The plunder and slaves from the cities sacked by Temür’s troops flowed back to adorn and enrich his ‘capital’ at Samarqand. Temür’s policy was one of indirect rule: he replaced his vanquished enemies with princes – usually from the same dynasty – who would act as his dutiful subordinates, furnishing troops for his campaigns and guaranteeing the payment of tribute. We have seen how he intervened, too, in the politics of the Blue Horde, where he promoted his client Toqtamish, and was drawn into attacks on the Golden Horde when Toqtamish turned against him. By 1370, when he broke with ?usayn and overthrew him, Temür had become the paramount figure in the western Chaghadayid polity.ĭuring the next few decades, Temür welded the Chaghadayid nomads into a more effective war-machine by gradually transferring administrative offices and military command from the old tribal leaders to men chosen from his own personal following.8 To cement his authority over the military, he led them in successful expeditions against external enemies: the khans of Mughalistan the successor dynasties that had arisen from the débris of the Ilkhanate the Sultanate of Delhi, which had defied numerous Chaghadayid attacks in the past and the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria. It was in the course of a local conflict in eastern Persia, where the two men had taken temporary refuge, that Temür received the wounds which partially disabled him and gave rise to his sobriquet ‘the Lame’ (Persian, -i lang Turkish, aksak). Temür belonged to the ruling clan of the Turkicized Mongol tribe of the Barlas, which occupied the pasturelands around Shahr-i Sabz (Kish) in Transoxiana.7 In the upheavals which followed the murder of the leading warlord and khan-maker, Qazaghan, in 1358, he first collaborated with the Chaghadayid khan of Mughalistan, who invaded and briefly subdued Transoxiana in 1361–2 and then allied with Qazaghan’s grandson ?usayn in order to defeat and expel the invaders. This region was popularly called Mughalistan (‘Mongolia’), though to their western neighbours in Transoxiana, its Mongol inhabitants were known as Jata (allegedly ‘robbers’).6 In the east, by contrast, where Islam was only beginning to make any headway, the Chaghadayid khans retained real power and their lifestyle was characteristically that of the steppe nomad. Here Islam had made significant advances, and the rulers were semi-sedentarized.
ALCATRA DE POLVO A MODA DA TERCEIRA SERIES
In the western part, comprising Transoxiana, the tribal amirs disputed power in the name of a series of feeble and ephemeral khans belonging to the lines of Chaghadai and (sometimes) of Ögödei.
The year was highly emblematic: it had witnessed the death of the last undisputed Ilkhan, Abu Sa?id, the effective collapse of the Ilkhanate and the division of its territories among a number of largely non-Mongol dynasties.2 Temür and his political opponents within the Mongol world acted out their lives on a stage dominated by the figure of Chinggis Khan.3 He and his historians believed (or wanted others to believe) that he was engaged in the restoration of Chinggis Khan’s world-empire.4 Temür’s own origins lay not in Ilkhanid Persia but in the Chaghadayid khanate in Central Asia, the territory known to Western Europeans as Medium Imperium, ‘the Middle Empire’, or (much less accurately) as Media and Imperium Medorum.5 The history of this polity is ill-documented and more obscure than that of any of the other Mongol states, but it seems that from c.1347 it was split into two khanates. Although those who wrote about Temür’s career during his lifetime gave no date for the conqueror’s birth, a convention among his later biographers would place it in 736 H./1335–6.
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