Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
From across his realm, Timur plundered riches and captured artisans
and poured them into his capital at Samarkand. The city blossomed, in
stark contrast to his conquered lands, into a lavish showcase of treasure
and spectacle. Much of the postcard skyline of today's Samarkand dates
to Timur's reign. Foreign guests of Timur's, including the Spanish en-
voy Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo, took home stories of Oriental enchantment
and barbarity which fed the West's dreams of a remote and romantic
Samarkand.
Timur claimed indirect kinship with Chinggis Khan, but he had little
of his forerunner's gift for statecraft. History can be strange: both con-
querors savagely slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent people,
yet one is remembered as a great ruler and the other not. The argument
goes that Timur's bloodbaths were insufficiently linked to specific politi-
cal or military aims. On the other hand, Timur is considered the more
cultured and religious of the two men. At any rate, Timur died an old
man at Otrar in 1405, having just set out in full force to conquer China.
For a scant century after Timur's death his descendants ruled on sepa-
rately in small kingdoms and duchies. A Timurid renaissance was led
by Timur's son Shah Rukh (1377-1447) and his remarkable wife Gowhar
Shad, who moved the capital from Samarkand to the cultured city of
Herat, populated by artistic luminaries such as the Sufi poets Jami and
Alisher Navoi, and the miniaturist painter Behzad, whose work had a
huge influence on subsequent Persian and Mughal miniatures.
From 1409 until 1449, Samarkand was governed by the conqueror's
mild, scholarly grandson, Ulugbek (Ulugh Bek). Gifted in mathematics
and astronomy, he built a large celestial observatory and attracted scien-
tists who gave the city a lustre as a centre of learning for years to come.
In addition to Persian, a Turkic court language came into use called
Chaghatai, which survived for centuries as a Central Asian lingua franca.
Timur-i-leng
(Timur the
lame), or Tamer-
lane, walked with
a pronounced
limp after a fall
from a horse in
1363 left him
disabled in his
right leg. He also
lost two fingers
during one battle.
Uzbeks & Kazakhs
Modern-day Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, the two principal powers of
post-Soviet Central Asia, eye each other warily across the rift dividing
their two traditional lifestyles: sedentary agriculture (Uzbeks) and no-
madic pastoralism (Kazakhs). Yet these two nations are closely akin and
parted ways with a family killing.
The family in question was the dynasty of the Uzbek khans. These
rulers, one strand of the modern Uzbek people, had a pedigree reaching
back to Chinggis Khan and a homeland in southern Siberia. In the 14th
century they converted to Islam, gathered strength, and started moving
south. Under Abylkayyr (Abu al-Khayr) Khan they reached the north
bank of the Syr-Darya, across which lay the declining Timurid rulers
in Transoxiana. But Abylkayyr had enemies within his own family. The
1395
Timur defeats the army
of the Golden Horde
in southern Russia,
fracturing the Mongol
empire and allowing the
rise of its vassals, the
fragmented Russian
princes. This marks the
predawn of the Russian
state.
1468
Uzbek khan Abylkayyr
is killed by a family
rival, splitting the clan
into the Uzbek
Shaybanids to the
south and the Kazakh
khanate to the north.
15th century
The end of the century
saw the decline of the
overland trade routes,
including the Silk Road,
due to a new emphasis
on trade by sea. Trad-
ing cities like Bukhara
start a slow decline.
1501-07
The Uzbek Shaybanids
capture Samarkand
and Bukhara, bringing
to an end the Timurid
dynasty and forcing
Babur to lee south
to Kabul and Delhi,
eventually to found the
Mughal empire in India
in 1526.
