Gone Medieval - Genghis Khan to Tamerlane: Mongol Empire Reborn

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

The Mongol Empire that rose in the early 13th century was fractured and in crisis by the mid-14th. But then a new warlord arose who sought to rebuild what had once been the most powerful empire in the world.  Operating in Genghis Khan’s shadow, Tamerlane deliberately drew parallels between himself and his great precursor. And as a Muslim, Tamerlane waged wars as jihad and had a more powerful impact than those of any Muslim Mongol ruler before him.In this episode of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis uncovers the full story with Professor Peter Jackson, author of From Genghis Khan to Tamerlane: The reawakening of Mongol Asia.This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code MEDIEVAL - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. The Mongol Empire that rose in the early 13th century was fractured and in crisis by the mid-14th. While the Black Death claimed lives across the continent and England and France were absorbed by the Hundred Years' War, a new warlord arose in Inner Asia who sought to rebuild what had once been the most powerful empire in the world. His name was Tamerlane, or at least that's how we remember him,

perhaps from the Christopher Marlow play that bears his name. Peter Jackson's new book, From Genghis Khan to Tamalane, The Re-Awakening of Mongol Asia, tells the story of the Mongol world and the last effort to fully revive it. Peter is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at Keel University and has previously written on the Crusades, the Mongols and the Eastern Islamic World. Welcome to God Medieval, Peter. Thank you.

The book title uses the names Genghis, Khan and Tamerlane, but inside throughout you refer to them as Chingis Khan and Timor. Why are the names recorded differently? Both names, as popularly used, go back to misspellings, bastardised forms that were current as far back as the 18th century in Chingis Khan's case, and in Tamerlane's were actually contemporary with his life. If I had used the correct forms in the title, I was afraid that in fact nobody would recognise whom I was talking about, Chingiz Khan very probably, but Timur would have meant nothing to an awful lot of people.

So I decided to cheat by using the bastardised forms in the title, and then correcting them in the introduction. It seems like an entirely reasonable cheat to me. It's important that people know what they're reading, I think, isn't it? He has entered popular imagination as Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. Those are the names that we know them by, so if you want to book on them, I guess that's the name you're expecting to see on the cover.

still. How important do you think it is that we try to get as close as possible to the names that they would have used in contemporary times? The scholar in me feels that it's extremely important. I suppose I just have this passion for accuracy that drives me. And I hope it's generally in evidence. Absolutely. I think it's important as well that we show these people from history the respect to call them by the name that they would have called themselves wherever we possibly can and not to use sort of later corruptions or westernizations or anglicizations of those names. If we're studying these people and telling their story, surely we should use their names. Certainly.

Why were you keen in this book to explore the period sort of from Chingis Khan and almost the end of his period to the rise of Timor? I felt it was high time for a fresh assessment of what Timur was trying to do and why. and a large part of the explanation was bound to reside in what had been happening over the previous decades, particularly the disintegration of the Mongol world into constituent parts, and then further disintegration, of course, into non-Mongal polities. It's generally accepted that Timu was trying to remedy that, although I wouldn't quite put the emphasis on it that earlier literature on Timor has placed. And how important for the region was this period of flux and kind of rebirth, the falling apart of the old Mongol world, the idea of recreating a new one? What impact did that have on the whole region?

Fairly traumatic impact, I think, to be honest. Certainly one of the attractions of Timur to me was not his personality or his method of doing things. Though that said, there's no doubt that he was prepared to be fairly indulgent towards those who submitted, and accepted his rule and that of his nominal harm. But those who resisted came in for extremely severe treatment, and it has to be said, cruel treatment. So he left, to some extent, a trail of havoc, and often it was repeated because he invaded a number of territories more than once, appears to be reconquering them, if I can use that term, very loosely.

So the upshot is that Timor's era is seen by contemporaries, at least, and especially those outside his dominions, as one of destruction, to a certain extent of rebuilding, but destruction ranks uppermost. Why do you think this period has been overlooked for so long? There is a lot of focus on Chingis Khan and the Mongol Empire, but then much less on what comes afterwards, really. I think one reason for this is that the best sources on the Mongols are completed by 1330, which is when the era of disintegration begins. The period after 1330 is covered by a number of lesser chroniclers, it's true, writing particularly in Iran,

but we become increasingly dependent on sources written under Timur, or his successors, for this middle period. I suspect it just hasn't been as attractive to historians as the great period of Mongol history, which is covered by, say, Rashida Dean, the most famous of the Persian historians of the Mongols, who was writing in about 1304 in the heyday of the Mongol. So what was Timor born into? When is he born? Whereabouts is he born? And what is the political situation that he's born into? Timur was born in the Mongol Khanate in Central Asia, known as the Khan of Chagaday after Chinggis Khan's second son. That state has grown in power and influence during the 14th century. But by the time Timor is growing to adulthood, it's begun to

slightly fall apart. The Khan's have ceased to have effective power since 1347, when Timur must have been about 20. And real authority is in the hands of tribal emirs, governors and aristocrats. The Khan has become a puppet. And Timur must have been very much influenced by this period. It seems to me that he felt a great deal of loyalty to the Khanate of Chagaday, his homeland, which is one reason why I'm not convinced by the idea that he's trying to restore the Mongol Empire. I think he's trying to restore the Chagaday Empire. You mentioned the sources around Timor and how lots of them are written about him during his time. How useful are they then in getting a picture of him and his rule and his personality and perhaps his aims,

given that they were all quite close to him and some of them quite hostile to him? We have to divide the sources into three categories. There are only two which are composed, or at least begin to be composed, in Timur's own lifetime, in his very final two years. The other Timurid sources proper are written under Timur's successors, his heirs. And the third category is outside sources, very often hostile emanating from, say, Mamluk Egypt, which Timur attacked, or by individuals who visited Timur's dominions, some of them under duress. The most notorious is Ibn Arab Shah, who was taken by Timor's troops as a boy of six from Damascus when it was sacked and carried off to Samarkand, grew up there, seems to have received an education,

and after he returned to Egypt as an adult, he wrote a life of Timor, which is unsurprisingly hostile. We also have the account of a Western European cleric who was Archbishop of the Catholic Diocese. a sultania, which lay in Timor's dominions, and who seems to have spent some time at Timor's side and wrote his own account. So these outside sources can provide a healthy corrective to the adulation of the sources written under Timor or under his successors. So it's a case of trying to find the balance between the hype that was around him from those who wanted to build him up and the criticism that was around him from those he attacked somewhere in between there might be the real Timor. Yes, we hope.

Are there things that you think we can confidently say about his personality and the kind of person he was? I think it will be fair to describe him as fairly single-minded in his pursuit of power and territory. He is ruthless, without doubt. He has no compunction in punishing in the most drastic fashion the entire populace of a city that has resisted or submitted but then rebelled subsequently. But he can be merciful, surprisingly. so in some cases, even with people who had resisted. He comes across intermittently as a man of strong emotions. It's interesting that our sources describe him as weeping when he hears of the death of particular individuals, not just members of his own family, but even the Ottoman Sultan,

who was a prisoner in his hands and had been a prisoner for the previous few months. He also is reported to have wept when his Khan died late in 40, He is described as being greatly moved when he witnesses the fortitude of his grandsons during the siege of Delhi in 1398. So he's by no means a cold person, however ruthless. Yeah, it's an interesting balance in a person, isn't it? He can be that ruthless, but show such strong emotion and not necessarily just for his family, as you mentioned. How important was Timor's background as a non-royal in his rise to power? We almost, I think, remember him as some sort of ruler, but he very definitely wasn't of a royal background.

He isn't a total an entity, but he is a minor member of the family that had commanded his tribe within the Chagaday Khanate. He becomes the head of the tribe, but not on the basis of any hereditary right, but simply because he allies himself temporarily with Mongols from the eastern part of the Sharia. Chagaday Khanit, who are asserting their rule over Samarkand and neighbouring regions. So he derives an advantage from this, but it's still some years before he's able to really rise to power. There was certainly a tradition of non-royal chieftains attaining power within the western part of the Chagadai Khanit. This had been going on since 1347. And it was entirely natural that Timur should not seek to rule. on his own account, but in the name of a nominal Shagdei Khan. The first seems to have been an old

comrade in arms who'd fought alongside him during his struggle to rise to power, and the second appears to have been his stepson. He married the widow of the first Khan and became stepfather to the new one, who, as I said, died in 1402. Between them, these two sovereigns almost filled the whole of Timur's period of hegemony. Why he didn't appoint a replacement for the second Khan in 1402, we cannot be certain. The man is known to have left a son, but it's perfectly likely that he was too young to be enthroned. And Timur by this stage was extremely busy with campaigns. He was about to plan the invasion of China. He had just returned from campaigning against the Ottomans in the near east.

So it looks as if he may have postponed the appointment of a new Khan rather than decided, as is often supposed, to just dispense with a Khan altogether. Yeah, it's an interesting parallel. I wonder whether he saw elements in his own background of Chingis Khan's story, that he rises to become a leader of a tribe and then potentially rebuilding, or in Chingis Khan's case, building an empire and Timor perhaps rebuilding it. Do you think he in any way tried to reflect Chingis Khan? Khan. Certainly, he is alleged to have made great play of his own lowly origins and the difficulties

that had confronted him during his rise to power. It looks as if he consciously tried to evoke memories of Ching Genghis Khan's own rise and was keen to emphasize the parallels. Certainly, his biographers are prepared to do that, although interestingly the main emphasis that they place on the connection is that Timur has surpassed Chinggish Khan. His achievement is greater in their eyes. Do we see Timur making any particular efforts to cover over his shortcomings as someone from a more lowly origin? No, although it's difficult to answer that question because of course we only have the viewpoint of his biographers. They misrepresent Timor's status. For instance, Shami, who was writing in 1404 just a year before Timor died, makes out that Timor had ruled his tribe jointly with the

genuine head of the tribe, who was a distant cousin. But this is plainly a misrepresentation. To that extent, Timor came from nowhere. He said before, it's not unusual for someone from his position to rise to work alongside the Khan. So I just wondered whether we see him making any efforts to cover over his background or whether that's something he could be proud of or whether that was just the normal course of things in the Mongol world still? To some extent it is normal that there are precedents. There have been precedents elsewhere in the Mongol world in the Ilkanid state in Iran until it fell apart in the 1330s. But on balance, I'd say that he is relatively proud of his low beginnings, at least as a political actor. And of course, he places a special emphasis

on the fact that he enjoys the favour of God. By now, this is the God of Isabel. Islam because the Khanate has been converted to Islam since the 1330s effectively. And Timur is undoubtedly a Muslim. Although the God he speaks of carries connotations of the old God, heaven, Tenghari, of the Mongols. He's carried that over, I think, into his religious devotion. We did sort of mention this a little bit earlier, but to what extent do you think we should consider Timor as trying to rebuild Chinghis Khan's empire. Is he interested in the whole thing or just revitalising his part of it? The latter. It seems to me absolutely almost certain that he was trying to revive and extend the Carnate of Chagaday,

particularly into Mongol-Iran, or what had been Mongol-Iran. He claimed to be the political heir of the Il-Kans who'd ruled it until the 1330s, early 1340s. But at the same time, he was asserting the right of his own Khan to rule over Iran. So I think he has to be seen as the champion of a revived and greatly extended kind of Chagaday rather than the restorer of the Mongol Empire. He doesn't make any attempt to absorb other parts of the former Mongol world into his dominion. He's content with asserting some kind of superiority over them. The The invasion of China is the oddity here. We can't be sure what his plans were because, of course, the invasion never materialised.

He died when he was just about to set out in 1405. It's portrayed as a holy war, a jihad. And certainly Ming China was the only constituent part of the former Mongol world that was ruled by infidels. So that was a perfectly plausible reason of the Holy War idea. but whether he had any ambitions other than to install a Mongol Khan in this area which had been ruled by the Mongols until as recently as 1368, we can't be certain.

We have no idea. He had a client Mongol prince with him who belonged to the old ruling dynasty, known as the Yuan in China, presumably intended to install this person had he been successful, but we shall never know. I think he seems to try to connect himself with Ching, Khan quite overtly and quite consciously, what do you think he's gaining from that direct connection to, by this point, the legendary Chingis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire? I think he was energising the troops and Miyos commanders under his leadership. The name of Chinggis Khan, and indeed of

Chingis Khan's dynasty, was still very powerful. Memories of past greatness, past unity and extraordinary success. The very fact that Timur's biographers try to make out that his achievement is greater seems to me to be a concession to the fact that the Mongol Empire really had been something quite stupendous. And invoking the name of Chinggis Khan and fighting in the name of a descendant of Chinggis Khan was probably the most potent appeal he could make. It was almost like a piece of propaganda that he could use to invigorate his own cause. Yes. You mentioned that he was harking back in some ways to the old Mongol world, but that he was very much a Muslim by this point.

How do we see him trying to balance elements of Mongol government with Islamic principles and his Islamic faith? It's a tenuous balance. We can't be sure how conscious he was of the need. He maintains Mongol-type institutions. Part of his government is the old Mongol court of inquiry, the Yahu, which Muslims view. with hostility and disapproval because it didn't operate along Islamic lines. It relied on torture

to extract confession. It was enforced by very often non-Muslims. He seems to have employed the old Mongol taxation, the Poltax, the Khuptu, which again was contrary to Islamic principles. And he

ruled in a very Mongol fashion, however strong his Islamic faith or profession of Islam. On the other hand, he behaved in many respects like the conventional Muslim ruler. He patronised Muslim holy men, the shrines of Muslim saints. He used the idea of jihad, holy war, in his campaigns, even against fellow Muslims. And indeed, it has to be said that the majority of the campaigns he undertook were erected, not against non-Muslims, but against his fellow believers. I think it was his first biographer in English, Hilda Huckham, who wrote something along the lines of

he could lead his forces against all the climes of the world, against infidels because they were not Muslims, and against Muslims because they were not faithful. There's a lot to be said for that. Yeah, it sounds like he was more of a pragmatist than an idealist, maybe. Probably. He was ready to concede that some of the Muslim princes who had ruled territories he attacked in the past had governed justly, but he generally made out that their successes were illegitimate and unjust. We've mentioned Samakand a little bit earlier, a sort of famous, huge city in the empire. What does it tell us about the progression of the Mongol world that cities like Samakand were becoming so important to someone from a nomad background like Timor?

Is it a recognition that with an empire that size you need these planted cities to act as an anchor for the empire, even if you consider yourself a nomadic peoples? Or is it a fading away of the nomadic tradition? I don't think it's a fading away of the nomadic tradition. There's a close, or can be, a close connection between the nomads and towns. If you look at towns constructed within Mongol Iran, for instance, Sultania, which, which I've already mentioned, had been built from scratch by a Mongol ruler. But part of the aim had been to foster the fortunes of the nomads encamped nearby by creating markets for their goods and also sources of goods that they desired.

And that must have happened also in the Carnet of Chagaday, although we have rather less evidence. For Timor in particular, the importance of Samar-Kand, and to a lesser-ranking, extent of his birthplace, Kish, which isn't that far distant from Samakhan, is that they give him the opportunity to demonstrate his passion for the colossal. He is a keen builder and he constructed or had constructed a number of edifices in Samakand, which demonstrate his power, his wealth, in an alternative way to the campaigns, the military. He has an enormous tomb constructed for his favorite grandson who pre-deceased him had been his heir apparent, and he himself is buried there. He has his favourite Muslim holy man, who has been one of his counsellors buried there as well,

just a year before his death. So this again is part of his conduct as a conventional Muslim ruler, in addition to what's increasingly becoming a pattern with Mongol rulers. How do you think we should remember, Chingis Khan, Timor, and the space in between the two. We have to remember Chingis Khan, I think, as the creator of the largest empire in territorial terms

in world history. It survived his death by many decades and even when it broke up around 1260 into its constituent Khanates, they were still each a major force. Timur by contrast

builds an empire that lasts nowhere near as long and is by no means as well endowed with institutions that will serve to make it durable. The emphasis is very much on military campaigns rather than on administrative techniques. He has an administration, though we know very little about it, and it doesn't really function as effectively as the administration bequeathed by Chingis-Kal to his successes, and refined by them. Do you think there is or there are threads that unite Chingis Khan and Timor? Or should we see them as very separate, disparate people who achieve different things?

I think we have to be more conscious of the differences than of any similarities. The similarities are partly, of course, fostered by Timur himself in conversation, as we learn from the outside sources, and also by the biographers writing at his behest or behest of his. heirs. The discrepancies are more marked. They relate to this lack of administrative genius, perhaps a lack of foresight. Paradoxically, in my view, one of the things that dooms Timur's empire, once it's in the hands of his dynasty after his death, is this obsession he has with descent from Chingis Khan. He's married a number of his sons and grandsons to Chingisid princesses. This helps, of course, reinforce the legitimacy of the dynasty. But what it achieves is to, in my view, create

two levels of Timurid princes, those who have Chingizid ancestry and those who lack it. And this seems to me to represent a kind of hierarchy which plays itself out in the struggles between the Timori princes after Timur's death. His original heir apparent had been the son of a woman who of Chingisid descent, but he pre-deceased Timur. And so the conquerors forced back onto the dead prince's younger brother, who has no Chingisid's history. And I suspect that's one reason why the others didn't recognize him as the new ruler. He wasn't able to establish himself. And just to end on, do you think this period in any any way defines the region today. Do we still see a lasting impact of both the Mongol Empire and Timor's efforts to revive it? That's a difficult question to answer. Certainly we can see some

sort of impact in Uzbekistan where Timur has been adopted as the national forebear and emblem of the state since the early years of this century. But is really highly ironic given that Timur was not an Uzbek. The term Uzbek in Timor's day was. would have applied to the Mongols of the Golden Horde territories to the north, the water now the steps of southern Russia and Kazakhstan. It was the Uzbeks advancing southwards who put an end to Timor's dynasty in Central Asia. Nobody at the time would have called Timor and Uzbek. So it's quite bizarre that he should have been chosen to represent Uzbekistan in this kind of way.

It is interesting that Uzbekistan have claimed someone who they, effectively destroyed his dynasty and he wouldn't have identified himself with them yet they've identified themselves with him today. Where there is an impact though I don't think it lasts until the present day is that Timur's meteoric career and his spectacular conquests imprint themselves on the mind of not just contemporaries but later generations so that he becomes a kind of new model of Muslim kingship, combination of genuine Islamic faith, we're told, and military political success. And subsequent generations of Muslim rulers, not just those of his own dynasty, but descendants of rulers that he'd attacked, even the Ottoman sultans, see Timur as in some

respects, that's part of his legacy. He's created a new sort of image of Muslim kingship. One that's been developing, in fairness, since the Mongols had destroyed the Kaysen. Phaelifate in 1258, Timur, if you like, embodies the fulfilment of this ideal of genuine Muslim rule now being based on quite different foundations than the old idea of hereditary descent from the Prophet. Well, thank you so much for introducing us more to Timor, Peter. It's been fascinating to get to know him a little bit better and to understand his impact and perhaps what he was trying to achieve.

He seems to me, as I said, a very pragmatic man who was. was kind of developing this idea of using the Mongol methods of success in a new Islamic way and trying to blend those together. Peter's new book, From Genghis Khan to Tamilane, the reawakening of Mongol Asia, is out now if you'd like to discover more about what we scratch the surface of today. There are new episodes of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please join us next time for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us wherever you get your podcast from,

and to tell all of your friends and family that you'll be. you've gone medieval. If you get a moment, please do drop us a review or rate us anywhere that you listen to your podcasts. It really does help new listeners to find us. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hits.