Tamerlane

by Justin Marozzi

  But there was one last ruse to be played. As the two armies faced each other across the divide, Temur gave orders very publicly for his sumptuous tents and pavilions to be unpacked and erected, and his carpets laid out. It was a deliberate show of contempt for the Horde, and an exercise in psychological warfare typical of his imagination and audacity. According to the chronicle, although Tokhtamish’s forces were more numerous than the Tatars, this eleventh-hour performance shattered their morale.

  The early hours of 18 June 1391 did not look much different from a typical summer’s dawn in these northern regions. The grey sky, flat and all-consuming, offered only the weariest of light. The cold was the same insistent force as ever, rushing in on the tails of the wind. What was exceptional on this day, though, were the odd shapes and sounds seeping through the gloom. The dark lines of the two armies stretched for several miles into the half-light until they merged with the dark earth and the pale horizon, and disappeared altogether. Here and there angular protuberances rose from this dark mass – a lance, a standard, a guard on horseback. A disturbed hush hung over the lines of war, hinting at calamity.

  On the Tatar side, Temur rode out in front of his army, dismounted, kissed the earth and prayed for the assistance of almighty Allah. The soldiers, with quickening heartbeats and throbbing temples, broke out into spontaneous roars of ‘Allahu akbar, God is great.’ Imam Sayid Baraka stepped forward to add his blessings to the imminent battle. Around him the drums started to beat and the trumpets sounded their terrible call. The holy man prostrated himself on the ground, recited a passage from the Koran and scooped up some dirt. He faced the Horde and his voice rose to shouting pitch. ‘Your faces shall be blackened through the shame of your defeat,’ he yelled. Then he turned to the emperor he had served so dutifully for twenty years, and his voice lowered almost to a whisper. ‘Go where you please,’ he said, ‘you shall be victorious.’ The drums and trumpets struck up again, rising in a crescendo, the battle-cry ‘Surun, Surun’ filled the sky and Asia shuddered as her greatest armies thundered towards each other across the divide. The following words are from Arabshah:

  Then both armies, when they came in sight one of the other, were kindled and mingling with each other became hot with the fire of war, and they joined battle and necks were extended for sword-blows and throats outstretched for spear thrusts and faces were drawn with sternness and fouled with dust, the wolves of war set their teeth and fierce leopards mingled and charged and the lions of the armies rushed upon each other and men’s skins bristled, clad with the feathers of arrows, and the brows of the leaders drooped and the heads of the captains bent in the devotion of war and fell forward, and the dust was thickened and stood black and the leaders and common soldiers alike plunged into seas of blood, and arrows became in the darkness of black dust like stars placed to destroy the Princes of Satan, while swords glittering like fulminating stars in clouds of dust rushed on kings and sultans, nor did the horses of death cease to pass through and revolve and race against the squadrons which charged straight ahead or the dust of hooves to be borne into the air or the blood of swords to flow over the plain, until the earth was rent and the heavens like the eight seas; and this struggle and conflict lasted about three days.

  Battle began with a charge from Temur’s right wing under Miranshah against Tokhtamish’s left. The fighting was furious but indecisive, with neither side breaking through the ranks of the enemy. Horses careered wildly at each other, their riders unleashing vicious volleys of arrows at their adversaries. At closer quarters, the sabres and scimitars were unsheathed, and steel blades rained down from the sky, slashing through anything that opposed them. In the general mêlée that followed the first attack, Temur seized the advantage on the right flank and in the centre. In response, Tokhtamish directed his right wing against the Tatar left led by Omar Shaykh, detaching it from the main body of the army with the aid of his greater numbers and threatening to engulf it completely. But then, in the heat of the action, just as the men of the Golden Horde looked set to carry the day, confusion suddenly gripped them when they saw that the horned standard of Tokhtamish had vanished from the field. It was the surest sign their leader was dead. In fact he was alive, but had abandoned his men and fled the battlefield, ‘seized with fear and despair’ as Temur’s horse-tail standard bore down on him. Panic descended on the Kipchaks and spread through the ranks. Soon the army that was on the verge of routing Temur’s host was itself in headlong flight, chased and cut down without mercy by the rampaging Tatars. ‘For the space of forty leagues whither they were pursued nothing could be seen but rivers of blood and the plains covered with dead bodies,’ wrote Yazdi. A hundred thousand men and women lost their lives at the battle of Kunduzcha.*

  The long march north was over. Temur kissed the earth and offered up thanks to God for delivering him this famous victory. Once more he and his army tasted the sweet fruits of victory. The amirs and princes of the blood stepped forward to congratulate him, sprinkling gold and precious stones over him, as was the custom. The booty was immense. The poorest soldiers plundered more horses than they could take back to Samarkand. There were camels, sheep and cattle. Those Kipchak men and women who had not been butchered were instantly thrown into slavery. Five thousand boys were chosen for service in the imperial household. The most beautiful girls and women were destined for the harem.

  Ruthless in his prosecution of war, Temur was lavish in his celebrations of triumph. Orders were given for a grand festival on the banks of the Volga, on the very plain where Jochi, son of Genghis, had held his seat of empire. Row after row of warriors sat inside the handsome pavilions in front of golden platters heaped with roast horse-meat, toasting their invincible emperor and reliving their battlefield heroics with tall stories. At their elbows stood the most desirable captives, beguiling women dressed in silks, filling their crystal cups with wine, filling and refilling them until, unable to drink any more, the warriors collapsed on the ground or grabbed a companion for the night and staggered heavily back to their tents. For a full month they sank into these blissful excesses, forgetting the fatigues of war, losing themselves in rousing music, bumpers of wine and deep embraces. Tokhtamish, it is true, had escaped their clutches, but his Horde had been shattered. New leaders had been installed in his place, and division sown among the Kipchaks. The threat to Mawarannahr, the land beyond the river, had been removed. Their mission was accomplished.

  That should have been the end of Tokhtamish. His struggle for supremacy had been fought and lost. Though the contest on the battlefield had been extremely close for several hours, in the end he had been utterly routed. Most men would have been grateful simply to have survived the slaughter. After that catastrophic reversal, few would have dreamt of resuming a career of conquest. But unfortunately for Temur, the ambitions of the khan of the Golden Horde proved more difficult to destroy than his mighty army.

  Three years after the battle of Kunduzcha, Temur was campaigning in the western empire. Persia had reverted to its unruly ways and a rebellion had broken out among the eternally feuding Muzaffarid princes. The troops of Mawarannahr, levied for a new, Five-Year Campaign, left Samarkand in early 1392. Sweeping all before him, Temur blazed through Mazandaran before continuing north-west to reconquer recalcitrant Georgia. From there he marched south, retaking Shiraz and occupying Baghdad without a fight after the battle-shy Sultan Ahmed abandoned his dominions once again.

  By 1394, already aware that Tokhtamish was reassembling an army and contracting an alliance with Sultan Barquq of Egypt against Temur, the Tatar was brought disturbing news.* The Kipchaks of the Golden Horde had rumbled south through Georgia and were now laying waste once more to the borders of his empire. A force was sent at once to give battle, but in typical fashion the Horde retired the way it had come, vanishing back into the steppes.

  On hearing these reports, Temur must have rued his failure to capture and kill Tokhtamish when their armies had last met. The sultan of Egypt was steadily emerging as an ad
versary who would have to be dealt with in due course. And after the great gains made during his westward expansion, Temur’s empire was beginning to rub uncomfortably close to the lands of the Ottoman sultan. A confrontation there also looked likely. But both these opponents could wait. Having been scorched on the battlefield, Tokhtamish was now emerging phoenix-like from the ashes. He had to be destroyed.

  The initial formalities took little time. An envoy was sent to Tokhtamish with a direct ultimatum:

  After having given God the thanks which are due to the governor of the world; I demand of you, whom the devil of pride hath turned from the right way, what is your design in passing beyond your bounds? Who has put you upon such vain undertakings? Have you forgotten how in the last war your country and effects were reduced to nothing? You certainly behave with great rashness, since you oppose your own happiness. Is it possible you can be so ignorant that they who have testified their friendship to me, have been received with respect, and drawn great advantages from the treaties I have made with them, and which I have inviolably observed; while my enemies have not only been under continual disquiets and fears, but also been unable to escape my vengeance, though in the greatest security? You are acquainted with my victories, and are persuaded that peace or war are equally indifferent to me. You have experienced both my mildness and severity. When you have read this letter, do not delay sending me an answer; but let me know your resolution, either for war or peace.

  The khan of the Golden Horde was not interested in peace. His character was far too similar to that of Temur, unable and unwilling to settle, ever striving to win new lands by the sword. The greatest difference between them was in their respective talents and fortunes on the battlefield.

  Temur wintered near the Caspian, enjoying the company of his wives during these desolate months. In the spring of 1395, as the snows receded, he bade them farewell and sent them home. The pleasures of the imperial pavilion must give way to war.

  Another review was ordered. The emperor reminded his amirs and their officers of their glorious triumphs of recent years. Of their conquest of Persia, Iraq and Georgia. Of their earlier destruction of Tokhtamish. This was the last time they would fight the khan of the Golden Horde, he assured them. Never again would this ungrateful princeling dare to trespass on the empire. Victory was, as always, in the hands of Allah, and in His boundless mercy and wisdom He would bless them once more against this treacherous infidel.

  Never since the time of Genghis had such a vast army been seen in the region, said Yazdi. The vanguard of Temur’s left wing stood at the foot of the Elburz mountains, the right wing on the banks of the Caspian. The order to march in full battle formation was given. The army was not to be surprised by Tokhtamish. Golden eagles circled overhead, high above the forests of juniper trees and maple. Brown bears and wild boars, lynxes and leopards, roamed the landscape in the shadows of Mount Damavand, the dormant volcano.

  Skirting the Caspian, the Tatars marched first west, then swung along a gentle arc north. Through the famous Derbend pass they continued, the spot where Tokhtamish had launched his predatory raids on Tabriz exactly ten years before. Once they had passed Georgia and its capital Tiflis, laying waste to vineyards as they moved through, they were in modern-day Chechnya. Here the countryside was far more enclosed than the northern steppes of the Horde, who had less room to withdraw and hide. The elaborate chase on which Tokhtamish had led Temur for five months prior to their last battle could not be repeated in this sort of territory. And so, in April 1395, at the Terek river near what is today the city of Grozny, Temur happened upon his enemy.

  The advantage was with Tokhtamish, who held the northern bank after crossing the river at the only available ford. Knowing that Temur was pressing him hard, he guarded the passage to prevent his rival’s approach. The Spanish envoy Clavijo recorded the Tatar’s subsequent manoeuvres.

  On coming up, Temur, finding that Tokhtamish was in possession of this passage, halted, sending envoys to Tokhtamish demanding why he acted thus, and assuring him that he, Temur, had not come to make war on him, being indeed his good friend, and calling on God to witness that he, Temur, on his part had never intended any aggression against him. Tokhtamish, however, would listen to none of his message, knowing well the guile of Temur. The next day therefore Temur broke up his camp and proceeded to march up the river bank on the south side, seeing which Tokhtamish did likewise and marched his host along the northern bank keeping pace opposite him. Thus the one following the other, both hosts took the way upstream, and at night camped each over against the other with the river in between. This business went on and was repeated during three days, neither army outstripping the other, but on the third night as soon as his camp was formed, Temur issued orders that all the women who marched with his soldiers should don helmets with the men’s war-gear to play the part of soldiers, while the men should mount and forthwith ride back with him to the ford, each horseman taking with him a second mount led by the bridle. Thus the camp was left in charge of the women disguised as warriors, with their slaves and captives under guard, while Temur went back by a forced march the three days’ journey to where the river could be crossed.

  The most revealing words in this passage are ‘the guile of Temur’. The Tatar’s first attempt at trickery was brazen. He can hardly have expected it to work. After the history between the two men, after the rout at Kunduzcha, and after his pursuit of Tokhtamish across Asia to the banks of the Terek, his intentions would not have been difficult to divine. For three days, then, the battle of wits continued, the necessary prelude to conflict as both leaders vied for position. Temur only broke this stalemate by deploying the extraordinary device of dressing up the women as soldiers, a plan so far-fetched it is scarcely credible. Had it not been for the many instances in which Temur had already displayed his mastery of the art of warfare – both conventional and psychological – his grasp of the counter-intuitive and his love of highly imaginative risk-taking, we would probably accuse the Castilian of high spirits and credulousness.

  As it is, we know much about Temur’s talents in these areas from a number of sources. The most remarkable example was given by Archbishop John of Sultaniya, who told the story of a young Temur outwitting his adversary through tactics as ingenious as they were improbable. The event was said to have occurred prior to his coronation in 1370. Summoned by a hereditary khan to submit to his authority or face him on the battlefield, Temur resorted to an elaborate ruse. Since he did not have an army strong enough to deploy on the battlefield, he pretended he was sick. While receiving the khan’s envoys, he started vomiting blood copiously, the result, though they did not know it, of consuming a basinful of wild boar’s blood. Predictably, the envoys returned to their master with news of Temur’s imminent death. Catching the khan and his courtly entourage entirely unawares, Temur promptly defeated them with ease.

  On 22 April 1395, battle commenced. The Tatar left wing came under heavy pressure from the start. At the head of twenty-seven regiments of the reserve, and under cover of his archers’ fire, Temur charged forward to support it. The counter-attack was so successful that they drove the enemy far back, until they found themselves separated from the main force of the army, heavily outnumbered by the regrouping Horde. The emperor himself was under fierce assault, fighting hand-to-hand as wave upon wave of Kipchaks surged forward against him. ‘His arrows were all discharged, his half-pike broke to shatters,’ reported Yazdi. Seeing his leader on the point of death, Shaykh Nur ad-din rushed to his protection with a small body of fifty men. Dismounting from their horses, they formed a circle around him, kneeling on one knee and firing volleys of arrows at the Horde. Some of Temur’s officers captured three wagons from Tokhtamish’s men and used them as a barricade, over which the familiar horse-tail standard stood aloft.

  While Temur and his men stood their ground in desperate straits, Mohammed Sultan rallied his right wing, took the fight to Tokhtamish’s left and inflicted heavy losses on him, forcing his ad
versary ever farther back. Amir Sayf ad-din Nukuz, leading the vanguard of the right wing, was hard pressed, his men dismounting under orders and defending themselves behind shields, fending off blows from swords and lances. Eventually, the left wing of the Horde gave way, turned to flight and was chased off the field. Demoralised by this loss, Tokhtamish’s centre now faced its opposite number. The two sides fought like ‘enraged lions … so that the blood flowed in this place like a torrent’. The Horde was first to buckle, at which point Tokhtamish, with his men in disorder all about him, ‘shamefully’ turned his back on the battlefield and rode for his life. Kicking their chargers for all they were worth, the Tatar horsemen galloped after Tokhtamish and his retreating Horde, hurling down their blades on them and screaming ‘Victory!’

  This was a defeat from which Tokhtamish never recovered. There was nothing now to stop Temur’s men from marching north to avenge his depredations against Mawarannahr. With its army cut down or flying for its life, the Golden Horde was defenceless. It was time for plunder.

  Looking at a map charting Temur’s various campaigns and the routes taken by his armies, one curiously shaped loop stands out. It is clear that this represents his northernmost venture. From the Terek river, the line of his progress through the Golden Horde swings round in a gentle north-eastern arc towards Astrakhan, thence north again to Saray, capital of the Golden Horde. After continuing towards Moscow, there is an abrupt change of direction and the line thrusts west for more than four hundred miles to the Dnieper river on the shores of the Black Sea. Here it heads first south, then east and finally north once more to form another smaller loop. The advance north continues just beyond the Russian city of Yelets before wheeling round tightly and returning south. From the Terek river to the northernmost point of the campaign, the distance as the crow flies is about 750 miles. Taking into account the frequent changes of direction, the true distance travelled in the Horde after Tokhtamish’s defeat is far longer, several thousand miles at least.