Who was Tamerlane. History of empires

Tamerlane

Biography of the commander

Tamerlane (Timur; April 9, 1336, the village of Khoja-Ilgar, modern Uzbekistan - February 18, 1405, Otrar, modern Kazakhstan; Chagatai (Temur, Temor) - "iron") - a Central Asian conqueror who played a significant role in the history of the Middle, South and Western Asia, as well as the Caucasus, the Volga region and Russia. An outstanding commander, emir (since 1370). Founder of the Timurid Empire and Dynasty, with its capital in Samarkand. The ancestor of Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire in India.

Thanks to the efforts of this particular person, as a result of the almost complete extermination of the Golden Horde troops led by Khan Tokhtamysh on the Dnieper and the destruction of the capital of the Golden Horde by Tamerlane, liberation from the Mongol Tatar yoke in Russia became possible.

Tamerlane's name

Monument to Tamerlane in Samarkand

The full name of Timur was Timur ibn Taragay Barlas (Timur bin Taragay Barlas - Timur son of Taragay from Barlas) in accordance with the Arabic tradition (alam-nasab-nisba). In Chagatai and Mongolian (both Altaic) Temur or Temir means "iron". The word (Temur) probably comes from the Sanskrit *cimara ("iron").

After Timur intermarried with the clan of Genghis Khan, he took the name Timur Gurkani (Gurkan is an Iranized version of the Mongolian krgen or khrgen, "son-in-law".

In various Persian sources, the Iranized nickname Timur-e Lang (Timur-e Lang,) "Timur the Lame" is often found, this name was probably considered at that time as contemptuous and pejorative. It has passed into Western languages (Tamerlan, Tamerlane, Tamburlaine, Timur Lenk) and into Russian, where it does not have any negative connotation and is used along with the original "Timur".

Personality of Tamerlane

monument to Tamerlane in Tashkent

The biography of Timur is in many ways reminiscent of the biography of Genghis Khan: both conquerors began their activities as leaders of detachments of adherents they personally recruited, who then remained the main support of their power. Like Genghis Khan, Timur personally entered into all the details of the organization of military forces, had detailed information about the forces of the enemies and the state of their lands, enjoyed unconditional authority among his troops and could fully rely on his associates. Less successful was the choice of persons placed at the head of the civil administration (numerous cases of punishment for extortion of high dignitaries in Samarkand, Herat, Shiraz, Tabriz).

The difference between Genghis Khan and Timur is determined by the great education of the latter. Genghis Khan was deprived of any education. Timur, in addition to his native (Turkic) language, spoke Persian and liked to talk with scientists, especially listen to the reading of historical works; with his knowledge of history, he astonished the greatest of Muslim historians, Ibn Khaldun; Timur used stories about the valor of historical and legendary heroes to inspire his warriors.

Timur's buildings, in the creation of which he took an active part, reveal in him a rare artistic taste.

Timur cared primarily for the prosperity of his native Maverannahr and for the exaltation of the splendor of his capital, Samarkand. Timur brought craftsmen, architects, jewelers, builders, architects from all the conquered lands in order to equip Samarkand. All his care that he invested in this city, he managed to express through his words about him: “Over Samarkand there will always be a blue sky and golden stars.” Only in recent years has he taken measures to improve the well-being of other areas of the state, mainly border areas (in 1398 a new irrigation canal was built in Afghanistan, in 1401 in Transcaucasia, etc.)

Biography
Childhood and youth

Chagatai Khanate

Timur was born on April 8 (9), 1336 in the village of Khoja-Ilgar near the city of Kesh (now Shakhrisabz, Uzbekistan) in Central Asia.

As shown by the opening of the tomb by M. M. Gerasimov and the subsequent study of the skeleton of Tamerlane from his burial, his height was 172 cm. Timur was strong, physically developed, his contemporaries wrote about him: Timur pulled it up to his ear. Her hair was lighter than most of her compatriots.

His father's name was Taragai, he was a military man, a petty feudal lord. He came from the Mongolian tribe of Barlasov, who by that time already spoke the Turkic Chagatai language. He did not have a school education and was semi-literate, but he knew the Koran by heart. He had 18 wives, of which his favorite wife was the sister of Emir Hussein - Uljay Turkan-aga. The people called him "not a very noble bey."

During Timur's infancy, the Chagatai state in Central Asia (the Chagatai ulus) collapsed. Since 1346, the power in Maverannahr belonged to the Turkic emirs, and the khans who were elevated to the throne by the emperor ruled only nominally. The Mogul emirs in 1348 enthroned Tugluk-Timur, who began to rule in East Turkestan, the Kulja region and Semirechye.

Rise of Timur

Fight against Mogolistan

Mongolian possessions as a whole across the continent in the 13th - 14th centuriesand territories conquered from the Horde by Tamerlane

The first head of the Turkic emirs was Kazagan (1346-1358). Timur entered the service of the ruler of Kesh - Hadji Barlas (his uncle), the head of the Barlas tribe. In 1360 Maverannahr was conquered by Tugluk-Timur. Haji Barlas fled to Khorasan, and Timur entered into negotiations with the khan and was approved as the ruler of the Kesh region, but was forced to leave after the Mongols left and Haji Barlas returned.

In 1361, Khan Tugluk-Timur again occupied the country, and Haji Barlas again fled to Khorasan, where he was subsequently killed. In 1362, Tugluk-Timur hastily left Maverannahr as a result of a rebellion of a group of emirs in Mogolistan, transferring power to his son Ilyas-Khoja. Timur was approved as the ruler of the Kesh region and one of the assistants to the Mogul prince. No sooner had the khan crossed the Syrdarya river than Ilyaskhodzha-oglan, together with emir Bekchik and other close emirs, conspired to remove Timurbek from state affairs, and if possible, destroy him physically. The intrigues became more and more intensified and took on a dangerous character. Timur had to separate from the Moguls and go over to the side of their enemy - Emir Hussein (Kazagan's grandson). For some time they led the life of adventurers with a small detachment and went towards Khorezm, where in the battle near Khiva they were defeated by the ruler of those lands, Tavakkala-Kongurot, and with the remnants of their warriors and servants, they were forced to retreat deep into the desert. Subsequently, having gone to the village of Mahmudi in the area subject to Mahan, they were taken prisoner by the people of Alibek Janikurban, in whose dungeons they spent 62 days in captivity. According to the historian Sharafiddin Ali Yazdi, Alibek intended to sell Timur and Hussein to Iranian merchants, but in those days not a single caravan passed through Mahan. The prisoners were rescued by Alibek's elder brother Emir Muhammad-bek.

In 1361-1364, Timurbek and Emir Hussein lived on the southern bank of the Amu Darya in the regions of Kakhmard, Daragez, Arsif and Balkh and waged a guerrilla war against the Mongols. During a skirmish in Seistan that took place in the autumn of 1362 against the enemies of the ruler Malik Kutbiddin, Timur lost two fingers on his right hand and was seriously wounded in his right leg, which made him lame (the nickname “lame Timur” is Aksak-Temir in Turkic, Timur- e lang in Persian, hence Tamerlane).

In 1364, the Moghuls were forced to leave the country. Returning back to Maverannahr, Timur and Hussein put Kabul Shah from the Chagatand family on the throne.

The following year, at dawn on May 22, 1365, a bloody battle took place near Chinaz between the army of Timur and Hussein and the army of Mogolistan led by Khan Ilyas-Khoja, which went down in history as a "battle in the mud." Timur and Hussein had few chances to defend their native land, since the army of Ilyas-Khoja had superior forces. During the battle, a torrential downpour began, during which it was difficult for the soldiers to even look ahead, and the horses got stuck in the mud, so the opponents had to retreat - the soldiers of Timur and Hussein retreat to the other side of the Syr Darya River.

Meanwhile, the army of Ilyas-Khoja was expelled from Samarkand by a popular uprising of the Serbedars, led by his teacher of the Mavlanazada madrasah, the artisan Abubakr Ka-lavi and the well-aimed shooter Khurdaki Bukhari. People's government was established in the city. Upon learning of this, Timur and Hussein agreed to speak out forgiving the Serbedars - they lured them with kind speeches to negotiations, where in the spring of 1366 the troops of Hussein and Timur suppressed the uprising, executing the Serbedar leaders, but by order of Tamerlane, they left the leader of the Serbedars, Mualan-zade, to whom popular passions were converted.

Election "Great Emir"

siege of Balkh fortress in 1370

Hussein wanted to rule on the throne of the Chagatai ulus among the Turkic-Mongolian people, like his uncle Kazagan, but according to established tradition, power from time immemorial belonged to the descendants of Genghis Khan. Hussein did not belong to the Genghisids, then Timur opposed the change in customs, and the title of supreme emir (emir ul-umaro), from the time of Genghis Khan, passed from generation to generation to the leaders of the Barlas tribe, who are the ancestors of Timurbek. This is confirmed by a written agreement between Genghis Khan's great-grandfather Tuminakhan and Kachuvli-bahadur, Timur's first great-grandfather. During the reign of Kazankhan, the position of Supreme Emir was forcibly appropriated by the grandfather of Emir Husain, Emir Kazagan, which served as a pretext for breaking the already not very good relations between the beks Timur and Hussein. Each of them began to prepare for the decisive battle.

Having moved from Sali-saray to Balkh, Hussein began to strengthen the fortress and prepare for the decisive battle. Hussein decided to act by deceit and cunning. He sent Timur an invitation to a meeting in the Chakchak gorge to sign a peace treaty, and as proof of his friendly intentions he promised to swear on the Koran. Going to the meeting, Timur, just in case, took with him two hundred horsemen, Hussein brought a thousand of his soldiers, and for this reason the meeting did not take place. Timur recalls this incident: “I sent a letter to Emir Hussein with a Turkic bait of the following content:

Who intends to deceive me, He will lie down in the ground, I'm sure. Having shown his deceit, He himself will perish from it.

When my letter reached Emir Hussein, he was extremely embarrassed and asked for forgiveness, but the second time I did not believe him.

Gathering all his strength, Timur began to redirect to the other side of the Amu Darya River. The advanced units of his troops were commanded by Suyurgatmish-oglan, Ali Muayyad and Khusapn barlas. On the approach to the village of Biya, Barak, the leader of the Andhud Sayinds, advanced to meet the army, and handed him the timpani and the banner of supreme power. On the way to Balkh, Timur was joined by Dzhaku Barlas, who arrived from Karkara, with his army, and Emir Kaykhusrav from Khuttalan, and on the other side of the river, Emir Zinda Chashm from Shibirgan, Khazarians from Khulm and Badakhshan Muhammadshah also joined. Having learned about this, many soldiers of Emir Hussein left him.

Before the battle, Timur gathers a kurultai, at which a man from the Chingizid family of Suyurgatmysh is elected khan.

Shortly before Timur was approved as the “great emir”, a certain good messenger came to him, a certain sheikh from Mecca, said that he had a vision that he, Timur, would be a great ruler. On this occasion, he handed him a banner, a drum, a symbol of supreme power. But he does not personally take this supreme power, but remains next to it.

On April 10, 1370, Balkh was conquered, and Hussein was captured and killed. At the kurultai, Timur took the oath from all the military leaders of Maverannahr. Like his predecessors, he did not take the title of khan and was content with the title of "great emir" - under him, the descendant of Genghis Khan Suyurgatmysh (1370-1388), his son Mahmud (1388-1398) and Satuk Khan (1398-1405) were considered khans. Samarkand was chosen as the capital, and an end was put to feudal fragmentation.

Strengthening the state of Timur

Battle with Mogolistan and the Golden Horde

State of Tamerlane

Despite the laid foundation of statehood, Khorezm and Shibirgan, which belonged to the Chagatai ulus, did not recognize new government represented by Suyurgatmish Khan and Emir Timur. It was restless on the southern and northern borders of the border, where Mogolistan and the White Horde caused anxiety, often violating the borders and plundering villages. After the capture of Sygnyak by Uruskhan and the transfer of the capital of the White Horde, Yassa (Turkestan), Sairam and Maverannahr were in even greater danger. It was necessary to take measures to strengthen the statehood.

In the same year, the cities of Balkh and Tashkent recognized the power of Amir Timur, but the Khorezm rulers continued to resist the Chagatai ulus, relying on the support of the Dashti Kipchak rulers. Emir Timur demanded the return of the occupied lands of Khorezm, first by peaceful means, sending first tavachi (quartermaster), then shaikhulislam (head of the Muslim community) to Gurganj, but Husayn Sufi both times refused to fulfill this requirement, capturing the ambassador. Since then, Emir Timur has made five trips to Khorezm. It was finally taken in 1388.

The next goals of Amir Timur were to curb the Juchi ulus (known in history as the White Horde) and establish political influence in its eastern part and unite Mogolistan and Maverannahr, previously divided, into a single state, which was once called the Chagatai ulus. The ruler of Moghulistan, Emir Kamariddin, had the same goals as Timur. Mogolistan feudal lords often made predatory raids on Sairam, Tashkent, Fergana and Turkestan. The raids of Emir Kamariddin in the 70-71s and the raids in the winter of 1376 on the cities of Tashkent and Andijan brought especially great troubles to the people. In the same year, Emir Kamariddin captured half of Fergana, from where its governor, Umar Shah Mirza, fled to the mountains. Therefore, the solution of the problem of Mogolistan was important for peace on the borders of the country. From 1371 to 1390, Emir Timur made seven campaigns against Mogolistan, finally defeating the army of Kamariddin and Anka-Tür in 1390 during the last campaign. However, Timur reached only the Irtysh in the north, Alakul in the east, Emil and the headquarters of the Mongol khans Balig-Yulduz, but he could not conquer the lands east of the Tangri-tag and Kashgar mountains. Kamariddin fled and subsequently died of dropsy. The independence of Mogolistan was preserved.

"The door to the chambers of Khan Tamerlane" painting by Vasily Vereshchagin 1875

Realizing the danger to the independence of Maverannahr from the unification of the Jochi ulus, from the very first days of his reign, Timur tried in every possible way to prevent its unification into a single state, once split into two - the White and Golden Hordes. The Golden Horde had its capital in the city of Sarai-Batu (Saray-Berke) and stretched across the North Caucasus, the northwestern part of Khorezm, Crimea, Western Siberia and the Volga-Kama principality of Bulgar. The White Horde had its capital in the city of Sygnak and stretched from Yangikent to Sabran, along the lower reaches of the Syr Darya, and also on the banks of the Syr Darya steppe from Ulu-tau to Sengir-yagach and the land from Karatal to Siberia. The Khan of the White Horde, Urus Khan, tried to unite the once powerful state, whose plans were thwarted by the intensified struggle between the Jochids and the feudal lords of the Dashti Kipchak. Timur strongly supported Tokhtamysh-oglan, whose father died at the hands of Uruskhan, who eventually took the throne of the White Horde. However, after ascending to power, Khan Tokhtamysh seized power in the Golden Horde and began to pursue a hostile policy towards the lands of Maverannahr. Amir Timur made three campaigns against Khan Tokhtamysh, finally defeating him on February 28, 1395.

After the defeat of the Golden Horde and Khan Tokhtamysh, the latter fled to Bulgar. In response to the plunder of the lands of Maverannahr, Emir Timur burned the capital of the Golden Horde - Saray-Batu, and gave the reins of government to Koirichak-oglan, who was the son of Uruskhan. In search of Tokhtamysh, Timur began a campaign against Russia.

In 1395, Tamerlane, who was marching on Russia, passed the Ryazan region and took the city of Yelets, in the same year, Yelets was ravaged by Tamerlane's troops, and the prince was captured, after Tamerlane moved towards Moscow, but unexpectedly turned around and left on August 26 back. According to church tradition, it was at that time that Muscovites met the revered Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God, which was transferred to Moscow to protect it from the conqueror. On the day of the meeting of the image, according to the chronicle, the Mother of God appeared to Tamerlane in a dream and ordered him to immediately leave the borders of Russia. The Sretensky Monastery was founded at the meeting place of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God. Tamerlane did not reach Moscow, his army passed along the Don and took full.

Tamerlane

There is also another point of view. According to the "Zafar-name" ("Book of Victories") Sheref-ad-din Yazdi, Timur ended up on the Don after his victory over Tokhtamysh near the Terek River and before the total defeat of the cities of the Golden Horde in the same 1395. Tamerlane personally pursued the retreating commanders of Tokhtamysh after the defeat until they were completely defeated. On the Dnieper, the enemy was finally defeated. Most likely, according to this source, Timur did not set out to march specifically on Russian lands. Some of his detachments approached the borders of Russia, and not he himself. Here, on the comfortable summer pastures of the Horde, stretching in the floodplain of the Upper Don to modern Tula, a small part of his army stopped for two weeks. Although the local population did not put up serious resistance, the region was severely devastated. As the Russian chronicle stories about Timur's invasion testify, his army stood on both sides of the Don for two weeks, "captured" (occupied) the land of Yelets and "captured" the prince of Yelets. Some coin treasures in the vicinity of Voronezh date back to 1395. However, in the vicinity of Yelets, which, according to the aforementioned Russian written sources, was subjected to a pogrom, no treasures with such dating have been found so far. Sheref-ad-din Yazdi describes the great booty taken in the Russian lands and does not describe a single combat episode with the local population, although the main purpose of the "Book of Victories" was to describe the exploits of Timur himself and the valor of his soldiers. According to the legends of the Yelets local historians of the 19th-20th centuries, the Yelets residents put up stubborn resistance to the enemy. However, in the "Book of Victories" there is no mention of this, the names of the soldiers and commanders who took Yelets, who were the first to climb the rampart, who personally captured the Yelets prince, were not named. Meanwhile, Russian women made a great impression on Timur’s soldiers, about whom Sheref-ad-din Yazdi writes in a poetic line: “Oh, beautiful peris like roses stuffed into a snow-white Russian canvas!” Then in "Zafar-name" follows a detailed list of Russian cities conquered by Timur, where there is also Moscow. Perhaps this is just a list of Russian lands that did not want an armed conflict and sent their ambassadors with gifts. After the defeat of Bek Yaryk Oglan, Tamerlane himself began to methodically ravage the lands of his main enemy Tokhtamysh. The Horde cities of the Volga region never recovered from the ruin of Tamerlane until the final collapse of this state. Many colonies of Italian merchants in the Crimea and in the lower reaches of the Don were also defeated. The city of Tana (modern Azov) rose from the ruins for several decades. Yelets, according to Russian chronicles, existed for about twenty more years and was completely ruined by some "Tatars" only in 1414 or 1415.

He defeated Khan Tokhtamysh, who at that time headed the state of the Golden Horde. Fearing the transition of Transcaucasia and Western Iran under the rule of the enemy, Tokhtamysh undertook an invasion of this region in 1385. Having captured Tabriz and plundered it, the khan retreated with rich booty; among the 90,000 captives was the Tajik poet Kamal Khojendi. In the 1390s, Tamerlane inflicted two severe defeats on the Khan of the Horde - on Kondurcha in 1391 and on the Terek in 1395, after which Tokhtamysh was deprived of the throne and forced to wage a constant struggle with the khans appointed by Tamerlane. With this defeat of the army of Khan Tokhtamysh, Tamerlane brought indirect benefits in the struggle of the Russian lands against the Tatar-Mongol yoke.

Campaigns in the Caucasus, India, Syria, Persia and China

In 1380, Timur went on a campaign against Malik Giyasiddin Pir Ali II, who ruled in the city of Herat. At first, he sent an ambassador to him with an invitation to the kurultai in order to solve the problem peacefully, but Malik rejected the offer, detaining the ambassador. In response to this, in April 1380, Timur, under the leadership of Emirzade Pirmuhammad Jahangir, sent ten regiments to the left bank of the Amu Darya River. He captured the regions of Balkh, Shibirgan and Badkhiz. In February 1381, Emir Timur himself marched with troops and took the cities of Khorasan, Serax, Jami, Kausia, Tuye and Kelat, and Herat was taken after a five-day siege. also, in addition to Kelat, Sebzevar was taken, as a result of which the state of the Serbedars ceased to exist; in 1382 Timur's son Miranshah was appointed ruler of Khorasan; in 1383, Timur devastated Seistan and brutally crushed the uprising of the Serbedars in Sebzevar.

In 1383, he took Seistan, in which the fortresses of Zireh, Zave, Farah and Bust were defeated. In 1384, he captured the cities of Astrabad, Amul, Sari, Sultania and Tabriz, in fact capturing all of Persia. After that, he went on a campaign to Armenia, after which he made several more aggressive campaigns in Persia and Syria. These campaigns are known in world history as three-year, five-year and seven-year campaigns, during which he waged wars in Syria, India, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey and Persia.

In 1402, Timur won a major victory over the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I Lightning Fast, defeating him at the Battle of Ankara on July 28. The Sultan himself was taken prisoner. As a result of the battle, all of Asia Minor was captured, and the defeat of Bayezid led to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, accompanied by a peasant war and civil strife among his sons. The official reason for the war was the alleged offering of gifts by Turkish ambassadors to Timur. Outraged that Bayezid was acting as a benefactor, Timur declared hostilities
Three great campaigns of Timur

Timur made three large campaigns in the western part of Persia and the adjacent regions - the so-called "three-year" (from 1386), "five-year" (from 1392) and "seven-year" (from 1399).

Three year hike

For the first time, Timur was forced to return back as a result of the invasion of Maverannahr by the Golden Horde Khan Tokhtamysh in alliance with the Mongols of Semirechye (1387).

Timur in 1388 drove out the enemies and punished the Khorezmians for their alliance with Tokhtamysh, in 1389 he made a devastating campaign deep into the Mongol possessions to the Irtysh to the north and to the Big Zhyldyz to the east, in 1391 - a campaign against the Golden Horde possessions to the Volga. These campaigns achieved their goal.

In 1398 a campaign against India was undertaken, and the highlanders of Kafiristan were defeated along the way. In December, under the walls of Delhi, Timur defeated the army of the Indian sultan (Toghlukid dynasty) and occupied the city without resistance, which was sacked by the army a few days later. In 1399, Timur reached the banks of the Ganges, took several more cities and fortresses on the way back, and returned to Samarkand with huge booty, but without expanding his possessions.

Five year hike

During the "five-year" campaign, Timur conquered the Caspian regions in 1392, and western Persia and Baghdad in 1393; Timur's son, Omar Sheikh, was appointed the ruler of Fars, Miran Shah - the ruler of Transcaucasia. The invasion of Tokhtamysh in Transcaucasia caused Timur's campaign against South Russia (1395); Timur defeated Tokhtamysh on the Terek, pursued him to the limits of the Muscovite kingdom. There he invaded the Ryazan lands, ruined Yelets, posing a threat to Moscow. Having launched an offensive against Moscow, he unexpectedly turned back and left Muscovy on the very day when Muscovites met the image of the Vladimir Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos, brought from Vladimir (from that day on, the icon is revered as the patroness of Moscow). Then Timur plundered the trading cities of Azov and Kafa, burned down Sarai-Bata and Astrakhan, but the lasting conquest of the Golden Horde was not the goal of Tamerlane, and therefore the Caucasus Range remained the northern border of Timur's possessions. In 1396 he returned to Samarkand and in 1397 appointed his youngest son Shahrukh as the ruler of Khorasan, Seistan and Mazanderan.

Seven Year Campaign

The "seven-year" campaign was initially caused by Miranshah's madness and unrest in the area entrusted to him. Timur deposed his son and defeated the enemies who invaded his possessions. In 1400, a war began with the Ottoman sultan Bayazet, who captured the city of Arzinjan, where Timur's vassal ruled, and with the Egyptian sultan Faraj, whose predecessor, Barkuk, in 1393 ordered the assassination of Timur's ambassador. In 1400, Timur took Sivas in Asia Minor and Aleppo (Aleppo) in Syria (belonging to the Egyptian Sultan), in 1401 - Damascus. Bayazet was defeated and captured in famous battle under Ankara (1402). Timur sacked all the cities of Asia Minor, even Smyrna (which belonged to the Joannite knights). The western part of Asia Minor was returned to the sons of Bayazet in 1403, and the petty dynasties deposed by Bayazet were restored in the eastern part. In Baghdad (where Timur restored his power (1401), and up to 90,000 inhabitants died), the son of Miranshah, Abu Bekr, was appointed ruler. In 1404, Timur returned to Samarkand and at the same time undertook a campaign against China, for which he began to prepare as early as 1398. In that year, he built a fortress on the border of the present Syr-Darya region and Semirechye; now another fortification has been built, 10 days' journey further east, probably near Issyk-Kul.

Death

Mausoleum of Tamerlane in Samarkand

He died during a campaign in China. After the end of the seven-year war, during which Bayezid I was defeated, Timur began preparations for the Chinese campaign, which he had long planned because of China's claims to the lands of Transoxiana and Turkestan. He gathered a large army of two hundred thousand, with whom he set out on a campaign on November 27, 1404. In January 1405, he arrived in the city of Otrar (its ruins are not far from the confluence of the Arys with the Syr Darya), where he fell ill and died (according to historians - on February 18, according to Timur's tombstone - on the 15th). The body was embalmed, placed in an ebony coffin lined with silver brocade, and taken to Samarkand. Tamerlane was buried in the Gur Emir mausoleum, which was still unfinished at that time.

Timur (Tamerlane)

Emir, who personified the last conquests of the Mongols in Asia and proved his loyalty to the traditions of Genghis Khan

Emir of the Timurid Empire Timur

Timur, the son of a bek from the Turkicized Mongolian Barlas tribe, was born in 1336 in Kesh (modern Shakhrisab, Uzbekistan). His father had a small ulus. The name of the Central Asian conqueror comes from the nickname Timurleng (Timur Khromets), which was associated with his lameness on his left leg.

In 1361, he entered the service of Khan Togluk, a direct descendant of Genghis Khan. Soon Timur became an adviser to the khan's son Ilyas Khoja and the ruler (viceroy) of the Kashkadarya vilayet in the possessions of Khan Togluk. By that time, the Bek's son from the Barlas tribe already had his own detachment of mounted warriors.

Having fallen into disgrace, Timur with his detachment of 60 people fled across the Amu Darya River to the Badakhshan Mountains. There he got stronger. Khan Togluk sent a thousand-strong detachment in pursuit of Timur, but he, having fallen into a well-arranged ambush, was almost completely exterminated in battle by the soldiers of Timur - lame.

Gathering his strength, Timur concluded a military alliance with the ruler of Balkh and Samarkand, Emir Hussein, and began a war with Khan Togluk and his son, heir Ilyas Khoja. The enemy troops consisted mainly of warriors - Uzbeks. On the side of Timur came the Turkmen tribes, who gave him numerous cavalry.

Soon he declared war on his ally - the Samarkand emir Hussein - and defeated him. Timurleng captured Samarkand - one of the largest cities in Central Asia - and intensified military operations against the son of Khan Togluk. The troops of that number (according to exaggerated data) were about 100 thousand people, but 80 thousand of them were garrisons of fortresses and almost did not participate in field battles.

Timur's cavalry detachment numbered only about two thousand people, but they were experienced warriors, soldered by iron discipline. In a number of battles, Timur the lame inflicted defeats on the Khan's troops, and by 1370 their demoralized remnants retreated across the Syr River.

After these successes, Timur went for a military trick, which he succeeded brilliantly. On behalf of the khan's son, who commanded the troops of Togluk, he sent out the strictest order to the commandants of the fortresses to leave the fortresses entrusted to them and to move beyond the Syr River with garrisons. They carried out the command.

In 1370, Timur became emir in Maverannahr - the region between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers. He ruled on behalf of the descendants of Genghis Khan, relying on the army, the nomadic nobility and the Muslim clergy. He made the city of Samarkand his capital.

Timur began aggressive campaigns outside his original possessions in 1371. By 1380, he had already made 9 such campaigns, and soon all the neighboring regions inhabited by Uzbeks, and most of modern Afghanistan, were under his authority. Any resistance to the Mongol army was severely punished - after himself, the commander Tamerlane left huge destruction and erected (according to a number of sources) pyramids from the heads of defeated enemy soldiers.

In 1376, Emir Timur provided military assistance to Tokhtamysh, a descendant of Genghis Khan, as a result of which the latter became one of the khans of the Golden Horde. However, Tokhtamysh soon repaid his patron with black ingratitude.

In 1386, Tamerlane made an aggressive campaign in the Caucasus. Near Tiflis, his army fought the Georgians and won a complete victory. The capital of Georgia was destroyed. The defenders of the fortress of Vardzia put up courageous resistance to the conquerors, the entrance to which was through the dungeon. The defenders of Vardzia repelled all enemy attempts to break into the fortress through an underground entrance. The Mongols managed to take it with the help of wooden platforms, which they lowered on ropes from the neighboring mountains.

Simultaneously with Georgia, the Mongols Timur Khromets conquered neighboring Armenia.

In 1388, after a long resistance, Khorezm fell, and its capital city of Urgench was destroyed. Now all the lands along the river Jeyhun (Amu Darya) from the Pamir Mountains to the Aral Sea became the possessions of Emir Timur. In 1389, the cavalry of the Samarkand ruler made a campaign in the steppes to Lake Balkhash, to the territory of Semirechie - the south of modern Kazakhstan.

Khromets made three big campaigns against Khan Tokhtamysh - in 1389, 1391 and 1394-1395. In the last campaign, the Samarkand emir went to the Golden Horde along the western coast of the Caspian Sea through modern Azerbaijan and the fortress of Derbent.

In July 1391, the largest battle between the cavalry armies of Emir Timur and Khan Tokhtamysh took place near Lake Kergel. The forces of the parties were approximately equal - 300 thousand cavalry soldiers each, but these figures in the sources are clearly overestimated. The battle began at dawn with a mutual skirmish of archers, followed by mounted attacks on each other. By noon, the army of the Golden Horde was defeated and put to flight.

Timur successfully waged war against Tokhtamysh, but did not annex his possessions to himself. The Emir's Mongol troops crushed the Golden Horde capital, Saray-Berke. Tokhtamysh with his troops and camps more than once fled to the most remote corners of his possessions.

In the campaign of 1395, Timur's army, after another pogrom of the Volga territories of the Golden Horde, reached the southern borders of the Russian land and besieged the border town - the fortress of Yelets. Its few defenders could not resist the enemy, and Yelets was burned. After that, Tamerlane suddenly turned back.

The Mongol conquests of Persia and neighboring Transcaucasia lasted from 1392 to 1398. The decisive battle between the emir's army and the Persian army of Shah Mansur took place near Patila in 1394. The Persians energetically attacked the enemy center and almost broke its resistance. Timur himself led the counterattack of the heavy armored cavalry, which became victorious. The Persians were completely defeated. This victory allowed Timurleng to completely subjugate Persia.

In 1398 Timur the lame invaded India. In the same year, his army besieged the city of Merath. The besiegers took the fortress by storm with the help of ladders. Bursting into Merath, the Mongols exterminated all its inhabitants. After that, Timur ordered the destruction of the Merath walls.

One of the battles took place on the Ganges River. Here the Mongol cavalry fought with the Indian military flotilla, which consisted of 48 large river boats. Emir's warriors rushed with their horses to the Ganges and attacked the enemy ships by swimming, hitting their crews with arrows accurately fired from bows.

At the end of 1398, Timur's army approached the city of Delhi. Under its walls, on December 17, a battle took place between the Mongol army and the army of the Delhi Muslims under the command of Mahmud Tughlaq. The battle began with the fact that Timur with a detachment of 700 horsemen, having crossed the Jamma River to reconnoitre the city fortifications, was attacked by the 5,000th cavalry of Mahmud Tughlaq. Timur repulsed the first attack, and when the main forces of the Mongol cavalry entered the battle, the Delhi Muslims were driven behind the fortress walls.

Tamerlane captured Delhi from battle, betraying this numerous and rich Indian city to plunder, and its inhabitants to massacre. The conquerors left Delhi, burdened with huge booty. Everything that could not be taken to Samarkand, the emir ordered to destroy or destroy to the ground. It took a whole century for Delhi to recover from the Mongol pogrom.

The cruelty of Timur on Indian soil is best evidenced by the following fact. After the battle of Panipat in 1398, he ordered the slaughter of 100,000 Indian soldiers who had surrendered to him.

In 1400, Timur began an aggressive campaign in Syria, moving there through Mesopotamia, which he had previously captured. Near the city of Aleppo (modern Aleppo), on November 11, a battle took place between the Mongol army and the Turkish troops, commanded by the Syrian emirs. They did not want to sit in the siege and went to battle in the open field. The Mongols defeated them, and the emirs of Syria, having lost several thousand soldiers, retreated to Aleppo. After that, Timur took and plundered the city, taking its citadel by storm.

The Mongol conquerors behaved on Syrian soil in the same way as in other conquered countries. All the most valuable was to be sent to Samarkand. In the capital of Syria, Damascus, which was captured on January 25, 1401, the Mongols massacred 20,000 inhabitants.

After that, he ordered to capture the crossings across the Kizil-Irmak River and besiege the Ottoman capital Ankara. This forced the Turks to accept a general battle with the Mongols under the walls of Ankara, which took place on June 20, 1402.

According to Eastern sources, the Mongol army numbered from 250 to 350 thousand soldiers and 32 war elephants brought to Anatolia from India. The Sultan's army, which consisted of Ottoman Turks, hired Crimean Tatars, Serbs and other forced peoples of the Ottoman Empire, numbered 120-200 thousand people.

Timur won a victory largely due to the successful actions of his cavalry on the flanks and the transition to his side of the bribed 18 thousand Crimean Tatars. In the Turkish army, the Serbs, who were on the left flank, held out most staunchly. Sultan Bayazid I was taken prisoner, and the infantrymen, the Janissaries, who were surrounded, were completely killed. The fleeing Ottomans were pursued by the emir's 30,000 light cavalry.

After a convincing victory at Ankara, Tamerlane laid siege to the large seaside city of Smyrna. He took it after a two-week siege and plundered it. Then the Mongol army turned back to Central Asia, once again devastating Georgia along the way. In 1405 the great conqueror passed away.

This text is an introductory piece.

Tamerlane

Central Asian commander-conqueror.

Tamerlane, the most powerful of the commanders Central Asia in the Middle Ages, restored the former Mongol empire of Genghis Khan (No. 4). His long life as a commander was spent in almost constant combat, as he sought to expand the borders of his state and hold on to conquered lands that stretched from the Mediterranean coast in the south to India in the west and to Russia in the north.

He was born in 1336 into a Mongol military family in Kesh (present-day Shakhrisaba, Uzbekistan). His name comes from the nickname Timur Leng (Lame Timur), which is associated with his lameness on his left leg. Despite his humble origins and physical handicap, Timur, thanks to his abilities, reached high positions in the Mongol Khanate, whose territory covers present-day Turkestan and central Siberia. In 1370, Tamerlane, who became the head of the government, overthrew the khan and seized power in the Jagatai ulus. After that, he proclaimed himself a direct descendant of Genghis Khan. In the next thirty-five years, Tamerlane waged wars of conquest, capturing more and more new territories and suppressing any internal resistance.

Tamerlane sought to take the wealth of the conquered lands to his palace in Samarkand. Unlike Genghis Khan, he did not unite the newly conquered lands into an empire, but left behind monstrous destruction in scale and erected pyramids from enemy skulls to commemorate his victories. Although Tamerlane greatly valued literature and art and turned Samarkand into a cultural center, he and his men carried out military operations with barbaric brutality.

Starting with the subjugation of neighboring tribes, Tamerlane then began to fight with Persia. In 1380-1389. he conquered Iran, Mesopotamia, Armenia and Georgia. In 1390 he invaded Russia, and in 1392 he went back through Persia, crushing the rebellion that had broken out there, killing all his opponents along with their families and burning their cities.

Tamerlane was an excellent tactician and a fearless commander who knew how to raise the morale of his soldiers, and his army often numbered more than a hundred thousand people. The military organization of Tamerlane partly resembled that of Genghis Khan. The main striking force was cavalry, armed with bows and swords, and supplies were carried on spare horses for long campaigns.

Obviously, only because of the love of war and imperial ambitions in 1389 Tamerlane invaded India, captured Delhi, where his army massacred, and destroyed what he could not take to Samarkand. Only a century later, Delhi was able to recover from the damage suffered. Not satisfied with the casualties among the civilian population, after the battle of Panipat on December 17, 1398, Tamerlane destroyed one hundred thousand captured Indian soldiers.

In 1401, Tamerlane conquered Syria, killing twenty thousand inhabitants of Damascus, and the following year he defeated the Turkish Sultan Bayezid I. After that, even those countries that were not yet subject to Tamerlane recognized his power and paid tribute to him, just to avoid invasion his horde. In 1404, Tamerlane even received tribute from the Egyptian Sultan and the Byzantine Emperor John.

Now the empire of Tamerlane could compete in size with Genghis Khanova, and the palace of the new conqueror was full of treasures. But although Tamerlane was well over sixty, he did not calm down. He plotted to invade China. However, on January 19, 1405, not having time to realize this plan, Tamerlane died. His tomb, Gur Emir, is today one of the great architectural monuments of Samarkand.

According to Tamerlane's will, the empire was divided between his sons and grandsons. It is not surprising that his heirs turned out to be bloodthirsty and ambitious. In 1420, after many years of war, the youngest son of Tamerlane Sharuk, the only survivor, received power over his father's empire.

Of course, Tamerlane was a powerful commander, but he was not a politician capable of creating a true empire. The conquered territories only provided him with booty and soldiers for robbery. He left no accomplishments other than scorched earth and pyramids of skulls. But it is indisputable that his conquests were very extensive, and his army kept all neighboring countries in fear. His direct influence on the life of Central Asia continued for most of the 14th century, and his conquests led to an increase in militancy, as the peoples had to arm themselves to protect themselves from the hordes of Tamerlane.

Tamerlane carried out his conquests thanks to the large number and power of his army and merciless cruelty. In our series, he can be compared with Adolf Hitler (No. 14) and Saddam Hussein (No. 81). Tamerlane took a place between these two historical figures, because he surpassed the latter in cruelty, although he is far inferior to the first.

Timur, the son of a Bek from the Turkicized Mongol Barlas tribe, was born in Kesh (modern Shakhrisabz, Uzbekistan), southwest of Bukhara. His father had a small ulus. The name of the Central Asian conqueror comes from the nickname Timur Leng (Lame Timur), which was associated with his lameness on his left leg. From childhood, he persistently engaged in military exercises and from the age of 12 began to go on campaigns with his father. He was a zealous Mohammedan, which played a significant role in his struggle with the Uzbeks.

Timur early showed his military abilities and the ability not only to command people, but also to subordinate them to his will. In 1361, he entered the service of Khan Togluk, a direct descendant of Genghis Khan. He owned large territories in Central Asia. Pretty soon, Timur became an adviser to the khan's son Ilyas Khoja and the ruler (viceroy) of the Kashkadarya vilayet in the possessions of Khan Togluk. By that time, the Bek's son from the Barlas tribe already had his own detachment of mounted warriors.

But after some time, having fallen into disgrace, Timur with his military detachment of 60 people fled across the Amu Darya River to the Badakhshan Mountains. There his squad was replenished. Khan Togluk sent a thousandth detachment in pursuit of Timur, but he, having fallen into a well-arranged ambush, was almost completely exterminated by Timur's soldiers in battle.

Gathering strength, Timur entered into a military alliance with the ruler of Balkh and Samarkand, Emir Hussein, and began a war with Khan Togluk and his son-heir Ilyas Khoja, whose army consisted mainly of Uzbek soldiers. On the side of Timur came the Turkmen tribes, who gave him numerous cavalry. Soon he declared war on his ally, the Samarkand Emir Hussein, and defeated him.

Timur captured Samarkand, one of the largest cities in Central Asia, and intensified military operations against the son of Khan Togluk, whose army, according to exaggerated data, numbered about 100 thousand people, but 80 thousand of them were garrisons of fortresses and almost did not participate in field battles. Timur's cavalry detachment numbered only about 2 thousand people, but they were experienced warriors. In a number of battles, Timur defeated the khan's troops, and by 1370 their remnants retreated across the Syr River.

After these successes, Timur went to a military trick, which he succeeded brilliantly. On behalf of the khan's son, who commanded the troops of Togluk, he sent an order to the commandants of the fortresses to leave the fortresses entrusted to them and to move beyond the Syr River with the garrison troops. So, with the help of military cunning, Timur cleared all the enemy’s fortresses from the khan’s troops.

In 1370, a kurultai was convened, at which the rich and noble Mongol owners elected a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, Kobul Shah Aglan, as khan. However, Timur soon removed him from his path. By that time, he had significantly replenished his military forces, primarily at the expense of the Mongols, and now he could lay claim to independent khan power.

In the same 1370, Timur became emir in Maverannakhr - the region between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers and ruled on behalf of the descendants of Genghis Khan, relying on the army, nomadic nobility and Muslim clergy. He made the city of Samarkand his capital.

Timur began to prepare for large campaigns of conquest by organizing a strong army. At the same time, he was guided by the combat experience of the Mongols and the rules of the great conqueror Genghis Khan, which by that time his descendants had thoroughly forgotten.

Timur began his struggle for power with a detachment of 313 warriors devoted to him. It was they who formed the backbone of the commanding staff of the army he created: 100 people began to command dozens of soldiers, 100 - hundreds and the last 100 - thousands. The closest and most trusted associates of Timur received the highest military posts.

He paid special attention to the selection of military leaders. In his army, foremen were chosen by the ten soldiers themselves, but Timur appointed centurions, thousandth and higher commanders personally. “The chief, whose power is weaker than a whip and a stick, is not worthy of the title,” said the Central Asian conqueror.

His army, unlike the troops of Genghis Khan and Batu Khan, received a salary. An ordinary soldier received from two to four horse prices. The size of such a salary was determined by the serviceman's service. The foreman received the salary of his ten and therefore was personally interested in the proper performance of the service by his subordinates. The centurion received a salary of six foremen, and so on.

There was also a system of awards for military distinctions. This could be the praise of the emir himself, an increase in salary, valuable gifts, rewarding with expensive weapons, new ranks and honorary titles - such as, for example, Brave or Bogatyr. The most common measure of punishment was the deduction of a tenth of the salary for a specific disciplinary offense.

Timur's cavalry, which formed the basis of his army, was divided into light and heavy. Simple light horse warriors were required to be armed with a bow, 18-20 arrows, 10 arrowheads, an ax, a saw, an awl, a needle, a lasso, a tursuk bag (water bag) and a horse. For 19 such warriors on a campaign, one wagon relied. Selected Mongol warriors served in the heavy cavalry. Each of her warriors had a helmet, iron protective armor, a sword, a bow and two horses. Five such horsemen relied on one wagon. In addition to the obligatory weapons, there were pikes, maces, sabers and other weapons. The Mongols carried everything necessary for camp life on spare horses.

Light infantry appeared in the Mongol army under Timur. These were horse archers (carrying 30 arrows) who dismounted before the battle. Thanks to this, the accuracy of shooting increased. Such horse archers were very effective in ambushes, during military operations in the mountains and during the siege of fortresses.

Timur's army was distinguished by a well-thought-out organization and a strictly defined order of construction. Each warrior knew his place in the ten, the ten in the hundred, the hundred in the thousand. Separate parts of the troops differed in the colors of horses, the color of clothes and banners, and combat equipment. According to the laws of Genghis Khan, before the campaign, the soldiers were reviewed with all the severity.

During campaigns, Timur took care of reliable military guards in order to avoid a sudden attack by the enemy. On the way or in the parking lot, security detachments were separated from the main forces at a distance of up to five kilometers. From them, sentinel posts were sent out even further, which, in turn, sent horse sentries ahead.

Being an experienced commander, Timur chose for the battles of his predominantly cavalry army flat terrain, with water sources and vegetation. He lined up the troops for the battle so that the sun did not shine in the eyes and thus did not blind the archers. He always had strong reserves and flanks to encircle the enemy involved in the battle.

Timur began the battle with light cavalry, which bombarded the enemy with a cloud of arrows. After that, horse attacks began, which followed one after another. When the opposing side began to weaken, a strong reserve was brought into battle, consisting of heavy armored cavalry. Timur said: "The ninth attack gives victory." This was one of his main rules in the war.

Timur began his campaigns of conquest outside his original possessions in 1371. By 1380, he made 9 military campaigns, and soon all the neighboring regions inhabited by Uzbeks and most of the territory of modern Afghanistan were under his authority. Any resistance to the Mongol army was severely punished - after himself, the commander Timur left huge destruction and erected pyramids from the heads of defeated enemy soldiers.

The Emir Palace in Samarkand was constantly replenished with treasures. It is believed that Timur brought to his capital up to 150 thousand of the best craftsmen from the conquered countries, who built numerous palaces for the emir, decorating them with paintings depicting the conquests of the Mongol army.

In 1386, Emir Timur made an aggressive campaign in the Caucasus. Near Tiflis, the Mongol army fought the Georgian army and won a complete victory. The capital of Georgia was destroyed. The defenders of the fortress of Vardzia put up courageous resistance to the conquerors, the entrance to which led through the dungeon. Georgian soldiers repelled all enemy attempts to break into the fortress through an underground passage. The Mongols managed to take Vardzia with the help of wooden platforms, which they lowered on ropes from the neighboring mountains. Simultaneously with Georgia, neighboring Armenia was also conquered.

In 1388, after a long resistance, Khorezm fell, and its capital Urgench was destroyed. Now all the lands along the river Jeyhun (Amu Darya) from the Pamir Mountains to the Aral Sea became the possessions of Emir Timur.

In 1389, the cavalry of the Samarkand Emir made a campaign in the steppes to Lake Balkhash, to the territory of Semirechye - the south of modern Kazakhstan.

When Timur fought in Persia, Tokhtamysh, who became the Khan of the Golden Horde, attacked the emir's possessions and plundered their northern part. Timur hastily returned to Samarkand and began to carefully prepare for a big war with the Golden Horde. Timur's cavalry had to travel 2,500 kilometers across the arid steppes. Timur made three big campaigns - in 1389, 1391 and 1394-1395. In the last campaign, the Samarkand emir went to the Golden Horde along the western coast of the Caspian Sea through Azerbaijan and the fortress of Derbent.

In July 1391, the largest battle between the armies of Emir Timur and Khan Tokhtamysh took place near Lake Kergel. The forces of the parties were approximately equal - 300 thousand cavalry soldiers each, but these figures in the sources are clearly overestimated. The battle began at dawn with a mutual skirmish of archers, followed by mounted attacks on each other. By noon, the army of the Golden Horde was defeated and put to flight. The winners got the khan's camp and numerous herds.

Timur successfully waged war against Tokhtamysh, but did not annex his possessions to himself. The Emir Mongol troops plundered the Golden Horde capital Sarai-Berke. Tokhtamysh with his troops and camps more than once fled to the most remote corners of his possessions.

In the campaign of 1395, Timur's army, after another pogrom of the Volga territories of the Golden Horde, reached the southern borders of the Russian land and besieged the border fortress city of Yelets. Its few defenders could not resist the enemy, and Yelets was burned. After that, Timur suddenly turned back.

The Mongol conquests of Persia and neighboring Transcaucasia lasted from 1392 to 1398. The decisive battle between the army of Emir Timur and the Persian army of Shah Mansur took place near Patila in 1394. The Persians energetically attacked the enemy center and almost broke its resistance. Assessing the situation, Timur reinforced his reserve of heavy armored cavalry with troops that had not yet joined the battle, and he himself led the counterattack, which became victorious. The Persian army in the battle of Patila was utterly defeated. This victory allowed Timur to completely subjugate Persia.

When an anti-Mongol uprising broke out in a number of cities and regions of Persia, Timur again moved there on a campaign at the head of his army. All the cities that rebelled against him were destroyed, and their inhabitants were ruthlessly exterminated. In the same way, the ruler of Samarkand suppressed revolts against Mongol rule in other countries he conquered.

In 1398 the great conqueror invades India. In the same year, Timur's army besieged the fortress city of Merath, which the Indians themselves considered impregnable. After inspecting the city fortifications, the emir ordered digging. However, underground work progressed very slowly, and then the besiegers took the city by storm with the help of ladders. Bursting into Merath, the Mongols killed all its inhabitants. After that, Timur ordered the destruction of the Merath fortress walls.

One of the battles took place on the Ganges River. Here the Mongol cavalry fought with the Indian military flotilla, which consisted of 48 large river boats. The Mongol warriors rushed with their horses to the Ganges and swam attacked the enemy ships, hitting their crews with well-aimed archery.

At the end of 1398, Timur's army approached the city of Delhi. Under its walls, on December 17, a battle took place between the Mongol army and the army of the Delhi Muslims under the command of Mahmud Tughlaq. The battle began with the fact that Timur with a detachment of 700 horsemen, having crossed the Jamma River to reconnoiter the city fortifications, was attacked by the 5,000-strong cavalry of Mahmud Tughlaq. Timur repulsed the first attack, and soon the main forces of the Mongol army entered the battle, and the Delhi Muslims were driven behind the walls of the city.

Timur captured Delhi from battle, betraying this numerous and rich Indian city to plunder, and its inhabitants to massacre. The conquerors left Delhi, burdened with huge booty. Everything that could not be taken to Samarkand, Timur ordered to destroy or destroy to the ground. It took a whole century for Delhi to recover from the Mongol pogrom.

The cruelty of Timur on Indian soil is best evidenced by the following fact. After the battle of Panipat in 1398, he ordered the slaughter of 100,000 Indian soldiers who had surrendered to him.

In 1400, Timur began an aggressive campaign in Syria, moving there through Mesopotamia, which he had previously conquered. Near the city of Aleppo (modern Aleppo), on November 11, a battle took place between the Mongol army and the Turkish troops, commanded by the Syrian emirs. They did not want to sit in a siege behind the fortress walls and went out to battle in an open field. The Mongols inflicted a crushing defeat on the opponents, and they retreated to Aleppo, losing several thousand people killed. After that, Timur took and plundered the city, taking its citadel by storm.

The Mongol conquerors behaved in Syria in the same way as in other conquered countries. All the most valuable was to be sent to Samarkand. In the Syrian capital of Damascus, which was captured on January 25, 1401, the Mongols massacred 20,000 inhabitants.

After the conquest of Syria, a war began against the Turkish Sultan Bayezid I. The Mongols captured the border fortress of Kemak and the city of Sivas. When the Sultan's ambassadors arrived there, Timur, to intimidate them, reviewed his huge, according to some reports, 800,000-strong army. After that, he ordered the capture of crossings over the Kizil-Irmak River and laid siege to the Ottoman capital Ankara. This forced the Turkish army to accept a general battle with the Mongols under the camps of Ankara, it happened on June 20, 1402.

According to Eastern sources, the Mongol army numbered from 250 to 350 thousand soldiers and 32 war elephants brought to Anatolia from India. The Sultan's army, which consisted of Ottoman Turks, hired Crimean Tatars, Serbs and other peoples of the Ottoman Empire, numbered 120-200 thousand people.

Timur won a victory largely due to the successful actions of his cavalry on the flanks and the transfer of bribed 18 thousand mounted Crimean Tatars to his side. In the Turkish army, the Serbs, who were on the left flank, held out most staunchly. Sultan Bayezid I was taken prisoner, and the Janissary infantrymen who were surrounded were completely killed. The fugitives were pursued by the emir's 30,000 light cavalry.

After a convincing victory at Ankara, Timur laid siege to the large seaside city of Smyrna and, after a two-week siege, took and sacked it. Then the Mongol army turned back to Central Asia, once again plundering Georgia along the way.

After these events, even those neighboring countries that managed to avoid the aggressive campaigns of Timur the Lame, recognized his power and began to pay tribute to him, if only to avoid the invasion of his troops. In 1404, he received a large tribute from the Egyptian sultan and the Byzantine emperor John.

By the end of Timur's reign, his huge state included Maverannahr, Khorezm, Transcaucasia, Persia (Iran), Punjab and other lands. All of them were combined artificially, through the strong military power of the conquering ruler.

Timur, as a conqueror and a great commander, reached the heights of power thanks to the skillful organization of his large army, built according to the decimal system and continuing the traditions of the military organization of Genghis Khan.

According to the will of Timur, who died in 1405 and was preparing a big campaign of conquest in China, his state was divided between his sons and grandsons. They immediately started a bloody internecine war, and in 1420 Sharuk, who remained the only one among Timur's heirs, received power over his father's possessions and the emir's throne in Samarkand.

Perhaps the greatest amount of information about the glorious past of the great Tartaria has come down to us thanks to such a bright personality as. Without a doubt, it was outstanding person, one of the greatest rulers in world history. That is why so many medieval authors wrote about the period of his reign. And one of the most significant works, containing a great many amazing details about the socio-political and, as well as the customs and customs of its inhabitants, was left by the ambassador of the King of Castile, Ruy Gonzalez De Clavijo. But let's start in order.

. Christopher Del Altissimo. (1568)

Quite a lot of information has been preserved about the identity of this person, and, as is usually the case when it comes to those whose deeds changed the course of history, the conjectures and fabrications contained in this information are much more than the truth. Take at least his name. In western Europe he is known as Tamerlane, in Russia he is called Timur. Reference literature usually contains both of these names:

“Tamerlane (Timur; April 9, 1336, the village of Khoja-Ilgar, modern Shakhrisabz, Uzbekistan - February 18, 1405, Otrar, modern Kazakhstan; Chagatai تیمور (Temür‎, Tēmōr) - “iron”) - a Central Asian conqueror who played a significant role in the history of Central, South and Western Asia, as well as the Caucasus, the Volga region and Russia. An outstanding commander, emir (since 1370). Founder of the Timurid Empire and Dynasty, with its capital in Samarkand. (Wikipedia)

However, from the Arabic-language sources left to us by the descendants of Tamerlane-Timur himself, it turns out that his real lifetime name and title sounded like Tamurbek-Khan Ruler of Turan, Turkestan, Khorassan and further on the list of lands that were part of Great Tartaria. Therefore, he was briefly called the Ruler of the Great Tartaria. The fact that today people with external features of the Mongoloid type live on these lands misleads not only the layman, but also orthodox historians.

Everyone is now convinced that Tamerlane looked like an average Uzbek. And the Uzbeks themselves have no doubt that Tamerlane is their distant ancestor and the founder of the nation. But this is not so either.

From the genealogy of the Great Khans, confirmed by chronicle sources, it is clear that the ancestor of the Uzbeks is another descendant of Genghis Khan, Uzbek Khan. And, of course, he is not the father of all living Uzbeks, who were so named according to the territorial principle.

Let's start from the end. Here is what is known from official sources about the death of the “Great Lame”: “As soon as the Egyptian sultan and John VII (later co-ruler of Manuel II Palaiologos) stopped resisting. Timur returned to Samarkand and immediately began to prepare for an expedition to China. He spoke at the end of December, but in Otrar on the Syrdarya River he fell ill and died on January 19, 1405 (other sources indicate a different date of death - 02/18/1405 - my comment.).

Tamerlane's body was embalmed and sent in an ebonite coffin to Samarkand, where he was buried in a magnificent mausoleum called Gur-Emir. Before his death, Timur divided his territories between his two surviving sons and grandsons. After many years of war and enmity over the left will, the descendants of Tamerlane were united by the younger son of the khan, Shahruk.

The first thing that raises doubts is the various dating of Tamerlane's death. When you try to find more reliable information, you inevitably stumble upon one single "true" source of all the myths about the "Uzbek" clone of Alexander the Great - the memoirs of Tamerlane himself, which he personally titled as follows: "Tamerlane, or Timur, the Great Emir." Sounds provocative, right? This contradicts the basic principles of the worldview inherent in the representatives of the Eastern civilization, which honors modesty as one of the highest virtues. Asian etiquette prescribes to praise your friends and even enemies in every possible way, but not yourself.

Immediately there is a suspicion that this "work" was titled by a person who has the most remote understanding of the culture, customs and traditions of the East. And the validity of this suspicion is confirmed as soon as you ask yourself the question of who became the publisher of Tamerlane's memoirs. This is one John Hern Sanders.

I believe that this fact is already enough to not take the "memoirs of the Great Emir" seriously. One gets the impression that everything in this world was created by British and French Freemasons, intelligence agents. This is no longer surprising, not even annoying. Egyptology was invented by Champillon, Sumerology by Layard, Tamerlanology by Sanders.

And if everything is very clear with the first two, then no one knows who Sanders is. There is fragmentary information that he was in the service of the King of Great Britain and regulated complex diplomatic issues in India and Persia. And so they refer to him as an authoritative specialist - "tamerlanologist".

Then it becomes clear that it is time to stop puzzling over the question of why suddenly the Uzbek leader unselfishly delivered the country of unfaithful Russian Christians, alien to him, from the yoke of the Golden Horde and crushed it (the horde) utterly.

Now is the time to remember the legendary opening of Tamerlane's tomb in June 1941. I will not go into a description of all the "mystical" signs and strange events, they are probably known to everyone. This is me about the prophecies on the tomb and in the old book, that if you disturb the ashes of Timur, then a terrible war will certainly break out. The tomb was opened on June 21, 1941, and on June 22, the next day, something happened that is known to every inhabitant of Russia and the republics of the former USSR.

Much more interesting is another "mystical" circumstance: the reasons that prompted Soviet scientists to open the tomb - that's where you need to start. On the one hand, everything is very clear, the goal was to study historical material. On the other hand, what if this was done to refute or, conversely, to confirm historical myths? I think that the main motive was just that - to prove to the whole world the greatness and antiquity of the great Uzbek people, which is part of the great Soviet people.

And this is where the magic begins. Something didn't go according to plan. First, clothes. The emir was dressed like a medieval Russian prince, the second - a light red beard and hair and fair skin. The famous anthropologist Gerasimov, a well-known specialist in the reconstruction of appearance from skulls, was amazed: Tamerlane did not at all resemble those of his rare images that have come down to us. The fact is that they can be called portraits with a very big stretch. They were written after the death of the "Iron Lame" by Persian masters who had never seen the conqueror.

So the later artists portrayed a typical representative of the Central Asian peoples, completely forgetting that Timur was not a Mongol. He was a descendant of a distant relative of Genghis Khan, who was from the kind of great Moghuls, or Mogulls, as Genghis Khan himself said. But the Moghuls have nothing to do with the Mongols, just as the province of Turana Katai has nothing to do with modern China.

Mogulls outwardly did not differ from the Slavs and Europeans. Everyone who has had time to live in the USSR knows that in every Soviet republic, local artists painted portraits of Lenin, endowing him with the external features of their own people. So in Georgia, on large street posters, Lenin looked exactly like a Georgian, and in Kyrgyzstan, Lenin was portrayed, well, too “Mongolian”. So, it's all very clear. The history of the conclusion about the causes of death is not clear.

There are testimonies of contemporaries who claimed that Gerasimov repeatedly stated orally that his first reconstruction of the appearance of Tamerlane was not approved by the leadership, and he was "recommended" to bring the portrait to the generally accepted standard: Tamerlane is an Uzbek, a descendant of Genghis Khan. I had to make him a Mongoloid. Against a saber, a bare heel is a dubious argument.

Further, it is necessary to mention the undisguised facts of the study of the tomb. So, everyone knows that despite the advanced age of the deceased, he had excellent strong teeth, very strong smooth bones. That is, Timur was quite tall (172 cm), a strong, healthy man. The discovered injuries of the hand and patella could not play a fatal role. If so, then what was the cause of death? The answer may lie in the fact that someone for some reason separated Timur's head from the body. It is clear that the members of the expedition would not have dismantled the body for "spare parts" without good reason.

The first probable reason for this barbarism, the desecration of the ashes, is the substitution of the head. Possibly the genuine white head has been replaced with the representative's head Mongoloid race. The second version is that he was already decapitated in the coffin. Then the question arises about the possible murder of Timur. And now the time has come to recall the long-running "duck" about the causes of Timur's death.

I don’t even remember now the publication that published the “secret” confession of the pathologist who took part in the study of Tamerlane’s body. According to rumors, allegedly, Tamerlane was shot from a firearm! I would not like to replicate false sensations, but what if it's true? Then such secrecy of this “archaeological enterprise” becomes clear.

Tamerlane is a Mongol? In my opinion, a very European-looking man, with a rod symbolizing Rarog, who is also the Slavic god Khors. One of the incarnations of Ra is a sunny half-man half-falcon. Maybe the European artist did not know what "wild tartars" look like?

But we translate the inscription from Latin into Russian:

"Tamerlane, the ruler of Tartaria, the lord of the wrath of God and the forces of the Universe and the blessed country, was killed in 1402." The main word here is "killed". It follows from the inscription that the author treats Tamerlane with the utmost respect, and for sure, when creating the engraving, he relied on the well-known lifetime images of Tamerlane, and not on his own fantasies. However, the number of well-known portraits painted in the Middle Ages does not even leave any doubt that this is exactly what the “Lord of God’s Wrath…” looked like.

This is the reason for the emergence of many of all myths. Discarding later fantasies about Timur, looking at this evidence with a clear eye, we come to the following conclusions:

Tamerlane is the Ruler of the Great Tartaria, of which Russia was also a part, therefore the symbolism of the "Mongol" is quite understandable to the Russian people.
Power was given to him by a higher power.
In 402 AD (I.402) he was killed. Perhaps they were shot.
Tamerlane, judging by the symbolism (Magendavid with a crescent), belonged to the same diaspora as Sultan Bayazid, who commanded the horde of Anatolia and owned Constantinople. But let's not forget that the vast majority of the Russian aristocracy, including the mother of Peter I, had the same symbols on the family emblems.

But that's not all. Noteworthy is the sign on the cap of Tamerlane. If he is the Ruler, then the version that this is an ordinary ornament does not stand up to criticism. On the headdresses of monarchs there is always a symbol of the state religion.

Distinctive signs on headdresses are not the most ancient tradition, but firmly entrenched even before the accession to the throne of Tamerlane. And it became law after the introduction of the uniform, which first appeared in the world in medieval Russia.

And guardsmen wore black uniforms:

On the sleeve they had almost this sign embroidered:

Why did the boyars cry out so much at the introduction of the oprichnina? I believe that everything that we are told about the "National Guard" of Ivan the Terrible is an analogue of the modern indignation of human rights activists and dishonest officials. Hence the myths about the cruelty of the monarch.

Previously, soldiers, tax collectors and other sovereign people dressed in the service, whatever they had to. Fashion, as such, appeared only after the emergence of manufacturing, so the attempts of modern scientists to study the "ancient fashion", which are trying to identify differences in the national costumes of the Middle Ages, look quite funny. There were no "national" costumes. Our ancestors treated clothing in a completely different way than we do, and therefore dressed almost the same in Persipolis, and in Tobolsk, and in Moscow.

Any item of clothing was strictly individual, sewn for a specific person, and wearing someone else's was simply suicide. This meant taking on all the ailments and ailments of the real owner of the clothes. In addition, people understood that they could harm the owner of the dress that they would like to try on. The clothes of each person were considered part of the spirit of its owner, which is why it was considered an honor to receive a fur coat from the royal shoulder. Thus, the recipient, as it were, was attached to the highest, royal, and therefore, to the divine. And vice versa. Convicted that he was trying on royal clothes, they were considered as encroaching on the health and life of the monarch, and, accordingly, they were executed at the frontal place.

And to imitate the clothes of others was considered the height of stupidity. Each nobleman tried to stand out with his clothes from both commoners and fellow classmates, so how many people existed, there were so many costumes. Of course, there were general trends, it is natural just like the fact that all cars have round wheels.

That is why I consider the surprised remarks of medieval travelers about the similarity of European and Russian costumes to be absurd. We live in approximately the same climatic conditions, we have approximately the same level of technology, it is absolutely normal that all people of the white race dressed in the same way. Except for the details, of course. Even on everyday clothes of peasants there were individual signs in the form of embroideries. Interestingly, the main thing in clothing was a belt. It had an individual ornament, and only the owner could touch it.

The belt was tied at the place where the chakra is located, called in Russia "hara" (hence the origin of the concept of "character"), which is responsible for a person's life. That is why, they used to say “Not sparing their belly”, which was synonymous with the expression “not sparing their lives”.

So maybe Tamerlane's headdress is just an ornament? It signified his own unique personality, and therefore was unique, and there was no point in looking for similar images? May be. Or maybe not. Here is an engraving from the book of Adam Olearius with views of Russia:

I don't know if you can even call it crosses? This does not fit in with the objects that we see on the modern domes of modern places of worship. Although in Western Ukraine there are still churches with such crosses. But the analogy with the "cockade" of Tamerlane is too obvious to be a mere coincidence.

It remains only to figure out what all this can mean.

By and large, there is absolutely nothing to be surprised at. The tradition of decorating royal headdresses with crosses is not new.

However, it may well be that the very meaning of this is not completely clear to us. Yes, we found out that Tamerlane was depicted with a symbol of royal power - a cross, and the shape of the cross on his hat corresponds to the era in which the crosses on the temples were of this form, but questions remain. Were they Christian crosses? Did they have any connection with religion at all? And why did such hats come to replace those that were used earlier?

A huge help in the reconstruction of genuine historical events are the most nondescript, at first glance, documents. From a cookbook, for example, you can learn more information than from a dozen scientific papers written by the most eminent historians. Cookbooks did not come to mind to destroy or forge. The same is true of various travel notes that have not become widely known. In our digital age, publications have come into open access that were not even considered as historical sources, but they often contain sensational information.

One of these, of course, is the report of Ruy Gonzalez De Clavijo, Ambassador of the King of Castile, about his journey to the court of the Ruler of the Great Tartary Tamerlane in Samarkand. 1403-1406 from the incarnation of God the Word.

A very curious report, which can be considered documentary, despite the fact that it was translated into Russian and published for the first time already at the end of the nineteenth century. Relying on known facts, about which today we already know with a high degree of certainty what exactly they were distorted in, one can draw up a very realistic picture of the era in which the legendary Timur ruled Tartaria.

The original version of the reconstruction of Tamerlane's appearance based on his remains, produced by Academician M.M. Gerasimov in 1941, but who was rejected by the leadership of the USSR Academy of Sciences, after which the appearance of Timur was given typical facial features characteristic of modern Uzbeks.

The report contains a lot of truly amazing information that characterizes the features of the history of the medieval Mediterranean and Asia Minor. When I began to study this work, the first thing that surprised me was that the official document, in which all dates are scrupulously recorded, geographical names, the names of not only nobles and priests, but even ship captains, are set out in a lively, vivid literary language. Therefore, the document is perceived as an adventurous novel in the spirit of R. Stevenson or J. Verne.

From the first pages, the reader plunges into the outlandish world of the Middle Ages with his head, and it is incredibly difficult to tear himself away from reading, while, unlike Treasure Island, de Clavijo's Diary leaves no doubt about the authenticity of the events described. In great detail, with all the details and reference to dates, he describes his journey in such a way that a person who knows the geography of Eurasia well enough can trace the entire route of the embassy from Seville to Samarkand and back, without resorting to reconciliation with geographical maps.

First, the royal ambassador describes a carrack journey through the Mediterranean. And unlike the officially accepted version of the properties of this type of ship, it becomes clear that Spanish historians greatly exaggerated the achievements of their ancestors in shipbuilding and navigation. It is clear from the descriptions that the carrack is no different from Russian plows or boats. Carrack was not adapted for traveling on the seas and oceans, it is exclusively a coaster capable of moving within sight of the coastline only if there is a fair wind, making “throws” from island to island.

The description of these islands attracts attention. Many of them at the beginning of the century had the remains of ancient buildings and at the same time were uninhabited. The names of the islands are basically the same as modern ones, until travelers find themselves off the coast of Turkey. Further, all toponyms have to be restored in order to understand what city or island we are talking about.

And here we come across the first great discovery. It turns out that the existence of which is not considered unconditional by historians to this day, at the beginning of the fifteenth century did not raise any questions. To this day we are looking for the “legendary” Troy, and De Clavijo describes it simply and casually. She is as real to him as his native Seville.

Here is the place today:

By the way, not much has changed now. Between Tenio (now Bozcaada) and Ilion (Geyikli) there is a continuous ferry service. It is probable that even earlier large ships moored to the island, and between the port and Troy there was communication only by boats and small ships. The island was a natural fort that protected the city from the sea from the attack of the enemy fleet.

A natural question arises: where did the ruins go? There is only one answer: they were dismantled for building materials. Common practice for builders. The Ambassador himself mentions in the Diary that Constantinople is being built at a rapid pace, and ships with marble and granite flock to the moorings from many islands. Therefore, it is completely logical to assume that instead of cutting the material in a quarry, it was much easier to take it ready-made, especially since hundreds and thousands of finished products in the form of columns, blocks, and slabs disappear in vain in the open air.

So Schliemann “discovered” his Troy in the wrong place, and tourists in Turkey are taken to the wrong place. Well... Absolutely the same thing is happening here with the site of the Kulikovo battle. All scientists have already agreed that the Kulikovo field is a district of Moscow called Kulishki. There is the Donskoy Monastery, and Krasnaya Gorka, an oak forest in which the ambush regiment hid, but tourists are still taken to the Tula region, and in all textbooks no one is in a hurry to correct the mistake of historians of the 19th century.

The second question that needs to be resolved is how did the seaside Troy end up so far from the surf line? I suggest adding some water to the Mediterranean. Why? Yes, because its level is constantly falling. According to the frozen lines on the coastal land areas, it is clearly visible at what mark the sea level was in what period of time. Since the De Clavijo embassy, the sea level has dropped several meters. And if the Trojan War actually took place millennia ago, then you can safely add 25 meters, and this is the picture you get:

The hit is complete! Geyikli is ideally becoming a seaside town! And the mountains behind, exactly as described in the Diary, and a vast bay, like Homer's.

Agree, it is very easy to imagine the walls of the city on this hill. And the ditch in front of him was filled with water. It seems that you can no longer look for Troy. One thing is a pity: no traces have been preserved, because Turkish peasants have been plowing the land there for centuries, and even an arrowhead cannot be found in it.

Until the nineteenth century, there were no states in the modern sense. Relations were of a pronounced criminal nature on the basis of the principle "I cover you - you pay." Moreover, citizenship therefore has the root “tribute”, which is not related to origin or location. The mass of castles in Turkey belonged to Armenians, Greeks, Genoese and Venetians. But they paid tribute to Tamerlane, as did the court of the Turkish Sultan. Now it is clear why Tamerlane called the largest peninsula in the Sea of Marmara from Asia, "Turan". This is colonization. The large country of Turan, which stretched from the Bering Strait to the Urals, owned by Tamerlane, gave its name to the newly conquered land in Anatolia opposite the Marble Island, where there were quarries.

Further, the embassy passed Sinop, which at that time was called Sinopol. And they arrived in Trebizond, which is now called Trobzon. There they were met by Chakatai, the messenger of Tamurbek. De Clavijo explains that in fact “Tamerlane” is a contemptuous nickname meaning “crippled, lame-legged”, and the real name of the Tsar, by which his subjects called him, was TAMUR (iron) BEK (Tsar) - Tamurbek.

And all the warriors from the native tribe of Tamurbek-Khan were called chakatay. He himself was a chakotay and brought his fellow tribesmen to the Samarkand kingdom from the north. More precisely, from the coast of the Caspian Sea, where Chakatai and Arbals live to this day, tribesmen of Tamerlane, fair-haired, white-skinned and blue-eyed. True, they themselves do not remember that they are descendants of the Moguls. They are sure that they are Russians. There are no external differences.

But, by the way, after Tamurbek defeated Bayazet and conquered Turkey, the peoples of Kurdistan and southern Armenia breathed more freely, because in exchange for an acceptable tribute, they received freedom and the right to exist. If history develops in a spiral, then perhaps the Kurds again have hope for liberation from the Turkish yoke with the help of their neighbors from the east.

The next discovery for me was the description of the city of Bayazet. It would seem that more new things can be learned about this city of military Russian glory, but no. See:

At first I could not understand what it was about, but only after I converted the leagues into kilometers (6 leagues - 39 kilometers), I was finally convinced that Bayazet was called "Kalmarin" in the time of Tamurbek.

And here is the castle, which was visited during the embassy of Ruy Gonzalez De Clavijo. Today it is called Ishak Pash Palace.

The local knight tried to force the ambassadors to pay tribute, saying that the castle exists only at the expense of the taxes of passing merchants, to which the chakatay noted that they were guests himself ... The conflict was settled.

By the way, De Clavijo calls knights not only the owners of castles, but also Chakatays - officers of Tamurbek's army.

During the journey, the ambassadors visited many castles, and from their description it becomes clear their purpose and meaning. It is generally accepted that these are exclusively fortifications. In fact, their military importance is greatly exaggerated. First of all, this is a house that can withstand the efforts of any "safecracker". Therefore, "castle" and "castle" are the same root words. The castle is a storehouse of valuables, a reliable safe and a fortress for the owner. A very expensive pleasure, available to very wealthy people who had something to protect from robbers. Its main purpose is to hold out until the arrival of reinforcements, the squad of the one to whom tribute is paid.

A very curious fact: even at the time of the described embassy, wild wheat grew in abundance at the foot of Ararat, which, according to De Clavijo, was completely unsuitable, because it did not have grains in ears. Like it or not, this fact indicates that Noah's Ark, as a repository of DNA samples, could well exist in reality and contributed to the revival of life from Ararat.

And from Bayazet, the expedition went to Azerbaijan and to the north of Persia, where they were met by the messenger of Tamurbek, who ordered them to go south to meet with the royal mission. And travelers were forced to get acquainted with the sights of Syria. On the way, sometimes amazing events happened to them. What, for example, is this:

Did you understand? A hundred years before the discovery of America in Azerbaijan and Persia, people calmly ate corn, and did not even suspect that it had not yet been “discovered”. As they did not suspect that it was the Chinese who first invented silk and began to grow rice. The fact is that, according to the ambassadors, rice and barley were the main food products, both in Turkey and in Persia and Central Asia.

I immediately remembered that when I lived in a small seaside village not far from Baku, I was surprised that in every house of local residents one room was allocated for growing silkworms. Yes! In the same place, mulberry, or "here" as the Azerbaijanis call it, grows at every step! And the boys had such a duty around the house, every day to climb a tree, and tear the leaves for the silkworm caterpillars.

And what? Half an hour a day is not difficult. At the same time, eat plenty of berries. Then the leaves crumbled into newspapers, over the mesh of the armored bed, and hundreds of thousands of voracious green worms begin to actively chew this mass. Caterpillars are growing by leaps and bounds. A week or two, and silkworm pupae are ready. Then they were handed over to the sericulture state farm, and on this they had a significant extra income. Nothing changes. Azerbaijan was the world center for the production of silk fabrics, not Chin. Probably, until the very moment the oil fields were opened.

In parallel with the description of the journey to Shiraz, De Clavijo tells in detail the story of Tamurbek himself, and tells about all his exploits in a picturesque form. Some of the details are amazing. For example, I recalled an anecdote about how a boy in a Jewish family asks: “Grandfather, was it true that during the war there was nothing to eat”?

True granddaughter. There wasn't even a loaf. I had to spread butter directly on the sausage.

Ryuy writes about the same: “In times of famine, the inhabitants were forced to eat only meat and sour milk.” I'm so hungry!

Indeed, the description of the food of ordinary Tartar subjects is breathtaking. Rice, barley, corn, melons, grapes, flat cakes, mare's milk with sugar, sour milk (kefir, yogurt, cottage cheese, and cheese, as I understand it), wine, and just mountains of meat. Horse meat and lamb in huge quantities, in a variety of dishes. Boiled, fried, steamed, salted, dried. In general, the Castilian ambassadors, for the first time in their lives, ate like a human being during a business trip.

But then the travelers arrived in Shiraz, where a few days later they were joined by the mission of Tamurbek to accompany them to Samarkand. Here for the first time I had difficulties with identification with the geography of the campaign. Suppose Sultania and Orasania are parts of modern Iran and Syria. What then did he mean by "Little India"? And why is Hormuz a city if it is now an island?

Let us suppose that Hormuz broke away from the land. But what about India? According to all descriptions, India itself falls under this concept. Its capital is Delies. Tamurbek conquered it in a very original way: against the war elephants, he released a herd of camels with burning bales of straw on their backs, and the elephants, terribly afraid of fire by nature, trampled the Indian army in a panic, and ours won. But if so, what then is "Greater India"? Maybe the modern researcher I. Gusev is right, who claims that Greater India is America? Moreover, the presence of corn in this region makes us think about it again.

Then questions about the presence of traces of cocaine in the tissues of Egyptian mummies disappear by themselves. They did not fly on vimanas across the ocean. Cocaine was one of the spices, along with cinnamon and pepper, that merchants brought from Little India. Of course? will sadden fans of the work of Erich von Däniken, but what can you do if in fact everything is much simpler and without the participation of aliens.

OK. Let's go further. In parallel with the most detailed description of the route from Shiraz to Orasania, which bordered the Samarkand kingdom along the Amu Darya, De Clavijo continues to pay much attention to the description of the deeds of Tamurbek, which the envoys told him about. There is something to be horrified here. Perhaps this is part of the information war against Tamerlane, but hardly. Everything is described in too much detail.

For example, Timur's zeal for justice is striking. He himself, being a pagan, never touched either Christians or Muslims or Jews. For the time being. Until the Christians showed their lying greedy face.

During the war with Turkey, the Greeks from the European part of Constantinople promised help and support to Tamurbek's army in exchange for a loyal attitude towards them in the future. But instead, they supplied Bayazit's army with a fleet. Tamurbek Bayazit defeated simply brilliantly, in the best traditions of the Russian army, with low losses, defeating many times superior forces. And then he drove the captive Sultan together with his son in a golden cage mounted on a cart, like an animal in a zoo.

But he did not forgive the vile Greeks, and since then he has persecuted Christians mercilessly. Just as he did not forgive the tribe of White Tartars, who also betrayed him. In one of the castles, they were surrounded by Tamurbek's squad, and they, seeing that they could not get away from retribution, tried to pay off. Then the wise, just, but vindictive king, in order to save the lives of his soldiers, promised the traitors that if they themselves brought him money, he would not shed their blood. They left the castle.

Well? I promised you that I would not shed your blood?
- Promised! - White tartars began to sing in unison.
- And I, unlike you, keep my word. Your blood will not be shed. Bury them alive! - he ordered his "Commander-in-Chief of the Tartar Guards."

And then a decree was issued that every subject of Tamurbek was obliged to kill all the white tartars he met on the way. And if he does not kill, he will be killed himself. And the repressions of the Timurov reform began. Within a few years, this people was completely exterminated. Only about six hundred thousand.

Rui recalls how on the way they met four towers "so high that a stone cannot be dropped." Two were still standing, and two collapsed. They were built from the skulls of White Tartars, held together as mortar with mud. Such were the manners in the fifteenth century.

Another curious fact describes De Clavijo. This is what I described in detail in the previous chapter - the presence of a logistics service in Tartaria. Tamerlane significantly reformed it, and some of the details of this reform can serve as a clue to another mystery, what kind of mythical Mongols, together with the Tatars, “have been torturing unfortunate Russia for three hundred years”:

Thus, we are again convinced that "Tatar-Mongolia", in fact, is not Tataria at all and not Mongolia at all. - Yes. Mogulia - yes! Just an analogue of the modern Russian Post.

Next, we will talk about the "Iron Gates". This is where the author most likely got confused. He confuses Derbent with the "Iron Gates" on the way from Bukhara to Samarkand. But not the point. Using the example of this passage, I highlighted the key words in the text in Russian with markers of various colors, and I highlighted the same words in the original text. This clearly shows what sophistication historians went to to hide the truth about Tartary:

It is possible that I am mistaken in the same way as the translator who translated the book from Spanish. And "Derbent" has nothing to do with it, but "Darbante" is something, the meaning of which has been lost, because there is no such word in the Spanish dictionary. And here are the original "Iron Gates", which, along with the Amu Darya, served as a natural defense of Samarkand from a sudden invasion from the west:

And now about the chakatas. My first thought was that this tribe could somehow be connected with Katai, who was in Siberian Tartaria. Moreover, it is known that Tamurbek paid tribute to Katai for quite a long time, until he took possession of it with the help of diplomacy.

But later another thought came. It is possible that the author simply did not know how to spell the name of the tribe, and wrote it down by ear. But in fact, not “chakatai”, but “chegodai”. After all, this is one of the Slavic pagan nicknames, such as chelubey, nogai, mother, run away, catch up, guess, etc. And Chegodai is, in other words, "The Beggar" (give me something?). Indirect confirmation that such a version has the right to life is the following find:

"Chegodaev - Russian surname, comes from male name Chegodai (in Russian pronunciation Chaadai). The surname is based on a proper male name of Mongolian origin, but widely known among the Turkic peoples. It is known and how historical name Chagatai (Jagatai), the second son of Genghis Khan, meaning brave, honest, sincere. The same name is known as an ethnonym - the name of the Turkic-Mongolian tribe Jagatai-Chagatai, from which Tamerlane came. The surname sometimes changed into Chaadaev and Cheodaev. The surname Chegodaev is a Russian princely family.

In general, the statement that Tamerlane is the founder of the Timurid dynasty is not true, because he himself was a representative of Genghisides, which means that all his descendants are also Genghisides.

It was interesting to understand the origin of the toponym "Samarkand". In my opinion, too many city names contain the root "samar". This is the biblical Samaria, and our metropolis on the Volga Samara, and before the revolution, Khanty-Mansiysk was called Samarov, and Samarkand itself, of course. We have forgotten the meaning of the word "Samar". But the ending "kand" fits perfectly into the system of formation of toponyms in Tartaria. These are Astrakh (k) an, and Tmu-cockroach, and many different "kans" and "vats" (Srednekan, Kadykchan) in the north-east of the country.

Perhaps all these endings are associated with the word "ham" or "khan". And we could have inherited from the Great Tartaria. Surely, in the east, the cities were called by the name of their founders. As Prince Sloven founded Slovensk, and Prince Rus - Russu (now Staraya Russa), so Belichan could be the city of Bilyk Khan, and Kadykchan - Sadyk Khan.

And further. Do not forget about how the Magi actually named the pagan Ivan the Terrible at birth:

"Ivan IV Vasilyevich, nicknamed the Terrible, by the direct name of Titus and Smaragd, in the tonsure of Ion (August 25, 1530, the village of Kolomenskoye near Moscow - March 18 (28), 1584, Moscow) - sovereign, Grand Duke Moscow and All Russia since 1533, the first Tsar of All Russia".

Yes. Smaragd is his name. Almost SAMARA-gd. And this may not be just a coincidence. Why? Yes, because when describing Samarkand, the word "emerald" is repeated dozens of times. There were huge emeralds (emeralds) on the cap of Tamurbek and on the diadem of his elder wife. Clothes and even numerous palaces of Tamurbek and his relatives were decorated with emeralds. Therefore, I would venture to suggest that "samara" and "smara" are one and the same. Then it turns out that the person in the title picture is the wizard of the Emerald City?

But this is a digression. Let's return to medieval Samarkand.

The description of the brilliance of this city is dizzying. For Europeans, it was a miracle of miracles. They did not even suspect that what they previously considered luxury is considered “jewelry” even among the poor in Samarkand.

Let me remind you that we were all told from childhood that the magnificent Tsaregrad was the pinnacle of civilization. But what a hitch... The author devoted several pages to the description of this Constantinople, of which only the church of John the Baptist is remembered. And in order to express the shock of what he saw in the "wild steppes", he needed fifty pages. Weird? It is obvious that historians are not telling us something.

There was absolutely everything in Samarkand. Powerful fortresses, castles, temples, canals, pools in the courtyards of houses, thousands of fountains, and much, much more.

Travelers were struck by the wealth of the city. The description of feasts and holidays merges into one continuous series of grandeur and splendor. So much wine and meat in one place in such a short period of time, the Castilians have not seen in their entire previous life. The description of the rituals, traditions and customs of the Tartars is noteworthy. One of them, at least, has come down to us in full. Drink until you drop. And mountains of meat and tons of wine from the palaces were taken out to the streets to distribute to ordinary citizens. And the Feast in the palace has always become a nationwide celebration.

Separately, I would like to say about the fight against corruption in the kingdom of Tamurbek. De Clavijo tells about one case when, during the absence of the Sovereign in the capital, an official who remained I.O. King, abused power and offended someone. As a result, I tried on a “hemp tie”. More precisely, paper, because in Samarkand everyone wore a natural cotton dress. Probably the ropes were also made of cotton.

Another official was also hanged, who was convicted of wasting horses from the giant herd of Tamurbek. Moreover, capital punishment was always accompanied by confiscation in favor of the state treasury under Timur.

People not of boyar origin were executed by beheading. It was worse than just death. By separating the head from the body, the executioner deprived the convict of something more important than just life. De Clavijo witnessed the trial and chopping off of the heads of a shoemaker and a merchant, who unreasonably raised the price during the absence of the Tsar in the city. That's what I understand, an effective fight against monopolies!

And here's another little discovery. For those who think that the Amazons were invented by Homer. Here it is, in black and white:

Witch? No, Queen! And that was the name of one of the eight wives of Timur. The youngest, and probably the most beautiful. That's how he was ... The Wizard of the Emerald City.

Modern archeological finds confirm that Samarkand was actually an emerald city during the time of Tamerlane. Today, these masterpieces are called so: “The Emeralds of the Great Moghuls. India".

The description of the ambassadors' way back through Georgia is interesting, of course, but only from the point of view of a novelist. Too many dangers and severe trials have fallen to the lot of travelers. I was especially struck by the description of how they ended up in snow captivity in the mountains of Georgia. Interestingly, today it happens that snow falls for several days and sweeps houses on the roof?

Pisconi is perhaps a profession, not a surname.

The exploits of Tamerlane, and not quite exploits

The story about the exploits of Tamurbek Khan would be incomplete if we did not turn to other sources that tell about the epochal events that occurred during his reign. One such source is a document known as Ivan Schiltberger's Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa from 1394 to 1427. I will omit the descriptions of Europe and Africa, since within the framework of this topic, my goal was initially only to describe the past of our country in its most ancient period, when it was called Scythia, and then Tartaria.

Why does it make sense to dwell on this issue in more detail. The fact is that this is also our history. An attempt by historians to separate the history of Russia from the history of the Great Tartary has led to what we have today. And we have a huge number of fellow citizens who question even the very existence of such a country in the past, not to mention the fact that Russia was an integral part of it.

This is the strategy aimed at crushing a great country. Having broken it into pieces in the past, it is very easy to break it into pieces in the present. Therefore, every inhabitant of all countries that were until recently a single state - Soviet Union It is vital to know your history in order not to repeat the mistakes in the future.

Today you cannot find a person who would not know the name of Tamerlane. But try to ask a casual passer-by about what the great politician and commander became famous for, and in about ninety percent of cases, you will not hear anything beyond what was told in the commercial of one commercial bank. People will say that, they say, there was such a ferocious Mongol who only did what he conquered everyone, and at the same time did not spare either his own or others.

This is partly true. Timur was stern and merciless. But he was fair. He took care of his people, defended the peoples who submitted to him, and at the same time was not bloodthirsty. There was a time when the death penalty was the most effective tool of government. But Timur ruled not for the sake of his own ambitions, but for the benefit of the people, who considered him their father and protector. He even took the title of Khan shortly before his death.

Therefore, it is not enough to know that Tamerlane existed. You need to know exactly what he did and how. We must be fully aware that along with Ogus Khan, Genghis Khan, Batu Khan, Prophetic Oleg and Tsar Smaragd (Ivan the Terrible), Tamurbek Khan, we owe the existence of our modern country - Russia. So, let's turn to the facts presented by Ivan Shiltberger, which largely confirm and supplement the information provided by Abulgazi-Bayadur-Khan.

About the war of Tamerlane with the king-sultan

Upon his return from a happy campaign against Bayazit, Tamerlane began a war with the Sultan King, who occupies the first place among the pagan rulers. With an army of one million two hundred thousand people, he invaded the possessions of the Sultan and began the siege of the city of Galeb, in which there were up to four hundred thousand houses. It's hard to believe, but from somewhere Schiltberger took such figures.

The commander of the besieged garrison made a sortie with eighty thousand people, but was forced to return and lost many soldiers. Four days later, Tamerlane took possession of the suburb and ordered that its inhabitants be thrown into the city ditch, and logs and dung were thrown on them so that this ditch was filled up in four places, although it had twelve fathoms of depth. If this is true, and Tamerlane actually did this to innocent civilians, then undoubtedly he is one of the greatest villains of all times and peoples. However, one should not forget that the information war was not invented today or yesterday.

Fables are written about all the great rulers of Tartaria to this day, and this is normal. The more merit the ruler has, the more myths about his bloodthirstiness are added up. So the tales of the cruelty of Ivan the Terrible have long been exposed, but no one is still in a hurry to rewrite textbooks. The same, I think, is the case with the myths about Tamerlane.

Then Tamerlane proceeded to another city, called Urum-Kola, which offered no resistance, and to the inhabitants of which Tamerlane showed mercy. From there he went to the city of Aintab, the garrison of which refused to submit to the sovereign, and the city was taken after a nine-day siege. According to the customs of the war of those times, the unsubdued city was given to soldiers for plunder. After that, the army moved to the city of Begesna, which fell after a fifteen-day siege, and where the garrison was left.

The mentioned cities were considered the main ones in Syria after Damascus, where Tamerlane then went. Upon learning of this, the Sultan King ordered to ask him to spare this city, or at least the temple located in it, to which Tamerlane agreed. The temple in question was so large that it had forty gates on the outside. Inside, it was lit by twelve thousand lamps, which were lit on Fridays. On other days of the week, only nine thousand were lit. Among the lamps there were many gold and silver consecrated by king-sultans and nobles.

Tamerlane besieged Damascus, and the Sultan sent from his capital Cairo, where he was, an army of twelve thousand people. Tamerlane, of course, defeated this detachment and sent in pursuit of enemy soldiers who had fled from the battlefield. But after each overnight stay, they poisoned the water and the area before leaving, so because of the heavy losses, the chase had to be returned back. This seems to be one of the oldest descriptions of the use of chemical weapons.

After a few months of siege, Damascus fell. One of the cunning qadi fell on his face before the conqueror and asked to negotiate a pardon for himself and other nobles. Tamerlane pretended to believe the priest and allowed all those who, in the opinion of the Qadi, were better than other civilians, to take refuge in the temple. When they took refuge in the temple, Tamerlane ordered to lock the gates from the outside and burn the traitors of his people. Such is the natural selection. Cruel? - Yes! Fair? Again - Yes!

He also ordered his soldiers to each present him on the head of an enemy soldier and after three days, used to carry out this order, he ordered to erect three towers from these heads.

Then he went to another region, called Shurki, which did not have a military garrison. The inhabitants of the city, famous for its spices and spices, supplied the army with everything necessary, and Tamerlane, leaving garrisons in the conquered cities, returned to his lands.

Conquest of Babylon by Tamerlane

Upon returning from the possessions of the king-sultan, Tamerlane with a million troops set out against Babylon.

By the way, if you think that the ancient city of Babylon is mythical, then you are deeply mistaken. Saddam Hussein's palace is on the edge of this city.

Upon learning of his approach, the king left the city, leaving a garrison in it. After a siege that lasted a whole month, Tamerlane, who ordered to dig mines under the wall, took possession of it and set it on fire. He ordered barley to be sown on the ashes, for he swore that he would destroy the city completely, so that in the future no one could even find the place on which Babylon stood. However, the citadel of Babylon, located on a high hill and surrounded by a moat filled with water, remained impregnable. It also contained the treasury of the Sultan. Then Tamerlane ordered to divert water from the ditch, in which three lead chests were found, filled with gold and silver, each two fathoms in length and one fathom in width.

The kings hoped to save their treasures in this way if the city was taken. Commanding them to carry away these chests, Tamerlane also took possession of the castle, where there were no more than fifteen people who were hanged. However, four chests filled with gold were also found in the castle, which were taken away by Tamerlane. Then, having mastered three more cities, he, on the occasion of the onset of a sultry summer, had to retire from this region.

The conquest of India Minor by Tamerlane

Upon returning to Samarkand, Tamerlane ordered all his subjects to be ready for a trip to Little India, a four-month journey from his capital, after four months. Having set out on a campaign with a 400,000-strong army, he had to pass through a waterless desert, which took twenty days to cross. From there he arrived in a mountainous country, through which he made his way only in eight days with great difficulty, where he often had to tie camels and horses to boards in order to lower them from the mountains.

Further, Schiltberger describes the mysterious valley, "which was so dark that the warriors at noon could not see each other." As to what it was, one can now only guess. However, most likely the matter is not in the valley itself, but in some natural phenomenon, which coincided in time with the arrival of Tamerlane's troops in this area. Perhaps the reason for the long eclipse was a cloud of volcanic ash, or perhaps some more formidable natural phenomenon.

Then the army arrived in the mountainous country of a three-day stretch, and from there it got to the plain, where the capital of India Minor was located. Having set up his camp in this plain at the foot of a forest-covered mountain, Tamerlane ordered the messenger to tell the Ruler of the Indian capital: "Peace, Timur geldi", that is, "Surrender, sovereign Tamerlane has come."

The ruler preferred to oppose Tamerlane with four hundred thousand warriors and forty elephants trained for battle, carrying a tower with ten archers inside on his back. Tamerlane came out to meet him and would willingly start a battle, but the horses did not want to go forward, because they were afraid of the elephants placed in front of the formation. Tamerlane retreated and arranged a military council. Then one of his generals named Soliman Shah (a salty man, probably Suleiman, aka Solomon) advised to collect the required number of camels, load them with firewood, set them on fire and send them to the Indian war elephants.

Tamerlane, following this advice, ordered twenty thousand camels to be prepared and firewood laid on them. When they appeared to the sight of the enemy formation with elephants, the latter, frightened by fire and the cries of camels, fled and were partially killed by Tamerlane's soldiers, and partially captured as trophies.

Tamerlane besieged the city for ten days. Then the king began negotiations with him and promised to pay two hundredweights of Indian gold, which is better than Arabian. In addition, he gave him many more diamonds and promised to send thirty thousand auxiliary troops at his request. Upon the conclusion of peace on these terms, the king remained in his state, and Tamerlane returned home with a hundred war elephants and riches received from the king of India Minor.

How the governor steals great treasures from Tamerlane

Upon returning from the campaign, Tamerlane sent one of his nobles named Shebak with a corps of ten thousand to the city of Sultania to bring the five-year taxes stored there, collected in Persia and Armenia. Shebak, upon accepting this indemnity, imposed it on a thousand carts and wrote about this to his friend, the ruler of Mazanderan, who did not hesitate to come with a fifty-thousandth army, and together with his friend and with money returned to Mazanderan. Learning about this, Tamerlane sent a large army in pursuit of them, which, however, could not take Mazanderan because of the dense forests with which it is covered. Here we are once again convinced that the eastern part of the Caspian lowland was once covered with lush vegetation. Looking at these places today, it is hard to believe, but after all, several medieval authors could not be so cruelly mistaken at once.

Then Tamerlane sent another seventy thousand people with orders to make their way through the forests. Indeed, they cut down the forest for a mile, but they did not gain anything by this, so they were recalled by the sovereign back to Samarkand. For some reason, Schiltberger is silent about the further fate of the stolen treasures. It is hard to believe that embezzlement on such a scale could go unpunished. And most likely, the author simply did not know the end of this incident.

How Tamerlane ordered to kill 7,000 children.

Then Tamerlane bloodlessly annexed the kingdom of Ispahan with the capital of the same name to his state. He treated the people kindly and kindly. He left Ispahan, taking with him his king, Shahinshah, leaving a garrison of six thousand people in the city. But soon after the departure of Tamerlane's army, the inhabitants attacked his soldiers and killed everyone. Tamerlane had to return to Ispakhan and offer the inhabitants peace on the condition that they sent him twelve thousand archers. When these soldiers were sent to him, he ordered each of them to cut off the thumb on the hand and in this form sent them back to the city, which was soon taken by him by attack.

Gathering the inhabitants in the central square, he ordered to kill all those over the age of fourteen, thus sparing those who were younger. The heads of the dead were stacked in towers in the center of the city. Then he ordered the women and children to be taken to a field outside the city and children under seven years old to be placed separately. Then he ordered the cavalry to trample them with the hooves of horses. It is said that Tamerlane's own associates begged him on their knees not to do this. But he stood his ground and re-issued the order, which, however, none of the soldiers could dare to carry out. Angry, Tamerlane himself ran into the children and said that he would like to know who would dare not follow him. The warriors then were forced to imitate his example and trample the children with the hooves of their horses. There were about seven thousand of them in total.

Of course, this could be in reality, but in order to demonize a person, there is still no more effective method than accusing him of killing innocent children. The most famous of these legends entered the Bible as a chilling tale of the slaughter of infants by King Herod. However, now we already understand where the “ears grow” from this legend. Herod did not give the order to destroy all babies. He sent his archers in search of only one boy who, having become of age, could claim his throne, since he was his natural son from Mary, the wife of Herod, who was in exile before it turned out that she was pregnant by the monarch.

Tamerlane proposes to fight with the Great Ham

At about the same time, the ruler of Cathay sent envoys to the court of Tamerlane with a demand to pay tribute for five years. Tamerlane sent the envoy back to Karakurum with the answer that he considered the khan not the supreme ruler, but his tributary, and that he would personally visit him. Then he ordered to notify all his subjects so that they would prepare for a campaign in Turan, where he went with an army consisting of eight hundred thousand people. After a month's journey, he arrived at a desert that stretched for seventy days' journey, but after a ten-day journey, he had to return, having lost many soldiers and animals due to lack of water and the extremely cold climate of this country. Probably, Tamerlane planned to enter Katai through modern Tuva and Khakassia by the western route, along the Genghis Khan Road. But in the northern steppes of modern Kazakhstan, the campaign had to be interrupted and stopped in Otrar, where Tamerlane was killed by the conspirators, who, no doubt, were bribed by the people of the Great Ham.

On the death of Tamerlane

This part of the story is more like a script for a television series. Quoting the author:

“It can be seen that three troubles were the causes of Tamerlane's illness, which hastened his death. First, he was upset that his governor stole his tribute; then you need to know that the youngest of his three wives, whom he loved very much, in his absence, contacted one of his nobles. Having learned, upon his return, from the elder wife about the behavior of the younger, Tamerlane did not want to believe her words. Therefore, she told him to go to her and make her open the chest, where he would find a precious ring and a letter from her lover. Tamerlane did what she advised him, found a ring and a letter, and wanted to find out from his wife who she got them from. She then threw herself at his feet and begged him not to be angry, since these things were given to her by one of his close associates, but without malicious intent.
Tamerlane, however, came out of her room and ordered her to be beheaded; then he sent five thousand horsemen in pursuit of a dignitary suspected of treason; but this latter, warned in time by the head of the detachment sent after him, escaped with his wives and children, accompanied by five hundred people, to Mazanderan, where he was not persecuted by Tamerlane. The latter took to heart the death of his wife and the flight of his vassal to such an extent that he died. His funeral was celebrated throughout the region with great triumph; but it is remarkable that the priests who were in the temple heard his groans at night for a whole year.
In vain did his friends hope to put an end to these cries by distributing much alms to the poor. Therefore, the priests, after consulting, asked his son to let go to his homeland the people taken by his father from different countries, especially to Samarkand, where they sent many artisans who were forced to work there for him. They were all, indeed, set free, and immediately the cries ceased. Everything I have described so far happened during my six years of service with Tamerlane.

Golubev Andrey Viktorovich (kadykchanskiy, Kadykchansky, notes of a Kolyma resident). Born July 29, 1969 in the village of Kadykchan, Susumansky district, Magadan region. Graduated from the Vyborg Aviation Technical School and the Russian Customs Academy. He worked in the 2nd Kuibyshev united air squadron. Served in the Pskov customs. Lawyer, writer, historian.

Tamerlane (Timur; April 9, 1336, Khoja-Ilgar village, modern Uzbekistan - February 18, 1405, Otrar, modern Kazakhstan; Chagatai تیمور (Temür‎, Tēmōr) - “iron”) - a Central Asian conqueror who played a significant role in history . An outstanding commander, emir (since 1370). The founder of the empire and the Timurid dynasty, with the capital in Samarkand.

Tamerlane was born into a family of hereditary Mongol warriors. From childhood, he limped on his left leg. Despite the fact that he came from a completely unremarkable and not noble family, and even had a physical handicap, Timur achieved high degrees in the Mongol khanate. The year was 1370. Tamerlane became the head of the government. He overthrew the khan and seized power over the Jagatai ulus. After that, he openly declared that he was a direct descendant of Genghis Khan. For the next thirty-five years, he conquered new lands. Suppressed riots and expanded his power.

Tamerlane differed from Genghis Khan in that he did not unite all the occupied lands together. However, he left behind enormous destruction. Tamerlane erected pyramids from enemy skulls. It showed his strength and power. Tamerlane decided to take all the loot to the fortress in Samarkand. Timur turned Samarkand into a cultural center. The conqueror greatly appreciated literature and art. However, this did not diminish his cruelty. He and his army were bloodthirsty barbarians.

Tamerlane began to seize the lands from nearby tribes. He then went to war with Persia. In nine years he conquered Iran, Mesopotamia, Armenia and Georgia. An uprising broke out in Persia, but Timur quickly crushed it. He killed all opponents. Burned women and children, devastated cities. Tamerlane was an excellent tactician, strategist and commander. He knew how to raise the morale of the soldiers. By the way, his army numbered about a hundred thousand people. The military organization was a bit like the one that was in the time of Genghis Khan. The main ones were cavaliers armed with bows and swords. Supplies were carried on spare horses in case of a long campaign.

In 1389 Tamerlane invaded India. Most likely because of the love of war and murder, as well as because of imperial ambitions. He captured Delhi. He staged a massacre there and destroyed what he could not take to Samarkand. India recovered from this senseless slaughter and losses only after a century. Tamerlane still wanted blood, and he killed a hundred thousand captured soldiers in India.
In 1401 Timur captured Syria. Killed twenty thousand inhabitants of Damascus. A year later, he defeated Sultan Bayezid I. Even then, the countries that were not subjugated by Timur recognized his power. Byzantium, Egypt paid him not to destroy their countries.

The empire of Tamerlane was even larger than the empire of Genghis Khan once was. The palace of the conqueror was full of riches. And although Timur was over sixty, he decided to capture China. However, this plan failed. Before the campaign, the conqueror died. According to the will, the empire was divided between his grandsons and sons. Tamerlane was, of course, a talented leader and warrior, but he left behind nothing but scorched earth and pyramids of skulls.