Rise of Timur (Tamerlane) and his Central Asian empire
- Date
- c. 1370 CE (empire to 1405)
- Category
- Politics & governance
- Region
- Central Asia & the Middle East (Transoxiana)
- Era
- Post-Classical / Medieval
- Significance
Around 1370 the Turco-Mongol warlord Timur (Tamerlane), of the Barlas tribe in Transoxiana, seized sole power after years of warfare and proclaimed himself restorer of the Mongol empire, ruling in the name of the Chagatai khans.
From his capital Samarkand—which he adorned with monumental architecture using artisans deported from conquered lands—he led three decades of relentless campaigns across Persia, the Caucasus, India, Mesopotamia and Anatolia, sacking Delhi in 1398 and Damascus and Baghdad, and crushing the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I at the Battle of Ankara in 1402, taking him captive. His conquests were extraordinarily destructive, with cities massacred and pyramids of skulls erected, yet he also patronised scholarship and the arts, and his Timurid dynasty fostered a brilliant cultural and scientific flowering in Samarkand and Herat. Timur died in 1405 while marching toward China. His empire represented the last great wave of steppe conquest in the Mongol tradition and reshaped the politics of the Islamic world.
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Empires active in c. 1370 CE (empire to 1405)
- Kanem-Bornu Empire700 CE – 1900 CE
- Ming Dynasty1368 CE – 1644 CE
- Ottoman Empire1299 CE – 1922 CE
- Solomonic dynasty1270 CE – 1974 CE
- Byzantine Empire330 CE – 1453 CE
- Golden Horde1242 CE – 1502 CE
Related politics & governance events
- Founding of the Iroquois Confederacy and the Great Law of Peacec. 1450 (scholarly estimate; oral tradition as early as 1142)
- Kublai Khan founds the Yuan dynasty and conquers Song China1271 CE (conquest completed 1279)
- Founding of the Ming dynasty in China1368 CE
- Foundation of the Vijayanagara Empire1336 CE
- Temüjin proclaimed Genghis Khan, uniting the Mongols1206 CE
- Founding of Tenochtitlan by the Mexica1325 CE
Further reading
The wider story
The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World
Award-winning popular history of the Golden Horde.
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