A national figure
A national figure, Tamerlan is everywhere in Uzbekistan. There's not a town that doesn't have its own statue, square or street dedicated to Amur Timūr. This conqueror is still a highly controversial historical figure, so difficult to pin down that legend plays such an important part. Written sources on the first years of his life are non-existent, and Tamerlan is best known for his succession of victorious campaigns towards India, China or the Aegean Sea, from 1370 to his death.
The destruction of hundreds of cities, or the heads of slain enemies assembled in towers, have left their mark on much of the Eastern world, obscuring the peace that reigned at the heart of his empire and the fantastic commercial boom exemplified by Samarkand, his capital. Today, the man considered by some historians to be one of the greatest criminals of all time is back at the forefront of history, adulated as an intrepid warrior, an unparalleled adventurer, without fear or reproach, a man who conquered the world despite his handicap, despite his paralyzed arm, despite illness, and through his exceptional longevity.
Conqueror, destroyer and... builder
And, in fact, Tamerlane considerably altered the face of the lands he had subdued. He preferred city life to nomadism, he consecrated the Muslim religion, fighting under the banner of the Prophet, while constantly violating Koranic law and mixing it with traditions stemming from paganism, Zoroastrianism and shamanism. His victory over the Ottomans freed the West from the Turkish threat; from then on, Tamerlane did his utmost to encourage trade between these two regions of the world. In the letters he sent to the kings of France and England announcing his victory over the Ottomans, he guaranteed that merchants who came to Samarkand would be treated with the utmost respect. Between conquests, Tamerlan returned to his beloved city, his jewel, his capital. He knew that the many caravans from all over the world that travelled the Silk Road and arrived in his city would return with tales of the magnificence of the capital of the greatest of conquerors.
Despite the prestige of his capital, the Empire did not survive long after his death. It was immediately divided into rival principalities which disappeared less than a century later, under the blows of the Uzbeks fleeing their territory controlled by the Golden Horde that Tamerlane himself had shaken.
A rich lineage of scientists..
Tamerlane's line gave rise to two personalities who distinguished themselves in very different ways: Ulug Beg, the astronomer, and Babur, the knight errant.
Ulug Beg (1394-1449), Tamerlane's grandson, inherited the whole area of the empire including Central Asia, Afghanistan and Mogholistan (present-day Xinjiang), but proved a clumsy warrior, winning only one notable victory against the Uzbek tribes of Kazakhstan. Unskilled in military maneuvers, he was far more interested (and competent!) in science and mathematics; he became famous for the gigantic sextant he built in Samarkand, capable of determining the precise position of over a thousand stars. Likewise, his treatises on astronomy were a reference for the great Western scientists for more than two centuries. Towards the end of his reign, he came into conflict with his own son, who murdered him two years later to seize power, destroying the Samarkand observatory and the magnificent library of scholarly works assembled by the man who would forever be known as the "Prince Astronomer".
... and empire builders!
Zahereddin Muhammad Babur (1483-1530), the fifth ruler of the Timurid line, acceded to the throne on the death of his father, Omar Sheikh, in 1494, at the age of 11. Seven years later, when he had just retaken Samarkand from the Chaybanids, they pushed him back and forced him into exile. Babur left Uzbekistan to conquer a new empire, in Afghanistan, from which he managed to retake Samarkand fleetingly, but definitively ousted by the Chaybanids in 1512, he renounced Transoxiana and turned to India. He captured Delhi in 1526, and founded the Mughal dynasty, which ruled India for 332 years. Babur's great-grandson Shah Jahan was responsible for building the Taj Mahal in Agra between 1632 and 1654.
Babur left numerous writings and poems, as well as a diary he never finished. In it, he recounts his conquests, but above all his regrets at having had to leave his hometown, Andijan. It is even said that the emperor sent an expedition to bring back a cargo of melons, the taste of which was so precious to him... Babur's writings are an irreplaceable source of information on the life of his contemporaries in the Ferghana Valley in Transoxiana, and in Afghanistan.
What if Tamerlane still made the world tremble?
It was Soviet anthropologist Guerasimov who, wishing to study the emperor's body, obtained permission to exhume it, much to the fright of the local authorities who knew of the inscription engraved on the emperor's tomb: " When I return to the light of day, the world will tremble. " Gerasimov opened Tamerlane's tomb on the night of June 22, 1941, just hours before the start of Operation Barbarossa. At the end of the following year, the body was returned to its coffin. And a few days later, at the end of January 1943, the Germans surrendered at Stalingrad... The research undertaken by Guerasimov - who also studied the tombs of Ulugh Begh and other Timurids - enabled him to confirm the atrophy of the right arm and leg of the man also known as Timur Leng - the Iron Gimp - as well as Ulugh Begh's violent death by decapitation, thus confirming his murder by his son.
