Storm Over Anatolia and Syria
In 1398 (802 in the Islamic calendar), Timur had not forgotten that Sultan Ahmad Jalayir had taken refuge with the Ottoman sultan Bayezid. He crossed northern Iran to Azerbaijan, dismissed his incompetent son, whom he had left as governor and who had taken to debauchery in his absence, and had some of the court companions and poets who had helped mislead the young man put to death. He then ravaged Georgia again, entered Asia Minor and besieged the city of Sivas.
The city's long resistance kindled his anger. When it fell, he ordered 4,000 Christian soldiers of the garrison to be put to death by burial, although this account may be war propaganda without basis. Before confronting the Ottomans, Timur wanted to secure his flank, so he sent an envoy to the Egyptian court proposing a non-aggression pact. The sultan of Egypt imprisoned the envoy and hired an assassin to kill Timur secretly. The plot failed. Timur took Aleppo, Homs, Baalbek and Damascus and turned toward Baghdad, whose people had expelled his appointed officials.
The Ruin of Baghdad
After Baghdad was taken at great cost, Timur ordered each of his 20,000 soldiers to bring him a severed head. History attests that this was done, and rich and poor, men and women, old and young, had to pay with their heads. Frightful pyramids of skulls were raised in front of the city gates (1401). Mosques, monasteries and convents were spared, but otherwise everything was plundered and ruined so completely that the splendid old capital never recovered, until recent times and thanks to oil, in the book's wry phrase.
The Clash at Ankara
With both flanks secure, Timur summoned Sultan Bayezid one last time to submit. The Turkish king, puffed up by his recent victory at Nicopolis (1396), replied that he would crush the Tatar army and make Timur's chief wife his slave. Two of the ablest commanders of the age met at Ankara (1402). Timur's tactics forced the Turks to fight before they had rested from a long march. The Ottoman army was soon destroyed and Bayezid was taken prisoner.
Constantinople celebrated, and Christendom, thanks to the Tatars, was freed from the Turks for half a century, according to the book. Timur advanced west to Bursa, burned it and carried off its Byzantine library and silver-decorated gates. He then moved to the Mediterranean, took Smyrna from the Knights of Rhodes and put its inhabitants to the sword. Back in Turkey he rested at Ephesus. Christendom trembled again. The Genoese, who still held Chios, Phocaea and Mytilene, submitted to Timur and paid tribute. The sultan of Egypt released the Tatar envoy and joined the ranks of Timur's honorable vassals.
The great conqueror returned to Samarkand as the most powerful ruler of his age, with lands from Central Asia to the Nile and from the Bosphorus to the heart of India under his rule. King Henry IV of England sent warm congratulations, France sent a bishop with gifts and Henry III of Castile sent a distinguished embassy led by Ruy González de Clavijo.
Clavijo Visits Samarkand
Most of what we know about Timur's court comes from Clavijo's detailed notes. He left Cádiz in Spain in 1403 and traveled by way of Constantinople, Trebizond, Erzurum, Tabriz, Tehran (the first time a European mentioned the name), Nishapur and Mashhad, reaching Samarkand on 31 August 1404. He had expected, for many reasons, to meet a gang of ugly killers. Instead he was astonished by the size and prosperity of Timur's capital, the splendor of its mosques and palaces, the courtesy of the nobility, the wealth and luxury of the court and the gathering of artists and poets who worked to praise Timur.
Samarkand was then more than two thousand years old. It had, by Clavijo's figures, 150,000 inhabitants, "very grand and beautiful houses" and many palaces "among the trees". Without its suburbs he judged the city "somewhat larger than Seville". Water from a nearby river was piped to the houses, and canals watered the surrounding countryside. The air was perfumed with orchards and vineyards, cattle and sheep grazed rich meadows and fields yielded abundant harvests. Workshops produced cannon and iron armor, bows and arrows, glass, porcelain, pottery and brilliantly dyed cloth, especially a deep red unmatched of its kind.
The population included Tatars, Turks, Arabs, Persians, Iraqis, Afghans, Georgians, Greeks, Armenians, Catholics, Nestorians and Hindus. They worked in shops and fields, lived in houses of brick, mud and wood, or strolled politely along the riverside in their leisure. All practiced their religions freely and spread their differing beliefs. The main streets were lined with trees, with shops, mosques, schools, libraries and an observatory on both sides. One wide, straight avenue joined the two ends of the city, and much of it was roofed with glass.
Audience with the Emperor
On 8 September Clavijo was received by the Tatar emperor. He first crossed a huge garden where there stood "silk tents and canopies decorated with curtains of flowers and foliage". Tatars usually lived in tents, and Timur himself had a tent in that garden about a hundred meters around, but there were also palaces with floors of marble or tile and rooms furnished with sturdy furniture set with precious stones or made entirely of gold and silver.
When Clavijo was admitted, the emperor "sat cross-legged on silk cushions in the hall of a very magnificent palace". Before him lay a pool in which many apples floated, and a strong fountain leapt from its midst. Timur wore a silk robe and a tall, wide hat set with rubies and pearls. The tall, strong and agile man was now sixty-eight, with a stooped back, a weak and sick body and nearly blind eyes, and he could barely open his eyelids to look at the envoy of Castile.
The Man Behind the Conqueror
As far as an active warrior could, Timur had learned history. He enjoyed poetry and art, gathered artists and works of art around him, kept company with poets and scholars and behaved correctly and with good manners on formal occasions. But his pride and self-regard were no less than his ability, and in both he had no rival. He treated cruelty as part of his war policy, yet, looking at the faces of his victims, we see that his bloodshed was often driven by vengefulness. Even in civil administration, he freely handed out the death penalty, whether to a governor who oppressed a city's people or to a butcher who sold meat above the set price.
Timur defended his harshness as useful policy for governing a people not yet familiar with law, and described his mass killings as the only effective way to subdue and unite turbulent tribes under a strong government. In truth, like other conquerors, he loved power for its own sake, and even took war booty only to spend it on buying greatness.
Death on the Road to China
In 1405 Timur set out to conquer Mongolia and China, to realize his dream of a half-world empire joining the Mediterranean to the China Sea. His army numbered 200,000 fighting men, but he died in the city of Otrar on his realm's northern border. His last order was for the army to go on without him, and for a while Timur's white horse walked at the head of the troops, riderless and unharnessed. But everyone knew that Timur's mind and organization alone made up half of their military strength, so they soon turned back, mourning and relieved, and returned home.
His sons built him a magnificent tomb, the Gur-e Amir, in Samarkand. The monument is a tower ending in a massive onion-shaped dome, the whole surface of which is covered with turquoise-blue tiles.
The Empire After Timur
When Timur's mind was gone, his empire fell apart. The western provinces broke away almost immediately, and only the Middle East remained under his successors. The wisest king of the Timurid dynasty was Shahrukh, who placed his son Ulugh Beg in Samarkand as governor of Transoxiana while he ruled Khorasan from Herat.