Читать книгу Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World - Justin Marozzi - Страница 8

‘The character of Temur has been differently appraised by those who are dazzled by his military achievements on the one hand and those who are disgusted by his cruelty and utter disregard of human life on the other.’

EDWARD G. BROWNE, A Literary History of Persia

If we are to understand Temur’s unparalleled life, his numerous campaigns and victories, the motivation which impelled him halfway across the world to seek them and the brilliant tactical acumen which left him undefeated on his deathbed, if we are to appreciate his love of magnificence, bravery and beauty, his intolerance of laziness, cowardice and corruption, his lifelong respect for learned men and religious scholars, the cunning and cruelty which proved fatal to millions, the generosity and forgiveness which came to the rescue of so many others – in short, if we are to make sense of perhaps the greatest self-made man who ever lived, then there is no better place to begin than with his contemporaries.

The most flattering profile of Temur is provided by the Persian court historian of the early fifteenth century, Sharaf ad-din Ali Yazdi. Zafarnama, the Book of Victory, is a veritable panegyric, peppered with passages singing the emperor’s praises, so much so that the reader is inclined to skim through the sycophancy and dismiss Yazdi as a hopelessly servile commentator. But what is interesting about the Persian’s ingratiating chronicle is the fact that both he and Ibn Arabshah, Temur’s inveterate critic, single out several attributes in common.

‘Courage raised him to be the supreme Emperor of Tartary, and subjected all Asia to him, from the frontiers of China to those of Greece,’ wrote Yazdi. ‘He governed the state himself, without availing himself of a minister; he succeeded in all his enterprises. To everyone he was generous and courteous, except to those who did not obey him – he punished them with the utmost rigour. He loved justice, and no one who played the tyrant in his dominion went unpunished; he esteemed learning and learned men. He laboured constantly to aid the fine arts. He was utterly courageous in planning, and carrying out a plan. To those who served him, he was kind.’^*

Arabshah, surprisingly, provided the most valuable portrait of the conqueror. As we have seen, the Syrian was anything but a dispassionate observer, having witnessed at first hand the devastation wrought on his native Damascus by the Tatar hordes in 1401. Appalled by the torture and slaughter of the city’s inhabitants, it is little wonder that he succumbed to the temptations of invective in his life of Temur. The recurrent references to his subject as a bastard, viper, demon, despot, treacherous impostor, wicked fool, owl of ill omen and the like do little for Arabshah’s credibility as an objective biographer.

Yet Arabshah is a critical character witness precisely because of this profound enmity. Nowhere is this more in evidence than in the final chapter of his book, the very heading of which pulls the reader up short. It is entitled ‘Of the Wonderful Gifts of Temur and his Nature and Character’. Unlike the preceding chapters, which rarely exceed five pages, and are frequently only one, this runs to thirty-five pages. Its opening passage leaves us with a picture of the conqueror at the end of his life, and is worth quoting from at length. It begins with a physical description:

Temur was tall and lofty of stature as though he belonged to the remnants of the Amalekites, big in brow and head, mighty in strength and courage, wonderful in nature, white in colour, mixed with red, but not dark, stout of limb, with broad shoulders, thick fingers, long legs, perfect build, long beard, dry hands, lame on the right side, with eyes like candles, without brilliance; powerful in voice; he did not fear death; and though he was near his [seventieth] year yet he was firm in mind, strong and robust in body, brave and fearless, like a hard rock.

The Soviet archaeological team which opened Temur’s tomb in 1941 found that he was a well-built man of about five feet seven inches, ‘tall and lofty of stature’ for that time. His lameness was likewise established. An injury to his right leg, where the thighbone had merged with his kneecap, left it shorter than the left, hence the pronounced limp referred to in his pejorative nickname. When walking he dragged his right leg, and his left shoulder was found to be unnaturally higher than the right. Further wounds were discovered to his right hand and elbow. The red colour Arabshah mentions in Temur’s colouring may well be a reference to his moustache and beard, traces of which were found still attached to the skull.

‘He did not care for jesting or lying,’ Arabshah continues. ‘Wit and trifling pleased him not; truth, even if it were painful, delighted him; he was not sad in adversity nor joyful in prosperity … He did not allow in his company any obscene talk or talk of bloodshed or captivity, rapine, plunder and violation of the harem. He was spirited and brave and inspired awe and obedience. He loved bold and valiant soldiers, by whose aid he opened the locks of terror, tore men to pieces like lions, and through them and their battles overturned mountains …’

It is as though the dignity and grandeur of Temur’s character, suppressed by the Syrian for nine-tenths of the book, is finally too much for him to contain. After the long summaries, and vituperative denunciations, of Temur’s campaigns, it is time for Arabshah to deliver his verdict on Temur the man. And suddenly, the language has changed. The conqueror is ‘wonderful in nature’, his fearlessness is mentioned twice within a few sentences, rather like Yazdi’s emphasis of his courage. He is the object of his soldiers’ awe. The man who Arabshah has been telling us for three hundred pages revels in wanton cruelty and spilling blood does not, it transpires, tolerate any talk of bloodshed, rape or plunder in his presence. As Arabshah continues, you sense that after all these pages filled with hatred he finds himself, despite his intentions, re-evaluating his subject in a vastly more favourable light. It is a marvellous and highly revealing moment. Temur, he goes on, was:

A debater, who by one look and glance comprehended the matter aright, trained, watchful for the slightest sign; he was not deceived by intricate fallacy nor did hidden flattery pass him; he discerned keenly between truth and fiction, and caught the sincere counsellor and the pretender by the skill of his cunning, like a hawk trained for the chase, so that for his thoughts he was judged a shining star.

No longer the coarse viper, Temur is the consummate diplomat and politician, masterful in the business of empire, attuned to deceit and subterfuge, a ‘shining star’ in the intellectual firmament. In his first chapter, Arabshah poured scorn on Temur’s lineage. He was born, said the Syrian, into ‘a mixed horde, lacking either reason or religion’. Brought up in the nomadic traditions of the steppe, the Tatar spoke both Turkic and Persian fluently, but was illiterate. By the end of his book, Arabshah has arrived at a rather different judgement on Temur’s intelligence and his respect for learning.

Temur loved learned men, and admitted to his inner reception nobles of the family of Mahomed; he gave the highest honour to the learned and doctors and preferred them to all others and received each of them according to his rank and granted them honour and respect; he used towards them familiarity and an abatement of his majesty; in his arguments with them he mingled moderation with splendour, clemency with rigour and covered his severity with kindness.

Temur’s harshest critic, the man who had seen his great city reduced to ashes, its men and women raped and butchered, is at pains to stress that the Tatar was no mindless, uncouth, heathen tyrant. Temur liked to gather the most illustrious minds about him. Few could expect mercy when he torched a city, but scholars, poets, men of letters, Muslim clerics, shaykhs, dervishes and divines, artists and architects, miniaturists, masons and skilled craftsmen of all descriptions were invariably spared.

If soldiers were his first love as an emperor, Temur’s admiration for holy men and men of letters came a close second. Under his rule Samarkand attracted – voluntarily and otherwise – Asia’s most distinguished minds, and this at a time when high culture in that continent shone more brightly than in benighted Europe. From Baghdad came Nizam ad-din Shami, author of the original Zafarnama, the inspiration for Sharaf ad-din Ali Yazdi’s later work of the same name. Persian scholars thronged to the conqueror’s court. There was Sa’d ad-din Mas’ud at Taftazani, one of the celebrated polymaths of his era, a theologian, grammarian, lawyer and exegetical teacher. He was joined by Ali ibn Mohammed as Sayyid ash Sharif al Jurjanj, the mystic and logician, and Abu Tahrir ibn Yaqub ash Shirazi al Firuzabadi, the renowned lexicographer. Lutfallah Nishapuri, the poet laureate and panegyrist of Temur’s son Miranshah, was highly regarded by Temur. Another poet, Ahmed Kermani, author of the Temurnama (Book of Temur), was on intimate terms with the emperor, while eminent scholars like Djezeri, compiler of one of the most respected Arabic dictionaries, were frequently granted high office. There were many foundations and endowments for colleges and mosques, schools and hospitals. And at the centre of this extended academic and cultural web sat Temur, distributing patronage like a spider spinning its web.

In 1401 there occurred one of the most fascinating meetings of minds of the age when the great Arab historian Ibn Khaldun was presented to the Tatar during the siege of Damascus. After staying in Temur’s camp for a month, he left with a profound respect for ‘one of the greatest and mightiest of kings’, not to mention a commission to write a history of North Africa. Temur impressed him with his knowledge of the history of the Tatars, Arabs and Persians: ‘He is highly intelligent and very perspicacious, addicted to debate and argumentation about what he knows and also about what he does not know.’ Arabshah also took note of Temur’s interest in history: ‘He was constant in reading annals and histories of the prophets of blessed memory and the exploits of kings,’ he wrote. The emperor even established a new position of Story-Reader in his court. Practical disciplines such as mathematics, astronomy and medicine were particularly favoured.

Prefiguring Yazdi’s uncritical comments, Arabshah goes on to express his admiration for Temur’s persistence and determination: ‘When he had ordered anything or given a sign that it should be done, he never recalled it or turned thence the reins of his purpose, that he might not be found in inconstancy and weakness of plan or deed.’ Yazdi puts it rather more flatteringly: ‘As Temur’s ambition was boundless, and the least of his designs surpassed the greatest actions in the world, he never abandoned any one of his enterprises till he had completely finished it.’

Famously brilliant at manoeuvring his armies to victory on the battlefield, Temur was no less skilful at marshalling his forces on the chessboard, where his cool calculation, audacity and control undid the grand masters of his day. Even here he was exceptional, observed Arabshah. ‘He was constant in the game of chess, that with it he might sharpen his intellect; but his mind was too lofty to play at the lesser game of chess and therefore he played only the greater game, in which the chess board is of ten squares by eleven, that is increased by two camels, two giraffes, two sentinels, two mantelets [war engines], a vazir and other pieces.’^*

The longer Arabshah dwells on Temur’s character, the more highly he seems to extol his virtues, until, towards the end, he observes simply: ‘He was called the unconquered lord of the seven climes and ruler by land and sea and conqueror of Kings and Sultans.’ But there is a last sting in the tail. Summoning back his deep-seated resentment, he damns the Tatar on one important account: ‘He clung to the laws of Jenghizkhan … on whom be the curse of Allah,’ he rasps. ‘Temur must be accounted an infidel and those also who prefer the laws of Jenghizkhan to the faith of Islam.’ Arabshah was right to recognise the tension between the two motivating principles behind Temur’s life of conquest. What he failed to appreciate was that Temur’s political and religious ideology was a shrewdly calculated amalgam of the yasa, or customary laws, of Genghis Khan on the one hand and Islam on the other.

Temur drew freely from both Islam and the laws of Genghis to justify his actions, be they military conquest or domestic political arrangements. He was, above all else, an opportunist. At his coronation in 1370 he installed a puppet Chaghatay khan as his nominal superior, in deference to the traditions requiring the khan to be of royal blood. Thereafter a khan presided over Temur’s expanding empire: first Prince Suyurghatmish and, from 1388, his son Sultan Mahmud. For all Temur’s pomp and power, and even at the height of his majesty, he never styled himself a khan. He was instead Temur the Great Emir, or Temur Gurgan, son-in-law of the Great Khan through his marriage to Saray Mulk-khanum, and it was in these names and that of the Chaghatay khan that coins were minted and Samarkand’s authority acknowledged in the khutba (Friday prayers) throughout his lands. But no one, certainly not Arabshah, doubted where the real source of power lay.

Temur was no infidel. Islam governed his military career in the same way that Christianity provided the ideological propulsion for the Crusaders during their bloody sojourns in the Holy Lands. The Crescent always surmounted Temur’s royal standard, and it was under the banner of Islam that his conquests were prosecuted. That Islam and wholesale slaughter were incompatible bedfellows was beside the point. The same could be said of the Christian faith and the Crusaders.

Just as he borrowed from the traditions of Genghis, so Temur dipped freely into the laws of Islam, picking up and retaining those aspects of the faith he found useful, disregarding those which were inconvenient. He had no time, for instance, for the Prophet’s recommendation of a maximum of four wives for a man. More important, despite a lifetime’s wanderings, he never found time to honour one of the five pillars of Islam, the pilgrimage to Mecca, a badge of honour for dutiful Muslims who can afford the journey. He did not shave his head, nor did he wear a turban or the robes prescribed by the faith.

Temur’s interpretation of jihad,^* or holy war, cast further doubt on his credentials as a good Muslim. In his eyes it justified the use of force and savagery against virtually anyone. It was one thing to launch a holy war against the infidels of Christian Georgia, as Temur did several times (on one campaign he even forced King Bagrat to convert to Islam). It was quite another to put fellow Muslims to the sword. As high-born leaders, lowly soldiers, desperate women and innocent children all discovered to their cost, professing the faith of Islam was no guarantee of safety from Temur’s armies. Muslim Asia, after all, was their stamping ground. They swept through its heartland – across what are today Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan and India – raining down death on the sons and daughters of the Koran. Who could count the nameless millions of Muslims who perished at their hands? These were the people who suffered his worst atrocities. Two thousand were piled on top of one another and cemented alive into towers of clay and bricks in the city of Isfizar in 1383. In Isfahan, holy city of Persia, seventy thousand were slaughtered in 1387; the sacking of Baghdad in 1401 left ninety thousand dead, their heads cemented into 120 towers. Damascus and Aleppo witnessed unimaginable horrors. And yet this was a man who aspired to the title of Ghazi, Warrior of the Faith.

Christians, Jews and Hindus – the infidels who should have felt the full force of the sword of Islam – escaped lightly by comparison. Only occasionally, as though to make up for his massacres of brother Muslims, did Temur unleash his wrath on them. In 1398, shortly before joining battle against the (Muslim) sultan of Delhi, he gave orders for a hundred thousand mostly Hindu prisoners to be killed. Two years later, he had four thousand Armenians buried alive in Sivas, this time sparing its Muslim population.

There was an arbitrariness to Temur’s atrocities that belied his claims of holy war. Sometimes, as in Afghanistan and parts of Persia, he explained his rampages as an attack on the Sunni creed of Islam.^* In Mazandaran, also in Persia, by contrast, cities were razed to punish Shi’a dervishes. Then again, Temur could just as easily pose as protector of the Shi’a tradition. In Damascus, Arabshah’s fellow citizens were put to the sword ostensibly on account of their hostility to the Shi’a. In 1396, Temur looked south for his next conquest. ‘The sultans of Delhi have been slack in their defence of the Faith,’ he told his amirs before leading his troops across the towering Hindu Kush mountains to sack that city. In 1404, he rallied his troops for his last campaign. Once more the banner of holy war was raised, this time against the infidel Ming emperor.

Temur’s observation of the Muslim faith was based on pragmatism rather than principle. Although he came from a conventional Sunni tradition, his Sufi credentials were bolstered through his patronage of the Naqshbandi order, centred in Bukhara, and his cultivation of the Sufi shaykhs of Mawarannahr and Khorasan, who enjoyed a prominent position in his court, none more so than Shaykh Baraka of Andkhoi.^† Temur also buried family members in handsome tombs next to the shrines of distinguished Sufis. But if the hints of his Sufist sympathies were strong, signs of support for the Shi’a were hardly lacking either. The most striking is to be found on his tombstone in the Gur Amir mausoleum in Samarkand, where an elaborate and largely invented family tree traces him back to Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet. In another nod to Shi’ite tradition, Temur displayed special attention to the descendants of the Prophet throughout his life. It is just as difficult for modern scholars to pin him down on his religious allegiances as it was for his contemporaries. Temur was a chameleon. Whatever worked or furthered his cause in any way was good. This was a cynical interpretation, certainly, but what his message of jihad lacked in intellectual coherence and consistency, it made up for in the sheer projection of force. It was, quite simply, the creed of conquest.

It was in the public displays that Islam shone brightest. The five daily prayers were a regular feature of life at Temur’s court. Wherever he campaigned, with him went the imams and the royal mosque, a sumptuously appointed pavilion made of the finest silk. From it came the ululating cadences of the muaddin, calling forth the faithful to prayer. One of Temur’s most practised routines was to prostrate himself on the ground and offer up prayers to the Almighty prior to joining battle. This was done in full view of his princes, amirs and soldiers, and served as a reminder that God was on his side, a message reinforced by the dutiful religious leaders who always accompanied the armies on their campaigns.

Pre-eminent among these was Shaykh Sayid Baraka, whom Temur had met in Termez during the early years of rivalry with Husayn. In 1391, as Temur’s army stared across the Kunduzcha river at the ranks of Tokhtamish’s soldiers, Baraka picked up some dirt and flung it at the enemy. ‘Your faces shall be blackened through the shame of your defeat,’ he roared. ‘Go where you please,’ he continued, turning to Temur. ‘You shall be victorious.’ Once again the emperor’s mounted archers rode to triumph.

It was a straightforward, symbiotic relationship. The priestly entourage owed its position to Temur, and in return for this generous patronage assured him – and the soldiers – of the Almighty’s support for whatever military campaign His servant on earth might propose. Sycophantic clerics, if called on, would justify any action. As Hilda Hookham put it in her 1962 biography: ‘With the blessing of the shaykhs, Temur could lead his hordes against all the kingdoms of the seven climes, destroying infidels because they were not Muslims and Muslims because they were not faithful.’

Obsequious court writers like Yazdi, in the service of one of Temur’s grandsons, later fulfilled the same purpose. ‘We have a tradition of Mahomet,’ he observed, ‘wherein he assures us that he was the child of the sword, and that the most happy moments which he passed with God were when he had the sword in his hand; and he adds, that paradise itself is under the protection of the sword: which demonstrates that kings are not peaceable possessors of the throne, but when they are victorious; and that subjects cannot enjoy quiet in their families, but by the protection of the sword of their prince.’

Yet the Lord of the Fortunate Conjunction was just as likely to consult astrologers as holy men for the opportune moment to strike. Their duty was to determine the disposition of the planets. In practice this meant delivering the verdict the emperor wanted to hear. His response to their deductions was governed, as ever, by expediency. If the astrologers failed to reach the desired conclusion, they were ignored. When, at the gates of Delhi, they decided the omens were unfavourable for attack, Temur simply reverted to Islam. ‘Neither fortune nor affliction depends on the stars,’ he replied with severity. ‘I confide myself to the care of the Almighty, who has never yet abandoned me. What does it matter if the planets are in this or that relationship?’ As the astrologers retreated in shame, he promptly took out his copy of the Koran and opened it, conveniently, at a passage which indicated that victory was assured. It was.

Temur saw no contradiction between bloodshed and Islam. The transition from slaughter on the battlefield one day and quiet reflection in a mosque or shrine the next posed no moral difficulties for him. Days after ravaging Delhi so utterly it took the city a century to recover, he strode calmly into the beautiful mosque on the river Jumna to give thanks for his victory. In Baghdad, as his soldiers put the finishing touches to the 120 towers of skulls, while the Tigris ran red with blood and the air was putrid from rotting corpses, Temur was visiting the tomb of the venerated eighth-century imam Abu Hanifa, chief of one of the four orthodox sects of Islam, ‘to implore the intercession of this saint’. In his understanding that appearances were everything, and with his instinct for choreographed expressions of piety, Temur demonstrated a profoundly modern approach to the politics of his day.

Wine was another subject on which Temur revealed his ambivalence towards religion and his preference for Mongol custom. Strictly prohibited by Islam, it was generally not permitted in his court. But there were numerous exceptions when it flowed freely: at the lavish Tatar banquets held to celebrate a victory in battle; during a family wedding; or on the conclusion of Ramadan. The Spanish ambassador Clavijo was one witness among many to bacchanalian orgies which owed more to the heathen traditions of Genghis Khan and the Mongols than the strictures of Islam. A beautiful cup-bearer was assigned to each man at the feast, the Spaniard noted. Her duty was to ensure that the guest’s golden goblet was kept full at all times. Refusing a toast, in which the entire contents of the vessel had to be downed, was considered a serious breach of etiquette and a sign of discourtesy towards the emperor. Teetotallers generally discovered a sudden affection for the grape on such occasions. Feasts invariably ended in a drunken blur. Those warriors who could still stand would grab a companion for the night and stagger back to their tents. There was nothing Islamic about that.

Moments like these betrayed Temur’s genius for the popular gesture. Sometimes these were designed to underline his position as an Islamic leader, such as zakat (the giving of alms), the observation of Ramadan or the prohibition on eating pork. At other moments it was the laws of Genghis he chose to honour, reassuring his followers that the traditions of the steppe were supreme. He was highly intelligent, ambitious, manipulative, cynical and exploitative. The question whether he was a good Muslim or whether he abided by Mongol customs misses the point. Temur was interested in either code insofar as it supported his designs of conquest. What is important to appreciate is the skill with which he managed to use now one, now the other, to his advantage. And this in turn testifies to his outstanding capacity for leadership.

Nowhere were these talents so much in evidence as with his armies. The foundation of his empire, the men by whom kingdoms were won or lost, Temur’s mounted archers were governed by a combination of iron discipline and lavish reward. They knew they could be cut in half, hanged, run through with a sword or otherwise executed for cowardice, treachery or unlicensed plunder. They also understood that unswerving loyalty to Temur on and off the battlefield was the most likely path to riches.

Temur’s generosity, referred to throughout the sources, was one of the causes of his victory over Husayn during their struggle for supremacy in Mawarannahr in the late 1360s. Where Husayn was greedy and loath to share the spoils of battle with his soldiers, Temur was generous to the point of self-impoverishment. While the amir of Balkh was happy to see Temur pay a punitive head tax with jewellery belonging to his wife, Husayn’s own sister, Temur regarded as a priority the reward of his supporters. This was not out of any sentimental regard for their prosperity and comfort. It was merely the most effective method of retaining their allegiance in a political system notorious for shifting, opportunistic alliances. The chronicles are full of tales of plunder, with soldiers staggering home under the weight of ransacked goods at the head of vast caravans of enslaved prisoners. Temur’s reputation for largesse served his military ambitions admirably. It also won him defections from his enemies. At times, such as the battle of Ankara in 1402, these defections were instrumental to his victories. In 1391, after his first defeat of Tokhtamish, he distributed priceless gifts to his soldiers in thanks for their courage on the battlefield. Yazdi related how:

He distributed robes of honour, and belts adorned with precious stones, to the princes, Emirs, Cheriffs, and all the lords and officers of his army: he also honoured with his favours the generals and captains of his troops, as a recompense for their fatigue, and in joy of his victories. But the pleasure which the great warriors received, when Temur applauded their actions, was inexpressibly great; in this charming retreat he sent them in cups of gold the most delicious wines by the hands of the most beautiful women in the world.

Both discipline and reward came to depend upon the emperor himself rather than the tribal leaders at the lower level. Temur deliberately appointed men from the ranks of his personal followers, including family members, to positions of high command. This was done to undermine the traditional system of armies being led by tribal chiefs, the main source of potential opposition to him – or, in extremis, outright rebellion. It resulted in the formation of a new military class directly loyal to his person, free from the political constraints of the tribe. These men enjoyed hereditary positions, which meant that in time, through their sons and grandsons, as well as his own, the numbers of Temur’s personal followers steadily increased. As his power grew and the size of his armies swelled from captured forces and fresh conscription, the authority of this new elite went from strength to strength, while the influence of the tribal leaders waned in parallel.

The organisation of Temur’s armies would have been recognised at once by Genghis Khan, for it followed the structure of the Mongols’. There was a left wing, a right wing, the centre and the advance guard. The smallest unit of men was ten soldiers, an onlik, led by an onbashi. Ten of these groups formed the yuzlik, under the next rank of yuzbashi, officers denoted by the kettle-drums slung across the saddles of their outriders. After this came the binlik, a body of a thousand troops under the command of a binbashi. The most senior rank beneath Temur was the amir who presided over ten thousand men, a tuman, whose insignia was the tuk, a long lance with a horse’s tail fastened at its tip.

Temur always heaped rewards on those who had shown particular valour on the battlefield. Acts of outstanding bravery were commemorated in the official court chronicles. Promotion depended above all on one’s military conduct. An onbashi would be made a yuzbashi after performing some heroic action, while the commander of a hundred became the commander of a thousand. The most senior officers were granted the ultimate title of tarkhan, a position harking back to the days of Genghis Khan. This conferred on them a number of important privileges, among which the most valuable was the permanent exemption from taxes. Unlike any other soldier in Temur’s armies, the tarkhan was entitled to keep everything he plundered. Everyone else had to make over a share of his spoils to the emperor. The tarkhan was also immune from criminal prosecution. Only after he had committed the same crime nine times was he answerable to justice. Perhaps the ultimate prize was his access to Temur at all times.

It was the responsibility of the aides-de-camp, the tovachis, to ensure that the soldiers were properly equipped. Once conscripted, each man had to report for service with a bow, a quiver containing thirty arrows, a shield and enough grain to feed a horse for a year. For every two cavalrymen a spare horse was required, and each onlik, the body of ten soldiers, had to bring a tent, two spades, a pickaxe, rope, hide, an awl, an axe, a saw and one hundred needles. The Tatar foot-soldier carried a bow, an axe, a dagger, a sabre and a small round shield, wooden with an iron rim, hung at the hip. In winter he wore black sheepskins, coloured kaftans in summer, over either tight or baggy trousers and boots. On his head he sported a tall hat made of fur, felt or sheepskin. There was a comprehensive range of secondary weapons, including maces and varieties of swords, knives and shields. The richer soldiers had helmets, single-edged sabres and coats of mail for themselves and their horses. The Tatar composite bow, the main arm on which Temur’s armies depended, was a formidable weapon, considerably longer than the Persian, Turk or Indian versions.^* It fired a heavier arrow with a shorter range.

Temur’s soldiers made much use of another destructive technology. Greek-fire, invented in the seventh century, was a gelatinous incendiary mixture, fired at one’s enemy through bronze tubes. Its original composition is unknown, a closely guarded secret handed down from one Byzantine emperor to another, but it is thought to have been made from a combination of flammable materials such as sulphur, naphtha, quicklime and pitch in a petroleum base. Since it ignited spontaneously and could not be extinguished by water, it was a profoundly effective weapon, sowing panic among those who faced it.

In battle, the principal tactics and techniques employed by Temur were horse-archery, envelopment of his enemy where possible, and, a particular favourite, used with enormous success, feigned flight. At Aleppo, for example, his men staged a deliberate retreat, leading the Syrians right behind their lines, where they were fallen upon and utterly routed. The Tatars, wrote an observer at the outset of the fourteenth century, ‘are for the most part victorious over their enemies; yet they are not afraid to turn their backs in a fight if it is to their advantage … Their manner of fighting is very dangerous, so that in one Tatar battle or skirmish there are more slain or wounded than in any great conflict between other nations, which results from their archery, for they shoot strongly and surely, being indeed so skilful in the art of shooting that they commonly pierce all kinds of armour, and if they happen to be routed they flee in troops and bands so well ordered that it is very dangerous to follow or pursue them, because they shoot arrows backwards in their flight, often wounding both men and horses that pursue them.’

Men predominated in the lines, but war was by no means their exclusive preserve, as Arabshah noted.

There were also in his army many women who mingled in the mêlée of battle and in fierce conflicts and strove with men and fought with brave warriors and overcame mighty heroes in combat with the thrust of the spear, the blow of the sword and shooting of arrows; when one of them was heavy with child and birth pangs seized her, while they were on the march, she turned from the way and withdrawing apart and descending from her beast, gave birth to the child and wrapping it in bandages, soon mounted her beast and taking the child with her, followed her company; and there were in his army men born on the march and grown to full age who married and begot children and yet never had a fixed home.

A leader of impressive intellect and infinite cunning, Temur placed a premium on good, timely intelligence, the lifeblood of his many campaigns. A vast network of spies fanned out from Samarkand across his lands and into the kingdoms and empires of those he sought to conquer. Well represented among them were the Islamic orders, itinerant monks, dervishes, shaykhs and Sufis. ‘He was of rare temper and depth so deep that in the sea of his plans the bottom could not be touched, nor could one reach the high peak of his government by a smooth or rough path,’ wrote Arabshah. ‘He had placed through his realm his informers and in other kingdoms had appointed his spies; and these were amirs like Atilmish, one of his allies, or learned fakirs, like Masaud Kahajani, his chief minister, or traders seeking a living by some craft, ill-minded wrestlers, criminal athletes, labourers, craftsmen, soothsayers, physicians, wandering hermits, chatterers, strolling vagabonds, sailors, wanderers by land, elegant drunkards, witty singers, aged procuresses and crafty old women.’

These men, women and children brought back news from across Asia, from the prices and availability of various commodities to the state of an enemy kingdom, the names of its military leaders and nobles and the mapping of its lands and cities. ‘One skilful plan can perform the service of a hundred thousand warriors,’ Temur was reported to have said.

To aid the flow of information, Temur, like the Mongols, used a system of posting stations known as yams. Up to two hundred horses were kept at each regularly staged post and stable, the costs met by the local population. Clavijo, who witnessed their operations at first hand while on his way to the emperor’s court, left a typically detailed description of how zealously the envoys and couriers went about their work on behalf of the emperor. Such was the importance accorded government business that if any envoy riding a tiring mount came upon other riders with fresher horses, these were required on pain of death to dismount and hand over their animals to the messenger and his entourage. No one was spared this inconvenience: the Spaniard was told that on one occasion Temur’s eldest son and his attendants were forced to surrender their horses to envoys en route to Samarkand.

The information and intelligence contained in his envoys’ despatches was highly valued and jealously guarded by Temur. They were under strict orders to ride full tilt around the clock. ‘Temur indeed sets much store that those he sends and those who come to him should ride post day and night,’ Clavijo recorded. ‘So doing they may easily cover fifty leagues in the twenty-four hours, though by thus riding they will kill two horses. But this may be, rather than to take three days over that journey: for he deems speed to be much to his service.’ This was no exaggeration. Such hard riding inevitably took its toll, the unsightly evidence plain for all to see: ‘By the roadside many were the dead horses we saw during our journey, which had thus been ridden to death and the carcass abandoned: the number indeed a marvel to note.’

It is hardly surprising, given the range of his military triumphs, the part of the world from which he came, and the conscious emulation, when it suited him, of the traditions inspired by his illustrious predecessor, that Temur should find himself compared with Genghis Khan. History’s verdict has been divided, with the rival camps occupying the ground staked out for them by the original protagonists, Arabshah on the one hand and Yazdi on the other.

In a recent history of Russia and the Mongols, Leo de Hartog found Temur both cruder and crueller than Genghis.

Temur was as merciless as the Mongol world conqueror had been, but his subtle methods were often characterised by sadism, which had never been present in Genghis Khan. In the field of religion there were also great differences between the two. A parochial Muslim, Temur had little understanding of other faiths, while the shamanistic Genghis Khan was particularly tolerant towards other religions.

In fact, it is not at all clear that Temur was as merciless as Genghis. There are numerous stories of acts of clemency on his part. Cities which surrendered quickly, such as Herat, Urganch and Baghdad, tended to be treated far more leniently than those whose resistance occasioned casualties among Temur’s soldiers and required an all-out assault. Those which opted to rise against him, however, could expect little quarter. As for the destruction which followed his every campaign, Temur was much more likely than Genghis to spare both men and monuments; and even when he did not he frequently had the same cities his men had razed to the ground rebuilt in the interests of trade and agriculture.

That Temur was cruel is beyond question. But to accuse him of sadism is to indulge in unfounded speculation which owes more to the prejudices of the twenty-first century than the values of the fourteenth, when human life was held far cheaper than it is today. Temur was no exemplar of cruelty. When the Mamluk sultan Baybars took Antioch in 1263, for example, he had the sixteen-thousand-strong garrison slaughtered and the hundred thousand inhabitants sold into slavery. The massacres Temur committed were neither for his amusement nor pleasure. They were carried out to strike terror into his opponents’ hearts, to rid his newly conquered territories of opponents, and to minimise the risks of rebellion.

The charge of religious intolerance is likewise wide of the mark. Temur used Islam primarily as an instrument conferring prestige and legitimacy on his actions. The charge of parochialism is one that not even his detractors, least of all Arabshah, would have recognised. Temur’s was the politics of the expedient. In an age when the Crescent and the Cross faced each other across the Aegean and the Mediterranean like the standards of hostile armies, it was Temur, and not the Ottoman sultan, who made friendly overtures towards the Christian princes of Europe. In Temur’s thinking the practicalities of trade between Europe and Asia could outweigh the traditional, deeply held religious antagonism between Christendom and the lands of Islam. He was a man of vision, his intellectual horizons as broad as the steppes across which he led his armies to victory.

Arminius Vambery, the nineteenth-century Hungarian traveller and philologist, was better able to put Temur in historical perspective. He dismissed comparisons with Genghis. ‘Those who would rank Temur side by side with a Chinghiz, as a mere savage, wilful tyrant, are doubly in error,’ he wrote. ‘He was pre-eminently an Asiatic soldier who used his victories after the fashion of his time and country.’

Genghis had delegated civil and military command. After his early conquests, he directed his sweeping campaigns from his headquarters in Karakorum. Temur, a more reckless commander, had no interest in holding back from the fray. Samarkand, though the imperial capital, came to know him as an absentee emperor, forever appearing with untold riches plundered from the great cities of Asia, celebrating his victories at famously sumptuous banquets that could last several months, before disappearing again on campaigns of up to five years. Unlike Genghis, Temur was rarely absent from the battlefield, where he frequently threw himself into the action at great personal danger.

Sir John Malcolm, the nineteenth-century soldier, statesman and historian, provided one of the best appreciations of Temur’s military charisma: ‘Such a leader as Temur must have been idolized by his soldiers … he was careless of the opinion of other classes in the community. His object was fame as a conqueror; and a noble city was laid in ashes, or the inhabitants of a province massacred, on a cold calculation that the dreadful impression would facilitate the purposes of his ambition.’

But whatever their respective styles on the battlefield, perhaps the most striking difference was evident off it. By today’s standards, Temur was a nomadic conqueror. He was constantly on the move. Hardly had he finished one campaign than his armies were assembled for another. Genghis and his Mongol hordes would, however, probably have viewed Temur’s career with disdain, for in Samarkand the Tatar had built a permanent capital, a concession to the way of life of the despised settled population, and a violation of the nomadic tradition cherished by the warriors of the steppe. Temur’s beloved city, the Pearl of the East, betrayed his love of opulence. The splendid mosques and madrassahs, the parks and the palaces, each of them a wonder of the world, revealed an appreciation of artistic excellence and architectural beauty that was entirely foreign to Genghis. Both men unleashed havoc across half the known world, put millions to the sword and razed to the earth cities standing in their path. But only Temur saw fit to rebuild, for he was a creator as much as a destroyer. This marked him out as a different breed of conqueror altogether. Much of his life was spent honouring the ancient traditions established by his Mongol predecessor, but by the time he died Temur was his own emperor, in thrall to no other man. Samarkand was the greatest expression of this individuality. It was a tribute to his undefeated military career and a monument to his imperial vanity.

Over four decades the city soaked up Temur’s offerings like an avaricious mistress. There was gold, silver, precious stones, marble, exotic beasts, fabulous cloths, silks, tapestries, slaves and spices; yet still she was not satisfied. Each time he returned with more, she sent him back out into battle. Her glorification required ever increasing spoils from countless victories. Only constant campaigning could deliver them.

By the end of the 1370s, Temur’s emerging empire took in the treasures and territories of Khorezm and Mawarannahr. Now, with Samarkand whispering in his ear, his eyes roved westward for more.

^* Yazdi is by no means alone in providing such a glowing profile. Subsequent writers have also been mesmerised by Temur’s blaze of conquests. Military historians, above all, have been overwhelmed. Writing in 1915, Sir Percy Sykes echoed Yazdi’s conclusions in remarkably similar language, calling him ‘the greatest Asiatic conqueror known in history’, ‘the bravest of the brave’, ‘an unsurpassed leader of men and a very god of war adored by all ranks’.

^* To this day this most demanding of games is known as Tamerlane chess.

^* The word is used here in the sense of the lesser jihad, meaning holy war, rather than the greater jihad, by which the Prophet Mohammed exhorted his followers to fight a personal struggle against vice, passion and ignorance, to improve themselves as human beings and demonstrate their commitment to Islam.

^* Sunni Islam, the most widely followed, orthodox sect of Islam, stressed the original dynasty of the caliphs, while the Shi’a faction, which broke off in 661, supported the rival dynasty of caliphs begun by Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet. Sunni and Shi’a Islam are united only by three core doctrines: the oneness of God, and belief in both the revelations of the Prophet and resurrection on the Day of Judgement.