The Timurid Empire was a late medieval Turco-Mongol, culturally Persianate, Muslim empire that dominated Greater Iran in the early 15th century, comprising modern-day Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, much of Central Asia, the South Caucasus, and parts of contemporary Pakistan, North India, and Turkey. The empire had a syncretic culture and combined Turkic, Mongolic, and Persian influences, with the last members of the dynasty being regarded as "ideal Perso-Islamic rulers".
The empire was founded by Timur, also known as Tamerlane, a warlord belonging to the Turco-Mongol Barlas tribe, which was of Mongol origin but had become Turkicized in Central Asia. Timur established the empire in 1370 and ruled it until his death in 1405. He saw himself as the great restorer of the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan, regarded himself as his heir, and associated closely with the Borjigin. Timur continued to have strong trade relations with Ming China and the Golden Horde, with Chinese diplomats like Ma Huan and Chen Cheng traveling west to his capital, Samarkand. The empire led to the Timurid Renaissance, particularly during the reign of Shahrukh Mirza (1405–1447) and his astronomer and mathematician son Ulugh Beg (1447–1449).
The ruling Timurid dynasty lost most of Persia to the Aq Qoyunlu confederation with the defeat and death of Abu Sa'id Mirza (1451–1469). However, members of the Timurid dynasty continued to rule smaller states, sometimes known as Timurid emirates, in Central Asia and Khorasan, with the reign of Husayn Bayqara (1469–1506) being regarded as the last flowering of the Timurid Renaissance in Herat. By 1507, Uzbeks under Shaybani Khan had conquered almost all of the surviving Timurid principalities, including Samarkand and Herat. In the 16th century, Babur, the Timurid prince of Ferghana (modern Uzbekistan), invaded Kabulistan (modern Afghanistan) and established a small kingdom there. After a final attempt to retake Samarkand in 1511–12, Babur turned to India and used this kingdom as a staging ground to invade the Delhi Sultanate in 1526 and established the Mughal Empire.
Name
Turan
Timurid historian Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdi states in his work Zafarnama (Book of victories) that the name of the Timur's state was Turan (Persian: توران). Timur personally ordered the name of his state as Turan be carved onto a rock fragment in Ulu Tagh mountainside (present-day Kazakhstan), known today as Karsakpay inscription. The original text, in particular, states:
... Sultan of Turan, Timur bey went up with three hundred thousand troops for Islam on the Bulgarian Khan, Tokhtamysh Khan...
Iran-o-Turan
According to Beatrice Manz, in the literature of the Timurid era the realm was formally referred to as Iran-o-Turan (Persian: ایران و توران) in the same manner that the words 'Turk' and 'Tajik' were paired together. The border between the two areas was considered to be at the Oxus River. Both terms were concerned with imperial traditions, Iran being Persian and Perso-Islamic, and Turan with the steppe empires of the Turks and the Mongols. Joo Yup Lee explains that in Mongol and post-Mongol era "Turk" was used in contrast to "Tajik", with the former denoting Inner Asian nomadic groups and the latter referring to sedentary Iranian-speaking populations, in this usage, "Turk" could encompass Mongols and did not imply a non-Mongol or pre-Mongol Turkic descent or a Turkic identity like in the modern sense.
Mongol
Contemporary observers often described Timur's dominion using terminology associated with the Mongol imperial world. The historian Ibn Khaldun, who met Timur in Damascus in 1401, referred to him as "the sultan of the Mongols and Tatars" and described the language of his court as al-lisān al-Mughūlī ("the Mongol language").
The Castilian envoy Ruy González de Clavijo, who visited Samarkand in 1404, referred to Timur's realm as Mugalia ("Mongolia") in his embassy account.
Other
Mawarannahr (Arabic: ما وراء النهر) also appears as the name of the realm.
According to Shi'a authors, the ruling dynasty of the Timurids was called Gurkani (Persian: گورکانیان, Gurkāniyān). Gurkani means 'son-in-law', a title applied by Timur to help legitimise his rule as he could not claim Genghisid descent. To this end, he married a Genghisid princess, Saray Mulk Khanum.
Genealogy
The Timurid dynasty originated from the Barlas tribe, a Mongol tribal group of the Chagatai ulus; by lineage, Timur and the Timurids belonged to this Mongol tribe. Historian Peter Jackson writes that Timur was of unimpeachable Mongol ancestry. Timurid histories trace his paternal line to Tumbinai Khan, an ancestor of Genghis Khan, though no contemporary source directly links Timur himself to Genghis in the male line. His ancestor Qarachar Noyan is described as a commander under Genghis Khan in Transoxiana, and later genealogies emphasized this connection for legitimacy. The ancestry of Timur's mother, Tekina Khatun, remains uncertain and is reported differently in later sources.
In the 17th-century memoir tradition known as the Tuzuk-e Tīmuri (also called the Malfuẓat-i Timuri), Timur is portrayed as recounting that his father told him their family descended from Abu al-Atrāk (lit. "Father of the Turks"). The same memoir presents the Timurids as descendants of Turk, son of Yafas (Japheth), who is described as the “Father of the Turks,” with Mughul and Tatar identified as descendants of Aljeh Khan within this genealogical chain. However, the Abu al-Atrak claim is preserved in the Tüzükat tradition, a work that does not appear in the historical record until 1637, when it was presented at the Mughal court of Shah Jahan. No copy of the purported original Chagatai manuscript is known to exist, and scholars regard the surviving Persian text as doubtful. Modern scholarship has questioned its authenticity, arguing that it cannot be regarded as a text authored by Timur himself. Moreover, major Timurid-era historians, including Yazdi and Shami, make no reference to the Tüzükat in their chronicles. It is treated as a later literary transmission rather than as documentary evidence of Timurid descent.
According to the Timurid ruler Ulugh Beg's 'Tārīkh-i arbaʿ ulūs (lit. 'History of Four Nations'), abridged as the Shajarat al-atrāk (lit. 'Genealogy of Turks'), It classified Mongols as 'Turks', while also praising their warrior spirit. Ulugh Beg included Yāfas (Japheth), Turk, Mughūl, Tātār and Ughūz in the genealogical record of the Genghisids and Timurids. However, in that era and post-Mongol Central Asia the term "Turk" frequently operated as a socio-political designation rather than a marker of strict genealogical descent. In this context, the Turk–Tajik distinction often referred to the contrast between steppe nomad and sedentary settled populations, not to fixed biological ancestry.
History
Timur conquered large parts of the greater Persian territories in Central Asia, primarily Transoxiana and Khorasan, from 1363 onwards with various alliances. He took Samarkand in 1366 and Balkh in 1369. He was recognized as ruler over them in 1370. Acting officially in the name of Suurgatmish, the Chagatai khan, he subjugated Transoxiana and Khwarazm in the years that followed. Already in the 1360s, he had gained control of the western Chagatai Khanate. While as emir he was nominally subordinate to the khan, in reality it was now Timur who picked the khans. These became mere puppet rulers. The western Chagatai khans were continually dominated by Timurid princes in the 15th and 16th centuries, and their figurehead importance was eventually reduced into total insignificance.
Rise
Timur began a campaign westwards in 1380, invading the various successor states of the Ilkhanate. By 1389, he had removed the Kartids from Herat and advanced into mainland Persia where he enjoyed many successes. This included the capture of Isfahan in 1387, the removal of the Muzaffarids from Shiraz after the Battle of Shiraz (1393), and the expulsion of the Jalayirids from Baghdad. Tokhtamysh, the khan of the Golden Horde, was a major rival to Timur in the region. In 1394–1395, he triumphed over the Golden Horde, following his successful campaign in Georgia, after which he enforced his sovereignty in the Caucasus.
In 1398, the anarchy prevailing in the Delhi Sultanate had drawn Timur's attention. At the beginning of 1398, Timur sent an army led by his grandson Pir Muhammad to cross the Indus and attack Multan; the successful siege lasted six months. Later in the same year, Timur himself marched the main army across the Indus, and after destroying Tulamba joined Pir Muhammad. At Sutlej, he defeated the Khokhar chief Jasrat and then took the Loni and Bhatnair forts, seven miles northeast of Delhi. In December 1398, Timur engaged with the armies of Sultan Mahmud Shah and won. This led to his triumphal entry into Delhi, where he conducted a massacre but spared the craftsmen to be sent to Samarkand. He left Delhi in January 1399. During Timur's entry into India, he was faced by a sultanate that was already in decline due to the secession of its richest provinces.
Later in 1400–1401 he conquered Aleppo, Damascus and eastern Anatolia. He destroyed Baghdad in 1401, and in 1402 he defeated the Ottomans in the Battle of Ankara. This made Timur the most preeminent Muslim ruler of the time, as the Ottoman Empire plunged into civil war. Meanwhile, he transformed Samarkand into a major capital and seat of his realm.
Stagnation and decline
Timur appointed his sons and grandsons to the main governorships of the different parts of his empire, and outsiders to some others. After his death in 1405, the dynasty quickly fell into disputes and civil wars, effectively weakening themselves, and many of the governors became conclusively independent. Due to the fact that the Persian cities were desolated by wars, the seats of Persian culture were now in Samarkand and Herat, cities that became the centre of the Timurid Renaissance. The costs of Timur's conquests included the deaths of possibly 17 million people.
Shahrukh Mirza (r. 1405–1447), who eventually emerged victorious from the first civil war, ruled from Herat and dealt with the Qara Qoyunlu, who aimed to expand into Iran. But in the wake of Shahrukh's death, the Qara Qoyunlu under Jahan Shah drove the Timurids out to eastern Iran after 1447 and also briefly occupied Herat in 1458. Shahrukh was succeeded by his son Ulugh Beg, who was based in Samarkand and a famed patron of science being an astronomer and mathematician himself; his execution in 1449 after a revolt by his son Abdal-Latif Mirza plunged the empire into a civil war. Abu Sa'id Mirza (r. 1451–1469) briefly reunited most of the empire but after his defeat and execution in 1469 by Uzun Hasan, bey of the Aq Qoyunlu, the Timurid possessions were permanently divided. Mirza's sons, most notably Ahmad Mirza (r. 1469–1494), retained most of Transoxiana, while in Herat Husayn Bayqara (r. 1469–1506) proved to be the last of the great Timurids.
Fall
The power of Timurids declined rapidly during the second half of the 15th century, largely due to the Timurid-Mongol tradition of partitioning the empire as well as several civil wars. The Aq Qoyunlu conquered most of Iran from the Timurids, and by 1500, the divided and war-torn Timurid principalities had lost most of the former territory, and in the following years they were effectively pushed back on all fronts. Persia, the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, and Eastern Anatolia fell quickly to the Shi'ite Safavid Empire, secured by Shah Ismail I in the following decade. Much of the Central Asian lands was overrun by the Uzbeks under Shaybani Khan who conquered the key cities of Samarkand and Herat in 1501 and 1507 respectively, founding the Khanate of Bukhara, and bringing an end to the rule of the main Timurid branches.
Babur and the Mughal Empire
Babur, a Timurid prince exiled from Fergana after repeated conflicts with Shaybani Khan, established a new base at Kabul in 1504 which previously had been under the rule of his uncle Ulugh Beg II (r. 1461–1502). From Kabul, he invaded the declining Delhi Sultanate in 1526, and by the reign of his grandson Akbar, the Mughal Empire was firmly established in South Asia. The dynasty Babur founded is commonly known as the Mughal dynasty, although it was directly inherited from the Timurids. By the 17th century, the Mughal Empire ruled most of India but eventually declined during the following century. The Timurid dynasty finally came to an end when the remaining nominal rule of the Mughals was abolished by the British Empire following the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
Culture
Although the Timurids hailed from the Barlas tribe, which was of Turkicized Mongol origin, they converted to Islam, and resided in Turkestan and Khorasan. Thus, the Timurid era had a dual character, reflecting both its Turco-Mongol origins and the Persian literary, artistic, and courtly high culture of the dynasty.