Tamerlane

by Justin Marozzi

  No sooner had the taxis departed than another convoy arrived. Another meringue and her groom were deposited on the road and the process was repeated all over again. More fussing about the wedding dress. A sombre march up to the statue. Another bunch of flowers. More photos.

  As I watched, I realised what a dramatic reversal of fortune these touching ceremonies represented. Who could have foreseen it? Who could have predicted how history would treat Temur? During the six centuries after his death he had been successively neglected by historians, erased by the Soviets, and now revered as the father of his nation. Overlooking his city’s greatest monuments, Temur had finally returned from the shadows, restored to his beloved Samarkand.

  By the beginning of 1398, Temur had spent almost two years in Samarkand, by his standards an eternity. But this lull in his military campaigns had not been unprofitable, and disguised considerable activity on other fronts. The various architectural works – the fabulous parks and gardens and palaces – lent further lustre to his imperial capital, which had multiplied in size and riches during his reign. Pearl of Islam and Centre of the Universe, Samarkand was now the envy of the world.

  These extravagant improvements had occupied only part of Temur’s time, however. Always the restless conqueror was looking ahead, gathering intelligence, provisioning his men and planning future conquests. For the first time in his life, his eyes turned east to his most formidable enemy, the Ming emperor of China. War with the ruler of Peking had long motivated Temur. It was the chance to win untold glory by raising the sword of Islam against the infidel in the darkest corners of the world. More important, it was an opportunity to test his power against the mightiest ruler on earth.

  With this object in mind, Temur had ordered fortresses to be built in his eastern frontier regions, around Lake Issykul in Kyrgyzstan, in the shadows of the spectacular Tien Shan mountains, and in the neighbouring city of Ashpara. His favourite grandson and designated heir Prince Mohammed Sultan had been given a special detachment of senior amirs and troops and entrusted with ensuring that the land could supply the needs of the army when it marched through en route to China. After overtures to the ever troublesome Moghuls, Temur had concluded a treaty with their khan, Khizr Khoja, a cessation of hostilities celebrated by his marriage in 1397 to the khan’s daughter, princess Tukal-khanum. The way east was open.

  All these preparations had been set in motion by 1398. It seemed clear where the emperor’s driving ambition would lead him and his armies next. But Temur was an unpredictable opportunist. He knew that the kingdom of Delhi, a thousand miles to the south, had been perilously weakened and was in a state of civil war. In 1394 its ruler Nasir ud-din Mohammed Tughluk had died after a rein of six years. The same year, the Angel Izrail descended on his son Humayun after only six weeks on the throne. The premature death triggered violent disputes over the succession. ‘The misfortunes of the state daily increased,’ wrote the historian Ferishta. ‘The omras [great lords] of Firuzabad, and some of the provinces, espoused the cause of Nasrut Shah. Those of Delhi and other places supported the title of Mohammed Tughluk. The government fell into anarchy: civil war raged everywhere; and a scene was exhibited, unheard of before, of two kings in arms against each other residing in the same capital.’

  Up to this point, with the exception of the periodic campaigns against Moghulistan, Temur had looked west for his military conquests. Preparations had now been set in motion for war with China. While they continued, a lightning raid on Delhi would secure his southern borders and bring fresh plunder from the bulging treasuries of India. There was a third consideration. ‘His present resolution [to conquer Delhi] was further strengthened by accounts long since conveyed to him, of the gross idolatry still suffered to extend its pollutions, throughout the countries dependent on both Delhi and Multan,’ wrote David Price in an early-nineteenth-century history of India. ‘And as the views of this apostle of desolation had been for some time bent on a war of religion, it seemed of little importance whether the current of zeal impelled him south or east.’

  For an ageing emperor, the opportunity to earn great honour by fighting a holy war against infidels who had turned their back on Islam was particularly inviting. Considering the extent of his conquests, Temur had yet to feature highly on the Islamic horizon. Indeed, as he looked around his fellow Muslim rulers he must have felt he had not been afforded the status – or the soubriquets – he so richly deserved within the dar al Islam. In Cairo, there was the caliph. In Baghdad, the Protector of the Faithful. Sultan Bayazid, the Ottoman emperor, was styled the Sword Arm of the Faith. These three men regarded Temur as no more than a barbaric pagan.*

  There was yet another important motivation at work. To date he had met and overcome the challenge of every enemy he had encountered. Was there indeed a power on earth which could resist him? For a ruler with such a keen interest in history on the one hand and an undefeated military record on the other, it was entirely natural that Temur should wish to pit himself against the great figures of antiquity. Alexander the Great had barely crossed the river Indus. Genghis, having made little headway in India, turned back because of the appalling heat. Neither of these world conquerors had managed even to reach Delhi.

  Temur put the idea to his princes and amirs. What was their opinion of this most audacious campaign against an enemy of the faith across the snow-capped mountains? They looked at him aghast. ‘The rivers! And the mountains and deserts! And the soldiers clad in armour! And the elephants, destroyers of men!’ they trembled. Surely the emperor was not serious about this most dangerous of ideas?

  Mohammed Sultan, disgusted by this cowardice, cut short their protestations with an impassioned appeal to their greed and sense of honour.

  The whole country of India is full of gold and jewels, and in it there are seventeen mines of gold and silver, diamond and ruby and emerald and tin and iron and steel and copper and quicksilver, and plants which are suitable for making clothes, and aromatic plants, and sugar cane. It is a country which is always green and verdant, and the whole aspect of the country is pleasant and delightful. Now, since the inhabitants are chiefly polytheists and infidels and idolaters and worshippers of the sun, by the order of God and his prophet, it is right for us to conquer them.

  The emperor’s son Shahrukh added his voice to the council. ‘India is an extensive country,’ he argued. ‘Whichever Sultan conquers it becomes supreme over the four corners of the globe. If, under the conduct of our amir, we conquer India, we shall become rulers over the seven climes.’

  The emperor smiled benevolently. His mind was made up. His grandson Prince Pir Mohammed Jahangir was sent ahead to put the holy city of Multan (in present-day Pakistan) under siege. The tovachis once again turned to the business of raising an army of ninety thousand. Then, in March 1398, the emperor called the traditional qurultay, at which he made clear his unswerving intention.

  Although the true faith is observed in many places in India, the greater part of the kingdom is inhabited by idolaters. The sultans of Delhi have been slack in their defence of the Faith. The Muslim rulers are content with the collection of tribute from these infidels. The Koran says that the highest dignity a man can achieve is to make war on the enemies of our religion. Mohammed the Prophet counselled likewise. A Muslim warrior thus killed acquires a merit which translates him at once into Paradise. Now that the empires of Iran and of Turan* and most of Asia are under our domination, and the world trembles at the least movement we make, Destiny has presented us with the most favourable opportunities. The troops will ride south, not east. India through her disorders has opened her doors to us.

  * * *

  * Omar Shaykh, ruler of Fars, was killed by an arrow-shot while besieging a fortress in Kurdistan in late 1393 or early 1394. Though this was the second of Temur’s sons to predecease him, the Tatar was said not to have betrayed the slightest trace of emotion on learning the news. Omar Shaykh’s son Pir Mohammed, Temur’s grandson, was installed as ruler of Fars.

>   * We have the whims of Black Sea weather systems in November 1403 to thank for Clavijo’s brilliantly observed portrait of Samarkand in its finest hour. Clavijo’s embassy, which included the friar Alfonso Paez and an officer of the royal guard called Gomez de Salazar, originally intended to meet Temur in the plains of the Qarabagh in the eastern Caucasus, where the emperor and his army were wintering after campaigning in Georgia. The itinerary, however, did not go according to plan. Shipwrecked on the edge of the Bosporus, the Spaniards were forced to wait for four months in Constantinople until more favourable conditions arrived. The following spring they continued their journey to Trebizond on the north coast of modern Turkey. By this time, however, Temur had left for Samarkand, and the envoys were obliged to play catch-up, following him across his Persian dominions to the heart of Mawarannahr. There they remained for three months. It was one of history’s most auspicious shipwrecks.

  * Though both the chronicles and the inscriptions on the Cathedral Mosque attribute its construction to Temur, a popular Samarkand legend has it otherwise. According to this version, it was built by Bibi Khanum, his Chinese princess wife, to surprise him on his triumphant return from India. Warned of her husband’s imminent return before the mosque was finished, Temur’s wife rushed to the architect to hurry him along. In vain she pleaded with him to redouble his efforts. Seething with passion for this predictably beautiful princess, the architect steadfastly refused to continue his work until she gave him a kiss. ‘But all women are the same,’ she replied, fearful of the consequences of kissing another man. ‘Take one of the slave girls from the harem.’ She brought him a bowl of coloured eggs. ‘Break any one of these eggs and inside they are all the same.’ Unmoved by this analogy, the architect attempted one of his own. Pouring water into one glass and vodka into another, he observed: ‘Their colour and shape are identical, but their contents are completely different. There are some women who are cold, like water. Others burn and set the veins on fire, like vodka.’ Impressed by his logic, if not his looks, Bibi Khanum consented to a kiss, covering her cheek with her hand. The mosque was finished, but such was the ardour of the lovelorn architect that his kiss burnt an imprint through the princess’s hand onto her cheek. When Temur discovered his wife’s infidelity, he ordered her to be taken to the top of a minaret and thrown to her death. The architect was also sentenced to death, but sprouted wings and flew to heaven instead.

  * Temur’s armies would in due course make a mockery of these exalted titles. His own claims to greatness within the Islamic world, however, should be viewed within the context of a career in which he directed his butchery primarily against Muslims, rather than Jews and Christians.

  * Turan, a vaguely defined Iranian term, refers to the land north-east of Iran. According to The Encyclopaedia of Islam: ‘The Muslim writers, Arabic, Persian and Turkish, have not been logical in the use of the term Turan. But since for the Arab geographers, the land of the Turks began only to the east of the Sir Darya and did not include Transoxiana, it seems that there was a tendency to identify Turan with Transoxiana, i.e. with the lands between the Amu Darya and the Sir Darya … The term Turan became naturalised in Europe only in the nineteenth century. Its vague character has earned it a certain degree of popularity as applied to ideas where accuracy of definition is out of the question.’

  7

  India

  1398–1399

  ‘If the rulers of Hindustan come before me with tribute I will not interfere with their lives, property or kingdoms; but if they are negligent in proffering obedience and submission, I will put forth my strength for the conquest of the kingdoms of India. At all events, if they set any value upon their lives, property and reputation, they will pay me a yearly tribute, and if not, they shall hear of my arrival with my powerful armies. Farewell.’

  LETTER FROM TEMUR TO SARANG KHAN OF DIPALPUR

  ‘It is difficult to take an empire like a bride to your bosom without trouble and difficulty and the clashing of swords. The desire of your prince is to take this kingdom with its rich revenue. Well, let him wrest it from us by force of arms if he is able. I have numerous armies and formidable elephants, and am quite prepared for war.’

  SARANG KHAN’S REPLY

  Once more the plains around Samarkand echoed to the thunder of arms. A thick pall of dust hung over the army as ninety thousand soldiers manoeuvred into position. Ninety thousand men, awaiting the emperor’s command, pondered the battles ahead. Among the veterans there was bluff confidence and a certain heartiness, a resignation to the will of Temur and the expectation, rarely disappointed over the years, of great reward. Temur’s generosity to his soldiers was famous the length and breadth of Asia. ‘I saw the duration of my power in this,’ the Lord of the Fortunate Conjunction is supposed to have said. ‘That I should divide among my soldiers the treasures which I had gathered together, both the money and the effects.’ This he had done assiduously from his early days as a desperado and mercenary to the height of his glory as emperor. It was one of the reasons he had triumphed over Husayn in 1370. The battle-hardened men remembered the lavish spoils from previous campaigns. If they fought valiantly again, they would win honour and new riches. All knew that a soldier distinguishing himself exceptionally in battle, be he the most junior infantryman or the greatest amir, might be awarded the exalted title of tarkhan. It was a prize worth fighting for.

  Delhi lay a thousand miles to the south-east as the crow flew. In practice it was much farther, given the complicated manoeuvrings and battles that would have to be fought along the way. Their marches would take them across some of the most treacherous terrain on earth, over the mighty Hindu Kush mountains, known to Arab geographers as the Stony Girdles of the Earth, with twenty-five-thousand-foot peaks soaring into the heavens. Here lived the warlike Kafir tribes which even Alexander the Great had been unable to subdue. As the amirs had warned, there were rivers and deserts which guarded the approach to Delhi. And even if they managed to overcome all these natural obstacles, they would then face the dreadful beasts of India, the colossal armoured elephants of which blood-curdling tales were told. They could uproot trees and houses, crash through walls, impale men on their sword-like tusks and rip heads clean off with their trunks. From lofty castles on their backs, Indian soldiers rained down arrows upon their enemies. Perhaps the emperor in his later years was miscalculating the host of dangers that lay before him.

  Ninety thousand interwoven destinies lay on these plains. Some young men, with tightly drawn, implacable features looked forward to war with a quiet assurance. Plucked from small, obscure lives on the steppes, in the towns and villages among the deserts and mountains, all of them steeped in poverty, they knew that by joining Temur’s army they were serving some higher purpose.

  Amid the smoke of the campfires that glowed like fireflies in the night, among the sweet smell of roast horse and mutton, the talk was all of war. Wizened veterans would have boasted of their past heroics on the battlefield, telling tall stories to credulous neophytes and describing with as much detail as they could muster how they would give these infidels a slow and excruciating death. Others probably spoke of the treasures they would steal from Delhi, the slaves they would make of their enemies and the beautiful women they would despoil. And as these stories dissolved into the night, the silent young men who dreaded this campaign more than anything in their short lives must have struggled to control a mounting fear.

  The emperor was troubled by no such doubts. He moved, as he knew, under almighty Allah’s protection, raising the sword of Islam against the infidel. His intelligence told him everything he needed to know. Fratricide, rampant since the death of Firuz Shah in 1388, had torn India apart. The country had degenerated into petty kingdoms – Bengal, Kashmir and the Deccan. Delhi, ancient treasure-house of the empire, was locked in internecine conflict. ‘Within ten years five kings, the grandsons and the youngest sons of Firuz, followed one another on the throne of Delhi like transient and embarrassed phantoms,’ wrote the hi
storian Sir George Dunbar. ‘The state of the country was an open invitation to an invader.’

  The invitation was accepted, and in March 1398 the order to march south was given. Ninety thousand soldiers – sons, husbands, fathers, grandfathers – said their prayers and set their eyes towards the Great Snow Mountains of the Hindu Kush.

  The M-39 south from Samarkand, which traces the route by which the Emperor of the World led his men to Delhi in 1398, is a notoriously dangerous road, crumbling and potholed in many places, and the annual death toll is heavy. In winter it is particularly unsafe, and reckless driving among the icy passes of the Zarafshan mountains, part of the Pamir range, accounts for numerous lives.

  The road starts climbing almost immediately after leaving Samarkand, pressing forward into High Asia and the distant outlines of the mountains, submerged in haze. There are dusty villages lined with white acacias, Persian walnut, pine and plane. Shepherd boys encourage their flocks along with sticks as the Darhom river sweeps past in full flow. Orchards hang in bright blossom. Mud bricks bake in the sun by the roadside. Apricots dry on rooftops. Old men trot along on donkeys, the long sleeves of their chapan gowns flapping like birds’ wings as they bump gracelessly up and down.

  Soon the M-39 is snaking tortuously uphill into the snowy mountains, and the Ladas, the Uzbek taxi drivers’ cars of choice (the choice is limited), labour up the 5,500-foot Takhtakaracha pass with engines screaming. The view from the summit of the pass, named after a palace built in 1398 by Temur at Qara Tepe, thirty miles south of Samarkand, is worth the effort. The country opens up magnificently, overlooking the broad Qashka Darya valley which is dominated by a dry riverbed littered with the debris of what must have been a spectacular landslide. Rocks the size of large houses have detached themselves from the upper slopes of the mountains and tumbled down towards the green fields of wheat and cotton and the villages below. Thousands of feet below the pass the road twists suddenly to avoid the latest rockfall. Somewhere down there, way off in the blurred distance, is Shakhrisabz, the Green City, birthplace of Temur.