A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

chapter nine
Timur and the Timurids
If the Mongol interlude (1220–1370) was a traumatic experience in the
history of Central Asia, the Timurid period (1370–1507) can be a
viewed as ultimately its most glorious one.It is true that the founder of
this dynasty, Timur (ruled 1370–1405), was a ruthless conqueror not
unlike Genghis Khan, and spent much of his life engaged in military
campaigns that wrought similar massacres and destruction.These,
however, befell other areas (Iran, the Golden Horde), while sparing
Central Asia itself.At any rate, Timur’s successors showed less aptitude
for large-scale conquest than for enjoying the good life at home; and
despite frequent infighting for the possession of this or that portion of
the inheritance, many of them also encouraged culture and the arts.
Timur himself had endeavored to embellish his capital, Samarkand,
with grandiose architectural monuments some of which still constitute
the pride of modern Uzbekistan: his own mausoleum, the Gur-i Emir
(“The Sovereign’s Tomb”), is the most famous example.Timur’s quaint
European appellation, Tamerlane, is a deformation of Timur-i lang,
“The lame Timur,” a Turco-Persian name as it appears in certain
Persian sources because of a leg maimed by a wound he sustained early
in his life.
Timur was born around 1336 in Transoxania near Kesh – later
known as Shahrisabz – in the Kashka Darya region of what is today the
Republic of Uzbekistan.He was a Turk of the Barlas tribe; this tribe,
like many others, boasted a Mongol name and ancestry, but for all practical
purposes it was Turkic.Turki was thus Timur’s mother tongue,
although he may have known some Persian from the cultural milieu in
which he lived; he almost certainly knew no Mongolian, though Mongol
terminology had not quite disappeared from administrative documents
and coins.
The process by which Timur seized power, and then exercised it, was
similar to Genghis Khan’s; namely, through personal and tribal alliances
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