anton

Born as a member of a Turkicized Mongol subculture in modern day Uzbekistan 109 years after the death of the Great Khan Genghis himself, Timur quickly rose in the ranks of the Chagtai Khanate.  Timur’s legitimacy and status within the Chagtai Khanate was dependent on his genealogical roots, of which he traced back to Genghis himself.  Though it is unknown and unlikely that Timur descended from the Khan himself, Timur did descend from the Mongol invaders who invaded his home region long ago.

Similar to many great Central Asian warriors before him, Timur began his track to dominance as a military leader.  Timur led many invasions, including the subjugation of Khwarizm and invasion of Khorosan, two Central Asian nations.  He was a devout Sunni Muslim, as his clan and great-great-grandfather were one of the first of the Mongol invaders to convert to Islam.  After the reigning Chagtai Khan’s death Timur began his reconquest of the Transoxanian territories.  His reputation as a conqueror and leader allowed him to rise the prominence in the region and after defeating the regional ruler and betraying his half-brother, he became the sole ruler of Transoxania.  Timur then declared himself the restorer of the Mongol Empire in his capital of Samarkand.  After securing his dominion, Timur began a series of invasions into Persia, Afghanistan, and Kurdistan.  First, he began an invasion of the Persian territory of Herāt. Progress of restoring stability in the region made by the Ilkhans had been halted after the death of the last member of the Ilkhanid dynasty.  Thus, the region was both politically and economically unstable and was not able to put up an effective resistance.  Khorosan and the entirety of eastern Persia fell to Timur next expanding his empire greatly in size.  The regions of “Fars, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Georgia all fell between 1386 and 1394.” After these conquests, a former ally, the leader of the Golden Horde began an invasion into Azerbaijan, but Timur’s armies pinned them against the Volga river and massacred the Horde’s armies.  Timur then weakened his enemy by destroying and disrupting the Silk Road trade that the Golden Horde depended on, weakening his greatest rival.

The second part of Timur’s conquests lies in the subcontinent of India.  After using a pretext based on Muslim rulers showing excessive tolerence to their hindu subjects, Timur crossed the Indus River, and in his wake reducing thousands of cities to rubble and killing hundreds of thousands.  The armies of the Dehli sultinate faired no better as Timur slaughtered its soldiers and sacked the city in 1399.

For his final expedition, Timur headed west toward the Mamluk Sultanate and the early Ottoman Empire even invading the Knights of Rhodes and receiving tribute from the late Byzantine Empire.  While preparing for an invasion east into China, Timur fell ill and died, dividing his territories among his sons.

Similarly to many other great Turkic Mongolian conquerors, Timur’s empire fell apart as rapidly has he had conquered it.  His focus on conquest, rather than administration left his sons with disloyal land, split up among them.  Western Iran was dominated by the tribal federation of Kara Koyunlu who had recently seized power from their former overlords, the Jalāyirids.  The Kara Koyunlu, roughly translated as Black Sheep, seized large portions of Iran after the death of Timur’s youngest son Shah Rokh. As a balance in the region an old tribal rival called Ak Koyunlu, also known as the White Sheep conquered western Iran from the Kara Koyunlu briefly forming a tribal Iranian Empire.  The Ak Koyunlu were led by the ruler Uzun Ḥasan who briefly took control of the persian city of Herāt.  Uzun Hasan’s grandfather had been appointed as a governor by Timur and the former subject of the Timurids began a rapid expansion into the surrounding lands.  By this time, the Ottoman Empire had risen in the region to dominance with Mehmed II taking the throne.  Uzun Hasan, at the asking of the Venetians who were threatened in the area by the Ottoman superpower, began a rapid conquest of Ottoman lands but was defeated by the Ottoman artillery superiority.  After the fall of the Ak Konyunlu, the Safavid Empire rose to prominence under Shah Ismāʿīl.

Though remembered as the last great Central Asian conqueror, Timur’s alteration of Iranian and Turkish history cannot be understated though his reign was short.  Like many conquerors before him, his empire soon fell after his death, but leaps in education and sciences were achieved under the Timurid Dynasty’s rule.  

Sources:

https://www.britannica.com/place/Iran/The-Timurids-and-Turkmen

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Kara-Koyunlu

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Timur

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Timurid-dynasty

https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/t/Timur.htm#:~:text=Early%20life,great%20Mongol%20conqueror%20Genghis%20Khan.