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Tamerlane and the Symbolism of Sovereignty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Beatrice Forbes Manz
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Extract

The great nomad conqueror Timur set out to conquer the whole of the former Mongol Empire and almost succeeded. Although the dynasty he founded lasted a relatively short time, he became a legendary figure within the Turco-Mongolian tradition of the Middle East and Central Asia, the subject of an elaborate myth connecting the Timurid dynasty with that of Chinggis Khan.

The dynastic claims formulated by Timur's successors remained alive and relevant to those within the tradition up to the nineteenth century. Timur's myth assumed its final form well after his death, but it had its origins in Timur's own formulation of his legitimacy and his personality as a ruler.

Timur's achievements as the founder of a dynasty and a myth are the more impressive because he operated under severe restraints within both the traditions to which he belonged, the Turco-Mongolian and the Islamic.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 1-2: Soviet and North American Studies on Central Asia , 1988 , pp. 105 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1988

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References

1 Several scholars have examined the Timurid genealogical myth in its mature form: See for example Eiji, Mano, “Amir Timur Kuragan -- Timur ke no keifu to Timur no tachiba”, Toyosho-Kenkyu, vol. 34.4, pp. 591–615Google Scholar, English summary pp. 4-5; and more recently, John E. Woods, “Tīmūr's Genealogy”, unpublished paper.

2 Woods, John E., The Aqquyunlu, Clan, Confederation, Empire, Minneapolis, 1976, pp. 4–5Google Scholar

3 Ayalon, D., “The Great Yasa of Chingiz Khan. A Reexamination”, Studia Islamica, vols. 33, 34, 36, 38 (1971, 1972, 1973)Google Scholar

4 See for instance Ghiyath al-Din Ali Yazdi, trans, Semenov, A.A., Giasaddin Ali, Dnevnik pokhoda Timura v Indiiu, Moscow, 1958, p. 21Google Scholar (hereafter Rūznāmeh)

5 Fischel, W.J., Ibn Khaldun and Tamerlane, Berkeley, 1952, p. 37Google Scholar; Jean of Sulṭāniyya, “Mémoires sur Tamerlan et sa cour par un Dominicain en 1403,” ed., Moranvillé, H., Bibliothèque de l'École des Charles, vol. 55 (1894), pp. 444–445.Google Scholar

6 For the Ulus Chaghatay, whose population spoke Turkic, I have used the Turkic spelling of the Mongolian name Chaghadai.

7 Woods, John E., “The Rise of Tīmūrīd Historiography,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol. 46.2 (1987), pp.94–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Woods, “Historiography”, p. 82; Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdi, Ẓafarnāmeh, ed., Mohammad Abbasi, (Tehran, 1336/1957) vol. I, pp. 18-19 (hereafter ZNY). This refers actually to a Turkish rather than a Persian history, and to one which has not survived.

9 Prof. John E Woods has pointed out the importance of this source in his article, “Tīmuūr's Genealogy,” p. 25.

10 Wüstenfeld, F., Die Geschichtschreiber der Araber und ihre Werke, Göttingen, 1882, pp. 216–217Google Scholar; Ibn ᶜArabshāh, trans., Sanders, J.H., Tamerlane or Timur the Great Amir, London, 1936, pp. 238, 248-57, 283-90Google Scholar; Encyclopaedia of Islam, N.E., “Ibn Arabshah”

11 Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, trans., Le Strange, Guy, Narrative of the Spanish Embassy to the Court of Timur at Samarkand in the Years 1403-1406, London, 1928Google Scholar

12 Jean of Sulṭāniyya, pp. 433-35; Fischel, W.J., “A New Latin Source on Tamerlane's Conquest of Damascus (1400-1401),” Oriens, vol. 9 (1956), p. 204CrossRefGoogle Scholar (hereafter Mignanelli)

13 Jean of Sultaniyya, p. 462

14 de Sacy, Sylvestre, “Mémoire sur une correspondence inédite de Tamerlan avee Charles VI,” Memoires de l'Institut Royal de France, Acadeémie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, vol. VI, Paris 1822, p. 506Google Scholar; Jean of Sultaniyya, p. 446

15 See above: Fischel, Ibn Khaldun and Tamerlane; Fischel, “A New Latin Source”

16 al-Din Shami, Nizam, Histoire des conquêtes de Tamerlan intitulée Ẓafarnāma, par Niẓāmuddīn Šāmī, ed., Tauer, Felix, Prague, vol. I, 1937Google Scholar; vol. 2, 1956 (hereafter ZNS), vol. I, p. 58; Woods, “Genealogy”, pp. 28-29. Ghiyath al-Din Ali Yazdi mentions merely that he was Chinggisid, Rūznāmeh, pp. 68-69.

17 Lane-Poole, S., The Coinage of Bukhara in the British Museum, London, 1882, pp. xxviii–xxixGoogle Scholar; Jean of Sultaniyya, p. 444; ZNY vol. I, p. 180; ZNS, vol. II, p. 40; Mu'izz al-ansāb fī shajārat al-ansāb, Paris, Bibliothéque Nationale, ancien fonds # 67, ff. 100b, 122b, 132b. Only Amiranshah, however, seems to have used this title. (See Woods, “Genealogy”, p. 30)

18 ZNS, vol. I, pp. 10, 58

19 Mano Eiji, “Amir Timur,” pp. 4, 112; Clavijo, p. 210

20 ZNS I, pp. 10, 12-14, 58.

21 Mignanelli, p. 228.

22 Ibn Arabshah, p. 18.

23 Jean of Sultaniyya, pp. 443, 446.

24 ZNS, I, p. 175-76; al-Husayn Nava'i, Abd, ed., Asnād wa makātibāt-i tārīkhī-yi Īrān, Tehran, 2536/1977, p. 20Google Scholar (to Shah Yahya Mozaffari), pp. 69-70 (fatḥ-nāmeh from Delhi to Pir Mohammad b. Umar Shaykh), p. 109 (third letter to Yildirim Bayazid).

25 ZNS I, pp. 128, 198, 247, 279, 285-86

26 Tauer, F., ed., Cinq opuscules de Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū concernant l'histoire de l'Iran au temps de Tamerlan, Prague, 1959, text, pp. 61–2Google Scholar; Aubin, J., “Le khanat de Caġatai et le Khorasan”, Turcica, vol. 8 #2, pp. 52–3Google Scholar

27 Nava'i, pp. 54-5 (to Sayyid Ali Kiya); Woods, “Genealogy,” p. 35. See also Rūznāmeh, pp. 68-69, where the author presents Shah Mahmud Khan as representing both a Chinggisid and an Islamic order.

28 Nava'i, pp. 76-77 (To Barquq); ZNS I, p. 10; Woods, “Genealogy,” pp. 32, 34

29 For Shami, see my discussion above; in the correspondence see the letters to Barquq (Nava'i, p. 77) and to Bayazid in 796/1393-4 (Woods, “Genealogy”, pp. 36-7,40)

30 Woods, “Genealogy,” pp. 36-42; Nava'i, pp. 75-77 (to Barquq); Jackson, Peter, “The Dissolution of the Mongol Empire,” Central Asiatic Journal, vol. 22 #3-4, pp. 188–91, 204-8Google Scholar

31 Nava'i, p. 109 (to Bayazid); Woods, “Genealogy,” p. 37

32 Nava'i, p. 99. This could of course have a broader meaning -- that of “subordinate khan.” This is the interpretation which John Woods tentatively suggests. (“Genealogy,” p. 42.)

33 I strongly suspect that the birthdate of 736/1335-6 ascribed to Timur in many Timurid histories is an invention, chosen to coincide with the date of Abu Sa'id's death and thus to place Timur and his dynasty as successors to the Ilkhans. Almost none of the sources written during Timur's lifetime mention this date. The two official histories written at Timur's behest -- the account of his conquest of India by Ghiyath al-Din Ali Yazdi and the Ẓafarnāmeh of Nizam al-Din Shami, give no date for Timur's birth. Other accounts from less official sources, based on information gleaned at Timur's court, give varying estimates of his age. Ibn Arabshah wrote that he was nearly eighty at the time of his death, which would place his birth in the late 720s/1320s. (Ibn ᶜArabshāh, p. 295) Jean of Sultaniyya, writing in 1403, gave a similar estimate, putting Timur's age at approximately seventy-five at that date; the Italian merchant Mignanelli, writing in 1416, stated that Timur was seventy-four years old at the time of his siege of Damascus in 1400-1401. (Jean of Sulṭāniyya, p. 463, Mignanelli, p. 227) The one writer contemporary with Timur who gave his age at a figure consonant with the birthdate later recorded for him is Ibn Khaldun, who estimated that at the time of writing (1401), he was between sixty and seventy years old -- here again however no specific birthdate is given. (Fischel, Idn Khaldun, p. 47.) The one known mention of the birthdate of 1336 during Timur's lifetime occurs in the waqf-nāmeh for the shrine of Shaykh Ahmad Yasawi written in the late 1390s, which contains a marginal note, in the same writing as the text, identifying Timur's birthdate as 1336, the same year as Abu Sa'id's death. (Conversation with John Woods, November, 1986.)

34 See, for example, Fleischer, Cornell H., Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire, Princeton, 1986, p. 280.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 Lockhart, L., Nadir Shah, London, 1938, p. 1Google Scholar

36 Nalivkin, V.P., Histoire du khanat de Khokand, trans., Dozon, A., Paris, 1889, pp. 62–95Google Scholar; Molla Niyaz Mohammad b. Molla Ashur Mohammad Khawqandi, Tārīkh-i Shāhrukhī, ed., N.N. Pantusov, Kazan’, 1885, pp. 15-19

37 Jean of Sultaniyya, pp. 441, 447; Ibn Arabshah, p. 2; Clavijo, p. 210

38 Amir Husayn, p. 4

39 Ibn Arabshah, p. 4; Ibn Khaldun, p. 37; Mu'izz al-ansāb, f. 97a

40 Ibn Arabshah, p. 2; Jean of Sultaniyya, pp. 441-42; Clavijo, pp. 210-11

41 Ibn Arabshah, p. 6; Clavijo, p. 211-12; Mignanelli, p. 228; for the official Timurid version see ZNS I, pp. 21-22

42 Ibn Khaldun, p. 47; Jean of Sultaniyya, p. 447

43 ZNY, I, pp. 35, 75

44 Ibn Arabshah, p. 5; Jean of Sultaniyya, p. 447

45 Nava'i p. 75

46 Rūznāmeh, pp. 17-18, 23

47 See for example Ibn Arabshah, p. 5

48 Rūznāmeh, p. 23

49 Aubin, Jean, “Comment Tamerlan prenait les villes,” Studia Islamica, vol. 19 (1963), p. 89Google Scholar; Aubin, J., ed., Matériaux pour la biographie de Shāh Niᶜmatullāh Walī Kermānī, Tehran; Paris, 1956, pp. 15, 43Google Scholar

50 Ibn Arabshah, pp. 4, 14

51 Ibn Arabshah, pp.4-5; Jean of Sulṭāniyya, pp. 447, 462-63. See also Aubin, “Comment,” p. 88

52 Ratchnevsky, P. Cinggis-Khan, sein Leben und Werken, Wiesbaden, 1983, p. 140Google Scholar (from Juzjani)

53 Aubin, “Comment,” p. 121

54 ZNS I, pp. 221-22

55 For Chinggis Khan, see Ratchnevsky, Cinggis-Khan, pp. 118-119; Ala al-Din Ata Malik Juvayni, trans., Boyle, J.A., The History of the World Conqueror, Manchester, 1958, pp. 97–107, 117-122Google Scholar

56 Beatrice F. Manz, “Politics and Control under Tamerlane,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1983, pp. 213-214

57 Blair, Sheila, “The Mongol Capital of Sulṭāniyya “The Imperial’,” Iran, vol. 24 (1986), p. 147Google Scholar

58 Aubin, “Comment”, p. 86-87; Clavijo, pp. 218, 231, 245, 254, 268

59 Fischel, Ibn Khaldun, pp. 31, 37

60 Jean of Sultaniyya, pp. 452-53

61 Clavijo, pp. 230-232

62 Jean of Sultaniyya, p. 446; Clavijo, p. 254

63 Woods, “Genealogy”, pp. 25-26.

64 Nava'i, p. 122

65 Clavijo, p. 254.

66 Clavijo, pp. 248-9, 262-69

67 Clavijo, p. 221.

68 Clavijo, pp. 222-23