Tamerlane claimed Spain, kept the Turkish Sultan in a cage, but did not conquer Russia, confining himself to only one of its cities and turning his armies back.
On February 18, 1405, a man who considered himself the ruler of the world died in the area of the present Kazakh village of Talapty. The person's full name is Timur ibn Taragay Barlas. We know him better as Tamerlane.
Acquaintance with this character for many began with Gaidar's book "Timur and his team", when in response to the question "Who is Timur?" the main character receives: “One such king. Evil, lame and from a middle story."
Oddly enough, this casually thrown phrase is an almost perfect characterization of one of the most famous conquerors in history.
Good bad evil
Tamerlane, who in less than 40 years, from 1366 to 1404, conquered all of Central Asia from the Caspian to the Indian Ocean and from China to Egypt, simply could not be "white and fluffy." Another thing is that cruelty was understood differently then. Islamic eyewitnesses believed that the most monstrous crime of Tamerlane was that he executed his fellow believers. It was quite in his style to demand the surrender of the city on terms of non-shedding of Muslim blood. They rented the city. And Tamerlane kept his promise. Christians and Jews were massacred. And Muslims were buried alive in the ground, without really shedding a drop of blood.
Few Europeans who witnessed the atrocities of Tamerlane did not divide people into Christians and Muslims - they were horrified by the very fact of mass and sophisticated killings. The memories of the German Johann Schiltberger, who, being a squire, were captured first by the Turks, and then by Tamerlane himself, and spent almost 30 years in his power, have been preserved.
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“Gathering the residents of Isfahan, he ordered to kill everyone who was over 14 years old. The heads of those killed were stacked in the form of a pyramid in the center of the city. He then ordered the women and children to be taken to a field outside the city, where he separated the children under 7 years old. After that, he ordered his soldiers to run over them with their horses. Tamerlane's own advisers and the mothers of these children fell on their knees before him and begged him to spare the children. But he did not heed their pleas, repeated his order, which, however, not a single soldier dared to carry out. Angry with them, Tamerlane himself ran into the children and said that he would like to know who would dare not follow him. Then the soldiers were forced to follow his example and trample the children with the hooves of their horses. In total, the trampled were counted about seven thousand. By the way,it was this plot that inspired the Russian artist Vasily Vereshchagin to paint the painting “The Apotheosis of War” - the famous pyramid of skulls.
Non-combat wound
Actually, Tamerlane, or rather Timur-e Liang is an insulting nickname. Consists of two words. The name given at birth "Timur" or "Temir" in some Mongolian dialects means "iron". The makeweight, meaning "lame", he received under really shameful circumstances.
Here is how the legend says about it: “He was not rich and had the means only to support three or four horsemen. With their help, he began to take from his neighbors one day of the ram, the other - the cow, and when he succeeded, he feasted with his people. When he already had 500 people, he attacked a herd of sheep in the land of Sistan. But the owners came and threw themselves at him and his people, they killed many, and he was thrown off his horse and wounded in his right hand, so that he lost two small fingers. And also in the right leg, which made him lame. " For the ambitious "ruler of the world", the reminder of ram theft was like a mockery.
On the banner of Tamerlane, a triangle was depicted, inside which three ovals were placed. It was believed that this symbolizes the whole world, that is, the three parts of the world - Europe, Asia and Africa, which submitted to the conqueror. In 1402, Tamerlane challenged the Turkish Sultan Bayazid. In the battle of Ankara, the sultan was defeated and then, until his death, was kept by Tamerlane in an iron cage. But before the battle, they managed to exchange pleasantries. Bayazid, seeing the banner of Tamerlane, allegedly said: "What impudence one must have to think of himself as the ruler of the whole world!" To which Tamerlane, hinting at the Turkish standard with a crescent moon, replied: "What audacity do you need to have to consider yourself the ruler of the moon?"
The Spaniard Rui Gonzalez de Clavijo, who visited the court of Tamerlane in Samarkand as King Enrique III's ambassador, left a report testifying to the extreme arrogance of the conqueror. The audience began with his question, "How is my son, the Spanish king?" and ended with the words "Well, I will give my blessing to the king, my son." According to the concepts of that time, it was rudeness. To the one whom the sovereigns considered to be their equal, they called “brother”, to the dependent - “younger brother”. The word "son" in the mouth of a politician meant "slave".
Perhaps this should be attributed to traditional Eastern arrogance. So, the court chronicler of Tamerlane, Giyassaddin Ali, with complete seriousness assured that in one of his campaigns he even reached the lands of the Franks. Other flatterers did not find this enough, and they argued that in the campaign to the north, Tamerlane had reached "the limits of the sixth climate." Islamic scientists divided the world into 7 climates - the first was the equator, the seventh was the pole. The sixth, it turns out, is the polar circle.
Russian trace
In reality, the Russian city of Yelets turned out to be the extreme northern point of Tamerlane's conquests. It happened in August 1395. Tamerlane, pursuing the Tatar Khan Tokhtamysh, set out to destroy not only his armies, but also the state itself - the Golden Horde. Theoretically, Russia, as a tributary of the Horde, could also fall under the swords.
But it turned out differently. Taking Yelets and capturing the local prince Fyodor, Tamerlane did not go to Moscow, but turned back. Why?
There are three versions of events. According to our chronicle, Russia was saved by the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God, which was brought to Moscow on the eve of the invasion. Tamerlane, allegedly, had a vision that a certain Tsarina with an innumerable host of angels was ordering him to get out of the Russian land.
According to Eastern legends, Tamerlane generally attacked the city of Vladimir. But there he also had a vision. It seems that Khyzr, an Islamic righteous man, who did not order to fight, but ordered to simply show the "Uruses" his strength, appeared. For which Tamerlane allegedly took a two-year-old stallion and threw him into the city walls. The walls collapsed, and Tamerlane shouted in such a way that “the soldiers lost their tongues from fear and a terrible pallor covered their entire face.”
In reality, Tamerlane simply had no plans to conquer Russia. His voyage to Yelets is just an attempt to overtake one of the fleeing Tatar commanders, Bek-Yaryk-Oglan. Yelets fell under the distribution as if for the company.
True, the Russian chronicle insists that Khromets was still going to attack Russia a second time. But then "General Frost" stepped in - the cold hit. Tamerlane, wanting to keep warm, drank too much wine and died from this.
Surprisingly, this almost exactly corresponds to the true circumstances of the death of Tamerlane. At the beginning of the campaign to China, his stomach began to hurt badly. Doctors tried to alleviate the suffering by applying ice to the stomach. This was not successful, and the vexed conqueror actually took a shock dose of alcohol, which caused an aggravation of the disease and death.