II.

Rise to Power

In the 14th century Samarqand was at the center of a vast area beset by chronic warfare as the Mongol Empire broke apart. Northeast of the city was the Jagatai khanate (state ruled by a leader known as a khan), in the hands of the quarreling descendants of Jagatai, second son of Genghis Khan. To the southwest were the lands of the descendants of Hulagu, the grandson of Genghis. The Golden Horde, a powerful khanate founded by another grandson of Genghis, ruled much of Russia in the northwest. To the east, on the frontiers of China, were Mongols who had broken away from the Jagatai khanate. The quarrels of all these groups were heightened by ill feeling between the region’s main non-Mongol residents: the Turkic-speaking nomads on the one hand and the Persian-speaking farmers on the other. The nomads were treated as privileged by the Mongol rulers, while the settled population paid most of the taxes.

Tamerlane began his career as a bandit-warrior with only a few companions, who subsisted on stealing sheep from other tribes. In one sheep-stealing raid Tamerlane was wounded in the leg and shoulder. Afterward he could not bend his right knee or lift his right arm, and so he became known as 'the Lame.' Tamerlane had built up his following to several hundred men by 1361, when he declared his allegiance to Tughluq Timur, an invading Mongol who had taken over the Jagatai khanate. Tughluq Timur made him ruler of part of the region around Samarqand. Tughluq Timur soon died, and by 1370—after a power struggle between Tamerlane, Tughluq Timur’s son, and Tamerlane’s brother-in-law—Tamerlane had become the master of Transoxiana. Tamerlane then declared that he had restored the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan and constructed a fictitious genealogy to link his ancestry with Genghis.