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Beatrice Forbes Manz, “Tamerlane’s Career and Its Uses,” Journal of World 

History 13, no. 1 (2002), 1–25. 

Abstract: 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 paper 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 our time. Tamerlane 

belonged to two worlds, the Islamic and the Turco-Mongolian, but was not 

eligible to hold the highest office in either one. To compensate for his low 

formal position, he deliberately created a persona which bordered on the 

supernatural. The dynasty he founded reworked earlier traditions to create 

the figure of a dynastic founder within both the Islamic and the Turkic 

traditions. Subsequent dynasties in the Middle East and Central and South 

Asia used Tamerlane to bolster their legitimacy, while European writers and 

historians found fascination in the contradictions of his personality and the 

monumentality of his ambitions. Many of the myths recounted later have 

their origins in stories apparently deliberately circulated by Tamerlane and 

his entourage. There is a striking continuity in the portrayal of Tamerlane and 

the use to which he has been put, from medieval Iran and India through the 

European Renaissance and Enlightenment to Russian, Soviet, and finally 

Uzbek formulations of history. 

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. 

Temür continues to be actively remembered both because of the fascination 

for his image and because of his usefulness in the creation of dynastic 

legitimacy. Later dynasties thought of Temür the dynastic founder, both a 

Used by permission for Bridging World History, 1 

The Annenberg Foundation copyright © 2004

Muslim and a follower of the Mongol heritage, as a convenient starting point 

for their own dynastic claims. Historians, writers, ambitious rulers, and folk 

memory have fed on the drama of his taste and talent for the contradictory 

and the colossal. The history of his exploits and the rich store of tales and 

myths surrounding his figure assigned to Temür a stature larger than life and 

a charisma bordering on the supernatural. In this paper I will follow his two 

careers—during and after his life—and explore the connections between 

them. While Temür’s conquests were certainly sufficiently spectacular to 

furnish material for later use, they were not quite sufficient enough to secure 

[End Page 1] the legitimacy of his rule during his lifetime, and we find from 

the beginning of his rule a concern with the creation of an exceptional 

personal image. A surprising number of the tales later elaborated in Europe 

and Asia began during Temür’s lifetime or during the rule of his descendants. 

Temür’s Career and the Creation of an Image 

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. One 

other trait lends a lasting fascination to his figure: the apparent contradictions 

of his career. 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. These traits were not a matter of 

chance. Temür’s theatricality and the paradoxes of his career were in large 

part a response to the difficulties he faced in adhering to the divergent 

traditions of his subjects and asserting legitimate sovereignty. 

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 [End Page 2] he then began to lay claim to 

the Iranian region. From this time on, 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. 

After this time, Temür set out to bring down any ruler who could rival him in 

power or glory. Tokhtamysh, who restored the Golden Horde and eventually 

became the supreme ruler of the Jochid house, challenging Temür’s 

supremacy within the Mongol world, suffered a final and crushing defeat in 

April 1395. The Mamluk Sultans of Egypt and Syria, who controlled a 

shadow caliphate and publicly belittled Temür’s religious standing, were 

repaid by invasion, defeat, and pillage in the winter of 1400–1401. The 

Ottoman Sultan Yildirim Beyezit, who combined spectacular military 

successes with indisputable service to the expansion of Islam, met his end 

after the battle at Ankara in July 1402. 

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. Temür reacted to these 

limitations on the one hand through formal strategies of official modesty, 

such as the use of a Chinggisid puppet khan and public respect for men of 

religion, and on the other by crafting for himself an image of supreme, almost 

supernatural personal power. [End Page 3] 



Temür took care to underwrite both Islamic and Turco-Mongolian traditions 

and ideas of legality. Since he was not himself eligible for supreme office, he 

allowed to his puppet khan the major titles of both worlds, padshah-i Islam, 

sultan, khan, which were associated with earlier Chinggisid rulers in the 

Middle East, while contenting himself with the modest title amir, or 

commander. The nominal precedence given to the legal holders of power was 

balanced by statements of extraordinary personal achievement. Temür’s 

chroniclers did not exalt the official position he held, but rather his person. 

He projected himself as an almost superhuman figure, and used the title 

Sahib Qiran, “lord of the fortunate conjunction.” Only some of Temür’s 

claims fit well enough with the Persian tradition to be recorded formally in 

the Persian court histories; others circulated apparently by word of mouth. 

We find them preserved in sources such as accounts left by envoys or 

travelers. These sources contain the story of Temür’s spectacular rise from a 

low position through personal valor—and brigandage—and his claims to 

supernatural powers of perception and to ascending to heaven on a ladder— 

all more consonant with the Turco-Mongolian milieu of his army and court 

than with the more conservative Perso-Islamic concepts of legitimacy. Stories 

of this type are also preserved in the histories of inimical writers like the Arab 

historian Ibn ‘Arabshah, for years a captive at Temür’s court, who did not 

fear discrediting Temür by reporting the extent of his claims. Despite their 

omission from formal sources, these tales clearly survived, as we find them 

repeated centuries later. 1 

Temür asserted his supreme power likewise through his actions and his 

patronage. He showed a talent for grandiosity and theater and a consistent 

taste for size. The enormous buildings of the Yasawi shrine and the Bibi 

Khanum mosque, the oversize kettle and candlesticks made at his bidding, his 

final great convocation witnessed by the Spanish ambassador Clavijo, and the 

massacres of city populations designed to rival those of Chinggis Khan—all 

objects and events associated with him were created on a scale intended to 

dwarf competitors past, present, and perhaps future. 2 The massacres for which 

Temür is famous [End Page 4] 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. 3 They were theatrical demonstrations of 

power, used as a tool to inspire not only fear, but also respect. Temür’s 

deliberate imitation of Chinggis Khan served as a form of legitimation; it put 

him into the ranks of world conquerors whose successes were so spectacular 

that they had to represent the will of God. The question of good and evil seems 

to be secondary in the histories of his exploits. Whether he was the scourge of 

God or a warrior for the faith was less important than the scale of his 

undertaking. 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. 4 

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. 5 

Temür was well known for his patronage of religious figures. In his 

campaigns he demonstrated both respect for them and his ability to compete 

with them successfully. At his court in Samarqand he collected some of the 

greatest religious and scholarly talents of the age, whose works remained 

central to the madrasa curriculum for centuries after his death. 

Temür met the contradictory demands of his position by confronting and 

surpassing them. He was at once the practical administrator and the 

extravagant conqueror, the scourge of God and the protector of religion, the 

modest advisor to khans and the sovereign with near-supernatural powers. 

All of these images were in place by the time of his death, and did much to 

preserve his memory. [End Page 5] 

Temür’s Image Under His Successors 

While Temür was alive, the successes of his armies, the strength of his 

personality, and the symbolic claims he asserted through his actions could 

counteract the inferiority of his strictly legal claims to power. It was possible 

therefore to maintain official modesty in titulature. 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. Two were formal and 

conventional. 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. From the moment of his death, Temür’s 

deeds, personality, and will became important elements in the legitimacy of 

his dynasty. 

Temür’s death ushered in a protracted succession struggle, during which all 

pretenders to power invoked his testament to back their individual claims. 6 

The history of his reign, written at his orders during his lifetime, was 

elaborated both in the capital and at provincial centers under ambitious 

rulers. The most popular history, the Zafarnama of Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi, 



was reproduced in numerous copies, some richly illustrated, and remained 

for many centuries an exceptionally popular work. 7 Yazdi and other 

historians glorified Temür’s ancestry and his genealogical connections to the 

line of Chinggis Khan. 8 The great historian of Shahrukh’s court in Herat, 

Hafiz-i Abru, further made it clear that Temür’s successes were due to 

heavenly favor, and that he had outdone even Chinggis Khan. 9 [End Page 6] 

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, 

and that references to Temür’s khans were omitted from Yazdi’s histories. 

This could be seen as evidence of Shahrukh’s abandonment of Turco- 

Mongolian tradition, but as I suggest elsewhere, it may also have been done 

to allow Temür’s successors to apply to themselves the titles khaghan, padshahi 

Islam, and sultan, formerly reserved for the puppet khans. Indeed, where 

Temür had used Chinggisid khans as sources of legitimation, his successors 

in Samarqand sometimes used Temür’s name. Temür’s grandson, Ulugh Beg, 

who controlled Temür’s original capital of Samarqand and claimed 

sovereignty over the Timurid state in 1447–49, put Temür’s own name on his 

coinage where Temür had put that of his puppet khan. 10 By the end of the 

Timurid period Temür was the sovereign to whose testament territorial and 

dynastic claims were referred and had to some extent even supplanted 

Chinggis Khan as the standard of might to be emulated or surpassed. 11 

Along with the emphasis on Temür as dynastic founder in his own right 

came a tendency to exalt his personality. Shahrukh’s court historian Hafiz-i 

Abru included in his history a long section on Temür’s qualities as a 

patriarch—his concern for his family and the personal care he gave to the 

education of his offspring. 12 The author of the Zafarnama, Yazdi, emphasized 

Temür’s person by including in his history some verses describing Temür’s 

childhood prowess and his preeminence among his playmates, a story which 

probably originated from the oral traditions of Temür’s lifetime. 13 While 

Temür’s successors were elaborating Temür’s personality for their own 

purposes, among their subjects he became a symbolic figure in literary and 

popular culture. 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 [End Page 7] arm. 14 A popular invented anecdote linking Temür to the 

famous Persian poet Hafiz also found its beginning in the early Timurid 

period; it is related by the poet Shuja’-i Shirazi in his work, Anis al-Nas, 

written in 830 /1426–27, and was then taken up by the influential 

Dawlatshah-i Samarqandi. Temür, when he took over Shiraz in 795 /1393, 

sent for Hafiz, and, perhaps humorously, reproached him for his oftenquoted 

lines stating that he would give Samarqand and Bukhara for the mole 



on the cheek of his beloved. Hafiz kissed the ground and replied that it was 

just such extravagance which had reduced him to his sorry state. 15 

Temür also entered into the hagiographical tadhkira literature, as a figure 

within legitimizing anecdotes about Sufi shaykhs. Some shaykhs showed 

their greater spiritual strength by besting Temür in an encounter, while 

others demonstrated their perspicuity by recognizing his greatness. 16 In a 

grave visitation manual for Samarqand, we find stories connecting Temür to 

the miraculous nature of several graves, including the revered shrine of 

Qutham b. ‘Abbas in the Shah-i Zinda complex. 17 By the end of the Timurid 

period then, Temür’s successors and their subjects had adapted his persona to 

further new purposes. The modesty of Temür’s formal position in relation to 

the Chinggisid line and the emphasis on his rise from a lowly position did not 

fit new dynastic needs, and were downplayed, while the scale of his exploits, 

the fear he inspired, and above all his exceptional character demonstrated 

from early youth, were memorialized and elaborated. 

The Timurid Legacy 

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 [End Page 

8] artistic achievement. Timurid courts became centers for the creation of 

buildings, literature, and manuscripts of beauty and refinement. Shahrukh’s 

son, Ulugh Beg, a gifted mathematician and astronomer, gathered a scientific 

circle in Samarqand which created star tables used for centuries in the Middle 

East and in Europe. The last Timurid ruler of Khorasan, Sultan Husayn-i 

Bayqara, presided over a court that became a model for succeeding dynasties. 

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. 18 Scholars and 

artists trained by Timurid masters helped to set the standards of taste in the 

courts of their new masters. In fields as diverse as horsemanship and 

agriculture, miniature painting, literary fellowship, and jurisprudence, they 

presented the Timurid experience as a model. 19 Several historians began their 

careers under the Timurids and ended them elsewhere. Probably the most 

influential was Khwandamir, whose monumental and popular work, the 

Habib al-siyar, written in 1524 and dedicated to the Safavid Shah Ismail, gave 

Temür and the Timurids a prominent place in the history of the Mongol and 

Islamic worlds. 

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. What made the 

package useful was not only the glamour of the material, but also its variety; 

the tensions with which Temür and his successors had to cope produced a set 

of images and myths which could appeal to a broad spectrum of people. 

Inheritors of the Timurid legacy drew on different parts of the Timurid 

corpus according to their needs. 

The dynasty which relied most directly on Timurid legitimacy was [End 

Page 9] 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. They 

traced their ancestors through Temür back to the legendary Mongol ancestress 

Alan Go’a, repeating the genealogy recorded for Temür by his descendants. 

Timurid manuscripts of the Shahnama and the Zafarnama held an honored place 

in the libraries of the rulers. 20 At the same time, while Temür provided 

legitimacy, Babur had founded a dynasty, if not new at any rate a new shoot off 

the old one. 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. 21 

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. Courtiers and literati from the court of 

Sultan Husayn-i Bayqara served as tutors in the art of legitimation through 

artistic and cultural patronage. 22 The great Timurid Chaghatay poet Mir ‘Ali 

Shir, close to Sultan Husayn, became the touchstone of literary merit. 

The Safavids, who came to power under a charismatic Shi’ite leader and 

conquered the central Iranian lands, were more independent of [End Page 10] 

the Timurid heritage. They did, however, take over Herat and they inherited 

several famous Timurid historians and miniaturists. From the beginning, 

Husayn-i Bayqara and his court at Herat were revered as a standard of 

excellence. 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. 23 

Temür and the Power of the Individual 

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. 24 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. 

The Renaissance history of Temür differed considerably from the accounts of 

the Persian histories, and stories such as those mentioned above seem to be 

Western fabrication, but some anecdotes originated during Temür’s lifetime 

and came from the informal sources close to Temür. There was interest in 

Temür’s youth and personality, and in his rise from a low position—the same 

stories promoted by Temür and his entourage to fit his career into the Turco- 

Mongolian tradition. Temür’s sense of destiny, his claim to supernatural 

powers and communication with angels also found appeal. The tale of 

Temür’s preeminence among his early playmates, found in Yazdi’s Zafarnama 

and the contemporary Arab historian Ibn ‘Arabshah, later became part of the 

standard Renaissance [End Page 11] story. 25 It is not entirely clear how this 

information traveled west. One conduit certainly was the account of the 

Dominican Jean of Sultaniyya, who carried a missive from Temür to France in 

1403, where he dictated a description of Temür’s personality and career 

which contains accounts of his claims to extraordinary powers and his ascent 

into the skies on a ladder. 26 However, neither this work nor Ruy Gonzales de 

Clavijo’s detailed account of the Spanish embassy to Temür’s court in 1404 

were widely circulated before the seventeenth century. As European 

emissaries traveled to the court of Temür and Temür’s to the courts of 

Europe, stories may well have spread by word of mouth. 

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 a period of heightened trade and diplomacy, these monarchs 

were well aware of each other. In England the lost play Temür Cham and 



Marlowe’s hugely successful Tamburlaine the Great appeared in the last 

decades of the sixteenth century. Scholarly interest in Temür also revived, 

and we find Clavijo’s embassy account published in 1582, along with an 

earlier sketch of Temür’s life by P. Mexia. In the early seventeenth century 

came the first translations of Islamic sources on Tamerlane, beginning with 

the biography of Ibn ‘Arabshah, written in Arabic shortly after Temür’s 

death. As I have written above, this text contained several of the stories about 

Temür’s youth and personality which had become popular in Europe. 27 

In Asia, Akbar and Shah ‘Abbas began their careers under difficult 

circumstances and struggled—successfully—to centralize their realms [End 

Page 12] about their own person. Both then used the figure of Tamerlane to 

enhance their prestige. Shah ‘Abbas first of all elaborated the existing story of 

Temür’s encounter with the Safavid shaykhs at Ardabil. His panegyrists 

reported prophecies that Temür foresaw the rise of the Safavids, and 

attempted to show that Shah ‘Abbas might deserve Temür’s title of sahib 

qiran, Lord of the Fortunate Conjunction. Under later shahs the cult of Temür 

continued, though less conspicuously. According to some histories, Shah 

‘Abbas’s successor, Shah Safi (1629 - 42 ), received as a present from the 

governor of Bahrayn a sword identified as Temür’s. 28 

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. Along with his 

successful military and administrative campaigns, Akbar undertook an 

ambitious program of historical writing, which included a lavishly illustrated 

history of the Timurid dynasty, Tarikh-i khanadan-i timuriyya, tracing the 

history of the Timurid line to his own time. This history contained the story of 

Temür as a child playing king among his comrades, brought up by Yazdi 

only in verse, but now emphasized by being made the subject of an 

illustration. 29 The Akbarnama, recalling the earlier Baburnama, carefully noted 

the ways that Akbar equaled or surpassed his ancestor Temür. 30 In the 

Mughal realm Temür retained his importance as forebear and example. 

Akbar’s grandson Shah Jahan (1628–57 ), who attempted to reconquer 

Khorasan and Central Asia, formally assumed the title Sahib Qiran-i Thani (the 

second Lord of the Fortunate Conjunction). 31 It was during his reign that the 

Memoirs and Institutes (Malfuzat and Tuzukat) of Temür first appeared in 

Persian. These two works were supposed to have been dictated originally by 

Temür himself. The Memoirs are a retelling of Temür’s life, differing from the 

standard earlier histories in a few factual details, and most importantly, 

strengthening the emphasis on Temür’s personality and youth. The Institutes 

are a mirror for princes and present Temür’s policies of rule as models. 32 

They were presented to Shah Jahan in 1637 by Abu Talib Husayni, who 

claimed that he had [End Page 13] discovered and translated the original 



Chaghatay Turkic version. Shah Jahan received them with great enthusiasm, 

and accorded them a prominent place in court historiography. 33 Both the 

Memoirs and the Institutes remained popular in India, Central Asia, and the 

Middle East into the nineteenth century. 

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. 34 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, 35 while in the nomad 

steppes, he was a popular figure in folk epics. 36 Because of his enduring 

fame, Temür remained a source of legitimacy for rulers in Iran and Central 

Asia, and was recalled by several dynasties of the eighteenth and nineteenth 

centuries. The Turkmen conqueror Nadir Shah Afshar (1736–47 ), who 

pursued a bloody career of conquest through Iran, India, and Central Asia, 

claimed blood relationship to Temür and consciously patterned his career on 

Temür’s. According to Nadir Shah’s court historian Muhammad Kazim, 

Nadir, while out hunting, discovered Temür’s buried treasure and an 

inscription prophesying that its discoverer would achieve glory. 37 A late 

tradition about the tribal Qajar dynasty of Iran (1797–1924 ) claimed that the 

dynasty was descended from Temür’s ancestor Qajar Noyan (in earlier 

literature, less conveniently named Qarachar). 38 In Central Asia, when the 

Uzbek Ming tribe founded the khanate of Kokand in the Ferghana Valley 

about 1800, its leaders found it expedient to claim descent from Temür via 

Babur, who, according to their dynastic history, had left [End Page 14] an 

infant son behind when he fled the area. This infant had been brought up by 

the Ming tribe, and for this reason they could now claim sovereignty over the 

region. 39 

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. To the 

Europeans the combination of rude shepherd warrior and intellectual patron 

was odd and piquant. Within the vast section of Asia that Temür’s two 

worlds overlapped—the Middle East, North India, and Central Asia—the 

combination of warrior and cultural patron was more accepted, and for that 

reason useful. Within the steppe itself, the figure of Chinggis Khan remained 

powerful, but in sedentary and border areas the memory of his ravages and 

the fact that he had not been Muslim made him problematical as a figure for 

dynastic legitimacy. Temür’s persona was less ambivalent; fully Muslim, and 



emembered for his artistic and intellectual patronage as well as his military 

prowess, he could be used where Chinggis could not. 

Temür Under the Soviets and After 

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. It is not surprising to 

find among the works of the Russian Orientalist painter Vereshchagin several 

paintings referring to Temür and his dynasty. The great buildings of the 

Timurids, still among the most prominent monuments of Central Asia, served 

as a backdrop for several pictures. One of Vereshchagin’s most famous 

paintings was an historical recreation of Temür’s rule, showing medieval 

Central Asian soldiers guarding the doors of his palace. 40 V. V. Bartol’d, the 

enormously productive and authoritative historian of the Middle East and 

Central Asia who wrote in the early twentieth century, devoted several 

monographs and numerous articles to Timurid history. 

When the Soviet state reconstituted the Russian Empire, the history [End 

Page 15] of Central Asia and thus of Temür became a state concern and the 

subject of repeated revisions. Nonetheless, while Soviet historiography 

introduced a new tone, its central concerns were traditional ones: the need to 

create a basis for government legitimacy and to determine the role of the 

individual in shaping the history of the collective. Temür was now judged 

differently, but when we examine Soviet writing we find that the old 

formulations were adapted rather than discarded. In recent years the 

interpretations of Soviet historians, despite their frequently critical tone, have 

in their turn provided the formulations used in the justification for 

contemporary Uzbek historians and politicians to claim the figure of Temür 

as father of the nation. 41 

The first Soviet reinterpretation which helped to move Temür into the 

position of an Uzbek hero was the conflation of the Uzbeks with the Timurid 

dynasty they had defeated and displaced. In the twentieth century the 

concern with purely dynastic legitimacy has given way to the creation of 

nations and peoples, even to some extent within the Soviet state. Nationhood 

and ethnogenesis became important issues in Soviet historiography. 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. 42 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. 43 

In the construction of national histories for the Soviet republics, state policy 

was to promote cultural achievements over military ones, [End Page 16] as less 

threatening to the past of the Russian empire and the future of the Soviet state. 

The Soviet republics formed from Islamic regions had to divide up the shining 

intellectual lights of past ages, many of whom had traveled widely and had 

produced work in more than one language, for rulers of an ethnic group 

different from their own. In the competition among Soviet republics for the 

glories of the past, name recognition was a crucial issue. Here again, the 

Timurid period was more useful than the Uzbek; although Uzbek cultural 

achievements were certainly far from negligible, they did not command the 

wide recognition that the Timurids had achieved. We find, for instance, that the 

early Soviet period brought a surge of publications on the Timurid poet Mir 

‘Ali Shir Nava’i, whose name was widely known and respected throughout the 

Turkic world. Despite initial criticism of his aristocratic style, over time Nava’i 

achieved a secure status as the founder of Uzbek literature. 44 Another popular 

Timurid figure for Soviet historiography was Temür’s grandson, the 

astronomer prince Ulugh Beg, whose star tables were well known in 

Renaissance Europe, thus granting him status as a figure in world culture. For 

the Soviet Uzbeks, as for the Uzbek khanates of the sixteenth century, it was the 

cultural heritage of the Timurids which was most useful. 

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. 45 

Non-Russian military heroes on the other hand remained a problem since 

many had won their spurs fighting against the Russians. 46 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. It seems likely, 

furthermore, that Temür, as a man of will, of supreme talent, of personal 

power, had usefulness for Stalin’s USSR just as he had had for the 

centralizing rulers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 

In the 1940 s we find a resurgence of Russian scholarly interest in [End Page 17] 

Temür. He was one of the leaders whose skeletons were exhumed and used to 

create historical portrait busts by the sculptor M. M. Gerasimov. 47 In 1946 the 

influential scholar A. Iakubovskii published an assessment of Temür in 



Voprosy Istorii, entitled “Timur (Opyt kratkoi kharakteristiki).” While the 

article contains considerable criticism of Temür’s actions, it also shows a 

fascination with his personality—his will, character, and ambition. Iakubovskii 

emphasized Temür’s youthful manifestations of leadership and consistently 

exaggerated his early power in relation to that of his ally and rival, Amir 

Husayn Qara’unas. In discussing the first part of Temür’s career, Iakubovskii 

placed himself inside Temür’s mind and validated his judgment. Temür 

“perfectly understood” that his most important task was to overcome 

centrifugal feudal powers and create a strong central government. 

Furthermore, the population of Transoxiana approved his policies. 48 The scale 

of Temür’s enterprise remained central to his fascination and to his importance 

in world history. Temür had done considerable service to the Russians and the 

Europeans by destroying the Golden Horde, and by delaying the Turkish 

conquest of Constantinople. 49 What Iakubovskii considered reprehensible 

were Temür’s purely predatory wars in Iran and Syria, with the bloodshed 

which accompanied them. Summing up his argument, Iakubovskii put Temür’s 

personality at the center. He was a man of contradictions: of strong will, of 

outstanding administrative and military talent, and personal bravery, but also 

of cruelty. This was not far from the man who had fascinated Temür’s 

contemporaries and Renaissance Europe. Iakubovskii’s article was reproduced 

in the Istoriia Narodov Uzbekistana, vol. 1, published in 1950, and became the 

standard short account of Temür’s life. 

In 1968 the well-known Uzbek scholar lbragim Muminov published an essay 

entitled “Rol’ i mesto Amira Timura v istorii Srednei Azii,” presented for the 

2500th anniversary of Samarqand. Muminov devoted several pages to the 

evaluation of Temür by Uzbek, Russian, and western European scholars, thus 

emphasizing his stature in world history. Like Iakubovskii, Muminov praised 

Temür’s organizational abilities and his centralization of power. Though he 

admitted Temür’s cruelty, he emphasized his cultural activities, echoing the 

concerns of the occasion and of a new period of Soviet historiography. 

Muminov [End Page 18] gave Temür’s rule a relatively positive assessment 

overall, and differed from Bartol’d and Iakubovskii in his willingness to 

accept Temür’s Memoirs and Institutes as genuine; he used lengthy quotes 

from these works to illustrate Temür’s character. 50 Like the Indian Timurids 

in the seventeenth century, the modern Uzbeks found a use for a legendary 

Temür as law-giving patriarch and dynastic founder. 

By this time the appeal of outstanding personalities was waning in Soviet 

historiography, and Muminov’s characterization brought harsh criticism in 

articles published in central journals in 1973. Two issues particularly engaged 

the critics: first Muminov’s positive assessment of Temür’s personality, and 

second, the historical weight given to a single person. The longer article, by 

the scholar A. P. Novosel’tsev, published in the highly visible journal Voprosy 



Istorii, criticized not only Muminov’s interpretation, but also those of Bartol’d 

and Iakubovskii. Novosel’tsev attacked Temür’s legitimacy as a Central Asian 

ruler by firmly attaching him to Mongol traditions, underlining his similarity 

to Chinggis Khan and the parallels between his state and the Golden 

Horde. 51 Temür’s campaigns and organizational activities were undertaken 

not for the benefit of the population, but to further the interest of the nomad 

aristocracy who made up his following. 52 In Novosel’tsev’s analysis, the 

history of Temür and the Timurids, despite the brief upsurge of culture in the 

fifteenth century, should be seen as part of the steady decline of Transoxiana 

associated with the continued influx and influence of nomads. The arrival of 

the Uzbeks themselves at the end of the Timurid period was another step 

along this path. 53 

Novosel’tsev’s grim picture of Central Asian history had more usefulness for 

Russian than for Uzbek historiography. It is not surprising that the Uzbek 

scholar M. A. Abduraimov offered a more limited correction. His article, 

published in Istoriia SSSR, also a central journal, was a review of recent 

literature on the Timurids. Abduraimov prudently limited his direct 

corrections to Central Asian scholars. He criticized two scholars for their 

idealization of Temür’s great-grandson Babur as ruler, rather than simply as 

author, and then proceeded to a discussion of Muminov’s work. Like 

Novosel’tsev, he stressed Temür’s cruelty, downplayed his achievement in 

centralization, and connected him both to the nomad aristocracy and to the 

Mongols. Abduraimov, [End Page 19] however, differed from Novosel’tsev in 

his positive assessment of Timurid cultural achievements. Cultural figures 

could safely be celebrated, so long as the role of the masses was stressed over 

that of the ruler. 54 

While these two articles made it clear that praise of Temür was not allowed, 

they did nothing to promote a vision of Uzbek history which could omit him. 

Indeed, Temür’s importance was underlined by the heat of the attack and the 

prominence of the journals used. In Uzbekistan, therefore, the Timurid 

period, with its conspicuous buildings, poets, and scholar princes, continued 

as the period of classic cultural achievement. Although Temür himself could 

not be exalted, he could also not be omitted without threatening the position 

of cherished cultural icons, since he was the figure that connected various 

members of the dynasty, and allowed Uzbeks to claim cultural figures from 

different parts of Temür’s realm beyond their twentieth-century borders. Mir 

‘Ali Shir Nava’i, now secure as the founder of Uzbek literature, and his 

patron the poet-prince Husayn-i Bayqara, had lived and written in the later 

Timurid capital of Herat, in Afghanistan. If these men were to be claimed as 

central figures in the history of Uzbekistan, and connected with the attractive 

astronomer-prince Ulugh Beg of Samarqand, Temür and the realm he created 

could not be left out of the picture. 



Temür in Independent Uzbekistan 

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. Several of Temür’s descendants were central 

cultural icons, along with the writers and artists they had patronized. If the 

Uzbeks were to abandon these figures, they would fall badly behind the 

Tajiks, whose possession of the Persian heritage allowed them to claim a 

brilliant array of writers. 

It is clear that attempts to rehabilitate Temür began at the very dawn of 

liberalization, since this was one of the historical tendencies denounced at the 

plenum of the Uzbek Party Central Committee in [End Page 20] October 

1986. 55 After the achievement of independence, the Uzbek educational 

establishment decided to give greater weight both to Central Asian history 

and to the more distant past, earlier slighted in favor of the Soviet period. Not 

surprisingly, the new formulation elevated Temür. The shift was one in tone 

and judgment, rather than content, and while Temür switched from villain to 

hero, little else changed. The 1992 school textbook, Istoriia Narodov 

Uzbekistana, prepared for the new school curriculum, shows us how little 

fundamental reinterpretation was needed in the new formulation of Temür’s 

life. The section on his career is largely an abridgment of Iakubovskii’s article, 

differing primarily in its omission of critical passages and in downplaying 

Temür’s western and southern campaigns. The text rehabilitates Muminov’s 

article and his acceptance of Temür’s Institutes as genuine. 56 

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. 57 

There are likewise few useful figures from earlier periods. In the pre-modem 

history of the region, there are two dynasties which might have challenged 

the Timurids as founding fathers, but both present problems within the 

formulation of Uzbek history developed under the Soviets, problems still 

largely in place. The first essentially independent Muslim dynasty of this area 

was the Samanid dynasty of the ninth century, which initiated a period of 

great cultural florescence. However, since the Samanids were of Iranian 

descent and promoted Persian culture, they cannot serve as progenitors of a 

Turkic nation. The states which gave Uzbekistan its name and approximate 

borders were the Uzbek dynasties founded by Muhammad Shibani Khan in 



the sixteenth century, but two issues militate against the choice of 

Muhammad Shibani and his descendants. First of all, when [End Page 21] 

they took over Transoxiana, the Uzbeks were a largely nomadic group, and as 

such cannot count among the progressive forces in world history. The 

accepted interpretation of Uzbek ethnogenesis strongly downplays the 

importance of the Uzbek invasion in the formation of the Uzbek nation. 

Secondly, the Shibanids were descendants of Chinggis Khan and promoted a 

Chinggisid restoration in Transoxiana. The independent Uzbeks have 

continued the negative Soviet attitude towards the Mongols, using them 

sometimes as unspoken commentary on Russian domination. 58 A selfproclaimed 

restorer of Mongol tradition therefore will not serve as hero 

within the narrative currently being presented. 

Most importantly, neither the Samanids nor the Uzbeks achieved quite the 

worldwide prestige and recognition that Temür and his descendants enjoy. It 

is probably this aspect of Timurid history, more than anything else, which 

makes Temür suitable for the role he now plays in Uzbekistan. 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. It is in this effort 

that Temür can be useful. The breadth of Temür’s conquests and his 

reputation are major assets, both because they boost the prestige of 

Uzbekistan within Central Asia, and because they give it an independent 

place in world history. 59 It is worth noting that the statue of Amir Temür in 

the central square of Tashkent has replaced a bust of Karl Marx, an equally 

international figure. 60 

The literature surrounding the Jubilee of 1996 on Temür’s supposed 660th 

anniversary shows the importance given Temür’s world stature. The year 

was marked by two conferences cosponsored by UNESCO and the Uzbek 

government. The Paris conference and accompanying book were entitled 

“Amir Temür in World History”; the Tashkent conference, “Temür and His 

Role in World History.” At both conferences President Karimov presented 

speeches describing Temür’s importance. The widespread knowledge of 

Temür and interest in him outside of Central Asia was a central subject, as 

was the deliberate denigration of his achievements during the period of 

Soviet colonial rule. Temür and [End Page 22] his descendants served not 

only their homeland of Central Asia, but also Europe, both by turning back 

the wild Ottoman hordes and by producing works that made up part of the 

European Renaissance—a reference to Ulugh Beg’s star tables. 61 President 

Karimov bestowed the order of Amir Temür on the French author Lucien 



Kehren, who has written a popular biography of Temür and has done much 

to publicize Uzbekistan and Timurid culture in France. It is noteworthy that 

Kehren’s book presents Temür as a man of destiny, of extraordinary will and 

personal power, and at the same time, describes in some detail the cruelty 

which accompanied his campaigns. 62 In the twentieth century, as in the 

fifteenth, what matters more than moral judgment is the recognition of Temür 

as an outstanding figure in world history. 

In his Tashkent speech, Karimov listed numerous reasons for the importance 

of Amir Temür in the history of Uzbekistan. First of all Karimov emphasized 

Temür’s creation of a centralized government, then his recognition of the 

importance of trade and international ties, his building activities, his 

religiosity, and his promotion of scholarly activity, all models of behavior for 

modern Uzbekistan. Temür, Karimov suggested, was a man of destiny, sent 

to liberate and uplift his homeland at a difficult time—that of Mongol 

domination. It was not pure chance, however, that such a man should arise in 

Uzbekistan, nor was it by chance that other men of genius, including Temür’s 

scholarly descendants, should exist here. This region had been for thousands 

of years a seat of high culture. 63 The image presented was that of a region 

central to world history, which in recent years had been artificially denied 

recognition due to Soviet domination. Now that Russian control has ended, 

Uzbekistan can take its proper place, not only as an independent nation, but 

as the recognized heir to powerful and creative states. 

There is not only one version of Temür’s career current in contemporary 

Uzbekistan; this remains a story which can be tailored to different needs. Both 

the variety of imagery originally presented by Temür himself and his heirs, 

and the vagaries of Soviet historiography present a wide and useful set of 

choices to Uzbek historians. In particular, Temür’s distinction between 

campaigns for glory and conquests of permanent [End Page 23] territory 

allow different narratives for internal and external consumption. Iakubovskii 

had emphasized Temür’s centralization and his campaigns against 

Tokhtamish, chronicling his other campaigns more critically and less fully. 

The 1992 Istoriia Narodov Uzbekistana follows Iakubovskii closely in his 

account of Temür’s northern campaigns against Tokhtamish, but gives only a 

few sentences to his other outside campaigns, creating the impression that his 

domains were strongly centered in Transoxiana, and were essentially 

coterminous with present-day Uzbekistan. 64 The massacres are quietly 

omitted. In the account of Temür’s career in the Paris UNESCO volume, also 

written by an Uzbek historian but aimed at in international audience, we find 

the opposite approach. Here the breadth of military activity is fully 

portrayed, and in the map of Temür’s realm, even Delhi, where Temür set up 

no administration, is included among the lands controlled by Temür. Temür 

intended to reunite the lands of the Mongol Empire, an ambition apparently 



quite justified; his campaigns against Iran, Syria, and the Ottomans were 

attempts to preserve international order and protect trade routes. 65 

The activities surrounding the jubilee revived Temür as a magnet for popular 

stories. While walking around Samarqand in the summer of 1996, I heard 

several new accounts of his sayings and deeds. A storekeeper informed me on 

Temür’s authority that one Tajik of Samarqand was worth several from 

Bukhara. A cook at a kabob stand told me that he had heard from reliable 

sources that the one surviving map showing the location of Temür’s lost 

treasure was now in the United States. 

Conclusion 

During his lifetime Temür and his followers showed themselves well aware of 

the importance of presentation, and formulated an image and a legitimation 

designed to appeal to a spectrum of people with varying traditions. 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. In 

histories and documents from the Timurid period, we see legitimation using 

Turco-Mongolian traditions, more or less filtered through Iranian custom 

according [End Page 24] to genre and occasion. Temür’s descendants further 

developed his figure as founding father in his own right, adding stories about 

his childhood prowess and his activities as patriarch. To this formulation they 

then contributed their own cultural achievements, and passed on to succeeding 

dynasties a package which has shown enduring appeal. 

It is striking how constant the image and use of Temür has remained through 

the centuries, and how much of his continuing attraction came from 

formulations already in place shortly after his death. Despite the changes in 

state legitimation, society, and culture in the centuries since Temür lived, the 

ideal of the powerful ruler, ruthless and charismatic, seems to have remained 

disconcertingly constant. 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. 

Notes 

1. B.A.F. Manz, “Tamerlane and the Symbolism of Sovereignty,” Iranian 

Studies, vol. XXI, no. 1–2 (1988): pp. 107–11, 114–18. 



2. For Temür’s taste for the monumental, see Thomas Lentz and Glenn D. 

Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth 

Century, Los Angeles, 1989, pp. 17–49; Lisa Golombek, “Tamerlane, 

Scourge of God,” Asian Art, vol. 11, no. 2 (1989): pp. 31–61. The kettle 

commissioned for the shrine of Ahmad Yasawi, still extant, is the largest 

preserved piece of Islamic metalwork, and measures two and a half 

meters in diameter. See Linda Kamaroff, “The Timurid Phase in Iranian 

Metalwork: Formulation and Realization of a Style” (unpublished Ph.D. 

dissertation, New York University, 1984), pp. 174–265. 

3. See, for example, H. R. Roemer, “Timur in Iran,” in Cambridge History of 

Iran, Cambridge, 1986, pp. 55–56; Lentz and Lowry, pp. 26–27; Jean Aubin, 

“Comment Tamerlan prenait les villes,” Studia Islamica, vol. XIX (1963): 

pp. 121–22. 

4. Irfan Habib, “Timur in the Political Tradition and Historiography of 

Moghul India,” in L’Héritage timouride, Iran-Asie Centrale-Inde, XVe-XVIIIe 

siècles, Cahiers d’ Asie Centrale, no. 3–4 (1997): pp. 296–97. Yazdi’s 

discussion of Temür’s destruction is reminiscent of Juwayni’s detailed 

account of Mongol atrocities, which was written for a Mongol patron. 

5. Walter J. Fischel, Ibn Khaldun and Tamerlane. Their historic meeting in 

Damascus, 1401 A.D. (803 A.H.), Berkeley, 1952. 

6. Even though Temür’s successor was successfully challenged, this was not 

done lightly. See Beatrice F. Manz, “Temür and the Problem of a 

Conqueror’s Legacy,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, vol. 8, 

pt. 1 (1998): pp. 34–35; Priscilla P. Soucek, “Eskandar b. ‘Omar Sayx b. 

Timur: A Biography,” in Michele Bernardini, ed., La civiltà timuride come 

fenomeno internazionale, Oriente Moderno, Nuova serie, Anno XV (LXXVI), 

1996, p. 76. 

7. John W. Woods, “The Rise of Timurid Historiography,” Journal of Near 

Eastern Studies, vol. 46 (1987): pp. 81–106; Lentz and Lowry, pp. 103, 262. 

8. See John E. Woods, “Timur’s Genealogy,” in M. M. Mazzaoui and V. B. 

Moreen, eds., Intellectual Studies on Islam, Salt Lake City, 1990, pp. 85–86. 

9. H.afiz.-i Abru, Majmu’a al-tawarikh, ms. Istanbul, Damad Ibrahim Pasha, 

919, 925b–27a. 

10. When Temür’s grandson Khalil Sultan took over Samarqand shortly after 

Temür’s death, he raised his own khan to the throne: the son of Temür’s 

original heir designate, Muhammad Sultan. See Manz, “Temür and the 

Problem of a Conqueror’s Legacy,” pp. 34, 36–37. 

11. See, for instance, The Babur-Nama in English, trans. Annette Beveridge, 

London, 1922, pp. 14, 520. 



12. Hāfiz-i Abrū, Majma’ al-tawārīkh, ms. Istanbul, Fatih 4371/1, ff. 3a-10b. 

13. Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi, Zafarnama, ed. Muhammad ‘Abbasi, Tehran, 

1336/1957, vol. 1, pp. 11–12. Less flattering versions of this story are found 

in Ibn ‘Arabshah. See Ibn ‘Arabshah, Tamerlane or Timur the Great Amir, 

trans. J. H. Sanders, London, 1936, pp. 2–5. 

14. J. Eckmann, “Die tschaghataische Literatur”, Philologiae Turcicae 

Fundamenta, vol. II, Wiesbaden, 1964, p. 318. 

15. Wheeler Thackston, ed. and trans., A Century of Princes. Sources on Timurid 

History and Art, Cambridge, Mass., 1988, p. 13; A. Schimmel, “H.afiz. and 

his Contemporaries,” in Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6, p. 935. 

16. Jürgen Paul, “Scheiche und Herrscher im Khanat Cagatay,” Der Islam, vol. 

67, no. 2 (1990): pp. 297–313; Jean Aubin, Matériaux pour la biographie de 

Shah Ni’matullah Wali Kermani, Tehran and Paris, 1956, pp. 42–44, 165. 

17. Iraj Afshar, ed., Qandiyya wa Samariyya: du risala dar tarikh-i mazarat wa 

jughrafiya-i Samarqand, Tehran, 1367/1988–89 pp. 64–76, 117–23. As this 

work contains material from different periods, the exact date of these 

stories remains uncertain. 

18. Hanna Sohrweide, “Dichter und Gelehrte aus dem Ostem im osmanischen 

Reich (1453–1600): Ein Beitrag zur türkisch-persischen Kulturgeschichte,” 

Der Islam, vol. 46, no. 3 (1970): pp. 263, 273–6; Michael Rogers, 

“Centralization and Timurid Creativity,” in La civiltà timuride, vol. II, pp. 

536–7, 539–40. 

19. Maria E. Subtelny, “The Timurid Legacy: a Reaffirmation and a 

Reassessment,” in L’Héritage timouride, pp. 9–14; Maria Szuppe, 

“L’Évolution de l’image de Timour et des Timourides dans 

l’historiographie safavide, XVIe-XVIIIe siècles,” in idem, pp. 316–17. See 

also Rogers, above. 

20. Irfan Habib, “Timur in the Political Tradition and Hagiography of Mughal 

India,” pp. 299–301; Michael Brand and Glenn D. Lowry, Akbar’s India: Art 

from the Mughal City of Victory, New York, 1985, pp. 14–17, 88–93. Temür’s 

descendants, who were major patrons of book production, had continued 

the Ilkhanid tradition of creating royal manuscripts of the Shahnama, along 

with illustrated copies of the Zafarnama, as mentioned above. 

21. Babur-Nama, pp. 382, 520; Geoff Watson, “Tradition, Transplantation, 

Transformation: Central Asia in the Making of the Mughal Empire” 

(unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Canterbury, 1992), pp. 119–20; H. 

Beveridge, trans., The Akbarnama of Abu-l-Fazl, Calcutta, 1897, repr. Delhi, 

1977, vol. I, pp. 244–45. 



22. See Maria Subtelny, “Art and Politics in Early 16th-Century Central Asia,” 

Central Asiatic Journal, vol. 27, no. 1–2 (1983): pp. 121–48. 

23. Maria Szuppe, “Timour et les Timourides dans l’historiographie 

safavide,” pp. 318–19; Sholeh Quinn, “Historical Writing during the Reign 

of Shah Abbas I” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 

1993), pp. 104–109. 

24. Hallett Smith, “Tamburlaine and the Renaissance,” Elizabethan Studies and 

other Essays in Honor of George F. Reynolds, University of Colorado Studies, 

Series B, Boulder, Colo., 1945, pp. 126–31; Tilman Nagel, “Tamerlan im 

Verständnis der Renaissance,” La civiltà timuride, vol. I, pp. 203–12; 

Vincent Fourniau, “Quelque aspects du thème timouride dans la culture 

française du XVe au XIXe siècle,” La civiltà timuride, vol. I, pp. 283–304. 

25. Nagel, p. 207; H. Smith, p. 127. 

26. Jean of Sultaniyya’s account was included in the Chronographia regum 

Francorum and also attached to the French translation of the Armenian 

history of King Hetum, entitled Fleurs des histoires d’Orient, printed in 

France in 1501. In the printed version, this account, with additions, is 

attributed to Hetum. In this guise, it may have been one source for 

Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. See H. Moranvillé, ed., Jean of Sultaniyya, 

“Mémoire sur Tamerlan et sa cour en 1403,” Bibliotèque de l’École des 

Chartes, vol. 55, Paris, 1894, pp. 434–36; Ethel Seaton, “Fresh Sources for 

Marlowe,” The Review of English Studies, Oct. 1929, pp. 399–400; U. M. Ellis- 

Fermor, ed., Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, New York, 1930, 

Introduction, pp. 27–28. 

27. B. F. Manz and Margaret L. Dunaway, “Clavíjo, Ruy Gonzales de,” 

Encyclopaedia Iranica; Fourniau, “Quelques aspects du thème timouride,” 

p. 291, “Ibn ‘Arabshah,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, NE. 

28. Szuppe, “Timour et les Timourides,” pp. 321–25; Sholeh Quinn, 

“Historical Writing during the Reign of Shah Abbas I,” pp. 131, 139–41. 

29. Brand and Lowry, pp. 71–72. 

30. Watson, “Tradition, Transplantation,” pp. 119–21; Akbar Nama, vol. I, pp. 

47, 79; vol. II, p. 69. 

31. Habib, “Timur in the Political Tradition,” pp. 300, 303–304. 

32. For English translations see Major Davy, Institutes, Political and Military, 

written originally in the Mongol Language, by the great Timour, Oxford, 1783; 

Charles Stewart, The Malfuzat Timury, or Autobiographical Memoirs of the 

Moghul Emperor Timur, London, 1830. 

33. Most twentieth-century scholars have judged these works to be 

seventeenth-century productions designed for use in the Mughal court, 



although Irfan Habib has recently suggested that they might indeed have 

originated in Chaghatay during the Timurid period. See Habib, “Timur in 

the Political Tradition,” pp. 305–309. 

34. David Bevington, “Timur and the Ambivalent Vision,” Asian Art, vol. II, 

no. 2 (1989): p. 9. 

35. Ulrich Marzolph, “Timur’s Humorous Antagonist, Nasreddin Hoca,” La 

civiltà timuride, vol. II, pp. 485–98; S. A. Tokarev, Dvadtsat’ chetyre 

Nasreddinna, Moscow, 1986, pp. 347–415. 

36. Devin DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde, 

University Park, Penn., 1994, pp. 340, 511. 

37. Peter Avery, “Nadir Shah and the Afsharid Legacy,” Cambridge History of 

Iran, vol. 7, Cambridge, 1991, pp. 10, 39. 

38. Gavin Hambly, “Agha Muh.ammad Khan and the Establishment of the 

Qajar Dynasty,” in Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7, p. 104. 

39. Mulla Niyaz Muhammad b. Mulla ‘Ashur Muh.ammad Khawqandi, 

Tarikh-i Shahrukhi, ed. N. N. Pantusov, Kazan’, 1885, p. 16. 

40. A. K. Lebedev, Vasilii Vasilevich Vereshchagin, zhizn’ i torchestvo, Moscow, 

1958, pp. 77, 94–95, 104–106, 108, 124–25. 

41. See, for example, Cassandra Cavanaugh, “Historiography in Independent 

Uzbekistan: The Search for National Identity,” Central Asia Monitor, 1994, 

no. 1, p. 30; Stephen Hegarty, “The Rehabilitation of Temur: 

Reconstructing National History in Contemporary Uzbekistan,” Central 

Asia Monitor, 1995 no. 1, pp. 28–29. 

42. J. Stalin, Marxism and the National and Colonial Question, London, 1936, p. 8. 

43. See Maria Subtelny, “The Symbiosis of Turk and Tajik,” in B. F. Manz, 

Central Asia in Historical Perspective, Boulder, 1994, pp. 52–54; and Sean 

Pollock, “The Trials and Tribulations of the Soviet Timur” (unpublished 

M.A. thesis, Harvard University, May, 1996), pp. 38–45. 

44. Prof. Allworth suggests that the fear of pan-Turkic sentiment and distaste 

for refinement and religious imagery lay behind the attack on Mir ‘Ali 

Shir in the 1920s. There was at that time also resistance to using a Timurid 

poet as a model for Uzbek literature, an objection which disappeared with 

the new formulation of Uzbek ethnogenesis. See E. Allworth, The Modern 

Uzbeks, Stanford, 1990, pp. 225–27. 

45. See Lowell Tillett, The Great Friendship, Chapel Hill, 1969, pp. 50–70. 

46. Ibid., pp. 58–83. 



47. M. M. Gerasimov, “Portret Tamerlana,” Kratkie soobshcheniia instituta istorii 

material’noi kul’tury, XVII (1947), pp. 14–21. 

48. A. Iakubovskii, “Timur (Opyt kratkoi kharakeristiki),” Voprosy Istorii, 

1946, no. 8–9, pp. 53–62. 

49. Ibid., pp. 64–66, 70–73. 

50. Ibragim Muminov, Rol’ i mestnost’ Amira Timura v istorii Srednei Azii, 

Tashkent, 1968. 

51. A. P. Novosel’tsev, “Ob istoricheskoi otsenke Timura,” Voprosy Istorii, 

1973, no. 2, pp. 3, 10–12, 14, 20. 

52. Ibid., pp. 5, 11–14. 

53. Ibid., p. 14. 

54. M. A. Abduraimov, “Obzor literatury, posviashchennoi Timuru i 

Timuridam, izdannoi v Uzvbekistane v 60–kh godakh,” Istoriia SSSR, 

Sept.–Oct., 1973, pp. 85–90. 

55. James Critchlow, Nationalism in Uzbekistan, Boulder, Colorado, 1991, p. 

120; Susanna Nettleton, “Uzbek Independence and Educational Change,” 

Central Asia Monitor, 1992, no. 3, p. 19. 

56. A. Askarov, ed., Istoriia Narodov Uzbekistana, Tashkent, 1992. 

57. The significance of this fact for Uzbek historiography was discussed by 

Nazif Shahrani in his article, “The Lessons and Uses of History,” Central 

Asia Monitor, 1993, no. 1, p. 25. The most famous resistance movement 

was the Andijan rebellion of 1898, which has received considerable 

attention since independence. It was headed by a Naqshbandi shaykh, 

Madali or Dukchi Ishan, who led his followers, armed with cudgels and 

magic toothpicks, against the Russian barracks. They killed twenty-two 

sleeping soldiers before being caught and executed. See Beatrice F. Manz, 

“Central Asian Uprisings in the Nineteenth Century: Ferghana under the 

Russians,” Russian Review, vol. 46 (1987): pp. 276–77. 

58. John Hay has remarked on this parallelism in his article, “A New Hero for 

Uzbekistan,” South Magazine, December 1996, p. 52. 

59. Hegarty, “The Rehabilitation of Temur,” pp. 29–31. 

60. Tashkent Radio Mashal, 28 February 1996, trans. World News Connection. 

61. Speech of Islam Karimov, in Amir Temur in World History, UNESCO, 

Tashkent, 1996, pp. 4–5. 

62. Lucien Kehren, Tamerlan, l’Empire du seigneur de fer, Neuchatel, 1978, pp. 

25–51, 167–77. 



63. “Amir Temur—nasha gordost’. Doklad Prezidenta Islama Karimova,” 

Tashkentskaia Pravda, October 26 1996, pp. 1–2. 

64. Istoriia Narodov Uzbekistana, pp. 149–57. 

65. Amir Timur in World History, pp. 36–50, 68, 178.

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