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- [00:01]
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- [00:57]
Emily Briffitts
Timor, sometimes known as Tamerlane, carved out one of history's largest empires through sweeping military campaigns and ruthless violence. In this episode of the History Extra podcast, I spoke with writer, journalist and historian Justin Marozi to explore Timur's rise from the Central Asian steppe, his extensive conquests from Delhi to Damascus, and the complicated legacy of a ruler remembered both as a cultural patron and and a bloodthirsty, tyrannical conqueror. Thank you so much for joining me to talk all about the life of Timur. Or I think as we should probably set up at the start of this episode, many people might know him as Tamerlane. Can I ask, Justin, why is he known by both of these names, Timur and Tamerlane?
- [01:49]
Justin Marozzi
Yeah, it's a good point to deal with straight away. Timur is Turkic Chagaytay language, and it means iron, basically. So that was his name, Timur. His enemies from a fairly early age gave him this derogatory nickname, Timur Ylang, which in English is Timur the Lame. And then you go from Timur the Lame to Tamerlane and Christopher Marlowe's famous play Tamburlaine. But the fact of the matter is, in the west he's much better known as Tamerlane. But if you speak to people in Central Asia and in the Muslim world generally, they will know him as Timur Tim.
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Emily Briffitts
So in this episode we may be using them interchangeably because he's known by both. To start this episode, then why should we know about Timur or Tamerlane?
- [02:36]
Justin Marozzi
I think he's important because for me at least, he is one of the three greatest military conquerors and leaders in history so everyone knows Alexander the Great. Everyone's heard of Genghis Khan. I think Timur is right up there in that top trio. But outside the Islamic world, he's just not as well known. There are various reasons. Reasons for that. It struck me when I was researching him that in a way, he's more impressive than either Alexander or Genghis. Genghis had one sort of homogenous people to lead in battle and to build up his empire. Alexander was the son of a king, Philip of Macedon. So Timor didn't have the advantages of royal blood and he didn't have one kind of tribal people to lead to military triumph across the world. So for me, he was a more impressive figure, but definitely more obscure in the West. But I think the one thing I would also say is wherever you travel in either the Middle East, Central Asia, Muslim majority countries, he is an absolutely household name. So it says more about our ignorance in the west that we don't know as much about Timur as perhaps we should. He's an absolutely a lister of conquerors and empire builders.
- [03:47]
Emily Briffitts
I suppose another important question that it might be worth asking at the start of this episode is how do we know about him? How do we know about his life?
- [03:56]
Justin Marozzi
This is, I think, one of the more interesting things, maybe from a literary perspective, but also because that's where we get our historical verdict from. There are essentially two main sources for the life of Timur. One is written by an absolutely raging enemy who witnessed at firsthand the sacking of his native city of Damascus in 1401. And he's a man called Ibn Arabsha. And you get a sense of what he really thinks about Timur in his book because he makes it very clear. He refers to him as, with words like demon, Satan, viper. So you have him on the one hand, and completely on the opposite side of the pitch is a man called Sharif al Din Ali Yazdi, who was commissioned by Timur's grandson to write a biography. And we would probably call it a panegyric. It's, you know, this most fragrant and beneficent and merciful of rulers then invaded this country because the Muslims weren't behaving themselves, et cetera, et cetera. And in a way, because they're so both incredibly partial, it allows you to sort of triangulate and aim off the excessive criticism and the excessive praise. But those are the two main sources that we have to deal with.
- [05:08]
Emily Briffitts
So it would be fair to say it gives us a little bit of a contested legacy. The Polar opposites completely.
- [05:14]
Justin Marozzi
And I think that's also interesting about him. I remember I was traveling in Afghanistan in Herat, which was one of the earliest conquests, Timor, made in the 1380s, I think it was, yeah, 1381, one of his first conquests, talking to two distinguished Afghans. One was a president of a university, another was an imam. And I said, what do you make of Timor? What was his legacy? And one of those gentlemen said he was a barbarian and a thug. And the other said, no, not at all. It's a very sort of contested legacy and reputation because on the one hand, the amount of bloodshed was astronomical, I suppose uncounted millions were destroyed in Timor's rise to empire. But at the same time, he became the Islamic world's greatest conqueror, defeating the Ottoman sultan, one of his last battlefield victories in 1402. So another thing I would quickly mention this early stage is he was undefeated on the battlefield from 1370 to his death in 1405. This was a man who never lost a battle. It's a completely extraordinary military record.
- [06:15]
Emily Briffitts
So I suppose we should find out a little bit about how he got there. If we go back to the start of Timur's story, what do we know about his family, his ancestry, his earliest years?
- [06:28]
Justin Marozzi
I guess different ways of answering that. But by the end of his life, he was completely altering his genealogy to show both blood descent from Genghis Khan, categorically untrue, and blood descent from the Caliph Ali, the son in law and cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, again categorically untrue. So he was highly manipulative, opportunistic and cunning. But going back to the truth of his background, pretty undistinguished in terms of the position he came from, the tribe, his father's background and so on. He was sort of middle of the road, nothing special, not aristocratic blood at all. But what he did have, as became clear quite soon, was sort of martial skills. And there was a sort of proverb in those days, you know, he who wants to grasp the scepter must be able to raise the sword kind of thing. And for someone who spent most of his life lame, this fact that he had this sort of extraordinary martial courage and military prowess was really at the heart of his rise to power, his ability to inspire men. And given that these armies had to constantly be bought off, the soldiers aren't following him because they think he's this wonderful figure and an enlightened Muslim leader. They're following him because he's victorious and he brings them plunder so in a way that's what we should remember. When he's storming around the world, he's doing that because he wants to, but he also has to keep the army with him. The moment you see military leaders at this time losing battles, their armies peel off pretty quickly. Alliances are as good for as long as the leader is victorious and not much after that. So he has this ability to inspire, highly inventive on the battlefield, all sorts of the Turkishized Mongol strategy of feigned flight in battle, luring enemies into to ambushes. There's a one lovely example when he's dealing with an enemy envoy early on in his career. And so before the meeting happens, he drinks a basin full of boar's blood, which makes him violently sick. During the meeting, he's vomiting copiously. So the envoy goes back to his leader and says, I think, you know, Timur is at rock bottom, you know, now's the time to attack. Meanwhile, Timur has already left camp and sacked his enemy's encampment completely and defeated him. So the chronicles are full of these sort of stories of very wily behaviour, you know, full of cunning and unexpected daring.
- [08:55]
Emily Briffitts
So he's got the trappings of a military leader from fairly early on. Then how does he rise through the ranks?
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Justin Marozzi
Yeah, I should also have mentioned in the earliest days, and we don't know exactly, but it is quite possible that he received the wound that left him crippled all down his right side, both right arm and right leg, as a sheep rustler. So Ibn Arabsha, the Arab from Damascus, who never liked him very much for very good reasons, made much of his very humble ancestry and said, you know, this guy was just a brigand, a sheep rustler. I think we should also notice he grew up in an incredibly fractured, politically turbulent environment. We're talking now in 2026, when the UK is having its own experience of political turbulence. But by comparison with the 1330s, Timur was born in 1336. The official record says it probably might have been five years before that. But he's growing up among the kind of fractured remnants of disintegration of the mongol empire established 120 odd years earlier by Genghis. And these are shifting alliances. On again, off again. And the landscape in which Timur grew up, the land between the rivers is contemporary Uzbek. Pakistan was invaded. He spoke to his tribal leader who was going to escape and said, leave me here, I'll fight. His leader disappears. And then what does Timur do? He immediately does a deal with the invader and has Himself installed in as his sort of vassal ruler of the territory. So at a stroke he suddenly vaults into a strong leadership position. So there's always this very strong sense of this is a highly intelligent, agile mind. He's not just a sort of brute warrior, he's extremely cunning and clever and has his eye on the main prize from a very early stage in his career.
- [10:48]
Emily Briffitts
And I feel I should ask, you mentioned earlier that he rewrote his ancestry, his genealogy. What was the purpose of that? What was the significance?
- [10:58]
Justin Marozzi
You get this sense that he's not from an obscure part of the world, but in terms of Islam and its heritage, he's sort of from more marginal parts of the Islamic world, what is Uzbekistan? And he styles himself as the source of Islam. He's always banging on about jihad and idolaters, never really admitting that the greatest victims of his rampages were fellow Muslims. But he early on, again in 1370, he defeats his on again, off again ally, a man called Hussein, who's from a more aristocratic tribal background, and marries his widow. And the widow's important. She becomes his chief queen, Sarai Mulk Khanum. And she's important to him as well because she's from the line of Genghis Khan, so she's of royal blood. And from that moment on he styles himself Timur Ghurgan, Timur the son in law. So he's sort of, he's associating himself overtly with Genghis Khan because that gives him greater legitimacy. And the fact of the matter is that he had no legitimacy other than what his sword was able to win him. But he was always conscious he needed to be a sort of, you know, illustrious Islamic leader, but also from the tradition of Genghis Khan, whose name counted for an awful lot in Central Asia at this time for obvious reasons.
- [12:15]
Emily Briffitts
So as well as his military prowess, his tactics, it would be fair to say he's pretty good at political theatre as well.
- [12:24]
Justin Marozzi
Extremely. And there are lovely descriptions in the chronicles of his coronation. In 1370, he deliberately chose the city of Balkh in northern Afghanistan, a very storied ancient city, very important for both Alexander and Genghis. And throughout his career, you sense strongly that he is comparing himself with both those great leaders, Alexander and Genghis, and he wants to go further than them. So when we may come to it later in 1398, he decides to cross the Hindu Kush with an enormous army to sack Delhi, a very rich then Muslim city. And he's doing that because he wants to go further than Alexander or Genghis and show that he was really the number one. So, yeah, a lot of political theater, a lot of rousing speeches, a lot of loyalty from his men over the years. But, you know, that was always contingent, as we said, on, you know, continued victories. I wonder if I could just read a few lines to give a sense of what he was like as a sort of person, both. Both physically and his character. So this is Ibn Arabsha again, the sworn enemy of Timur. And this is how he describes the great leader. Timur was tall and lofty of stature, big in brow and head, mighty in strength and courage. He did not fear death. He was firm in mind, strong and robust in body, brave and fearless like a hard rock. He did not allow in his company any obscene talk or talk of bloodshed or captivity, rapine, plunder and violation of the harem. He was called the unconquered Lord of the Seven Climes, and ruler by land and sea, and conqueror of kings and sultans. So that's from someone who was. You feel in his prose that although he can't stand Timor for what he did to Damascus in 1401, he nevertheless has to admire this unbelievably mighty leader who just stormed across the world and subdued everything inside. And there's another line which slightly runs counter to what he's just said, but he says he ran to the ends of the earth as Satan runs from the son of Adam and crept through countries as poison creeps through bodies. So this is sort of language Agra is using, quite florid, very strong. But you, you know, you get a sense of his own view of the conqueror and how that conqueror was regarded by his contemporaries, which Arabcha absolutely was.
- [14:56]
Emily Briffitts
Wow. It's very vivid imagery.
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Justin Marozzi
Yes, it really is. And that contrasts with, well, equally florid language. But, you know, almost entirely in his praise from that Persian courtier, Yazdi. But, you know, both men, you could, you can tell very clearly were in awe of Timur.
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Emily Briffitts
So I suppose we've got to the stage where he's consolidating his rule. Can you talk us through some of his major campaigns and conquests as this great military commander?
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Justin Marozzi
Yeah, in a way that. That's one way of looking at it is that's an easy question. And the other is it's a different way of saying, tell me about Timur's career. Because you've got 1336 to 1370 is that's. So what's that? 34 years rise to power, takes undisputed command of what's called the land between the rivers, currently uzbekistan. Then from 1370 to his death. So that's 35 solid years. He is only not campaigning for two of those years. It's almost like he has a sort of a sudden sabbatical. He only ever takes two years off. That's 1396-98. And even then, what he's doing is frantically building up Samarkand with amazing mosques, mausoleums, madrasas, religious colleges to really adorn and beautify his imperial capital, which is rich from all the pillage and plunder of the great cities of Central Asia. So only two years off in 35. But if we're looking at the campaigns broadly, I suppose I'd say the first decade or so is what we would call the near abroad campaigns. In Afghanistan very much in Iran, there's a very long rivalry with a man called Toqtamish Khan of the Golden Horde. And that's another sort of fallout from the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan, Swathes of Siberia into Eastern Europe, the Caspian. And this man comes to Timor for help. When he's down on his uppers, Timur helps him, arms him, supports him. But then a few years later, Tokhtamish sets himself up against Timur. And the men are sort of daggers drawn. And you have several years of military confrontation. It takes him several years to subdue him. And Tokhtamish himself is a great military leader. And he lures Timur deeper and deeper into the sort of Siberian wastelands because he knows that, you know, if he can't do battle, Timur's men are eventually going to starve to death. But finally they close in on each other. And in 1395, Timur defeats Tokhtamys, one of his greatest ever rivals, really. And then that leaves him for a new campaign in the close of the 14th century, and that is the great expedition against India. And you have these amazing descriptions really of Timur himself as the emperor being lowered down by rope from these great mountain passes. A man in his late 60s and quite possibly early 70s, crippled on his right side, but still wanting more, still leading his men to battle, really. You know, we always talk about how difficult Afghanistan is to fight for foreign invaders. He crosses Afghanistan, subdues it very quickly, but doesn't bother staying on. He presses down on the Indian plain and absolutely ravages Delhi, having first executed 100,000 Indian prisoners in cold blood because they made the mistake of celebrating the initial reversals Timor's army faced in battle. So victorious in India goes back to Samarkand again, having also sacked Damascus, Baghdad again. And throughout the military victories, he has this sort of quite nasty, well, very nasty grisly signature on the battlefield, which is piling up towers of skulls from his victims. And we're told in the chronicles that after he took Baghdad in 1401, he had 90,000 skulls piled up in 120 towers encircling the city he just destroyed. And then oil is poured all over these heads and then they're set alight. So you have these really disgusting beacons that can be seen from afar, consisting of these severed heads burning 24 hours a day. I would say he's like an early master of psychological warfare. This was absolutely terrifying for the many peoples of Central Asia. And frequently it persuaded them that when he sent them an ultimatum, they surrendered because they knew what he'd done to the city up the road or so on. And today, obviously, we'd call them war crimes against humanity, atrocities and so on. But in 14th century Central Asia, they didn't have those sort of standards. And it was to the victor the spoils. And huge numbers of people were slaughtered and often killed in cold blood as well.
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Emily Briffitts
Gosh, it's astonishing strategy. So it would be fair to say that terror was a deliberate military strategy for Timur.
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Justin Marozzi
Absolutely right. He used terror strategically as a weapon to cow many adversaries into surrender, which saved his men from having to fight. So if he can just take a city in peace, traditionally, he would spare the scholars, the writers, the poets, the miniaturists, the calligraphers, the masons, the architects, the silk weavers and so on. And they're all effectively enslaved and sent back to Samarkand, where they're put to work either glorifying his reign, building up his wonderful capital of Samarkand, painting, miniatures, making textiles and so on and so forth. So that was the traditional route. You spare the scholars and the cultured people and the artisans, and many of the others are put to death and slaughtered. Throughout Timur's military career, there are a number of instances where his army unleashes particularly shocking levels of slaughter. In 1383, for example, he sacks a rebellious city in Afghanistan. The city is called Isfazar, and he has 2000 prisoners cemented alive into towers. You feel he's doing that so that the message gets out across the region. This is not someone to muck around with. If he tells you to surrender, surrender pretty quickly, or else that sort of behaviour would encourage them to fall into line with what he wanted. It's just a whirlwind of destruction. I think Arabsha described it in his book. When Timur is going through what we call, you know, the Levant, eastern Mediterranean, Syria, Lebanon, that area, parts of Iraq, as he called it, a pilgrimage of destruction. It's a sort of unusual form of words, but it was just extraordinary. And you have these terrible descriptions of all sorts of sort of perverse and barbaric treatment of prisoners and so on. It is incredibly bloody story. There's no getting around that.
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Emily Briffitts
What would you say were his motivations for these Campaigns and conquests. What was the purpose for him?
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Justin Marozzi
I mean, it's sometimes difficult to retrospectively fit motivations to someone who lived so long ago. But I think it seems to be pretty clear from the chronicles. There was a sense of destiny, of calling to greatness and command and glory, I think, as well. Glory, power, riches. I think you get this unmistakable sense that this is someone who wants their names to be written in history. They want their capital to be the greatest in the world. And I think you could make a strong argument for Samarkand being one of the absolutely greatest cities in the world under Timor's leadership. The Athens of the east, the Pearl of the East, Garden of the Soul, Very evocative names. The parks and the palaces he built. For once we have a third source on the sort of the glamour and the glitz of Samarkand from a European ambassador. He's King Henry III of Castile's ambassador, RUY Gonzalez de Clavijo. And I think he traveled east, quite possibly with the European prejudices of his time, that he was off to meet some barbarian from a corner of Central Asia, you know, who is he, and is completely dumbfounded by the magnificent spectacle he meets in Samarkand. And he's put in his place quite quickly. Timor calls King Henry his son, you know, sort of pejorative, friendly but pejorative. You know, I'm the superior. Your master may be the leading European leader, but he is as nothing compared to me, which was completely true as well. I mean, Timur had just defeated the Ottoman Sultan in 1402. The only adversary left he thought was worthy of a fight was the Ming emperor of China. So Europe was poor, riven by schism, the Black Death. He wasn't really interested in Europe when he defeated the Ottoman Sultan in 1402. All the sort of the princes of Christendom wrote these pathetic sycophantic letters congratulating him for getting rid of their enemy, the Ottoman sultan, and. And desperately worried that he was going to continue further west. He just didn't bother. Not because he wanted to spare Christians an invasion, but because there was nothing there for him in terms of the great riches that possibly awaited or did await if he were victorious against the Ming dynasty of China.
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Emily Briffitts
I was going to ask you, was he a diplomat alongside his sort of more military side, but I'm not sure that's the right question to ask now.
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Justin Marozzi
I think that's a great question, because in a way, I suppose, the diplomatic exchanges tended to be ones of threat. It's not really diplomacy Is it? It's not exchange. It tends to be surrender or we will flatten your city. And one of the worst threats was to obviously kill the inhabitants of a city and then sack it, burn it, torch it, and then the final sort of piece de resistance after the Towers of Skulls, was to sow barley across what was left. So you literally erase all traces of the city that had been there before. So that was sort of Timurid diplomacy to a great extent, I think.
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Emily Briffitts
Not how we would necessarily see diplomacy today, hopefully. I suppose we've spoken about Samarkands and that cultural patronage. How can we reconcile this elaborate cultural patronage, the arts, the architecture, creating this city as their great centre, with the devastation of his campaigns? This seems like opposite sides of the coin.
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Justin Marozzi
Yes, that's a good point. And I think for me, it makes him a more interesting and rounded character, because no one can doubt for a minute the sheer quantity of bloodshed and slaughter that he unleashed across Central Asia, Anatolia and as far east as getting towards the borders with China and certainly in India as well. You know, that's just a given. Huge numbers of people slaughtered, most of the Muslims, as we said earlier, in the name of jihad. But on the other hand, he was someone who was almost equally fanatical supporter of what we would call the arts today. The word Timurid to me means the great blue domed, blue tiled monuments of Central Asia, Iran, Uzbekistan especially, these wonderful glazed majolica tiles that you see on minarets and on domes, and that blue, that reference point color, which is a sort of homage to the heavens and a sign of water and fertility and life. So there is this extraordinarily beautiful architectural legacy. Samarkand was obviously its center. And so today you can still see the great monuments, including the mausoleum in which he's buried, the Ghor Amir Mausoleum, the famous Registan, the main public square of Samarkand. Exquisite architectural creation. Curzon, the British Foreign secretary of the 19th century, described it as the most noble public square in the world. So enormous cultural contributions to art, literature, religious scholars especially, he was interested in. He had a private audience with Ibn Khaldun, so he took a great interest in scholarship, in art and in architecture. And that's, as I say, I think that makes him a more interesting figure than a purely military conquering. A lot of it might have been for his own greater glory, but there was that interest in culture, the arts, music, history, literature and the study of Islam as well.
- [29:27]
Emily Briffitts
Before we come to talk a little bit about his legacy, I suppose I should probably ask you what we know about his later years and his death.
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Justin Marozzi
The tradition says he was born in 1336. So in 1404 he's closing off with some more building works in Samarkand. He has that exchange with the Spanish ambassador, Clavio, and then starts making plans to face his greatest adversary remaining in the world, which would be the Ming emperor. And I think that's quite interesting because it's one of the great what ifs in history. Could he really have defeated the mighty and formidable Ming emperor of China at that time? And of course we'll never know because in 1405 he got as far east as Otra, a place in Kazakhstan, fell ill and died. And so he was either 68 or 73, depending on when you believe he was born, but he died undefeated. That was the last campaign. He was for the time a pretty elderly man, still in the saddle, probably arthritic, had been lame for decades and crippled in his right side. And that was the end of the career. There are these sort of famous deathbed words to his family. The sons and grandsons maintain unity and keep the empire together. And within moments of his death, the sons and grandsons are fighting and the empire pretty quickly disintegrates.
- [30:59]
Emily Briffitts
His empire then fractured. Are there any important long term consequences of these conquests?
- [31:07]
Justin Marozzi
There are a number of consequences, I suppose, of this unbelievably brutal martial career. For example, Delhi. It was said it took a century to recover from the depredations unleashed by Timur in 1398 during that campaign. You could say the same with much of Central Asia, really. It took a long time to recover from these military campaigns because a lot of them were repeated. Sometimes, you know, he would subdue a city, then a couple of years later it might rebel again, then he would come in and sack it even more comprehensively. And in the most extreme cases, the cities disappeared from the face of the earth altogether. We touched upon the sort of cultural, artistic legacy, especially the architectural legacy. So I think wherever you see these beautiful Islamic monuments across Central Asia, especially in Iran, Uzbekistan and much of Central Asia, the, the stans, including Afghanistan, the word Timurid always springs to mind. It's the Timurid cultural and architectural legacy. And then the other dynastic legacy, which I think is interesting, is the great, great, great grandson Babur, one of the most interesting men of his time, founded the Mughal dynasty of India, which then lasted into the 19th century. So you could say that that's a very long afterburn of Timor's career. Several generations later, a Conqueror in his own sort of mold, but more cultured and less inclined to maniacal levels of slaughter, founds another dynasty which is only ended by the British in the later 19th century. So there's that as well. But I think, in short, huge amounts of instability in the aftermath of his own career. It was a one man empire builder and it fell apart pretty quickly after his death.
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Emily Briffitts
As we've said, his legacy is very much contested. It's very much mixed. How differently has Timur been remembered in different regions?
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Justin Marozzi
Yeah, that's also really interesting because I remember going in to research my history of Timor in the late 90s. So Uzbekistan was less than 10 years into its independence from the Soviet empire. And during the Soviet Empire, Timor had been, or the history of Timor had been, had been really suppressed. He was seen as a potentially dangerous symbol of nationalism and separatism. So Soviet academics would routinely denigrate him and portray him as, you know, a barbarian and so on and so forth. Then with independent Uzbekistan, you have this strange moment when he's resurrected as the great symbol of Uzbekistan. Suddenly he's on the highest denomination banknotes. There are statues of him appearing across the country. In the heart of Tashkent, President Karimov, who was a pretty vicious dictator himself, made speeches in which he compared himself with Timor and told Uzbeks that they should regard Timur as a model to follow in life. And for obvious reasons, you could sense the, the neighbors of Uzbekistan being pretty disappointed with this because this was the man who had destroyed their countries, their great cities. So there was a lot of politics with timur in the 90s. I remember speaking to Uzbeks about it. They knew exactly what was happening. They weren't particularly interested in Timor as well. They were much more interested not having much money to live on, the cost of living and so on and so forth. And they knew that the Soviets played politics with Timur and his legacy and their then leader, Islam Karimov was doing exactly the same. As a sort of, you know, chief fanboy of Timur. You didn't feel they were particularly convinced by that.
- [34:39]
Emily Briffitts
With that in mind, how do you feel that we should perhaps be considering Timur today? Great state builder, a bloodthirsty tyrant. Can he be all of those things at once?
- [34:49]
Justin Marozzi
I think absolutely he can be all of those things at once. But I suppose even if you had to pick out one aspect to dwell on, it would have to be one of the greatest conquerors the world has ever seen. We mentioned him defeating the Ottoman Sultan in 1402. Probably worth saying in that particular battle, he was actually caught. The Ottoman Sultan Bayazit. Bayazit Yildirim. The thunderbolt was caught by Timur and it's the only time in history the Ottoman Sultan was captured in person. So it was tremendous humiliation for the mightiest Islamic power at the time, or so we thought. But actually, Timur was proving conclusively that he was the greatest leader of the Islamic world. So I think, yeah, he's a conqueror and a one man empire builder. And yes, that obviously entailed terrible amounts of slaughter and bloodshed across much of Central Asia, the Middle east and many of the great cities, you know, Damascus and Baghdad, ancient cities and very important metropolises of Islam. So, you know, the fact that he was undefeated in battle and put together single handedly this empire, which was sort of, I think about 2000 by 3000 miles or something, absolutely vast, is something, you know, remarkable and probably just as well for the world that it didn't last much longer.
- [36:15]
Emily Briffitts
That was writer, journalist and historian Justin Marozzi speaking to me. Emily Brifitts. Justin is the author of Tamerlane Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World, and has joined us on the podcast before to discuss the long and fraught history of slavery in the Islamic world. You can find a link to that conversation in the description of this episode.