Overview
The Timurid Empire (1370–1507) was founded by Timur — known in the West as Tamerlane — a Turco-Mongol conqueror from Transoxiana who claimed Genghisid legitimacy through marriage and made Samarkand his capital. The paradox of the era is destruction followed by brilliance: Timur dragged artisans from conquered cities to Samarkand, and under his successors the arts flowered in what is often called the Timurid Renaissance.
Key developments
Timur’s campaigns, which lasted until 1405, devastated a vast arc from Iran and the Golden Horde to Delhi (1398), Damascus and Baghdad (1401), and Ankara (1402), where he captured the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I; the sources are filled with massacres and pyramid-of-skulls stories, though their figures are unreliable. He died in 1405 while marching on Ming China. His successors turned to patronage: Shahrukh ruled at Herat with his wife Gawhar Shad, while at Samarkand the ruler-astronomer Ulugh Beg built an observatory whose star catalog was among the finest of the era. In late Timurid Herat under Sultan Husayn Bayqara, the painter Behzad, the poet Jami, and Mir Ali Shir Nava’i led a flowering of Chagatai Turkic letters.
End and transition
In Iran proper, Timurid control shrank after mid-century against the Turkoman confederations of the Qara Qoyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu. The Uzbeks then took Samarkand in 1500 and Herat in 1507, ending the dynasty. Its great sequel came in India, where the Timurid prince Babur went on to found the Mughal Empire.