Tamerlane: The Life and Legacy of the Legendary Mongol Conqueror

Though history is usually written by the victors, the lack of a particularly strong writing tradition from the Mongols ensured that history was largely written by those who they vanquished. Because of this, their portrayal in the West and the Middle East has been extraordinarily (and in many ways unfairly) negative for centuries, at least until recent revisions to the historical record. The Mongols have long been depicted as wild horse-archers galloping out of the dawn to rape, pillage, murder and enslave, but the Mongol army was a highly sophisticated, minutely organized and incredibly adaptive and innovative institution, as witnessed by the fact that it was successful in conquering enemies who employed completely different weaponry and different styles of fighting, from Chinese armored infantry to Middle Eastern camel cavalry and Western knights and men-at-arms. Likewise, the infrastructure and administrative corps which governed the empire, though largely borrowed from the Chinese, was inventive, practical, and extraordinarily modern and efficient. This was no fly-by-night enterprise but a sophisticated, complex, and extremely well-oiled machine.

Aside from Genghis and his grandson Kublai Khan, the most famous Mongol conqueror was Tamerlane, who dominated Eurasia in the 14th century. He was known by the name Timur in Asia, while the Europeans used the name Tamerlane, which came from the Persian Timur-i-Leng, meaning “Timur the Lame.” This was intended to be an insult referring to crippling injuries he received to his right leg and arm as a young man, probably from arrows, but clearly his injuries did not prevent him from spending much of his lifetime in the saddle. Tamerlane came from a Turkicized Mongol tribe, the Barlas, which had several constituent sub-clans. A number of original Mongol tribes had migrated west, where the majority of the population was Turkish, and over time, the Mongols blended with the Turks.