A national figure
Since independence, Tamerlan has become the historical figure of Uzbekistan. Not a city that does not have its own statue, square or Amur Street Timūr. The conqueror of the 14th century is one of those historical figures who is still very controversial, difficult to define because the legend is so important. Written sources on the early years of his life are non-existent, and Tamerlan is best known for his succession of victorious campaigns to India, China and the Aegean Sea from 1370 until his death.
The destruction of hundreds of cities, the heads of the killed enemies assembled in towers have left memories and traces in much of the eastern world, obscuring the peace that reigned at the heart of his empire and the fantastic commercial boom illustrated by Samarkand, his capital. Today, the man whom some historians consider to be one of the greatest criminals of all time, returns to the forefront of history, adulated as an intrepid warrior, an outstanding adventurer, fearless and blameless, a man who conquered the world despite his handicap, despite his paralyzed arm, his illness, and his exceptional longevity. He also built one of the most beautiful cities the sun has ever shone on.Conqueror, destroyer and... builder
And, in fact, Tamerlan significantly changed the face of the lands he had submitted. He preferred city life to nomadism, he consecrated the Muslim religion, fighting under the banner of the Prophet, while constantly violating Koranic law and mixing it with traditions stemming from paganism, Zoroastrianism and shamanism. His victory over the Ottomans freed the West from the Turkish threat, and Tamerlan from then on did everything he could to encourage trade between these two regions of the world. In the letters he sent to the kings of France and England announcing his victory over the Ottomans, he guaranteed that merchants coming to Samarkand would be treated with the utmost respect. The prestigious Samarkand, whose legendary beauty made it famous, ran all along the Silk Road. For between two conquests, Tamerlan returned to his beloved city, his jewel, the new capital of his empire. He knew that the numerous caravans that would arrive in his city, coming from all walks of life, would tell on their return the magnificence of the capital of the greatest of the conquerors.
Despite the prestige of his capital, the Empire did not survive long after the death of its founder. It was immediately divided into rival principalities that would disappear less than a century later under the blows of the Uzbeks, fleeing their territory controlled by the Golden Horde that Tamerlan himself had shaken.A rich lineage of scientists..
Tamerlan's lineage gave birth to two personalities who each distinguished themselves in very different ways: Ulugh Begh, the astronomer, and Babur, the knight errant. Ulugh Begh (1394-1449), Tamerlan's grandson, inherited the entire area of the empire including Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Mogholistan (present-day Xinjiang), but proved to be a clumsy warrior, winning only one notable victory against the Uzbek tribes of Kazakhstan, and having to call on his father in every major military maneuver. He was much more competent and interested in science and mathematics, and became famous thanks to the gigantic sextant he built in Samarkand. He was able to determine the precise position of more than a thousand stars, and his treatises on astronomy were a reference for the great Western scientists for more than two centuries. At the end of his reign, he came into conflict with his own son, who murdered him two years later to seize power, destroying in the process the Samarkand observatory and the magnificent library of scholarly works gathered by the man who would forever remain the "astronomer prince".
... and empire builders!
Zahereddin Muhammad Babur (1483-1530), the fifth ruler of the Timurid lineage, came to the throne upon the death of his father, Omar Sheikh, in 1494 at the age of 11. Seven years later, having just retaken Samarkand from the Chaybanids, they repulsed him and forced him into exile. Babur leaves Uzbekistan to carve out a new empire in Afghanistan in the first instance, from which he will succeed in fleetingly seizing Samarkand. But definitively driven out by the Chaybanides in 1512, he renounced Transoxiana and turned towards India. He seized Delhi in 1526, and founded the Mogul dynasty, which ruled India for 332 years. Babur's great-grandson, Shah Jahan, was responsible for the construction of the Taj Mahal in Agra between 1632 and 1654. Babur left many writings and poems, as well as a diary that he never had time to finish. In it he tells of his conquests, but also of his regrets for having had to leave his hometown, Andijan. It is even said that the emperor had ordered an expedition to return to Andijan to bring back a shipment of melons whose taste was so precious to him. Babur's writings are an irreplaceable source of information about the lives of his contemporaries in the Ferghana Valley, in Transoxiana and in Afghanistan.
What if Tamerlane still made the world tremble?
It was the Soviet anthropologist Gerasimov who, wishing to study the emperor's body, obtained permission to exhume it, to the great fright of the local authorities who knew of the inscription engraved on the emperor's tomb: "When I return to the light of day, the world will tremble. "Guerasimov opened Tamerlan's tomb on the night of June 22, 1941, hours before the start of Operation Barbarossa. At the end of the following year, the body was returned to its coffin. And a few days later, at the end of January 1943, the Germans surrendered in Stalingrad... The research undertaken by Guerasimov, who also opened the graves of Ulugh Begh and the other Timurids, enabled him to confirm the atrophy of the arm and the right leg of Timur Leng - the Iron Gimp - as well as the violent death, by decapitation, of Ulugh Begh, confirming his assassination by his son.
