Transcript Reflections - Tamerlane - White Plains Public Schools

 Article:
““Tamerlane’s Career and Its Uses” by
Beatrice Forbes Manz
 Journal of World History 13, no. 1 (2002), 1–25
 Online Source: Bridging World History
- Tamerlane has remained an important figure in
world history, both because of the impact of his
career on the world of his time and because he
remains fascinating and useful to many people
- This article explores the facts of Temür’s career and
the uses made of his image following his death,
showing how his actions together with the stories
circulated during his lifetime served to create a
charisma that survives into the present time
 The
Turco-Mongolian conqueror Tamerlane, or
Temür, who ruled from 1370 to 1405, had a
significant impact on the world of his time
 He founded a state covering the present Iran and
Central Asia, crushed the army of the Ottoman
sultan Yildirim Beyezit, and destroyed the power of
the Mongol Golden Horde
 To the Europeans and Byzantines, Temür’s
destruction of the Ottoman menace was a reprieve
from danger, and for the emerging Muscovite state,
the weakening of the Golden Horde proved a useful
opportunity
 Within
the Middle East Temür reestablished the
frontier between the steppe and the agricultural
regions, and founded a dynasty famous for its
cultural brilliance
 After his death, Temür continued to be useful and
fascinating, both in the East and in the West, and it
is not too surprising to find him appearing at the
end of the millennium as the founding father of a
new Uzbek nation
 Two
aspects of Temür’s lifetime achievement set
him apart from most men and put him into the
ranks of legendary commanders: his success in
acquiring wealth and territory, and the theatrical
nature of his exploits
 There is a striking contrast between his lowly
beginnings and the extraordinary power he
achieved, his modest formal claims and his
extravagant symbolic ones, his illiteracy and his
scholarly understanding, his penchant for building
and for destruction
 Temür
came to power in Transoxiana, on the border
between the nomad steppes and the agricultural
Middle East
 As a Muslim and a descendant of Mongols, bilingual
in Turkic and Persian, he belonged to both worlds
 His native region had been part of the Chaghadayid
Khanate, which was one of the less powerful and
organized sections of the Mongol Empire,
controlled by the descendants of Chinggis Khan’s
second son Chaghadai
 Temür himself, although he was a member of the
tribal aristocracy, was not a descendant of Chinggis
Khan, nor chief of his own tribe
 Nonetheless,
through ceaseless political and
military activity, he came to dominate first
Transoxiana and then much of Iran
 This was not sufficient for him; he aimed to
recreate the Mongol Empire—at least symbolically—
under his suzerainty, and to achieve recognized
primacy over the Islamic world as well
 In the military and political sphere Temür achieved
his ambition through an interesting combination of
restraint and extravagance
 He
claimed preeminence over essentially the whole
of the Mongol Empire, but constructed an
administration in only a small portion of it, in Iran
and Central Asia
 Almost the whole of his long life was spent on
campaign
 Starting as a member of the Barlas tribe in
Transoxiana, he won his way to power over the
region in 1370
 By 1380 he had achieved supremacy as far as
Kashghar in the east and Khorezm in the west, and
he then began to lay claim to the Iranian region
 Temür
set out to assert his symbolic power over the
Islamic and Mongol worlds
 By helping the Chinggisid pretender Tokhtamysh
take the throne of the Blue or White Horde north
of the Jaxartes, he positioned himself as protector
of a member of the senior Chinggisid line, that of
Chinggis Khan’s eldest son, Jochi
 His conquest of northern Iran in the winter of 1384
-85 allowed him to invoke the heritage of the
Mongol Ilkhans who had centered their rule in that
area
 But
Temür’s victories abroad were achieved at
considerable cost to his armies, and if he had tried
to assert full control over the lands of his defeated
rivals—a region stretching from the Russian steppes
to Delhi, from Anatolia to the Issyk Kul—he would
have seriously strained even his rich resources
 What he did instead was to establish a government
over a much smaller area—Iran, Iraq, and Central
Asia
 These territories he could administer successfully,
and they provided him with a rich tax base and a
reserve of manpower which made possible the
showy campaigns that established his fame
throughout almost the whole of Eurasia
 Even
though Temür led the largest and most
successful army of his time and dominated both of
the political worlds he belonged to—the Islamic and
the Mongol—he was not eligible for supreme office
within either of the imperial traditions he honored
 Since he was not directly descended from Chinggis
Khan, he could not claim the title of khan, the
mark of sovereignty within the world of the steppe
nomads
 He could likewise not call himself caliph, the
supreme title of the Islamic world, since that office
was limited to the Quraysh, the tribe of the
Prophet Muhammad
 Since he was not himself eligible for supreme
office, he allowed to his puppet khan the major
titles of both worlds while contenting himself with
the modest title amir, or commander
 Therefore,
Temür’s chroniclers did not exalt the
official position he held, but rather his person
 The massacres for which Temür is famous were not
frequent
 They were reserved for cities that rebelled, and
they were organized for impressiveness, echoing in
scale and method those of the Mongol invasion
 They were theatrical demonstrations of power,
used as a tool to inspire not only fear, but also
respect
 In
this context it is telling that the historian Sharaf
al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi, writing for the Timurid court,
estimated the number of Indian captives that
Temür’s army put to the sword on the Delhi
campaign at 100,000, while a hostile account by
the Indian historian Yahya Sirhindi in the Tarikh-I
Mubarakshahi gave Temür credit for only 50,000
victims
 Temür
accompanied his greatest shows of
destructive force with displays of learning, piety,
and care for the arts
 Craftsmen he spared and deported, as Chinggis
Khan had done
 He further invited out the learned classes—the
ulama — and debated with them; the masters of
chess he challenged and defeated
 His ability to hold his own in learned conversation
was attested by the famous historian Ibn Khaldun,
with whom he talked outside Damascus
 For
his descendants, a different system had to be
worked out; what was required now was a dynastic
rather than a personal legitimation
 Temür bequeathed to his successors three useful
bases for continued legitimacy
 First, he had established his position as a promoter
of Islam through patronage of scholars,
construction of religious buildings, and campaigns
for the spread of the faith
 Second, he had connected himself with Chinggis
Khan through marriage and the maintenance of a
figurehead khan
 Third, and in the long run most importantly, he had
established himself as a person of extraordinary
stature, whose figure could be used in its own right
to lend stature to his descendants
 Now
that Temür had become a
source of legitimacy in his own
right, the modesty of his formal
titles became less acceptable
 Historians have noted that
Temür’s son and successor
Shahrukh ceased to maintain a
puppet khan
 Along with the emphasis on
Temür as dynastic founder in his
own right came a tendency to
exalt his personality
 The
poet Sakkaki, writing shortly after Temür’s
death, included in his mystical verse poem a story
about Temür who, seeing the struggles of a
crippled ant, learned to persevere despite his own
damaged leg and arm
 Princes, authors, and miniaturists of the Timurid
period contributed to Temür’s fame in a less direct
way as well—by creating a brilliant cultural milieu
which made the Timurid period a model of
intellectual and artistic achievement
 The
Timurids gained their lasting reputation not
only through the refinement of the works they
produced, but also because the dynasty fell at the
height of its cultural brilliance, leaving behind
scholars and artists in need of new patrons
 These men became valued prizes for the dynasties
succeeding the Timurids: Uzbeks, Mughals,
Safavids, and even Ottomans
 The dynasties which followed the Timurids shared
many traits with them, including a mixed nomad
and sedentary population and a respect for Islamic
Iranian, and Turkic or Turco-Mongolian traditions
 The figure of Temür and the Timurid heritage were
attractive to several of them
 The
dynasty which relied most directly on
Timurid legitimacy was the Mughal dynasty
of India, founded by Temür’s descendant
Babur, who, unable to overcome the
invading Uzbeks, left Transoxiana and in
932/1526 established himself in India
 The early Mughal rulers emphasized both
their descent from Temür and their
Chinggisid lineage through Babur’s mother;
they were known equally as the Mughals
and the Later Timurids
 Just as Temür’s descendants claimed that
Temür had outdone Chinggis Khan, so
Babur and his descendants recorded those
aspects of Babur’s career which had
surpassed the achievements of Temür
 At
the beginning of the sixteenth century the
central Timurid lands fell to two dynasties: the
Safavids and the Uzbeks
 For both of these it was the cultural legacy of the
Timurids which held the greatest appeal
 The Uzbek khans, who took over Transoxiana, were
directly descended from Chinggis Khan through his
son Jochi and advertised their rule as a restoration
of the true Chinggisid tradition
 They thus exalted their khans over the Timurid
rulers, whose line was inferior by Mongol standards
 On the other hand, coming from outside the
central Islamic lands, the Uzbeks were not adept in
Perso-Islamic cultural traditions and thus depended
heavily on former Timurid personnel for the
establishment of a courtly milieu
 The
Safavids, who came to power under a
charismatic Shi’ite leader and conquered the
central Iranian lands, were more independent of
the Timurid heritage
 They did, however, take over Herat and they
inherited several famous Timurid historians and
miniaturists
 Temür himself was not prominent in early Safavid
historiography, but in the middle of the sixteenth
century, historians began to incorporate him into
accounts of the earlier Safavid Sufi order from
which the shahs descended, using a story
reminiscent of those found in the histories of other
Sufis
 Temür, they claimed, had visited the head of the
order on his campaign to Anatolia, and had shown
him honor
 For
powerful individuals as well as for
dynasties, Temür’s figure held appeal
 His interest in international trade and his
defeat of the Ottoman Sultan Beyezit
brought him to the attention of Europe,
where his fame lasted and grew through the
Renaissance
 He became for the Europeans a symbol of
the power of will
 The interest he aroused was more literary
than scholarly; Tamerlane was prominent in
literature as the conqueror of extraordinary
might, who drove a chariot drawn by
defeated kings and dragged the Ottoman
Sultan Beyezit around in a cage
 Temür
held particular appeal for rulers
aspiring to personal power, and it is not
surprising that his figure enjoyed a spurt
of popularity in Europe and Asia from the
end of the sixteenth century to about the
middle of the seventeenth, a period
associated with the reigns of
exceptionally powerful monarchs
 In Europe this was the period of Elizabeth
1 (1558–1603 )
 Further east, Shah ‘Abbas (1588–1629 ) in
Iran and Akbar (1556–1605 ) in India both
brought their realms to a new level of
centralized power focused around their
own persons
 In
India it was Akbar who
initiated a resurgence of
interest in the figure of
Temür
 Neither of his predecessors,
Babur and Humayun, had fully
secured power over India;
this was the achievement of
Akbar himself
 From
this time on Temür’s place within the
pantheon of great rulers of popular and
court culture was established, both in
Europe and in Asia
 In Europe he provided subject matter for
the French philosophes and for composers
Handel and Scarlatti in the eighteenth
century, as well as for the American writer
Poe in the nineteenth
 In the central Islamic lands he was firmly
embedded in folk culture, used as the
embodiment of royal rule and a foil for the
popular folk figure, Nasr al-Din Khwaja,
while in the nomad steppes, he was a
popular figure in folk epics
 For
five hundred years after his death
Temür remained important in political
and intellectual life both because of
the dramatic appeal of his deeds, his
personality, and the myths surrounding
him, and because he belonged equally
to two worlds—the Perso-Islamic and
the Turco-Mongolian
 The two sides of Temür—his appeal as
a powerful personality and his
usefulness in state legitimation—
maintained for him a prominent place
in history and made it certain that he
would figure in any new interpretation
of the history of Central Asia and its
place in the world
 When
the Soviet state reconstituted the Russian
Empire, the history of Central Asia and thus of
Temür became a state concern and the subject of
repeated revisions
 The Soviet view of nationality, laid out in its
classical form by Stalin in “Marxism and the
Nationality Question,” linked territory, language,
and history as the basis of nationality
 Such a formulation requires some readjustment of
the historical record for any region, and
particularly for Uzbekistan, since the Uzbek tribes
came into the territory of modern Uzbekistan only
in the sixteenth century, and their entry is well
documented
 Furthermore
the Uzbeks were nomadic, and nomads
hold an inglorious place in the Marxist scheme of
development
 To make it worse, they were descendants of the
Mongols, led by a khan directly descended from
Chinggis Khan, consistently reviled in Soviet
historiography
 The solution was to emphasize the importance of
the Turkic people earlier inhabiting Transoxiana,
including the Timurids, and to downplay the
number of new people brought in by the Uzbek
invasion
 The
figure of Temür himself gained prominence
with the change in Soviet historiography during the
Second World War
 The need to encourage patriotism and to allow
glory to military leaders brought the rehabilitation
of previously controversial Russian figures like
Peter I and Ivan the Terrible
 Non-Russian military heroes on the other hand
remained a problem since many had won their
spurs fighting against the Russians
 Temür, however, was not among the most
threatening; he was medieval, and unconcerned
with the Russians
 In addition, he had done much to destroy the
Mongol Golden Horde, through his duel with his
rival Tokhtamish
 When
it became possible to begin the rewriting of
Uzbek history during the period of perestroika in
the late 1980s, Temür was well positioned to
become a beneficiary
 National republics were eager to break loose from
earlier Soviet strictures and to promote a more
local and independent view of history
 Soviet Russian historians had given Temür secure
status as an important figure in world history and
had criticized him sufficiently to allow an Uzbek
revision and rehabilitation
 Temür
has not only been rehabilitated; he has been
given the stature of father of the Uzbek nation
 There are several reasons for this choice
 First of all, there are few other suitable candidates
 There is no major figure of national resistance
from either the Russian or the Soviet period;
Uzbekistan did not win its independence from
Russia; rather, it had independence come to it
 There are likewise few useful figures from earlier
periods
 Uzbekistan
did not have to fight for its
independence, but it does have to struggle for
recognition as a power in its own right, now that it
is no longer part of the Soviet Union
 In the Soviet period, whatever the drawbacks of
Uzbekistan’s position, it was part of a superpower;
the history taught in its textbooks and the
monuments gracing its squares testified to that
fact
 Now that the USSR is dissolved, it is necessary to
find another source of prestige
 In
formulating his persona Temür echoed actions of
past rulers, copying both the grandiose campaign
and massacre style of Chinggis Khan and the
patronage of learning and high culture approved
within the Perso-Islamic tradition
 The
image of a man of will and destiny
rising from low station to rule the
world, which Temür and his entourage
encouraged orally during his lifetime,
appealed strongly to the writers of the
European Renaissance, to wartime
Soviet writers, and now to the rulers of
independent Uzbekistan
 The dynastic patriarch, great
centralizer and promoter of order, the
field commander who honors and even
outshines the scholars of his day, has
also had an enduring attraction for
numerous ambitious rulers since, from
Akbar to Karimov