Rise from Transoxiana

The last great conqueror of the steppe was born in 1336 near the city of Kesh in Transoxiana — the land between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, modern Uzbekistan — into the Barlas, a Turco-Mongol tribe that had settled in the region during the Mongol conquest. His world was the wreckage of the Mongol Empire: the once-mighty Chagatai Khanate had fragmented into warring factions, and Central Asia was a patchwork of tribal warlords, each claiming some thread of Genghisid legitimacy.

In his youth, Timur was wounded by arrows that crippled his right leg and withered his right arm — injuries that earned him the Persian epithet Timur-e Lang, 'Timur the Lame,' corrupted in Europe to 'Tamerlane.' These disabilities did nothing to diminish his ferocity, his political cunning, or his physical endurance in the saddle. Through a decade of shifting alliances, betrayals, marriages, and small wars, he clawed his way to dominance over the other Barlas chiefs and their rivals.

His decisive break came in 1370, when he turned on his brother-in-law and former ally, Amir Husayn, besieged him in Balkh, and had him killed. At a kurultai convened in Balkh, Timur was proclaimed sovereign — though he carefully refrained from taking the title of Khan, which was reserved for those of Genghis Khan's bloodline. Instead, he ruled as 'Amir' and maintained puppet Chagatai khans as figureheads, marrying into the Genghisid line to bolster his legitimacy.

From his capital of Samarkand, Timur now embarked on the conquest of all the lands that had once belonged to the Chagatai Khanate and beyond. By 1380 he had subdued Khwarezm to the north, destroying the great city of Urgench, and had begun to extend his reach into Persia, Afghanistan, and the Caucasus. The pattern was already established: those who submitted were spared and absorbed; those who resisted, or who submitted and then rebelled, were annihilated with a ferocity that would make Timur's name a byword for terror across three continents.