Uzbekistan, with the city of Samarkand it’s capitol, during
the rule of the Muslim Timur (Tamerlane) and his dynasty.
What did Timur do to Samarkand?
Under Timur and his successors, Samarkand became a great centre
of art, science, and scholarship. His mausoleum there, the Gūr-e Amīr, is one of
the gems of Islamic art. The Timurid dynasty survived in Central Asia for a
century, and Timur's descendant Bābur founded the Muslim line of Indian
emperors known as the Great Mughals.
Samarkand was known for not having beggars. They annoyed
Timur, who had them rounded up and executed. The Timurids were known for their
extremes of cruelty and sadistic humor, and the building of pyramids of human
skulls outside of most of the world’s cities after his visits.
An eyewitness, Ibn Khaldun, described Timurid troops entering
Damascus like “a swarm of locusts” who pillaged, plundered, tortured, and raped
with extreme inhumanity. Timur's revenge for revolts would also include the
murder of entire populations, followed of course by his trademark pyramids of
human skulls.
"Late in the fourteenth century, Timur, the Turk or
Turco-Mongol, came down from the north in India; he came to Delhi and went
back. But all along his route he created a wilderness adorned with pyramids of
skulls of those he had slain; and Delhi itself became a city of the dead.
Fortunately he did not go far and only some parts of the Punjab and Delhi had
to suffer this terrible affliction.": wrote Nehru in his "Discovery
Of India". According to one writer, Marco Polo, who passed by a century
later said the city was still mostly ruins, uninhabited except for three
villages (the three neighbourhoods Timur said was spared?).
Describing Timur's savagery, Nehru goes on to write in
"Glimpses of World History”: "wherever he went he went he spread
desolation and pestilence and utter misery. His chief pleasure was the erection
of enormous pyramids of skulls. … But Timur was much worse. He stands apart for
wanton and fiendish cruelty. In one place, it is said; he erected a tower of
2000 live men and covered them up with brick and mortar."
In Timur the Lames own autobiographical history, it states
describing Delhi "On that day, Thursday, and all the night of Friday,
nearly 15,000 Turks were engaged in slaying, plundering, and destroying. When
morning broke on the Friday, all my army, no longer under control went off to
the city and thought of nothing but killing, plundering, and making prisoners.
All that day the sack was general. The following day, Saturday, the 17th
(December 27), all passed in the same way, and the spoil was so great that each
man secured from a fifty to a hundred prisoners, men, women, and children.
There was no man who took less than twenty. The other booty was immense in
rubies, diamonds, garnets, pearls, and other gems; jewels of gold and silver; ashrafis,
tankas of gold and silver; and brocades and silks of great value. Gold and
silver ornaments of the Hindu women were obtained in such quantities as to
exceed all account. Excepting the quarter of saiyids, the ulama, and the other
Musulmans, the whole city was sacked."
Timur built his own wailing wall, with living people with
only their heads, and feet, protruding from the wall, where they cried and
begged until they died, amusing Timur. Timur carried the captured Sultan of the
Ottoman Turks as an ornament, putting him on display in a giant bird cage on
the back of a wagon. Timur as the world’s greatest conqueror is credited for
the death of at least 5% of the human race. Timur began his career as a cattle
rustler, he was a self-made man.
He looted the libraries in every city, sending the books to
Samarkand, burning and destroying anything left behind. He took all the
scholars and learned men, skilled craftsmen, Doctors, etc as slaves sent to
Samarkand, killing the rest. Persia credits him with destroying at least a
third of all their science, medicine, and history. He repeatedly sacked every
city in Persia, Iran, Russia, Middle East Excluding Egypt*, Turkey, the
Steppes, and Southern Asia. He was en-route to do the same to China when he
died. His sons and grandsons tried to emulate him.
From Edward Gibbins “Conquests of Timur the Tartar”
“The losses and fatigues of the campaign obliged Timur to
renounce the conquest of Palestine and Egypt; but in his return to the
Euphrates he delivered Aleppo to the flames and justified his pious motive by
the pardon and reward of two thousand sectaries of Ali, who were desirous to
visit the tomb of his son. I have expatiated on the personal anecdotes which
mark the character of the Mongol hero, but I shall briefly mention that he
erected, on the ruins of Bagdad, a pyramid of ninety thousand heads; again
visited Georgia; encamped on the banks of the Araxes; and proclaimed his
resolution of marching against the Ottoman Emperor.”
PS= Contains corrections suggested by Khalid Elhassan
The Egyptian Mamluks managed to regroup and counter-attack,
under the leadership of their new sultan, Barsbay, defeating Timur’s army
outside Aleppo in 1403. Timur’s only known defeat, causing Timur to retreat
back to his empire.
