When around 1260, the Mongol Empire was divided into four khanates ruled by different branches of the house of Genghis Khan, Central Asia fell to the descendants of Genghis's second son Chaghatai, after whom that khanate is named. In fact, until the end of the 13th century the dominant Mongol prince in the area was Qaidu, a descendant of the second Great Khan, Ogedei: the Chaghatai khans had to take second place. But from the beginning of the 14th century the Chaghatais were supreme, and the Khanate in one form or another survived for centuries. By the middle of the fourteenth century the khanate had fallen into two halves. In the eastern, still largely pagan part (known as Mughulistan, the land of the Mongols) the Chaghatais still held real power and kept to their ancestral nomadic ways. In the western half, Transoxania - broadly modern Uzbekistan - which was much more of a sedentary society, and largely Muslim, power had fallen into the hands of a series of amirs (military chiefs) though this shift was not accepted by the Chaghatai khans, who invaded the west from time to time to try and assert their lost authority. It was in the western part of the khanate that Timur, Tamerlane, the last great Mongol conqueror, was born around 1336.

Tamerlane, though of Mongol blood, was not a descendant of Genghis Khan. Nevertheless, his early career has some resemblance to that of the earlier conqueror. He rose from obscurity essentially as a successful bandit, relying on help from those more powerful than himself — at least until he was strong enough to discard them. By 1370 he was the master of Transoxania, establishing his capital at Samarqand, though during the remaining 35 years of his life he was rarely there. Instead he spent his time in an endless series of military campaigns of expansion and plunder. He kept the Chaghatais of Mughulistan at bay - for which service, though himself a nomadic warrior; he received the loyalty of the sedentary population of Transoxania. He invaded the Golden Horde and soundly defeated, but did not occupy, that state. He campaigned constantly in Iran, the former Ilkhanate, he invaded and plundered northern India, sacking Delhi in 1398, and in 1402 he defeated and captured the Ottoman sultan Bayezid at Ankara, severely checking Ottoman expansion and inadvertently saving Constantinople from the Turks for half a century. When he died in 1405 he had just set off for the conquest of China. If he had succeeded in this, he would have made good his claim to be the restorer of the Mongol Empire.

Tamerlane was an extremely destructive conqueror, far more wanton and cruel than Genghis Khan had ever been. Nor did his rule have the positive characteristics of his great predecessor. His main aim seems to have been to keep his Chaghatai tribal elite content with fighting and plunder - hence his repeated invasions of territories he had already conquered. He could not - unlike Genghis Khan - delegate authority; and he failed to arrange the succession satisfactorily. His descendants, the Timurids, continued to rule for a century after his death, and as great cultural patrons they made some amends for their forebear's appalling career. But they ruled a gradually shrinking kingdom: Tamerlane's empire, unlike Genghis's, did not continue to grow once its founder was dead. But there was a notable postscript. In the early 16th century a Timurid prince named Babur, who had lost control of Samarqand to the invading Uzbeks, fled first to Afghanistan (he is buried in Kabul), and then to northern India, where he won a great victory in 1526 and founded the Mughal Empire, which endured at least in name until 1858, when the last Timurid king of Delhi was deposed after the suppression of the Indian Mutiny.

Contributed by David O. Morgan
Professor of History, University of Wisconsin - Madison
 

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Il-Khans | Travelers and their narratives | Empire of Timur