Timur: the story on HearLore

Timur

Timur was born with a withered right leg and a withered right arm, a physical disability that would define his life and earn him the name Tamerlane, meaning the Lame. Born in the 1320s near the city of Kesh, now Shahrisabz in modern-day Uzbekistan, he was a member of the Barlas, a Turkicized Mongol tribe. His early life was marked by violence and survival; as a youth, he and a small band of followers raided travelers for livestock. Around 1363, during a raid, he was shot by two arrows, one in his right leg and another in his right hand, causing him to lose two fingers and permanently disable his right leg. These injuries did not stop him; instead, they forged a man of immense will who would go on to become one of the most feared military commanders in history. He spoke several languages, including Chagatai, an ancestor of modern Uzbek, as well as Mongolian and Persian, which he used for diplomatic correspondence. Despite his physical limitations, Timur was a military genius who loved to play chess in his spare time to improve his military tactics and skill. He wielded absolute power, yet never called himself more than an emir, preferring to rule through puppet khans of the Chinggisid line to legitimize his authority.

Sword of Islam

Timur used Islam to legitimize his conquests, referring to himself as the Sword of Islam. He was a practising Sunni Muslim, possibly belonging to the Naqshbandi school, which was influential in Transoxiana. His chief official religious counsellor and adviser was the Hanafi scholar 'Abdu 'l-Jabbar Khwarazmi. In Tirmidh, he had come under the influence of his spiritual mentor Sayyid Baraka, a leader from Balkh who is buried alongside Timur in Gur-e-Amir. Timur was known to hold Ali and the Ahl al-Bayt in high regard and has been noted by various scholars for his pro-Shia stance. However, he also punished Shias for desecrating the memories of the Sahaba. Timur was also noted for attacking the Shia with Sunni apologism, while at other times he attacked Sunnis on religious grounds as well. In contrast, Timur held the Seljuk Sultan Ahmad Sanjar in high regard for attacking the Ismailis at Alamut, and Timur's own attack on Ismailis at Anjudan was equally brutal. He styled himself a ghazi in the last years of his life, and his most famous title was Sahib Qiran, meaning Lord of Conjunction, which is rooted in astrology and was used to designate conquerors. This title referred to the conjunction of the two superior planets, Saturn and Jupiter, which was held to be an auspicious sign and the mark of a new era. According to A. Azfar Moin, Sahib Qiran was a messianic title, implying that Timur might potentially be the awaited messiah descended from the prophetic line who would inaugurate a new era, possibly the last one before the end of time. Otherwise, he depicted himself as a spiritual descendant of Ali, thus claiming the lineage of both Genghis Khan and the Quraysh.

When was Timur born and where was he born?

Timur was born in the 1320s near the city of Kesh, which is now Shahrisabz in modern-day Uzbekistan. He was a member of the Barlas, a Turkicized Mongol tribe.

What physical disabilities did Timur have and how did he get them?

Timur was born with a withered right leg and a withered right arm. He lost two fingers and permanently disabled his right leg after being shot by two arrows during a raid around 1363.

When did Timur die and where did he die?

Timur died at Farab on the 17th or the 18th of February 1405 while on an expedition to invade Ming China. He became ill while encamped on the farther side of the Syr Daria and never reached the Chinese border.

Which cities did Timur sack and massacre during his conquests?

Timur sacked and massacred citizens in Herat, Isfahan, Delhi, Baghdad, Aleppo, Damascus, and Smyrna. He also destroyed Sarai, the capital of the Golden Horde, and Astrakhan.

Who were Timur's descendants and what empires did they found?

Timur's grandson Ulugh Beg was a renowned astronomer and mathematician who ruled Central Asia from 1411 to 1449. His great-great-great-grandson Babur founded the Mughal Empire.

How did Timur die and what happened to his body after death?

Timur died on the 17th or the 18th of February 1405 before reaching the Chinese border. His body was embalmed with musk and rose water, wrapped in linen, laid in an ebony coffin, and buried in the Gur-e-Amir in Samarkand.

The Persian Campaigns

Timur spent the next 35 years in various wars and expeditions, consolidating his rule at home by the subjugation of his foes and seeking extension of territory by encroachments upon the lands of foreign potentates. His conquests to the west and northwest led him to the lands near the Caspian Sea and to the banks of the Ural and the Volga. Conquests in the south and southwest encompassed almost every province in Persia, including Baghdad, Karbala and Northern Iraq. In 1383, Timur started his lengthy military conquest of Persia, though he already ruled over much of Persian Khorasan by 1381, after Khwaja Mas'ud, of the Sarbadar dynasty surrendered. Timur began his Persian campaign with Herat, capital of the Kartid dynasty. When Herat did not surrender, he reduced the city to rubble and massacred most of its citizens; it remained in ruins until Shah Rukh ordered its reconstruction around 1415. Timur then sent a general to capture rebellious Kandahar. With the capture of Herat, the Kartid kingdom surrendered and became vassals of Timur; it would later be annexed outright less than a decade later in 1389 by Timur's son Miran Shah. Timur then headed west to capture the Zagros Mountains, passing through Mazandaran. During his travel through the north of Persia, he captured the then town of Tehran, which surrendered and was thus treated mercifully. He laid siege to Soltaniyeh in 1384. Khorasan revolted one year later, so Timur destroyed Isfizar, and the prisoners were cemented into the walls alive. The next year the kingdom of Sistan, under the Mihrabanid dynasty, was ravaged, and its capital at Zaranj was destroyed. Timur then returned to his capital of Samarkand, where he began planning for his Georgian campaign and Golden Horde invasion. In 1386, Timur passed through Mazandaran as he had when trying to capture the Zagros. He went near the city of Soltaniyeh, which he had previously captured but instead turned north and captured Tabriz with little resistance, along with Maragha. He ordered heavy taxation of the people, which was collected by Adil Aqa, who was also given control over Soltaniyeh. Adil was later executed because Timur suspected him of corruption. Timur then went north to begin his Georgian and Golden Horde campaigns, pausing his full-scale invasion of Persia. When he returned, he found his generals had done well in protecting the cities and lands he had conquered in Persia. Though many rebelled, and his son Miran Shah, who may have been regent, was forced to annex rebellious vassal dynasties, his holdings remained. So he proceeded to capture the rest of Persia, specifically the two major southern cities of Isfahan and Shiraz. When he arrived with his army at Isfahan in 1387, the city immediately surrendered; he treated it with relative mercy as he normally did with cities that surrendered. However, after Isfahan revolted against Timur's taxes by killing the tax collectors and some of Timur's soldiers, he ordered the massacre of the city's citizens; the death toll is reckoned at between 100,000 and 200,000. An eye-witness counted more than 28 towers constructed of about 1,500 heads each. This has been described as a systematic use of terror against towns, an integral element of Tamerlane's strategic element, which he viewed as preventing bloodshed by discouraging resistance. His massacres were selective and he spared the artistic and educated. This would later influence the next great Persian conqueror: Nader Shah. Timur then began a five-year campaign to the west in 1392, attacking Persian Kurdistan. In 1393, Shiraz was captured after surrendering, and the Muzaffarids became vassals of Timur, though prince Shah Mansur rebelled but was defeated, and the Muzafarids were annexed. Shortly after Georgia was devastated so that the Golden Horde could not use it to threaten northern Iran. In the same year, Timur caught Baghdad by surprise in August by marching there in only eight days from Shiraz. Sultan Ahmad Jalayir fled to Syria, where the Mamluk Sultan Barquq protected him and killed Timur's envoys. Timur left the Sarbadar prince Khwaja Mas'ud to govern Baghdad, but he was driven out when Ahmad Jalayir returned. Ahmad was unpopular but got help from Qara Yusuf of the Kara Koyunlu; he fled again in 1399, this time to the Ottomans.

The Golden Horde Wars

In the meantime, Tokhtamysh, now khan of the Golden Horde, turned against his patron and in 1385 invaded Azerbaijan. The inevitable response by Timur resulted in the Tokhtamysh, Timur war. In the initial stage of the war, Timur won a victory at the Battle of the Kondurcha River. After the battle Tokhtamysh and some of his army were allowed to escape. After Tokhtamysh's initial defeat, Timur invaded Muscovy to the north of Tokhtamysh's holdings. Timur's army burned Ryazan and advanced on Moscow. He was pulled away before reaching the Oka River by Tokhtamysh's renewed campaign in the south. In the first phase of the conflict with Tokhtamysh, Timur led an army of over 100,000 men north for more than 700 miles into the steppe. He then rode west about 1,000 miles advancing in a front more than 10 miles wide. During this advance, Timur's army got far enough north to be in a region of very long summer days causing complaints by his Muslim soldiers about keeping a long schedule of prayers. It was then that Tokhtamysh's army was boxed in against the east bank of the Volga River in the Orenburg region and destroyed at the Battle of the Kondurcha River, in 1391. In the second phase of the conflict, Timur took a different route against the enemy by invading the realm of Tokhtamysh via the Caucasus region. In 1395, Timur defeated Tokhtamysh in the Battle of the Terek River, concluding the struggle between the two monarchs. Tokhtamysh was unable to restore his power or prestige, and he was killed about a decade later in the area of present-day Tyumen. During the course of Timur's campaigns, his army destroyed Sarai, the capital of the Golden Horde, and Astrakhan, subsequently disrupting the Golden Horde's Silk Road. The Golden Horde no longer held power after their losses to Timur. Russian Orthodox tradition states that later, in 1395, having reached the frontier of the Principality of Ryazan, Timur had taken Yelets and started advancing towards Moscow. Vasily I of Moscow went with an army to Kolomna and halted at the banks of the Oka River. The clergy brought the famed Theotokos of Vladimir icon from Vladimir to Moscow. Timur stopped his advance and withdrew from Russian territory, with the Russian chroniclers claiming that a vision of the Virgin defending Moscow, accompanied by a heavenly host, convinced him to turn back.

The Delhi Sack

In the late 14th century, the Tughlaq dynasty which had been ruling over Delhi Sultanate since 1320 had declined. Most of the provincial governors had asserted their independence, and the Sultanate was reduced to only a part of its former extent. This anarchy drew the attention of Timur, who in 1398 invaded Indian subcontinent during the reign of Sultan Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq. After crossing the Indus River on the 30th of September 1398 with a force of 90,000, he sacked Tulamba and massacred its inhabitants. He sent an advance guard under his grandson Pir Muhammad who captured Multan after a siege of six months. His invasion was unopposed as most of the nobility surrendered without a fight, however he did encounter resistance by a force of 2,000 under Malik Jasrat at Sutlej river between Tulamba and Dipalpur. Jasrat was defeated and taken away as captive. Next he captured the fort of Bhatner which was being defended by Rajput chief Rai Dul Chand and demolished it. While on his march towards Delhi, Timur was opposed by the Jat peasantry, who would loot caravans and then disappear in the forests. He had thousands of Jats killed and many taken captive. But the Sultanate at Delhi did nothing to stop his advance. The battle took place on the 17th of December 1398. Before the battle, Timur slaughtered some 100,000 slaves who had been captured previously in the Indian campaign. This was done out of fear that they might revolt. Sultan Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq and the army of Mallu Iqbal had war elephants armored with chain mail and poison on their tusks. As his Tatar forces were afraid of the elephants, Timur ordered his men to dig a trench in front of their positions. Timur then loaded his camels with as much wood and hay as they could carry. When the war elephants charged, Timur set the hay on fire and prodded the camels with iron sticks, causing them to charge at the elephants, howling in pain: Timur had understood that elephants were easily panicked. Faced with the strange spectacle of camels flying straight at them with flames leaping from their backs, the elephants turned around and stampeded back toward their own lines. Timur capitalized on the subsequent disruption in the forces of Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq, securing an easy victory. Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq fled with remnants of his forces. The capture of the Delhi Sultanate was one of Timur's largest and most devastating victories as at that time, Delhi was one of the richest cities in the world. The city of Delhi was sacked and reduced to ruins, with the population enslaved. After the fall of the city, uprisings by its citizens against the Turkic-Mongols began to occur, causing a retaliatory bloody massacre within the city walls. After three days of citizens uprising within Delhi, it was said that the city reeked of the decomposing bodies of its citizens with their heads being erected like structures and the bodies left as food for the birds by Timur's soldiers. Timur's invasion and destruction of Delhi continued the chaos that was still consuming India, and the city would not be able to recover from the great loss it suffered for almost a century.

The Ottoman Defeat

Before the end of 1399, Timur started a war with Bayezid I, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and the Mamluk sultan of Egypt Nasir-ad-Din Faraj. Bayezid began annexing the territory of Turkmen and Muslim rulers in Anatolia. As Timur claimed sovereignty over the Turkoman rulers, they took refuge behind him. In 1400, Timur invaded Armenia and Georgia. Between 1386 and 1404, the Turco-Mongol forces of Timur raided the countries of Transcaucasia from their bases in northern Iran several times. Tiflis was finally conquered by Timur in 1404, and King George VII was forced to recognize Timurid suzerainty. Armenia too, which had been under Mongol Jalayirid control, was incorporated into the Timurid realm. Of the surviving population, more than 60,000 of the local people were captured as slaves, and many districts were depopulated. He also sacked Sivas in Asia Minor. Then Timur turned his attention to Syria, sacking Aleppo, and Damascus. The city's inhabitants were massacred, except for the artisans, who were deported to Samarkand. Timur invaded Baghdad in June 1401. After the capture of the city, 20,000 of its citizens were massacred. Timur ordered that every soldier should return with at least two severed human heads to show him. When they ran out of men to kill, many warriors killed prisoners captured earlier in the campaign, and when they ran out of prisoners to kill, many resorted to beheading their own wives. British historian David Nicolle, in his The Mongol Warlords, quotes an anonymous contemporary historian who compared Timur's army to ants and locusts covering the whole countryside, plundering and ravaging. In the meantime, years of insulting letters had passed between Timur and Bayezid. Both rulers insulted each other in their own way while Timur preferred to undermine Bayezid's position as a ruler and play down the significance of his military successes. This is the excerpt from one of Timur's letters addressed to the Ottoman sultan. Finally, Timur invaded Anatolia and defeated Bayezid in the Battle of Ankara on the 20th of July 1402. Bayezid was captured in battle and subsequently died in captivity, initiating the twelve-year Ottoman Interregnum period. Timur's stated motivation for attacking Bayezid and the Ottoman Empire was the restoration of Seljuq authority. Timur saw the Seljuks as the rightful rulers of Anatolia as they had been granted rule by Mongol conquerors, illustrating Timur's interest with Genghizid legitimacy. In December 1402, Timur besieged and took the city of Smyrna, a stronghold of the Christian Knights Hospitalers, thus he referred to himself as ghazi or Warrior of Islam. A mass beheading was carried out in Smyrna by Timur's soldiers. With the Treaty of Gallipoli in February 1403, Timur was furious with the Genoese and Venetians, as their ships ferried the Ottoman army to safety in Thrace. As Lord Kinross reported in The Ottoman Centuries, the Italians preferred the enemy they could handle to the one they could not. During the early interregnum, Bayezid I's son acted as Timur's vassal. Unlike other princes, Mehmed minted coins that had Timur's name stamped as Demur han Gürgân, alongside his own as Mehmed bin Bayezid han. This was probably an attempt on Mehmed's part to justify to Timur his conquest of Bursa after the Battle of Ulubad. After Mehmed established himself in Rum, Timur had already begun preparations for his return to Central Asia, and took no further steps to interfere with the status quo in Anatolia. While Timur was still in Anatolia, Qara Yusuf assaulted Baghdad and captured it in 1402. Timur returned to Persia and sent his grandson Abu Bakr ibn Miran Shah to reconquer Baghdad, which he proceeded to do. Timur then spent some time in Ardabil, where he gave Ali Safavi, leader of the Safaviyya, a number of captives. Subsequently, he marched to Khorasan and then to Samarkhand, where he spent nine months celebrating and preparing to invade Mongolia and China.

The Final Campaign

In 1368, the Yuan dynasty collapsed and was succeeded by the Ming dynasty. The Ming dynasty during the reigns of its founder, the Hongwu Emperor, and his son, the Yongle Emperor, produced tributary states of many Central Asian countries. In 1394, the Hongwu Emperor's ambassadors eventually presented Timur with a letter addressing him as a subject. Timur had the ambassadors Fu An, Guo Ji, and Liu Wei detained. Neither the Hongwu Emperor's next ambassador, Chen Dewen (1397), nor the delegation announcing the accession of the Yongle Emperor fared any better. Timur eventually planned to invade China. To this end, Timur made an alliance with surviving Mongol tribes in the Mongolian Plateau and prepared all the way to Bukhara. Engke Khan sent his grandson Öljei Temür Khan, also known as Buyanshir Khan after he converted to Islam while at the court of Timur in Samarkand. Timur preferred to fight his battles in the spring. However, he moved east via Timur's Gates and died en route during an uncharacteristic winter campaign. In December 1404, Timur began military campaigns against Ming China and detained a Ming envoy. He became ill while encamped on the farther side of the Syr Daria and died at Farab on 17 or the 18th of February 1405, before ever reaching the Chinese border. After his death, the Ming envoys such as Fu An and the remaining entourage were released by his grandson Khalil Sultan. Geographer Clements Markham, in his introduction to the narrative of Clavijo's embassy, states that, after Timur died, his body was embalmed with musk and rose water, wrapped in linen, laid in an ebony coffin and sent to Samarkand, where it was buried. His tomb, the Gur-e-Amir, still stands in Samarkand, though it has been heavily restored in recent years. Timur had twice previously appointed an heir apparent to succeed him, both of whom he had outlived. The first, his son Jahangir, died of illness in 1376. The second, his grandson Muhammad Sultan, had died from battle wounds in 1403. After the latter's death, Timur did nothing to replace him. It was only when he was on his own death-bed that he appointed Muhammad Sultan's younger brother, Pir Muhammad as his successor. Pir Muhammad was unable to gain sufficient support from his relatives and a bitter civil war erupted amongst Timur's descendants, with multiple princes pursuing their claims. It was not until 1409 that Timur's youngest son, Shah Rukh was able to overcome his rivals and take the throne as Timur's successor.

The Iron Legacy

Timur's legacy is a mixed one. While Central Asia blossomed under his reign, other places, such as Baghdad, Damascus, Delhi and other Arab, Georgian, Persian, and Indian cities were sacked and destroyed and their populations massacred. Thus, while Timur still retains a positive image in Muslim Central Asia, he is vilified by many in Arabia, Iraq, Persia, and India, where some of his greatest atrocities were carried out. However, Ibn Khaldun praises Timur for having unified much of the Muslim world when other conquerors of the time could not. The next great conqueror of the Middle East, Nader Shah, was greatly influenced by Timur and almost re-enacted Timur's conquests and battle strategies in his own campaigns. Like Timur, Nader Shah conquered most of Caucasia, Persia, and Central Asia along with also sacking Delhi. Timur's short-lived empire also melded the Turko-Persian tradition in Transoxiana, and, in most of the territories that he incorporated into his fiefdom, Persian became the primary language of administration and literary culture, regardless of ethnicity. In addition, during his reign, some contributions to Turkic literature were penned, with Turkic cultural influence expanding and flourishing as a result. A literary form of Chagatai Turkic came into use alongside Persian as both a cultural and an official language. Tamerlane virtually exterminated the Church of the East, which had previously been a major branch of Christianity but afterwards became largely confined to a small area now known as the Assyrian Triangle. In Uzbekistan, Timur is referred to as the Founder of the Uzbek nation despite having belonged to a competing tribe that hated the Uzbeks. His monument in Tashkent now occupies the place where Karl Marx's statue once stood. The Amir Timur Museum in Tashkent focuses on his genealogy and life. In 1794, Sake Dean Mahomed published his travel book, The Travels of Dean Mahomet. The book begins with the praise of Genghis Khan, Timur, and particularly the first Mughal emperor, Babur. He also gives important details on the then incumbent Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II. The poem Tamerlane by Edgar Allan Poe follows a fictionalized version of Timur's life. Timur's body was exhumed from his tomb on the 19th of June 1941 and his remains examined by the Soviet anthropologists Mikhail M. Gerasimov, Lev V. Oshanin and V. Ia. Zezenkova. Gerasimov reconstructed the likeness of Timur from his skull and found that his facial characteristics displayed typical Mongoloid features, i.e. East Asian in modern terms. An anthropologic study of Timur's cranium shows that he belonged predominately to the South Siberian Mongoloid type. At 1.75 meters, Timur was tall for his era. The examinations confirmed that Timur was lame and had a withered right arm due to his injuries. His right thighbone had knitted together with his kneecap, and the configuration of the knee joint suggests that he kept his leg bent at all times and therefore would have had a pronounced limp. He appears to have been broad-chested and his hair and beard were red. It is alleged that Timur's tomb was inscribed with the words, When I rise from the dead, the world shall tremble. It is also said that when Gerasimov exhumed the body, an additional inscription inside the casket was found, which read, Whomsoever opens my tomb shall unleash an invader more terrible than I. Even though people close to Gerasimov claim that this story is a fabrication, it became known as the Curse of Timur. In any case, three days after Gerasimov began the exhumation, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, which resulted in one of the deadliest invasions in human history. Timur was re-buried with full Islamic ritual in November 1942, just before the Soviet victory at the Battle of Stalingrad. Timur had forty-three wives and concubines, all of these women were also his consorts. Timur made dozens of women his wives and concubines as he conquered their fathers' or erstwhile husbands' lands. His descendants include Umar Shaikh Mirza I, Jahangir Mirza, Miran Shah Mirza, Shah Rukh Mirza, and many others. His grandson Ulugh Beg was a renowned astronomer and mathematician, and his great-great-great-grandson Babur founded the Mughal Empire. Timur's personality was characterized by his military genius and his uncanny ability to work within a highly fluid political structure to win and maintain a loyal following of nomads during his rule in Central Asia. He was also considered extraordinarily intelligent, not only intuitively but also intellectually. In Samarkand and his many travels, Timur, under the guidance of distinguished scholars, was able to learn the Persian, Mongolian, and Turkish languages. However, it was Persian which was held in distinction by Timur as it was the language not only of his court, but also that of his chancellery. Timur was a learned king, and enjoyed the company of scholars; he was tolerant and generous to them. He was a contemporary of the Persian poet Hafez, and a story of their meeting explains that Timur summoned Hafez, who had written a ghazal with the following verse: For the black mole on thy cheek, I would give the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara. Timur upbraided him for this verse and said, By the blows of my well tempered sword I have conquered the greater part of the world to enlarge Samarkand and Bukhara, my capitals and residences; and you, pitiful creature, would exchange these two cities for a mole. Hafez, undaunted, replied, It is by similar generosity that I have been reduced, as you see, to my present state of poverty. It is reported that the King was pleased by the witty answer and the poet departed with magnificent gifts. There is a shared view that Timur's real motive for his campaigns was his imperialistic ambition, as expressed by his statement: The whole expanse of the inhabited part of the world is not large enough to have two kings. However, besides Iran, Timur simply plundered the states he invaded with a purpose of enriching his native Samarqand and neglected the conquered areas, which may have resulted in a relatively quick disintegration of his Empire after his death. Timur used Persian expressions in his conversations often, and his motto was the Persian phrase rāstī rustī, meaning truth is safety or veritas salus. He is credited with the invention of the Tamerlane chess variant, played on a 10×11 board. Timur had numerous diplomatic exchanges with various European states, especially Spain and France. Relations between the court of Henry III of Castile and that of Timur played an important part in medieval Castilian diplomacy. In 1402, the time of the Battle of Ankara, two Spanish ambassadors were already with Timur: Pelayo de Sotomayor and Fernando de Palazuelos. Later, Timur sent to the court of the Kingdom of León and Castile a Chagatai ambassador named Hajji Muhammad al-Qazi with letters and gifts. In return, Henry III of Castile sent a famous embassy to Timur's court in Samarkand in 1403, 06, led by Ruy González de Clavijo, with two other ambassadors, Alfonso Paez and Gomez de Salazar. On their return, Timur affirmed that he regarded the king of Castile as his very own son. According to Clavijo, Timur's good treatment of the Spanish delegation contrasted with the disdain shown by his host toward the envoys of the lord of Cathay, i.e. the Yongle Emperor, the Chinese ruler. Clavijo's visit to Samarkand allowed him to report to the European audience on the news from Cathay, which few Europeans had been able to visit directly in the century that had passed since the travels of Marco Polo. The French archives preserve a the 30th of July 1402 letter from Timur to Charles VI of France, suggesting that he send traders to Asia. It is written in Persian. A May 1403 letter is a Latin transcription of a letter from Timur to Charles VI, and another from Miran Shah, his son, to the Christian princes, announcing their victory over Bayezid I at Smyrna. A copy has been kept of the answer of Charles VI to Timur, dated the 15th of June 1403. In addition, Byzantine John VII Palaiologos who was a regent during his uncle's absence in the West, sent a Dominican friar in August 1401 to Timur, to pay his respect and propose paying tribute to him instead of the Turks, once he managed to defeat them. Timur arguably had a significant impact on the Renaissance culture and early modern Europe. European views of Timur were mixed throughout the fifteenth century, with some European countries calling him an ally and others seeing him as a threat to Europe because of his rapid expansion and brutality. When Timur captured the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid at Ankara, he was often praised and seen as a trusted ally by European rulers, such as Charles VI of France and Henry IV of England, because they believed he was saving Christianity from the Turkic Empire in the Middle East. Those two kings also praised him because his victory at Ankara allowed Christian merchants to remain in the Middle East and allowed for their safe return home to both France and England. Timur was also praised because it was believed that he helped restore the right of passage for Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Other Europeans viewed Timur as a barbaric enemy who presented a threat to both European culture and the religion of Christianity. His rise to power moved many leaders, such as Henry III of Castile, to send embassies to Samarkand to scout out Timur, learn about his people, make alliances with him, and try to convince him to convert to Christianity in order to avoid war. The earliest known history of his reign was Nizam al-Din Shami's Zafarnama, which was written during Timur's lifetime. Between 1424 and 1428, Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi wrote a second Zafarnama drawing heavily on Shami's earlier work. Ahmad ibn Arabshah wrote a much less favorable history in Arabic. Arabshah's history was translated into Latin by the Dutch Orientalist Jacobus Golius in 1636. As Timurid-sponsored histories, the two Zafarnamas present a dramatically different picture from Arabshah's chronicle. William Jones remarked that the former presented Timur as a liberal, benevolent and illustrious prince while the latter painted him as deformed and impious, of a low birth and detestable principles. The Malfuzat-i Timuri and the appended Tuzūk-i Tīmūrī, supposedly Timur's own autobiography, are almost certainly 17th-century fabrications. The scholar Abu Taleb Hosayni presented the texts to the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, a distant descendant of Timur, in 1637, 1638, supposedly after discovering the Chagatai language originals in the library of a Yemeni ruler. Due to the distance between Yemen and Timur's base in Transoxiana and the lack of any other evidence of the originals, most historians consider the story highly implausible, and suspect Hosayni of inventing both the text and its origin story. Timur's legacy is a mixed one, but his impact on history is undeniable. He was the last of the major nomadic conquerors of the Eurasian Steppe, and his empire set the stage for the rise of the more organized and lasting Islamic gunpowder empires of the 16th and 17th centuries. Timur's armies were multi-ethnic and much feared, and laid waste to sizable parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Scholars estimate that his military campaigns caused the deaths of millions of people. Of all the areas he conquered, Khwarazm suffered the most, as it repeatedly rose against him. Timur's campaigns have been characterized as genocidal. He was the grandfather of the Timurid sultan, astronomer and mathematician Ulugh Beg, who ruled Central Asia from 1411 to 1449, and the great-great-great-grandfather of Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire.