Timur: life of the week
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Timur, sometimes known as Tamerlane, carved out one of history's largest empires through sweeping military campaigns and ruthless violence. In this episode of the History Extra podcast, I spoke with writer, journalist and historian Justin Morozzi to explore Timur's rise from the Central Asian steppe. his extensive conquests from Delhi to Damascus, and the complicated legacy of a ruler remembered both as a cultural patron and a bloodthirsty tyrannical conqueror. Thank you so much for joining me to talk all about the life of Tim Moore, or, I think as we should probably set up at the start of this episode, many people might know him as Tamilane. Can I ask Justin, why is he known by both of these names, Timur and Tamilane?
Yeah, it's a good point to to deal with straight away. Timur is Turkic Chagaitai language and it means iron basically. So that was his name, Timur. His enemies from a fairly early age gave him this derogatory nickname, Timurilang, which in English is Timur the Lame, and then you go from Timur the lame to Tamilane and Christopher Marlowe's famous play Tambalane. But the fact of the matter is in the West, he's much better known as Tamilane.
But if you speak to people in Central Asia and in the Muslim world generally, they'll they will know him as Timur. So in this episode we may be using them interchangeably because he's known by both. To start this episode, then, why should we know about Timur or Tamilane? I think he's important because for me at least he is one of the three greatest military conquerors and leaders in history. So everyone knows Alexander the Great, everyone's heard of Genghis Khan.
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