The Steppe Conqueror Who Was Even Scarier than Genghis Khan
Tamerlane (1336 – 1405) was the last powerful Eurasian Steppe conquerors to terrify the civilized world. He is chiefly remembered for his savagery, and his wide ranging rampage from India to Russia and the Mediterranean and points in between, killed about 17 million people, or 5 percent of the world’s population back then. If extrapolated to the world’s 2023 estimated population of about 7.95 billion people, it would be the equivalent of almost 400 million deaths. Tamerlane, a Muslim Turko-Mongol who claimed descent from Genghis Khan, was born in the Chagatai Khanate, ruled by Genghis’ descendants, in today’s Uzbekistan. His rise began in 1360, when he led Turkic tribesmen on behalf of the Chagatai Khan. After the Khan’s murder, a struggle for power ensued, at the end of which Tamerlane emerged as the power behind a throne occupied by a figurehead Chagatai puppet through whom Tamerlane ruled.
Tamerlane’s claimed descent from Genghis is dubious. Nonetheless, he claimed that he wanted to restore the Mongol Empire and re-impose legitimate Mongol rule over lands seized by usurpers. He then spent 35 years earning a reputation for savagery. In that period, he brought fire and sword to the lands between the Indus and the Volga, the Himalayas and the Mediterranean. Among the cities he left depopulated and in ruins were Damascus and Aleppo in Syria; Baghdad in Iraq; Sarai, capital of the Golden Horde, and Ryazan, both in Russia; India’s Delhi, outside whose walls he massacred over 100,000 captives; and Isfahan in Iran, where he massacred 200,000 people. Tamerlane piled up pyramids of severed heads, cemented live prisoners into the walls of captured cities, and erected towers of his victims’ skulls as object lessons and to terrorize would-be opponents.