Tamerlane

by Justin Marozzi

  Restoration work had been complicated by the fact that for much of the past twenty years the gardens had been on the front line between warring factions. Ordnance was everywhere. In one month alone, Nanda’s team uncovered thirty rocket-propelled grenades and thirteen artillery shells. How sustainable the restoration work would prove was anyone’s guess. ‘Once this project is completed in 2006, our hope is that the local population will protect it, but there is always a worry at the back of my mind,’ Nanda admitted. In Afghanistan, peace can never be taken for granted. Without ISAF’s presence in Kabul, many fear the city – and the country – would tear itself apart again.

  * Delhi itself was left without a ruler and, like the rest of northern India, remained racked by internecine conflict among the princes. Mallu Shah and Sultan Mahmud returned to the fray, joined in time by other would-be rulers. By the time Khizr Khan captured the city in 1414, these depredations had taken their toll and the once illustrious kingdom of Delhi had shrunk so dramatically that its territories barely extended beyond the city walls.

  8

  ‘This Pilgrimage of Destruction’

  1399–1401

  ‘“You see me here a poor, lame, decrepit mortal. Yet by my arm has the Almighty been pleased to subdue the kingdoms of Iran, Turan and the Indies. I am not a man of blood, and God is my witness that in all my wars I have never been the aggressor, and that my enemies have always been the authors of their own calamity.” During this peaceful conversation the streets of Aleppo streamed with blood and re-echoed with the cries of mothers and children, with the shrieks of violated virgins. The rich plunder that was abandoned to his soldiers might stimulate their avarice, but their cruelty was enforced by the peremptory command of producing an adequate number of heads, which, according to his custom, were curiously piled in columns and pyramids.’

  EDWARD GIBBON, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

  The crowds gasped as captured elephants, decked out in brilliant colours, strode through the streets of Samarkand. Few, if any, of the citizens had ever set eyes on such gargantuan creatures. Fabulous stories about these great beasts told how they were invulnerable to swords and arrows, could uproot trees just by running past them and toss man and mount to their destruction with their swinging trunks. As Temur rode past, slaves scattered precious stones beneath his horse’s hoofs. Others threw gold dust and pearl seed into the air to honour him. Men and women cheered and clapped and shouted until they were hoarse. Spring sunlight glinted on the blue domes of mosques and palaces that rose throughout the city and on the many minarets tiled in azure majolica. Never had the emperor’s triumphal homecoming appeared so exotic and magnificent. After three decades watching Temur depart from the capital on one or other campaign, waiting for news of his battles until, several years later, he reappeared victorious, there was a sense of inevitability about his successful return. All that seemed to change, rising inexorably beyond the mortal sphere, was the scale of his victories and the richness of his plundered treasures. Now India had bared its coffers to him and Samarkand ruled the world.

  In a style befitting this latest whirlwind conquest which had taken him a little over a year to accomplish, Temur made a grand, stately progress through his kingdom to celebrate it. After a fortnight holding court in the as yet unfinished Ak Sarai palace at Shakhrisabz, he continued north, first to the rolling lawns and pastures of Takhta Qaracha park, one of Samarkand’s most luxurious, thence to the Garden of Heart’s Delight. His route was a roll-call of his tireless building works: to the city baths; the Shah-i-Zinda complex of shrines; the madrassah of Great Queen Saray Mulk-khanum; then a further round of park-hopping, from the Garden of the Plane Trees to the Model of the World, Paradise Garden and High Garden.

  As Samarkand simmered with excitement at the emperor’s return, Temur announced his greatest construction project yet. The Cathedral Mosque would be a tribute both to his countless conquests and to the God who had enabled them. Scores of Indian masons, taken prisoner after the sacking of Delhi, were put to work alongside craftsmen from Basrah and Baghdad, Azerbaijan, Fars and Damascus as well as artisans from Mawarannahr. The mosque was still being built when the Spanish envoy Clavijo arrived in Samarkand in late 1404 to find Temur directing much of the work in person, shouting instructions and throwing chunks of roast meat to the workers sweating in the foundations.

  ‘At length, under his conduct, this great edifice was finished,’ the dutiful Yazdi reported. ‘It contained 480 pillars of hewn stone, each seven cubits high. The arched roof was covered with marble, neatly carved and polished: and from the architrave of the entablature to the top of the roof were nine cubits. At each of the four corners of the mosque without was a minaret. The doors were of brass: and the walls, as well without as within, as also the arches of the roof, were adorned with writing in relief, among which is the chapter of the cavern, and other parts of the Alcoran. The pulpit, and reading-desk, where the prayers for the emperor were read, were of the utmost magnificence: and the niche of the altar, covered with plates of iron gilt, was likewise of perfect beauty.’

  For a while, at least, the Cathedral Mosque marked the apotheosis of Temur’s architectural creations. But Yazdi neglected to relate how quickly this monument to the emperor’s hubris started to collapse, the result of its hasty construction. As a court historian, this would have been impolitic in the extreme.

  All of a sudden, the high-spirited celebrations accompanying Temur’s return were dramatically interrupted. From the Caspian came dark news in the beautiful shape of Khan-zada, widow of Temur’s first-born Jahangir and wife of Miranshah, who ruled the Hulagid kingdom in his father’s name. Trembling before the Conqueror of the World, this princess who could trace her ancestry to Genghis told him how Miranshah’s behaviour had degenerated appallingly and how he was, as she spoke, plotting to seize Temur’s throne. Pleading for mercy and sobbing uncontrollably, she threw herself at the emperor’s feet, saying she could no longer suffer her husband’s intolerable abuse and would never return to him.

  Though shocking, the news did not come as a complete surprise to Temur. Already, on his way back from India, word had reached him of Miranshah’s uncontrolled debauchery. There were stories of riotous gambling, of marathon drinking bouts inside mosques, and of gold coins being thrown from palace windows into the hands of frenzied mobs. The state treasury had been bled dry to fund the prince’s hedonistic pursuits.* Further evidence of his disturbed mind came with reports that he had desecrated the tomb of the Mongol prince Oljeytu in the famous green-domed mosque of Sultaniya. Another, that of the Persian historian Rashid ad-din, he ordered to be destroyed and the bones transferred to the Jewish cemetery. Other fine buildings throughout the city were also being summarily demolished. Clavijo doubted reports of Miranshah’s insanity, however, attributing his bizarre behaviour to nothing more than insecurity and attention-seeking. The Spaniard quoted one report which had Miranshah saying to himself: ‘Forsooth I am the son of the greatest man in the whole world, what now can I do in these famous cities, that after my days I may be always remembered?’ Indulging in a very personal building spree, according to this account, the decadent prince soon realised that none of his monuments in any way surpassed those of his predecessors.

  Considering this he was heard to say: ‘Shall nothing remain of me for a remembrance?’ and added ‘They shall at least remember me for some reason or other,’ and forthwith commanded that all those buildings of which we have spoken should be demolished, in order that men might say: that though Miranshah forsooth could build nothing, he yet could pull down the finest buildings of the whole world.

  As for his plotting to succeed Temur, Arabshah had Miranshah writing a letter to Temur whose contents, if true, would surely have resulted in his immediate execution. It was time, said the upstart prince with excruciating directness, for the emperor to make way for the next generation.

  Certainly through your advanced age and weak constitution and infirmity you are now unequal to
raising the standards of empire and sustaining the burdens of leadership and government and above all things it would befit your condition to sit as a devotee in a corner of the mosque and worship your Lord, until death came to you. There are now men among your sons and grandsons, who would suffice to you for ruling your subjects and armies and undertake to guard your kingdoms and territory … You govern men, nay also you administer justice, but unjustly; you feed, but it is on their wealth and corn; you act the defender, but by burning their hearts and ribs; you lay foundations, but foundations of afflictions; you go forward, but on a crooked road …

  Whatever the truth of Miranshah’s mental state, his military talents, or rather the lack of them, gave his father greatest cause for concern. The record of recent years suggested he was ill equipped to rule a notoriously unruly region populated by Georgians, Turkmens, Armenians and Azerbaijanis who were invariably loath to recognise Temur’s supremacy. Sultan Ahmed Jalayir of Baghdad, having been expelled from his capital by Temur in 1393, had reoccupied it the following year. Miranshah had attempted to drive him out for good but his mission had ended in ignominious retreat. To the north, he had been similarly humiliated. Sultan Ahmed’s son had been hard pressed under siege by the Tatars in the city of Alanjiq in Azerbaijan. Instead of pressing home his advantage and storming the stronghold, Miranshah had been overcome by a rescue party of Georgians. He had lost both his quarry and the city.

  Such a poor performance did not commend itself to his father. Although the chronicles report how Temur loved drinking bouts, particularly after great battles, or at weddings and festivals, the difference was that unlike Miranshah, he did not let the drinking get in the way of either winning wars or administering his empire. The answer to the problem was self-evident. Something had to be done with this wayward son.

  In October 1399, only four months after returning from India, Temur left Samarkand at the head of his army. Mohammed Sultan, his designated successor, whose name was already read out at Friday prayers and minted on the imperial coinage, had been summoned to Mawarannahr to take care of the kingdom in the emperor’s absence. Son of Jahangir and Khan-zada, this grandson remained Temur’s favourite.*

  With barely a summer in which to rest and recuperate, the troops had been levied for a Seven-Year Campaign in the west. Temur was still not ready to press east. His southern borders had been secured with victory in India. To the north, his defeat of Tokhtamish had sown internal dissension in the lands of the Golden Horde and crushed its capacity to challenge him. But there was unfinished business in the west.

  In 1393, when Temur seized Baghdad, Sultan Ahmed had fled to Cairo, where he took refuge at the court of Barquq, sultan of Egypt and Syria. At the time Temur had sent an embassy proposing friendly relations between the two states, but Barquq had imprisoned and murdered the Tatar envoys, the leader of whom was related to Temur by marriage.* Equally provocative was the Mamluk sultan’s decision to rearm Ahmed and support his successful bid to retake Baghdad, an alliance he later cemented by marrying one of the Iraqi’s daughters.

  Temur had come close to engaging Barquq in battle while campaigning in Iraq in 1394 but, with his troops exhausted, had resolved to wait until a more favourable day. Now came news that Barquq had died, leaving his ten-year-old son Faraj at the mercy of various powerful factions in court. It was an opportune moment for Temur to avenge the murder of his ambassadors and, more important, extend his western borders to the Mediterranean. But first there was a family matter to attend to which could not wait any longer. Miranshah’s capital at Sultaniya lay directly on Temur’s westward route. The wayward prince would be shown the error of his ways.

  Officers were sent ahead of the army to establish exactly what intrigues had been brewing at the prince’s court. Reporting back to Temur, they resorted to the classic diplomatic ruse of blaming the monarch’s advisers. Miranshah, they said, had been corrupted by the scandalous company he kept. A louche entourage of scholars, poets and musicians were responsible for the disastrous state into which the kingdom had descended. Temur’s decision was swift. Maulana Mohammed of Quhistan, a celebrated scientist and poet, together with Qutb ad-din of Mosul, a famous musician, and other court favourites were sentenced to death. The witty repartee of the main protagonists continued right up to the scaffold. ‘You had precedence in the King’s company,’ observed Maulana Mohammed to his friend; ‘precede me, therefore, now.’* Miranshah himself escaped the ultimate punishment, but was relieved of his throne and ordered to remain with the imperial party on the coming campaign. Those of his officers who had been involved in the shameful defeat at Alanjiq were either severely beaten or fined between fifty and three hundred horses.

  With discipline restored, the westward march continued. The army wintered in the meadows of the Qarabagh, from where Temur launched another punitive expedition against the Georgians in revenge for their role in the revolt against Miranshah and the assistance they had given Sultan Ahmed’s besieged son, Prince Tahir, in Alanjiq. Once more, the snow-lined valleys ran with blood as Tatar troops forged north, ransacking and burning churches, vineyards, houses, and entire towns and villages. The carnage was interrupted only in the depths of winter, when the army withdrew to their pastures to join the emperor’s celebrations at news of the latest addition to the imperial family. Khalil Sultan had had a son. At the age of sixty-three, Temur had a great-grandson.

  The auspicious news meant little to the Georgians. Certainly it did not prevent Temur ordering yet another expedition against the recalcitrant Christian kingdom, the fifth in his lifetime, in the spring of 1400. This time the catalyst for hostilities was the refusal by King Giorgi VII of Georgia to surrender Prince Tahir, who had taken refuge at his court, to Temur. Faced with another Tatar invasion, the Georgians retreated to higher ground, secreting themselves in impenetrable mountain caves. The difficult terrain and the unexpected tactics of his adversary demanded a new approach. First, Temur had baskets woven that were big enough to hold a man. Archers stepped inside them and were lowered over the cliffs until they reached the mouths of the caves. Once there, they fired flaming arrows soaked in oil into the farthest recesses, smoking the enemy out and sending them to agonising deaths. The capital, Tiflis, first seized by Temur in 1386, was stormed again. Within a short space of time mosques, minarets and muaddin occupied the ground on which the Christian churches and their priests had stood. At the point of a sword, pragmatic Georgians recited the sacred words which defined themselves as Muslim: ‘La ilaha illa’llah, Mohammedan rasul Allah’ (There is no god but God and Mohammed is his Prophet). Death was the penalty for those who clung on to Christianity.

  King Giorgi, however, managed to elude the Tatar forces, striking out towards the western Caucasus. Prince Tahir he sent south to take sanctuary with the Ottoman Sultan Bayazid I, in a move surely intended to plant the seeds of conflict between the Turk and the Tatar. He did not know it, but these would soon bear fruit in spectacular fashion.

  War between Temur and Bayazid was not inevitable. In fact, the Tatar tried on several occasions to broker peace, just as he had done with the Egyptian sultan. The best guide to understanding how Bayazid and Temur came to face each other on the battlefield does not come from the chronicles. For once it is not Yazdi, or Arabshah, or Nizam ad-din Shami who provides the answers. It is an atlas. Here, on a map of Asia Minor, it becomes clear how both political and geographical considerations were beginning to affect the dynamic between two supremely ambitious empire-builders.

  As ever, there were the usual grievances about various enemies who had sought and been given sanctuary at the two courts. Thus it was anathema to Bayazid that Temur should give shelter to the princes of the ten provinces of Anatolia, known as Rum, whose kingdoms the Turk had first crushed and then sucked into the Ottoman orbit as it expanded eastwards. Equally, it was a serious affront to Temur that Bayazid should harbour adversaries both new (Prince Tahir) and old (Sultan Ahmed Jalayir and Qara Yusuf, chief of the Black Sheep Turkmen tribes which had
rebelled so frequently against Temur in the regions between Mesopotamia and Asia Minor).

  Through his extensive intelligence network, Temur was well aware that moves were afoot to construct a grand alliance against him. Such plans were being actively discussed by Bayazid, Sultan Ahmed and the Egyptian authorities with whom he had sought protection. Temur despatched a letter to the Ottoman warning him against war and directing him to abandon his intrigues with Sultan Ahmed and Qara Yusuf. He himself, he said, had refrained from aggression only because Bayazid was then fighting the infidel Europeans and war would damage the common cause of Muslims and aid the unbelievers. No one, he assured Bayazid, had ever fought him and prospered. The Ottoman should remain within his borders lest he precipitate his own downfall.

  Since the ship of your unfathomable ambition has been shipwrecked in the abyss of self-love, it would be wise for you to lower the sails of your rashness and cast the anchor of repentance in the port of sincerity, which is also the port of safety; lest, by the tempest of our vengeance you should perish in the sea of punishment which you deserve … Take care of yourself and try by your good conduct to preserve the dominions of your ancestors and let your ambitious foot not attempt to tread beyond the limits of your little power. Cease your proud extravagances, lest the cold wind of hatred should extinguish the flambeau of peace. You may remember the precept of Mohammed to let the Turks remain in peace, while they are quiet: don’t seek war with us, which no one ever did and prospered. The devil certainly inspires you to your own ruin. Though you have been in some notable battles in the forests of Anatolia and have gained advantages over the Europeans, that was only through the prayers of the Prophet and the blessings of the Islamic faith which you profess.