Tamerlane (April 8, 1336–February 18, 1405) was the ferocious and terrifying founder of the Timurid empire of Central Asia, eventually ruling much of Europe and Asia. Throughout history, few names have inspired such terror as his. Tamerlane was not the conqueror’s actual name, though. More properly, he is known as Timur, from the Turkic word for “iron.”
Early Life
Timur was a member of the Turkicized Barlas tribe, a Mongol subgroup that had settled in Transoxania (now roughly corresponding to Uzbekistan) after taking part in Genghis Khan’s son Chagatai’s campaigns in that region. Timur thus grew up in what was known as the Chagatai khanate. After the death in 1357 of Transoxania’s current ruler, Amir Kazgan, Timur declared his fealty to the khan of nearby Kashgar, Tughluq Temür, who had overrun Transoxania’s chief city, Samarkand, in 1361.
Tughluq Temür appointed his son Ilyas Khoja as governor of Transoxania, with Timur as his minister. But shortly afterward Timur fled and rejoined his brother-in-law Amir Husayn, the grandson of Amir Kazgan. They defeated Ilyas Khoja (1364) and set out to conquer Transoxania, achieving firm possession of the region around 1366. About 1370 Timur turned against Husayn, besieged him in Balkh, and, after Husayn’s assassination, proclaimed himself at Samarkand sovereign of the Chagatai line of khans and restorer of the Mongol empire.
For the next 10 years Timur fought against the khans of Jatah (eastern Turkistan) and Khwārezm, finally occupying Kashgar in 1380. He gave armed support to Tokhtamysh, who was the Mongol khan of Crimea and a refugee at his court, against the Russians (who had risen against the khan of the Golden Horde, Mamai); and his troops occupied Moscow and defeated the Lithuanians near Poltava.
In 1383 Timur began his conquests in Persia with the capture of Herāt. The Persian political and economic situation was extremely precarious. The signs of recovery visible under the later Mongol rulers known as the Il-Khanid dynasty had been followed by a setback after the death of the last Il-Khanid, Abu Said (1335). The vacuum of power was filled by rival dynasties, torn by internal dissensions and unable to put up joint or effective resistance. Khorāsān and all eastern Persia fell to him in 1383–85; Fars, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Georgia all fell between 1386 and 1394. In the intervals, he was engaged with Tokhtamysh, then khan of the Golden Horde, whose forces invaded Azerbaijan in 1385 and Transoxania in 1388, defeating Timur’s generals.
In 1391 Timur pursued Tokhtamysh into the Russian steppes and defeated and dethroned him; but Tokhtamysh raised a new army and invaded the Caucasus in 1395. After his final defeat on the Kur River, Tokhtamysh gave up the struggle; Timur occupied Moscow for a year. The revolts that broke out all over Persia while Timur was away on these campaigns were repressed with ruthless vigour; whole cities were destroyed, their populations massacred, and towers built of their skulls.
In 1398 Timur invaded India on the pretext that the Muslim sultans of Delhi were showing excessive tolerance to their Hindu subjects. He crossed the Indus River on September 24 and, leaving a trail of carnage, marched on Delhi. The army of the Delhi sultan Mahmud Tughluq was destroyed at Panipat on December 17, and Delhi was reduced to a mass of ruins, from which it took more than a century to emerge. By April 1399 Timur was back in his own capital. An immense quantity of spoil was conveyed away; according to Ruy González de Clavijo, 90 captured elephants were employed to carry stones from quarries to erect a mosque at Samarkand.
Timur set out before the end of 1399 on his last great expedition, in order to punish the Mamlūk sultan of Egypt and the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I for their seizures of certain of his territories. After restoring his control over Azerbaijan, he marched on Syria; Aleppo was stormed and sacked, the Mamlūk army defeated, and Damascus occupied (1401), the deportation of its artisans to Samarkand being a fatal blow to its prosperity. In 1401 Baghdad was also taken by storm, 20,000 of its citizens were massacred, and all its monuments were destroyed.
After wintering in Georgia, Timur invaded Anatolia, destroyed Bayezid’s army near Ankara (July 20, 1402), and captured Smyrna from the Knights of Rhodes. Having received offers of submission from the sultan of Egypt and from John VII (then coemperor of the Byzantine Empire with Manuel II Palaeologus), Timur returned to Samarkand (1404) and prepared for an expedition to China. He set out at the end of December, fell ill at Otrar on the Syr Darya west of Chimkent, and died in February 1405. His body was embalmed, laid in an ebony coffin, and sent to Samarkand, where it was buried in the sumptuous tomb called Gūr-e Amīr. Before his death he had divided his territories among his two surviving sons and his grandsons, and, after years of internecine struggles, the lands were reunited by his youngest son, Shāh Rokh.
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Head Full, Many Thought: Unjust Depths 9.1-9.2
Sonya Shalikova kissed her cuttlefish lady finally, and it was adorable. I relate strongly to her acting alienated about the ways people date and have sex, very cool. She could do it for Maryam!!!
Conversely Dear Zachikova, the fish lady with the gore robe emerging from a pile of fleshy briney guts is NOT AT ALL SUS, she is NOT MIND CONTROLLING YOU and you should DEFINITELY FUCK HER lmao. I do like how blunt Zachikova’s narration is about her attractions and lack thereof. She is extremely, deeply unconcerned about fucking the newly-formed fish lady. Took a lot of restraint not to fuck her on the floor of the hangar though, I never had Zachikova pegged for “too horny to live, will be subsumed by a sexy sea creature”… uncritical support though, lol. I like Arbitrator I and her aid in the ascent of the Brigand is extremely cool, the whole Omenseers thing fucks really hard.
During that same ascent, Yana finally gets over her hangups with EMOTIONAL SUPPORT CATGIRL AALIYAH, WHO GETS YOU THROUGH SUDDEN ASCENT! Everything from the point Ulyana realises that Arbitrator I is the dancer fish to the point where she calls for damage assessment is rad.
Meanwhile onboard the Antenora, I really did expect Norn to just beat the absolute living shit out of Gertrude, repeatedly, viciously. I woulda critically supported her, even! But the way she sees Emperor Konstantin in Gertrude, how she feels like a failure of a mentor, how she grants forgiveness to her, and the way she considers all of this as she stares at her own clenched fist while time is stopped? Again it’s a stellar moment for her. Norn always seems like she’s just rampaging around manipulating and murdering motherfuckers to take her bottomless anger out, but there’s so much going on with her internally. Her complicated feelings about the Emperor, her shrouded mysterious past with the Sunlight Foundation, her bond with Adelheid. She is an absolutely fucking superb villian. If evil lady bad, why sympathetic and complex and fascinating??? I cannot fathom her motivations and I desperately want to know.
Out of the Loser Gang, Selene sees the most immediate change, having been schooled by some funny gay autist.
And as a result Sonya has a rival now, finally!! Selene deserves to feel like a pathetic untermensch or whatever the fuck, what a nerd lol. What credibility did she have?
But aside from ubermensch here getting dunked on, I learned a lot about her inner workings. When Selene asks questions about Who She Is, Why She Was Born, What She Is Meant For, I realise finally that she has fundamentally misunderstood the concept of purpose in life.
She asserts that natal humans are born with innate destinies, in families, states, ethnicities and such. She asserts that even Katarrans have a born purpose, but that she has nothing as a blank-slate person, and asks how to attain a destiny if not born with it. She is so myopically focused on PURPOSE that she cannot envision making her own. A character flaw of sorts. She desperately wants to be told her purpose, and knows not what she would do with herself if given freedom. Norn, who lives in spite of her grand stated purposes, strikes a fascinating contrast.
I’ll be real, chat, Unjust Depths is really picking up. Its leads are gaining in complexity and the pacing is tighter than a guitar string. Already good and only keeps getting better.