Timur or Tamerlane was a brutal leader (1336-1405) of Turkish who established a empire in Central Asia with a capital in
Samarkand (now- Uzbekistan) in the 1300s after the destroy of
the Mongol empire.
Tamerlane was called as Timur and Tanburlaine because Tamerlane is a
conjunction of "Tamer the Lame," a name he received because of a limp he
received from a wound in his leg and the word "Timur" means "iron" in
Turkic language.
Tamerlane was a Muslim and a great hero across Asia and the Muslim
world in his time. During a 19-year campaign between 1386 and 1395, he
conquered many countries like presently Iran, Iraq, Syria, eastern Turkey, the
Caucasus,
northern India, with his home base in Uzbekistan and
Kazakhstan.
Tamerlaine once reportedly said:
"There is only one God in the sky, and there should be only one king on
the earth, the whole world do not deserve to have more then one king".
In the life time of Tamerlaine, he conquered many countries from Eurasia from Delhi to
Moscow, from the Tien Shan Mountains of Central Asia to the Taurus
Mountains in Anatolia. Though Tamerlane's empire was large it only occupied the southwesterly quarter of the realm of the Mongols when
they were at their peak.
Tamerlane defeated many historical most famous armies namely the Mongols, the Golden Horde and the Ottoman Turks. His military was composed of 'tumen' military units of a 10,000 made of soldiers from conquered territories.
In 1398, Tamelane invaded India and sacked Delhi and massacred thousands
of Hindus. In a key battle there Tamerlane faced Sultan Mahmud Khan's
army, which had 120 war elephants armored with chain mail and with
poison on their tusks.
Tamerlaine military forces were afraid of the elephants,
Tamerlane ordered his men to dig a trench in front of their positions.
Timur then loaded his camels with as much wood and hay as they could
carry.
When the war elephants charged, Timur's army set the hay on fire
and prodded the camels with iron sticks, causing them to charge at the
elephants howling in pain.
Timur had understood that elephants were
easily panicked. Faced with the strange spectacle of camels flying
straight at them with flames leaping from their backs, the elephants
turned around and stampeded back toward their own lines.
Timur
capitalised on the subsequent disruption in Mahmud Khan's forces,
securing an easy victory. Tamerlane claimed the sultan's elephant corps
and took them back to Samarkand to build mosques and tombs.
Tamerlane's Tomb:
Tamerlane died suddenly of pneumonia at Otyrar in Kazakhstan 1405, while
on his campaign to conquer China. By that time he was an old man at the
age of 69. His body was transferred to Samarkand and buried in
mausoleum Guri-Emir Gur-Emir (one kilometer southwest of the Registan)
is a mausoleum where Tamerlane, two of his sons, two of his grandsons
(including Ulugbek) and other descendants are entombed.
In 1941, Soviet anthropologists opened Tamerlane's grave and confirmed
that Tamerlane was in fact lame and that Ulughbek was beheaded.
According to an often told story the anthropologists uncovered an
inscription on his tomb that said, "When I rise from the dead, The world shall tremble." Inside his casket was a note that said "whoever opens this will be defeated by an enemy
more fearsome than I." The next day, June 22, Hitler invaded the Soviet
Union.
Sources:
> Wikipedia
> Facts And Details
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