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.
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