Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home 		English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Tamerlane   Listen
proper noun
Tamerlane  n.  A Tatar conquerer, also called Timur or Timour or Timur Bey, also Timur-Leng or Timur-i-Leng ('Timur the Lame'), which was corrupted to Tamerlane. He was born in Central Asia, 1333, a member of the Barslas, a Turkish Mongol tribe which had converted to Islam. He died 1405. Though he claimed descent from Jenghiz Khan, it is believed that he was in fact descended from a follower of the Khan. By 1370, Tamerlane, a renowned warrior, began consolidating his power among the various nomadic tribes of Central Asia by conquering the entire region. He became a ruler about 1370 of a realm whose capital was Samarkand; conquered Persia, Central Asia, and in 1398 a great part of India, including Delhi; waged war with the Turkish Sultan Bajazet I. (Beyazid), whom he defeated at Ankara in 1402 and took prisoner; and died while preparing to invade China. By the end of his life in 1405, after 35 years of campaigns and wars that left hundreds of thousands dead and enslaved, he had successfully defeated Ottoman Turks, Hindus, The Golden Horde, and other peoples and controlled an empire stretching from the Aegean to the River Ganges and threatened the trembling Kingdoms of Europe and the Eastern Roman Empire. He is the Tamerlaine of the plays. "Just at the moment when the Sultan (Bajazet) seemed to have attained the pinnacle of his ambition, when his authority was unquestioningly obeyed over the greater part of the Byzantine Empire in Europe and Asia, when the Christian states were regarding him with terror as the scourge of the world, another and greater scourge came to quell him, and at one stroke all the vast fabric of empire which Bayezid (Beyazid) had so triumphantly erected was shattered to the ground. This terrible conquerer was Timur the Tatar, or as we call him, "Tamerlane". Timur was of Turkish race, and was born near Samarkand in 1333. He was consequently an old man of 70 when he came to encounter Bayezid in 1402. It had taken him many years to establish his authority over a portion of the numerous divisions into which the immense empire of Chingiz Khan had fallen after the death of that stupendous conqueror. Timur was but a petty chief among many others: but at last he won his way and became ruler of Samarkand and the whole province of Transoxiana, or 'Beyond the River' (Ma-wara-n-nahr) as the Arabs called the country north of the Oxus. Once fairly established in this province, Timur began to overrun the surrounding lands, and during thirty years his ruthless armies spread over the provinces of Asia, from Delhi to Damascus, and from the Sea of Aral to the Persian Gulf. The subdivision of the Moslem Empire into numerous petty kingdoms rendered it powerless to meet the overwhelming hordes which Timur brought down from Central Asia. One and all, the kings and princes of Persia and Syria succumbed, and Timur carried his banners triumphantly as far as the frontier of Egypt, where the brave Mamluk Sultans still dared to defy him. He had so far left Bayezid unmolested; partly because he was too powerful to be rashly provoked, and partly because Timur respected the Sultan's valorous deeds against the Christians: for Timur, though a wholesale butcher, was very conscientious in matters of religion, and held that Bayezid's fighting for the Faith rightly covered a multitude of sins." Note: Timour, Timur, or TAMERLANE, was the second of the great conquerers whom central Asia sent forth in the middle ages, and was born at Kesh, about 40 miles southeast of Samarkand, April 9, 1336. His father was a Turkish chieftain and his mother claimed descent from the great Genghis-Khan. When he became tribal chieftain, Timour helped the Amir Hussein to drive out the Kalmucks. Turkestan was thereupon divided between them, but soon war broke out between the two chiefs, and the death of Hussein in battle made Timour master of all Turkestan. He now began his career of conquest, overcoming the Getes, Khiva and Khorassin, after storming Herat. His ever-widening circle of possessions soon embraced Persia, Mesopotamia, Georgia, and the Mongol state, Kiptchak. He threatened Moscow, burned Azoo, captured Delhi, overran Syria, and stormed Bagdad, which had revolted. At last, July 20, 1402, Timour met the Sultan Bajazet of the Ottoman Turks, on the plains of Ankara, captured him and routed his army, thus becoming master of the Turkish empire. He took but a short rest at his capital, Samarkand, and in his eagerness to conquer China, led his army of 200,000 across the Jaxartes on the ice, and pushed rapidly on for 300 miles, when his death, Feb. 18, 1405, saved the independence of China. Though notorious for his acts of cruelty he may have slaughtered 80,000 in Delhi he was a patron of the arts. In his reign of 35 years, this chief of a small tribe, dependent on the Kalmucks, became the ruler of the vast territory stretching from Moscow to the Ganges. A number of writings said to have been written by Timour have been preserved in Persian, one of which, the Institutions, has been translated into English. Note: There is a story about an incident when an archaeologist opened Timur's tomb at the Gur-Amir mausoleum in Samarkand, which was erected in 1404. Timur and several of his descendants, including Ulugh Beg, are interred in that magnificent structure in the south-western side of Samarkand. In the mausoleum, mosaics made out of light- and dark-blue glazed bricks decorate the walls and the drum, and the tiled geometrical designs of the cupola shine brightly in the sun. Restoration work was started in 1967; the exterior cupola and glazed decorations were restored before that, in the 1950s. The mausoleum holds tombstones made of marble and onyx, the tombstone of Timur is carved from a slab of nephrite. The burials proper are placed in a crypt under the mausoleum. In 1941, a distinguished Soviet scientist, M. Gerasimov, received permission to exhume Tamerlane's body. On June 22, 1941, working in the Samarkand crypt, he opened the sarcophagus to study the body and found the inscription: "Whoever opens this will be defeated by an enemy more fearsome than I". Hours later, Hitler invaded Russia. Five weeks after the great Emir was reinterred in 1942, the Germans surrendered at Stalingrad. Examination of the remains in Timur's tomb confirmed that the body was tall, as was reported in the histories, and had been wounded in the leg and arm. The actual inscription on the tomb has been reported variously: "He whomsoever shall disturb the earthly resting place of Timur-i-Lenk (Tamerlane), then his country shall suffer such terrible retribution as the Hand of Allah shall visit upon it." "When I rise, the World will Tremble". "Timur's Legacy: The Architecture of Samarkand Let he who doubt Our power and munificence look upon Our buildings Amir Timur, 1379 AD Timur, better known in the West as Tamerlane from his nickname Timur-i-leng or "Timur the Lame", was the last of the great nomadic warriors to sweep out of Central Asia and shake the world. As befits a man styled "World Conqueror", we know a lot about him and not all of it good. In 1336, at Shakhrisabz in present-day Uzbekistan, the wife of a minor chief of the Mongol Barlas clan gave birth to a son with blood-filled palms, a sure omen that the infant was predestined to cause the death of many. He was given an appropriate name Timur means "iron" in Turkish and raised in the Turkic-Islamic tradition of the surrounding steppe as a rider, archer and swordsman. Even by the harsh standards of the Mongol hordes, Timur excelled. Before he was twenty years old he had attracted a band of followers with whom he ranged across the steppe raiding caravans and rustling horses. In 1360 his skills as a commander were rewarded when he was recognised as chief of the Barlas clan. Over the next ten years he steadily extended his influence over Transoxiana the region between the Oxus and Jaxartes Rivers centred on present-day Uzbekistan acquiring wounds to his right arm and leg in the process, and hence his nickname. In 1370 he conquered Turkistan, the last surviving Mongol Khanate, and declared himself Amir or "Commander". He made the Silk Road city of Samarkand his capital, and then embarked on a series of military conquests that rocked Asia and Europe to their very foundations. For 35 years Timur's forces ranged far and wide, repeatedly sweeping across Central Asia, Iran, Turkey and northern India. In 1405 Timur was preparing his greatest expedition ever, aimed at conquering China, when he was struck down by fever. Despite the best efforts of his doctors, to the sound of massive thunderclaps and "foaming like a camel dragged backwards by the rein", Timur finally succumbed. The Ming Emperor must have breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief when he eventually heard the news. Historians estimate that Timur, who personally led his forces as far afield as Moscow and Delhi, may have been responsible for the death of as many as 15 million people. Yet he made little attempt to consolidate his conquests, preferring to mount regular, devastating attacks against his neighbours before returning to his native Transoxiana. As a consequence, the dynasty he established proved to be short-lived, though in 1526 Timur's great, great, great grandson Babur restored the family fortunes by conquering Delhi and founding the resplendent Mogul Empire. Timur must have been an enigma to his contemporaries. Brutal and utterly ruthless, he was nevertheless a man of culture. He is said to have been illiterate, but fluent in Turkish and Persian. Sources speak of his sharp wit and hunger for knowledge. When not out and about slaughtering his neighbours, he indulged in passionate debate with scholars of history, medicine and astronomy. He enjoyed playing chess. Above all, he seems to have loved his capital, Samarkand, and he spent much time between campaigns embellishing this previously undistinguished city. To help in this great enterprise, he plundered cities like Damascus, Baghdad, Isfahan and Delhi not just for the loot, but for their skilled artisans, who were brought back to make Samarkand a city worthy of the "World Conqueror". As a consequence the warlike Timur's most lasting and unlikely legacy remains the unsurpassed architectural jewel of Central Asia. With Timur's death Transoxiana began a long period of decline, culminating in gradual Russian conquest during the 19th century. Samarkand had long been inaccessible to outsiders because of the xenophobia and religious bigotry of the ruling amirs. This situation was compounded in 1920, when the Red Army seized control of the region and began a process of Sovietisation. In 1924 Samarkand was included within the frontiers of the new Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, and a curtain of silence fell across the region with Westerners, in particular, being rigorously excluded. Only in the 1980s did the veil begin to rise, and then within a few short years the former USSR disintegrated, resulting in the birth of independent Uzbekistan in 1991. Although ruled by a suspicious and innately cautious former Soviet aparatchik, Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan is today slowly opening to foreign tourism. It should do well. The cities of Bukhara and Khiva, together with Timur's capital at Samarkand, are truly magnificent. In places, it's as though time stood still. It didn't of course. The Soviets worked long and hard to restore what remained of Timurid Samarkand, and Uzbekistan stands to benefit greatly as a result. Moreover, the process continues apace, both in spiritual terms Timur is now an Uzbek national hero and at a more mundane level. Everywhere the chip of stonemasons' hammers is to be heard, and a whole new generation of skilled craftsmen is being trained to restore the architectural legacy of the "Iron Limper". The historic heart of Samarkand is the Registan, an open square dominated by three great madrassa, or Islamic colleges. George Curzon, later to become Viceroy of India, visited in 1899 and was moved enough to describe the Registan as "the noblest public square in the world". He continues: "No European spectacle can be adequately compared to it, in our inability to point to an open space in any western city that is commanded on three of its four sides by Gothic cathedrals of the finest order". The architecture is distinctively Timurid, being characterised by an extraordinarily lavish use of colour, especially emerald, azure, deep blue and gold. The great domes are fluted, the vast porticoes richly decorated with corkscrew columns and intricately-patterned glazed tiles. Astonishingly, the fa?ade of the Shir Dor Madrassa on the east side of the square is decorated with half-tiger, half-lion creatures stalking deer, whilst a blazing sun with a human face rises behind the beast of prey's back. In Islam, such representational art is generally forbidden, and it is wonderful that these clearly heretical images have survived through the long centuries since they were created. Samarkand let alone Uzbekistan has too many Timurid gems to describe in one short article, but after the Registan, the monumental Bibi Khanum Mosque is perhaps the most extraordinary sight in the city. Built for Timur's chief wife, Saray Mulk Khanum, this magnificent building was financed by the plunder brought back from Delhi in 1398; it is said that 95 elephants were used in hauling marble for the mosque. On Bibi Khanum's completion a chronicler was moved to write: "Its dome would have been unique had it not been for the heavens, and unique would have been its portal had it not been for the Milky Way". Even so, historians have shown that in his plans for the Bibi Khanum, Timur's vision exceeded the architectural possibilities of the time. Quite simply, the lofty iwan (portico) and the towering minarets were too ambitious for the technology of the time especially in a land prone to violent earthquakes. By all accounts, parts of the giant mosque began to collapse within months of its consecration. Today all three massive azure domes have been restored, and work still continues, though this time with ferro-concrete supports hidden behind the elaborate glazed tilework, on the lofty iwan and minarets. When the restoration is complete in around 2002, Uzbekistan will have yet another architectural marvel to draw visitors. Finally and fittingly we turn to the Gur-i Amir, or "Tomb of the Ruler", Timur's own last resting place. This fabulous structure, which was completed in 1404, is dominated by the octagonal mausoleum and its peerless fluted dome, azure in colour, with 64 separate ribs. Within lie the remains not only of Timur, but also of various members of his family, including his grandson the scholar-king Ulugh Beg. Timur's tomb is protected by a single slab of jade, said to be the largest in the world. Brought back by Ulugh Beg from Mongolia in 1425, it was broken in half in the 18th century by the Persian ruler Nadir Shah, who tried to remove it from the chamber. Carved into the jade is an inscription in Arabic: "When I rise, the World will Tremble". Coincidence, no doubt, but on the night of June 22, 1941, the Russian Scientist M. Gerasimov began his exhumation of Timur's remains. Within hours Hitler's armies crashed across the Soviet frontier signalling the beginning of the Nazi invasion. Gerasimov's investigations showed that Timur had been a tall man for his race and time, lame, as recorded, in his right leg, and with a wound to his right arm. Surprisingly, red hair still clung to the skull from which Gerasimov reconstructed a bronze bust. Eventually Timur's remains were reinterred with full Muslim burial rites, giving truth to the message thundered in Arabic script three metres high from the cylindrical drum of the great conqueror's mausoleum: "Only God is Immortal"."





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words


Share |




"Tamerlane" Quotes from Famous Books



... that General Burgoyne, apart from the farce which incited Mrs. Mercy Warren, was himself a serious dramatist, who took his work seriously, and whose dramas may be obtained at any large reference library. The Red-Coats, as actors, amused their Tory public with such plays as "Tamerlane," "The Busybody," and "Zara;" and when they invaded the Southwark Theatre, around 1777, Major Andre, the presiding genius of the English soldier-actors, turned to good account his ability as a scene-painter, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists - 1765-1819 • Various
... the gutter, on his way to be married to one of the fairest daughters of New England, and at the very hour the bride was decking herself for the altar; and did he not die of delirium tremens, almost unattended, in a hospital? Tamerlane asked for one hundred and sixty thousand skulls with which to build a pyramid to his own honor. He got the skulls, and built the pyramid. But if the bones of all those who have fallen as a prey to dissipation could be piled up, it would make a vaster pyramid. Who will gird himself ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... after him served to like purpose. To the children of Rome in her later days, Attila, the great Hun, was such a bogy, as was Narses, the Byzantian general (d. 568 A.D.), to the Assyrian children. Bogies also were Matthias Corvinus (d. 1490 A.D.), the Hungarian king and general, to the Turks; Tamerlane (Timur), the great Mongolian conqueror (d. 1405 A.D.), to the Persians; and Bonaparte, at the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, in various parts of the continent of Europe. These, and other historical characters have, in part, taken the place of the giants ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... came to the Dewan-i-Khas, and further on to the Dewan-i-Aum, or Hall of Audience. This last, a large building of white marble on the battlements overhanging the River Jumna, was now the headquarters of the General and his staff, and where formerly the descendants of the great warrior Tamerlane held their court, British officers had taken up their abode; and infidels desecrated those halls, where only "true believers" had ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... every means of defence, and animated by high sentiments of honor and fidelity. Towards the close of the campaign, the arms of Sapor incurred some disgrace by an unsuccessful enterprise against Virtha, or Tecrit, a strong, or, as it was universally esteemed till the age of Tamerlane, an impregnable fortress ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... police, but was in no sense independent. Its position in India was analogous to that of British capitalists in America who are operating a mine or factory and have been authorized to police their property. The mighty house of Tamerlane had become a political nonentity, the empire of the Great Mogul was divided among nominal viceroys who were really independent sovereigns, gorgeous but indolent. The teeming millions of India were, for the most part, as unfitted by nature and occupation for the fatigues of ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... wont to dwell on the fact that these victories of what they so oddly called peace were usually purchased at a cost in human life and suffering quite as great as—yes, often greater than—those of so-called war. We have all read of Tamerlane's pyramid at Damascus made of seventy thousand skulls of his victims. It may be said that if the victims of the various inventions connected with the introduction of steam had consented to contribute their skulls to a monument ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... of the Mogul empire in Hindustan, a descendant of Tamerlane; thrice invaded India, and became at length master of it in 1526; left memoirs; his dynasty ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... bunch for some reason or other. Poor devils. They think this is some kind of heaven. They tell me this is easy work compared to the type they had to undergo. The Satheri like to get big bunches through in one conjuration, like the haul they made from the victims of somebody named Tamerlane." He tested a rope, then dropped to a sitting position on the edge of the block. "I'll let you stay up to call signals from here. Only watch it. That overseer has his eyes on you. Make sure the ropes stay tight while we see if the thing can ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... alluding to events or opinions, of which they could not possibly have any knowledge. The barbarians of remote or newly discovered regions often display their skill in European learning. The god of love is mentioned in Tamerlane with all the familiarity of a Roman epigrammatist; and a late writer has put Harvey's doctrine of the circulation of the blood into the mouth of a Turkish statesman, who lived near two centuries before it was known even to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Turkey. My dear, religiously, scrupulously fashionable, exquisitely anxious hearer, fearful lest your wife, or daughter, or sister shall be sullied by looking into your neighbors' faces at the ballot-box, you do not belong to the century that has ballot-boxes. You belong to the century of Tamerlane and Timour the Tartar; you belong to China, where the women have no feet, because it is not meant that they shall walk. You belong anywhere but in America; and if you want an answer, walk down Broadway, and meet a hundred thousand petticoats, and they are a hundred ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... to Mecca. The son of Byram, Khan-khana, or khan of the khans, in conjunction with his friends and allies, is a great curb on Shah Selim, being able to bring into the field upwards of 100,000 horse. Shah Selim affirms himself to be the ninth in lineal male descent from Tamerlane, or Timur the Great, emperor of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... established by conquest, and therefore not likely to be distinguished by any marks of extraordinary mildness towards the conquered. The book before me will prove to your Lordships that the head of this government (who is falsely supposed to have a despotic authority) is absolutely elected to his office. Tamerlane was elected; and Genghis Khan particularly valued himself on improving the laws and institutions of his own country. These laws we only have imperfectly in this book; but we are told in it, and I believe the fact, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of Malic Jemaluddin Firozkohi, a nobleman of high rank and fortune as well as great literary attainments, was born in Sebzwar, A. H. 786. He passed a part of his life at the courts of Baisankar (the son of Shahrukh Mirza, and grandson of Tamerlane) and of his son Abul Kasim Baber, during which time he held appointments of the highest trust and emolument, and was universally caressed. But, taking offense at an expression of Sultan Baber's, which he conceived reflected ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... towns like Hissar and Fatehabad, dug canals from the Jamna and the Sutlej, and carried out many other useful works. On his death the realm fell into confusion. In 1398-99 another appalling calamity fell upon it in the invasion of Timurlang (Tamerlane), Khan of Samarkand. He entered India at the head of 90,000 horsemen, and marched by Multan, Dipalpur, Sirsa, Kaithal, and Panipat to Delhi. What lust of blood was to the Mongols, religious hatred was to Timur and his Turks. Ten thousand ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... framed upon the other Plan, and have ended happily; as indeed most of the good Tragedies, which have been written since the starting of the above-mentioned Criticism, have taken this Turn: As 'The Mourning Bride', 'Tamerlane', 'Ulysses', 'Phaedra' and 'Hippolitus', with most of Mr. Dryden's. [3] I must also allow, that many of Shakespear's, and several of the celebrated Tragedies of Antiquity, are cast in the same Form. I do not therefore dispute against ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... for the serenity of the sky, or what we generally call a fine summer's day; so that, according to this their exposition, the same months are proper for tragedy which are proper for pastoral. Most of our celebrated English tragedies, as Cato, Mariamne, Tamerlane, &c., begin with their observations on the morning. Lee seems to have come the nearest to this ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... great conquests of history were made by such "strong" over such "weak" countries. Such were notably those wars by which Persia, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Spain gained their pre-eminence; and such were the wars by which they later fell. Such were the wars of Ghenghis Khan, Tamerlane, Mahomet, and Napoleon; such were the wars by which most tribes grew to be great nations, and by which as nations they subsequently fell. No greater cause of war has ever existed than a disproportion between countries or ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske


Words linked to "Tamerlane" :   Timur, ruler, swayer, Timur Lenk, Tamburlaine


Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org