Timur the Great and the Central Asian Empire You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
West of China and India, south of Russia, and east of Turkey and Iraq lies a stretch of land that is currently occupied by Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. The area that these nations occupy roughly correspond with one of the largest and most impressive central Asian Empires the world has ever seen. The common English name is “The Timurid Empire,” but the so-called Timurids referred to themselves as the Gurkani, so that is the name I will be using throughout the remainder of this piece.
The Gurkani Empire was partially the product of the creation and subsequent retraction of the Mongol Empire. While Genghis Khan and his various generals created the largest land empire in history, that empire was receding and splintering within a few generations of the great Khan’s death. Such times created opportunities for ambitious men with sufficient charisma to attract personal armies. One such ambitious man was Timur, who is remembered by history as Timur the Great.
Considering himself a potential successor to his father-in-law Genghis Khan, Timur sought to emulate the great Khan at every opportunity. He was a brilliant field commander, a ruthless political operator, a master of strategy, and a maestro who orchestrated a reign of terror replete with nightmarish cruelty and unspeakable atrocities. While fear kept the various branches of his empire in line, it is hard to argue with his results on the battlefield.
Timur the Great seems to have possessed a keen understanding for the power inherent in the conditions of any given battlefield. Numbers were an advantage, of course, but not as much as position, morale, and readiness to fight. He once famously remarked, “It is better to be on hand with ten men than absent with ten thousand.”
One of his most impressive battlefield achievements occurred at the battle of Ankara. Although the Ottoman army he faced held a strong defensive position in the mountains of Asia Minor, his troops prevailed against them partly by cutting off a supply of fresh water by diverting a river. Timur’s army not only won the battle, but also managed to capture Sultan Bayezid I. No other person in world history, before or since, has ever captured an Ottoman Sultan in battle. Throughout the next twelve years, the Ottoman Empire was in disarray as the sons of Bayezid fought a series of civil wars against one another in an attempt to claim succession for themselves. The unfortunate sultan later died in captivity.
Timur died in 1405 while on the march. This time he was determined to expand eastward and was about to go toe-to-toe with Ming Dynasty China. After his death, the empire which he founded was thrown briefly into confusion as two of his sons raised armies and fought against one another for control of the Gurkani nation. When the dust settled, his youngest son Shahrukh came out on top and ruled as Sultan.
The government of the Gurkani Empire was a sort of hybrid creation with elements of both nomadic steppe confederations and central Asian urban bureaucracies. The upper echelon of executive leadership were generally Turko-Mongol nobility who descended from followers of either Genghis Khan or Timur. The bureaucracy that arose, however, was primarily Persian and it spread gradually throughout the rest of the empire.
In order to assuage ethnic rivalry between themselves and the many ethnic groups they governed, the Turko-Mongol rulers of the Gurkani Empire converted to Islam and branded themselves as ghazis, or holy warriors. Thus the Gurkani rulers would frequently engage in military campaigns against Christian factions in the Caucasus like the Kingdom of Georgia.
However, there are some significant differences between creating an expansive land empire through conquest and being able to actually manage said empire. The Gurkani Empire was full of many different ethnic groups, different expressions of Islam, and no shortage of contradictory internal political and social pressures that threatened to split it apart. Next time, we will explore the middle period of the Gurkani Empire, when the Turko-Mongol rulers would be challenged by a host of different forces, both external and internal.
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