Sultan Bayezid Was a Jerk Who Met a Bigger Jerk
Timur’s most dramatic victory came at the expense of the Ottoman Turks. A rising power in their own right, the Ottomans were as exuberantly confident in their prowess as was Timur. For years, heated letters were exchanged between Timur and Ottoman Sultan Bayezid, until Timur finally showed up with his army in 1402, crushed Bayezid, and imprisoned him. To humiliate his prisoner, Timur kept him in a cage at court, while Bayezid’s favorite wife was made to serve the victor and his courtiers, naked.
Timur’s decades-long rampage finally ended in 1405. As he prepared to invade China, he took ill, and died before he could launch the campaign. His grave was reportedly cursed. His body was exhumed by Soviet anthropologists on June 19th, 1941. Carved inside his tomb were the words “When I rise from the dead, the word shall tremble“. Two days later, the Nazis launched the largest military operation of all time against the USSR. The Soviets survived only by the skin of their teeth. Just to be on the safe side, in November, 1942, shortly before Operation Uranus which led to the first major Soviet victory at Stalingrad, Timur was reburied with full Islamic rituals.