Which countries have the most brutal and horrific history?

 

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.