Timurid Empire: A Visual History

The Timurid Empire was founded by Timur (Tamerlane), a Turco-Mongol warlord who from 1370 conquered Persia, the Caucasus, Delhi, Damascus, Baghdad and Anatolia, and died in 1405 marching on China. His empire, centred on Samarkand, fragmented after his death, but his son Shah Rukh and grandson Ulugh Beg made Herat and Samarkand centres of art, astronomy and architecture in the Timurid Renaissance. Uzbek conquest ended the dynasty in Central Asia in 1507; Babur carried it to India as the Mughal Empire.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Timurid Empire. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Timurid territory

Timeline of the Timurid Empire

1. 1370
   Timur takes BalkhMaster of Transoxiana.
2. 1387
   Isfahan massacreTowers of 70,000 skulls.
3. 1395
   Golden Horde crushedSarai destroyed.
4. 1398
   Delhi sacked
5. 1402
   Battle of AnkaraThe Ottoman sultan captured.
6. 1405
   Timur diesEn route to invade Ming China.
7. 1420
   Ulugh Beg's madrasaSamarkand's Registan begins.
8. 1449
   Ulugh Beg murdered
9. 1507
   Herat falls to the Uzbeks
10. 1526
    Babur founds the Mughal Empire

Timur's conquests

Timur, born near Samarkand around 1336, was a Turkicised Mongol who could not claim the khan title so ruled through puppet Genghisids and the title amir. From 1370 he campaigned almost every year: Khwarazm, Persia, the Golden Horde (whose cities he destroyed in 1395), Delhi (1398, where he massacred perhaps 100,000 prisoners), Damascus and Baghdad (1401), and the Ottoman sultan Bayezid, captured at Ankara in 1402. He is notorious for towers of skulls at Isfahan, Baghdad and elsewhere.

The Timurid Renaissance

Timur died in 1405 setting out for China. His son Shah Rukh, ruling from Herat, and Shah Rukh's son Ulugh Beg in Samarkand presided over a cultural flowering: Ulugh Beg's observatory produced the most accurate star catalogue before Tycho Brahe; miniature painting, tilework and Persian poetry reached their peak; and the buildings of Samarkand and Herat set the style for Safavid Persia and Mughal India.

Fragmentation and afterlife

Ulugh Beg was murdered by his son in 1449. Timurid princes fought each other while the Qara Qoyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu Turkmen took Persia. Sultan Husayn Bayqara's Herat (1469-1506) was a last brilliant court, home to the poet Navai and painter Bihzad. Muhammad Shaybani's Uzbeks took Samarkand in 1500 and Herat in 1507. Babur, driven from Fergana, seized Kabul and then Delhi in 1526, founding the Mughal (i.e. Mongol) dynasty.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Chagatai Khanate (1226 to 1347)
• Golden Horde (Jochi Khanate) (1242 to 1502)
• Ottoman Empire (1299 to 1922)
• Delhi Sultanate (1206 to 1526)
• Mughal Empire (1526 to 1857)
• Safavid Empire (1501 to 1736)
• Mamluk Sultanate (1250 to 1517)
• Ilkhanate (1256 to 1335)
• Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644)

Wars of the same era and region

• Conquests of Timur (1370 to 1405)
• Bahmani-Vijayanagar wars (1362 to 1509)
• Mongol invasions and conquests (1206 to 1368)
• Akbar's conquest of North India (1556 to 1605)

8 surprising things about the Timurid Empire

1. Timur's tomb was opened by Soviet scientists on 20 June 1941; an inscription warned that whoever disturbed it would unleash a terrible invader. Germany invaded two days later.
2. Timur reportedly played chess on a board of 110 squares of his own devising.
3. The Ottoman sultan Bayezid died in captivity a year after Ankara; the story that he was kept in a cage is probably legend.
4. Ulugh Beg's star catalogue of 1437 listed 992 stars, and his measurement of the year was accurate to under a minute.
5. Timur's name means 'iron'; 'Tamerlane' comes from Timur-i Lang, Timur the Lame, from wounds to his leg and arm.
6. He forced captured architects and craftsmen from every conquered city to work in Samarkand.
7. Christopher Marlowe's play Tamburlaine the Great made him famous in Elizabethan England.
8. The Mughal emperors of India called themselves Gurkani, from Timur's title guregen, 'son-in-law' (of the Genghisid house).

Sources

• Timur Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Timurid Empire Wikipedia
• Timur World History Encyclopedia
• Beatrice Forbes Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane (1989) Cambridge University Press

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