Timur: Difference between revisions
timur
No edit summary |
(timur) |
||
| Line 34: | Line 34: | ||
The newest generation of Iron Lords occasionally honor his memory by taking up one of his old artifacts. As Timur once used it to turn entire hordes of enemies against each other, they can now use it to do the same, albeit on a smaller scale.<ref name="LordTimur"/> | The newest generation of Iron Lords occasionally honor his memory by taking up one of his old artifacts. As Timur once used it to turn entire hordes of enemies against each other, they can now use it to do the same, albeit on a smaller scale.<ref name="LordTimur"/> | ||
Timur[3] (Persian: تیمور Temūr, Chagatai: Temür; 9 April 1336 – 18 February 1405), historically known as Amir Timur and Tamerlane[4] (Persian: تيمور لنگ Temūr(-i) Lang, "Timur the Lame"), was a Turco-Mongol conqueror. As the founder of the Timurid Empire in Persia and Central Asia, he became the first ruler in the Timurid dynasty.[5] According to John Joseph Saunders, Timur was "the product of an islamized and iranized society", and not steppe nomadic.[6] | |||
Born into the Barlas confederation in Transoxiana (in modern-day Uzbekistan) on 9 April 1336, Timur gained control of the western Chagatai Khanate by 1370. From that base, he led military campaigns across Western, South and Central Asia, the Caucasus and southern Russia, and emerged as the most powerful ruler in the Muslim world after defeating the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria, the emerging Ottoman Empire, and the declining Delhi Sultanate.[7] From these conquests, he founded the Timurid Empire, but this empire fragmented shortly after his death. | |||
Timur was the last of the great nomadic conquerors of the Eurasian Steppe, and his empire set the stage for the rise of the more structured and lasting Gunpowder Empires in the 16th and 17th centuries.[8][9]:1 Timur envisioned the restoration of the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan (died 1227). According to Beatrice Forbes Manz, "in his formal correspondence Temur continued throughout his life to portray himself as the restorer of Chinggisid rights. He justified his Iranian, Mamluk, and Ottoman campaigns as a re-imposition of legitimate Mongol control over lands taken by usurpers."[10] To legitimize his conquests, Timur relied on Islamic symbols and language, referred to himself as the "Sword of Islam", and patronized educational and religious institutions. He converted nearly all the Borjigin leaders to Islam during his lifetime. Timur decisively defeated the Christian Knights Hospitaller at the Siege of Smyrna, styling himself a ghazi.[11]:91 By the end of his reign, Timur had gained complete control over all the remnants of the Chagatai Khanate, the Ilkhanate, and the Golden Horde, and even attempted to restore the Yuan dynasty in China. | |||
Timur's armies were inclusively multi-ethnic and were feared throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe,[11] sizable parts of which his campaigns laid to waste.[12] Scholars estimate that his military campaigns caused the deaths of 17 million people, amounting to about 5% of the world population at the time.[13][14] | |||
He was the grandfather of the Timurid sultan, astronomer and mathematician Ulugh Beg, who ruled Central Asia from 1411 to 1449, and the great-great-great-grandfather of Babur (1483–1530), founder of the Mughal Empire, which ruled parts of South Asia for over three centuries, from 1526 until 1857.[15][16] Timur is considered as a great patron of art and architecture, as he interacted with intellectuals such as Ibn Khaldun and Hafiz-i Abru.[ | |||
==List of appearances== | ==List of appearances== | ||