donkeys and horses. Those who wish to escape the sun have adjourned to a small eatery, whose front is covered several layers deep in bicycles. Under the gallery men chew on shashlik kebabs or plates of manty, mutton and onion dumplings topped with smetana sour cream. Some of them congregate like soldiers around a cauldron of plov, steaming away on a fire.

  Life is hard in Shakhrisabz, as it is throughout Uzbekistan. The lustre that the town enjoyed in Temur’s time, six centuries ago, has virtually disappeared. The once luminous jewel of an ever-expanding empire has become a crumbling ruin in a forgotten former Soviet backwater mired in corruption and poverty. The glory of Shakhrisabz has long gone. Only the ruins, and the gleaming statue of Temur, suggest it ever existed.

  In 1365, on the banks of the Amu Darya, Temur stood a very long way indeed from glory. His ally Amir Husayn had just deserted him on the battlefield in his first serious reversal. A growing sense of resentment and rivalry was starting to emerge between the two men. It came to life at the fateful battle of the Mire.

  Ilyas Khoja, the former governor of Mawarannahr, had invaded again. His army was close to Tashkent when he encountered the forces of Temur and Husayn. Battle was joined as the heavens opened. Amidst thunder and lightning the rain poured down, turning the ground into an illuminated quagmire which swamped man and beast alike. Pressing hard against the Moghuls, Temur seized the upper hand and signalled for Husayn, nominally his commander, to bring forward his men and finish off the enemy. Yet Husayn held back. The Moghul forces rushed to take advantage of this fatal mistake and swarmed through, cutting men down on all sides. Ten thousand were killed. Temur and Husayn fled south across the Amu Darya. It was an ignominious ending.

  It was also instructive. For a man like Temur with ambitions far beyond this small theatre of war, it sowed the seeds of doubt into his alliance with Husayn. How reliable was a man who refused to fight alongside his partner in battle when the fighting was at its most critical? In Temur’s mind, he had been betrayed. It is unlikely, in any case, that either Temur or Husayn considered this a permanent alliance. That, after all, was the way of the steppes. Alliances were regularly made and just as promptly broken. In the short term, however, the partnership continued. A year after the battle of the Mire, Temur and Husayn celebrated success with their brutal overthrow of the independent Sarbadar leadership of Samarkand and installed themselves as the new rulers.* Officially, as before, Husayn, the nomad aristocrat, grandson of Amir Qazaghan, was the senior man.

  But already Temur was winning a personal following. His amirs and soldiers, encouraged by his generosity in distributing plundered treasures, loved him. Husayn, by contrast, was mean-minded. To recoup the heavy losses he had incurred in the ill-fated battle of the Mire, he raised a punitive head tax on Temur’s amirs and followers. It was so exorbitant, said the chronicles, that it was completely beyond their means. Temur was reduced to offering his horses, and went so far as to give Husayn the gold and silver necklaces, earrings and bracelets belonging to his wife Aljai, Husayn’s sister. Husayn recognised the family jewels as he tallied up the levies, but was only too happy to pocket them. His avarice did not escape notice. Temur’s star, however, was on the rise.

  The alliance between the two aspiring warlords had been sealed with the marriage of Temur to Aljai. Her death at this time, which represented the final severance of family ties, now looked like a harbinger of destiny. From 1366 to 1370, the two men duly opted in and out of temporary alliances, now uniting against Moghul invaders, now resolved each to exterminate the other. With every year that passed one thing became increasingly clear: the vast lands of Mawarannahr were not big enough to encompass their rival ambitions.

  Temur used these years profitably. He consolidated his popularity with his tribesmen and cast a shrewd eye over those other sections of society whose support he would need if he were to govern alone: the Muslim clergy; the nomad aristocracy of the steppe; merchants; agricultural workers; the settled populations of towns and villages, hurt by endless conflict. Husayn, on the other hand, progressively alienated his subjects with onerous and capricious taxes. His fateful decision to rebuild and fortify the citadel of Balkh was a provocative gesture to the nomad aristocracy who opposed settlement and saw in its broad walls and defences the rise of Husayn’s power and the decline of their own.

  Temur continued to win more and more followers to his cause. The Moghuls had been successfully repelled. Now he set his sights on removing the last obstacle to supreme power in southern Mawarannahr.

  Eventually, the time arrived. At the head of his forces, Temur rode south in 1370, crossing the Amu Darya at Termez (with covetous eyes he would march this way again in 1398, taking his armies across the roof of the world to war with India). Here he met Imam Sayid Baraka of Andkhoi, ‘one of the most illustrious lords of the house of the prophet’, according to Yazdi, a Muslim sage from Mecca or Medina who was in search of equally illustrious patronage. Having earlier been rebuffed by Husayn, Baraka turned instead to Temur, who proved more receptive to the older man’s advances. The white-bearded cleric could not have harmed his chances by foretelling a magnificent future for Temur and handing him a standard and a kettle-drum, traditional emblems of royalty. ‘This
great Sharif resolved to spend all his days with a prince whose greatness he had foretold,’ wrote Yazdi, ‘and Temur ordered that after his death they should be both laid in the same tomb, and that his face should be turned sideways, that at the day of judgement, when every one should lift up their hands to heaven to implore assistance of some intercessor, he might lay hold on the robe of this child of the prophet Mahomet.’ (On his death, Temur was laid to rest in a tomb at the feet of his spiritual guide, a position of unprecedented modesty for the mightiest of monarchs.* )

  Assured of Allah’s protection, Temur pressed on south, where his army surrounded Husayn’s capital of Balkh. Fighting raged between the followers of the two protagonists. Eventually, the city walls were forced and Temur’s marauding troops cut loose. Isolated inside his citadel, Husayn watched his enemy advance until at last he appreciated the imminence of his own ruin. Throwing himself on Temur’s mercy, he promised to leave Mawarannahr for the haj (pilgrimage) to Mecca if his former brother in arms spared his life. But it was too late for contrition.

  Husayn’s death, when it came, bordered on the farcical. Doubting Temur’s promises of quarter, he first hid inside a minaret until he was discovered by a soldier who had climbed the tower in an effort to find his lost horse. The officer encountered a trembling Husayn, who tried to bribe him with pearls. The soldier reported his discovery but Husayn escaped again, this time hiding in a hut. Happened upon by watchful soldiers once more, he was finally handed over to his arch-rival. Pontius Pilate-like, Temur refused to condone his killing – he had given his word that Husayn’s life be spared – but did nothing to stop Kay-Khusrau, one of his chiefs who had a blood feud with the ruler of Balkh, from carrying out the deed.

  The reckoning had come. Temur was triumphant. His greatest rival had been eliminated. Balkh was robbed of its treasures and razed to the ground, prefiguring the rapine, slaughter and destruction that awaited the rest of Asia.