Tamerlane: The Earth Shaker , livre ebook

Tamerlane: The Earth Shaker
by Harold Lamb

First published in 1928
This edition published by Rare Treasures
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TIMUR. Painted during the Life of the great Amir, when he was about fifty years of age.
Tamerlane


The Earth Shaker






by HAROLD LAMB

To
MY FATHER
“ This is the resting place of the illustriousand merciful monarch, the most great Sultan,the most mighty Warrior, Lord Timur, conquerorof the Earth. ”


INSCRIPTION OVER THE DOOR OF THE
ANTECHAMBER OF TAMERLANE’S TOMB
IN SAMARKAND.

Foreword THE ATTEMPT
F ive hundred and fifty years ago a man tried to makehimself master of the world. In everything he undertookhe was successful. We call him Tamerlane.
In the beginning he was a gentleman of little consequence—masterof no more than some cattle and land in thatbreeding ground of conquerors, Central Asia. Not the sonof a king, as Alexander was, or the heir of a chieftain, likeGenghis Khan. The victorious Alexander had at the outsethis people, the Macedonians, and Genghis Khan had hisMongols. [1] But Tamerlane gathered together a people.
One after the other, he overcame the armies of more thanhalf the world. He tore down cities, and rebuilt them inthe way he wished. Over his roads the caravan trade of twocontinents passed. Under his hands he gathered the wealthof empires, and spent it as he fancied. Out of mountainsummits he made pleasure palaces—in a month. More,perhaps, than any human being within a life he attempted“To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire . . . andthen, Remould it nearer to the heart’s desire.”
Tamerlane he was, and only as Tamerlane is he known tous to-day. In our general histories his empire is called onlyTamerlane’s—although our ancestors of five centuries agospoke of it as Tatary. Vaguely they knew him as a dominantand merciless figure, moving beyond the gates of Europeamong golden tents and towers built of human skulls lightedat night by spirit beacons.

Asia knew him well—both to its pride and its sorrow.And there his enemies said that he was a great grey wolfeating the earth; while his followers called him lion andconqueror.
The blind Milton, pondering the legends of Tamerlane,seems to have drawn from them the sombre colours withwhich he painted the magnificence of his Satan.
And the fantasies of the poets have been followed by thesilence of the historians. Tamerlane could not easily beclassified. He was part of no dynasty—he founded one;he was not, like Attila, one of the barbarians who harriedRome—out there in the limbo of things he built a Rome ofhis own in the desert. He made a throne for himself, buthe spent most of his years in the saddle. And whenhe built he used no previous pattern of architecture;he made a new one according to his own inclination, out ofcliffs and mountain peaks and a solitary dome that he saw inDamascus before he burned that city. This swelling domeof Tamerlane’s fancy has become the motif of Russian design,and is the crown of the Taj Mahal. And the Taj Mahalwas built by one of the Moghuls—Tamerlane’s greatgrandchildren.
History has dealt fully with the Europe of his day. Weknow how Venice was dominated by the Council of Ten,and how Rienzi became the Mussolini of that time, ageneration after the death of Dante. Petrarch was writingthen, and in France the Hundred Years’ War was draggingthrough its sterile course, while Orleanist and Burgundianwrangled with the butchers in Paris, under the indifferenteyes of the half-mad Charles the Sixth. Europe was youngthen, rousing from the darkness of the middle ages. Notyet had the fire of the Renaissance given it brilliance.
And Europe looked to the east for the luxuries of civilization—forlinen and buckram and spice, for silk and iron andsteel and china-ware. Silver and gold and precious stonescame out of the east. By this overland trade Venice andGenoa had grown great; Cordova and Seville in Spain had been built by the Arabs, and the palaces of Granada.Constantinople was half oriental.
There is to-day near a junction of the Trans-Siberianrailway a stone obelisk bearing on one side the wordEuropa and on the other Asia. In Tamerlane’s day thisstone would have been placed some fifty degrees of longitudefarther west, about in the suburbs of Venice. Europeproper would have been no more than a province of Asia.A province of barons and serfs where the cities as a rule wereno more than hamlets and life—so says the chronicler—anaffair of murmuring and misery.
We know the setting of the European scene of thatcentury, but not the man who rose to dominate the world.To those Europeans Tamerlane’s magnificence seemedunearthly and his power demoniac. When he appeared attheir threshold, their kings sent letters and envoys to“Tamburlan the Great, Lord of Tatary.”
Henry IV of England, who had fought beyond the borderwith the Prussian Knights, congratulated the unknownconqueror upon his victories; Charles VI, King of France,sent praise to “The most victorious and serene Prince,Themur.” And the shrewd Genoese raised his standardoutside Constantinople, while the Greek Emperor Manuelappealed to him for aid. The Lord Don Henry, by graceof God King of Castile, dispatched to Tamerlane as envoythe good knight Ruy de Gonzales Clavijo. And Clavijo,following the conqueror to Samarkand, returned to reportin his own way who Tamerlane was.

“Tamerlane, Lord of Samarkand, having conquered allthe land of the Mongols, and India; also having conqueredthe Land of the Sun, which is a great lordship; also havingconquered and reduced to obedience the land of Kharesm;also having reduced all Persia and Media, with the empire ofTabriz and the City of the Sultan; also having conqueredthe Land of Silk, with the land of the Gates; and alsohaving conquered Armenia the Less, and Erzerum, and theland of the Kurds—having conquered in battle the lord of India and taken a great part of his territory: also havingdestroyed the city of Damascus, and reduced the cities ofAleppo, of Babylon and Baghdad; and having overrunmany other lands and lordships and won many battles, andachieved many conquests, he came against the TurkBayazid (who is one of the greatest lords of the world) andgave him battle, conquering him and taking him prisoner.” [2]

Thus said Clavijo, who stood before Tamerlane and sawat his court of Samarkand princesses from the royal familiesof most of the world, and ambassadors from Egypt andChina. He himself as envoy of the Franks was treatedcourteously because “even the smallest fish have their placein the sea.”
In the European pageantry of kings, Tamerlane has beengiven no place; in the pages of history there is only afleeting impression of the terror he aroused. But to themen of Asia he is still The Lord.
After five centuries it is clear to us that he was the last ofthe great conquerors. Napoleon and Bismarck are securein their niches; we know the details of their lives. Butthe one died a failure, and the other triumphed in thepolitical leadership of a single empire. Tamerlane createdan empire, and was successful in every campaign he undertook;he died on the march toward the last power strongenough to oppose him.
To understand what he attempted we must look at theman as he lived. To do this it is necessary to put aside thehistories of Europe, and close our eyes to modern civilization,with its prejudices. And to look at Tamerlanethrough the eyes of the men who rode at his side.
As Clavijo did, we must penetrate the veil of terror andgo beyond the towers of human skulls, past Constantinople,and over the sea into Asia—along the highway of the Landof the Sun, on the road to Samarkand. The time is the yearof Our Lord 1335.
The place is a river.

[1] See Note VIII, p. 260 .

[2] See Note VII, p. 257 .
Part One
CHAPTER I BEYOND THE RIVER
“I t is,” the good knight Clavijo said, “one of the fourrivers that flow out of Paradise. And the country isvery bright, gay and beautiful.”
A cloudless sky overhead—blue ridges of mountains inthe distance, rising to the snow peak that was called theMajesty of Solomon. The rolling foothills were coveredwith meadows, and the streams raced down still cold fromthe chill of the higher ranges. In these uplands sheepgrazed, watched by shepherds on shaggy ponies. Cattleclustered lower down in the lush grass of the glens near thevillages.
The river twisted among masses of limestone. Moresedately it flowed out into a long valley dark with mulberrytrees and the tangle of vineyards. Channels led from it intofields of rice and melons and rolling barley—irrigationditches where creaking wheels raised the water slowly.
They called the river the Amu. And it had been fromtime immemorial the border between Iran and Turan—betweensouth and north. To the south lay Khorassan, theLand of the Sun where the Iranians spoke Persian andcultivated the soil. They were wearers of turbans, gentlefolkand beggars of elder Asia.
Beyond, to the north, lay Turan, out of the depths ofwhich the nomads had come, the cattle-breeding, horse-raisingraces—the helmeted men. Except for the river,there was no frontier. The land to the north of the riverwas called Ma-vara’n-nahr , Beyond the River.
Hither, the traveller crossed the river, to go to Samarkand.He threaded through gullies and a dense oak forest andentered the