10 Things You Never Knew About Timur: One of History’s Biggest Monsters

10 Things You Never Knew About Timur: One of History’s Biggest Monsters

Patrick Lynch - February 7, 2018

10 Things You Never Knew About Timur: One of History’s Biggest Monsters
Depiction of Timur in Baghdad – Illustrations of Costume & Soldiers

5 – Butchery at Baghdad

When he conquered Baghdad, Timur once again indulged in his favored passions: Mainly, massacring resistance and creating pyramids out of skulls. By 1399, Timur and his army had already conquered an incredible amount of territory, but he was far from being finished. It is impossible to say how much he could have conquered had he stayed alive for another decade, although it is worth noting that he was possibly in his mid-seventies when he died and was certainly in his late sixties.

After taking Delhi, Timur’s next goal was to gain territory in the Levant, and he began this particular campaign by starting a war with the Ottoman Sultan, Bayezid I, and the Egyptian Mamluk Sultan, Nasir-ad-Din-Faraj in 1399. Along the way, he invaded Georgia and Armenia, capturing an estimated 60,000 people and using them as slaves. Then, he moved onto Syria where he plundered Aleppo and Damascus. Unlike in previous campaigns where everyone died, Timur spared artisans who were deported to the capital of the Empire, Samarkand.

By the time he reached Baghdad and encountered resistance in 1401, Timur was in no mood to show mercy. Once the city had been captured, an estimated 20,000 citizens were murdered. As was the case in previous campaigns, Timur demanded that each man reached a quota. In this instance, they had to bring back at least two severed heads. What happened next clearly illustrated the fear Timur put into his men. When they ran out of people to slay, they resorted to killing prisoners they had previously captured. Then, they began beheading their own wives in a desperate attempt to placate their leader. Some sources claim there were 90,000 people executed and their skulls created 120 towers in the city.

When Timur defeated Bayezid and took him, prisoner, he decided to invade Western Anatolia. In the meantime, the leader of the Kara Koyunlu dynasty, Qara Yusuf, attacked and captured Baghdad in 1402. Timur, never a man to take anything lying down, quickly made his way back to Persia to regain the city. He ordered his grandson (which shows you how old Timur was at this stage) Abu Bakr ibn Miran Shah to recapture the city and the young commander was successful in his mission.

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