Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World

by Justin Marozzi

Book Overview

A powerful account of the life of Tamerlane the Great (1336-1405), the last great Mongol conqueror of Central Asia, ruler of a vast empire, and one of history's most brutal tyrants Tamerlane, aka... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 000711611X
• ISBN13: 9780007116119
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 449 Pages

Customer Reviews

No jewels, no jihad

I found myself wondering how I could possibly have heard so little of Temur before reading this. The name "Tamerlane" or "Tamburlaine" crops up now and again when reading Gibbon or Poole, but more than the name and its derivation from Timur the Lame (Temur-i-leng) one seldom hears. Marozzi's book comes as a welcome corrective, and as a bonus it is a joy to read, written with a truly poetic turn of phrase. The mongols Cengiz and Khubilai Khan are familiar names. Alexander more so. It comes as a surprise to the reader to discover that Temur comes a close third to Cengiz and Alexander as aspirant conqueror of the world. Perhaps it is that he never penetrated into Europe, but what a career of conquest, butchery and magnificence to lay forgotten! Baghdad, Damascus, Isfahan, Aleppo, Delhi - the list of cities laid waste reads like a tourists' guide to Asia. Temur died undefeated, on the march to repeat his savage triumph in Peking. Cities that defied him were laid waste utterly, their walls and towers replaced with pyramids of skulls and if he felt especially piqued, the ground itself sown with barley to symbolise his ability to erase a city from the map. And yet, unlike Cengiz, Temur also built. Temurid architecture may represent the pinnacle of Islamic architectural grace. Temur rationalised his conquests by appeal to Islam, but he rates as one of the greatest butchers of Muslims of all time. His forces were hired and kept loyal with generous shares of the spoils of conquest, and the cynical deal was, "No jewels, no jihad." If a city were rich enough to merit plundering, it would qualify as a city of bad Muslims to be blessed with Temur's corrections and a pretext found. If it happened to be filled with Crusaders or Hindus, all the better. The Ottomans themselves, fresh from annihilating the flower of Christian knighthood at Nicopolis, were swept aside almost without effort. Clearly, Temur's blessings to his religion were equivocal. Campaigns against Delhi and Christian enclaves in Asia Minor allowed a slightly more convincing pretext of religious war, and in his later years he directed his energies more consistently against non-Muslims as he felt immortality approach, but his campaigning character seems to have been defined by the lust for conquest. His tactical and strategic acumen appears to have been unparalleled, setting land into production in anticipation of the passage of an army loaded with pillage years in advance and moving with lightning speed to surprise one opponent after another. Marozzi starts with a battle scene on the eve of victory over the Turks, then works through Temur's life and conquests in strict chronological sequence. He shifts forward now and again to his personal travels while researching Amir Temur, evidently post-Soviet Uzbekistan's defining national hero, and to history's treatment of his architectural legacy and reputation. Temur is still an enigma to me, probably due to no fault of this book. It is simply impossib

One of history's most remarkable figures

A thoughtful history of Timur The Lame (Tamerlane), his legacy and the efforts of the young nation of Uzbekistan to claim him as a much needed symbol of national unity. Reading this its impossible not to be impressed by the sheer drive and relentlessness of Timur, although its less clear why his troops did not eventually grow sated with conquest as, for example, did Alexander's. The relative paucity of sources does Maruzzi no favours, but it is a topic that would have been worth investigating. If plunder was the troops main motivation, surely some time to enjoy the spoils of war would have been appreciated? Marozzi also makes much of Timur's military brilliance but reading his accounts one is taken more by the tactical ineptness of some of his opponents, or perhaps their sheer folly in resisting him. The Christian kingdom of Georgia, for example, was ravaged 6 times by the marauding Tatars - it might have been wise to make at least a show of a conversion to Islam? Having said that, Marozzi also makes it clear that Timur wore his Islam lightly, and that his jihads against other Muslim rulers or Christians were merely pretexts for conquest, rather than the reason for them. Although happy to be "The Scourge Of God" when the occasion demanded, he was also happy for his troops to carouse drunkenly after battle, and he never took the Haj for example. Marozzi's thesis that Tamerlane was not only a great military leader, but a great statesman is harder to swallow. He may have commissioned some beautiful mosques and other architecture, but the general destruction and mass slaughter that accompanied most of his military victories cannot be explained, as Marozzi attempts, as an unfortunate strategic necessity. Never the less this is a fascinating portrait of one of history's most remarkable figures, and is highly recommended. The contrast between the current desolation of most of Timur's territories, compared to their relative splendor just 7 centuries ago, is particularly stark. Europeans may be startled, as I was, to learn that Timur turned away from laying waste to Eastern Europe on the assumption there was no city worth sacking whereas some of the most impoverished parts of Asia were once highly prized possessions; a reminder, as is the short duration of Timur's empire, of the impermanence of most successful societies

Heady reading

It might be inappropriate to say I >enjoyed< a book about a protagonist who decorated the scenes of his victories with pyramids of skulls. However, the book is absorbing. The author writes well, with skill, knowledge, and at times quiet humor. His comments on conditions in Temur's lands today were very interesting, connecting the past to the present. <br /> <br />I probably had better than average knowledge of Temur, knew about his coffin lid, and so forth, but my knowledge was, at best sketchy. Didn't Handel have a hand in writing an opera about him? I had never figured out what Mongols were doing ruling India. This book filled in vivid details about this fascinating, but almost forgotten, page of history. <br /> <br />Fortunately, my decision to buy the book was not influenced by the reviewer who complains about Marozzi's use of Marlowe's play. Actually, the play figures very briefly in the book. It provides an intriguing contrast of the perception or dramatization of Temur and the historical facts. For that matter, I wish he had commented on Handel's opera, too. <br /> <br />Readers are sure to ... well, I shouldn't say enjoy it, but you will want to read this book.

Monster of the ancient world

Tamerlane was a monster, his mass killings, which amounted to genocide in several cases, helped change the face of central asia, the middle east and anatolia. If these is one things he is remmembered for it is mass murder. However there is this reason that he is generally forgotten by history, his expploits were not that of Ganghis Khan(who he claimed as an ancestor) and yet he was a Muslim, and then against many of his victims were Muslims. THerefore the biographies of Genghis, which were written in many cases by contemporary muslims, embellished him as a non-Muslim come to rid the world of the Baghdadi regime, for Tamerlame the world was more ambivlent. An important work, that blends understanding and honesty, a good contirbution to the subject. Seth J. Frantzman