The Amir Who Shook the Earth

Tamerlane, the Earth Shaker. By Harold Lamb. (Thornton Butterworth. 10s. 6d.) A MAN of iron . . . " 0 bloody dog named Timur," as

sultan Bayazid impolitely but not inaccurately addressed him . Terrible in wrath, silent and unsmiling always,

utterly loyal to his friends, passionately deVoted to- chess and

pioneer of the complicated " double chess " now becoming poptilar, master strategist, dashing cavalryman, consummate

architect, the lame chieftain who left pyramids of human skulls in the path of his Horde and yet"-made Samarkand n rival' of Rome for beauty and learning is a figure that has mg awaited an interpreter in the West.

Mr. Lamb was well qualified for the task and he has accom- plished it to the admiration of laymen and the confusion of

those hilitoiians who rely on the records Of the Vanquished for-the truth about the Tartars. To attempt to whitewash or extennitte .Tiinur's massacres would be profitless and the author offers no excuse fOr the mounds of severed heads at Tekrit, the Christian knight whoSe torso was catapulted into the fleet that had 'come to 'relieve the siege of Sinyrna, the burying alive of 4,000 Armenians, the 90,000 victims of Baghdad, and all the other holoeausts, from Delhi, which Timur sacked, to Damascus, which he gutted.

But as he camped before Damascus, Timur's keen eyes (they were to fail him later and their lids drooped when he was seventy so that he had the appearance of being always 4.1eep) at once noticed the curious bulbed dome of the great Ommayad Mosque, swelling outward from the base. Its beauty appealed to the mystical nomad strain in his character and when the mosque, which caught fire when he gave orders for the burning of the city, collapsed with the rest he probably felt sorry. In any case he took the plans of it back with him to Samarkand, as he had taken the plans (and artificers) of the Juma Masjid from Delhi, and built magnificent blue- domed tombs for his wife and himself with pomegranate domes. His descendants copied them in India, first in the mausoleum of Humayun and then in the Taj Mahal. So that if Tamerlane had not lived, the crown and glory of Mogul architecture might never have been built by the Juma.

Would America have been discovered when it was, but for Tamerlane ? He had opened the trade mutes to Asia and made them safe and popular. After his death they were blocked by various upheavals and a new way to the Indies had to be found. Columbus sailed. Would Russia have existed as it is, but for Tamerlane ? Moscow was in the grip of the Golden Horde. Tamerlane scattered it like chaff and enabled the Russians to free themselves.

Perhaps this defeat of the Horde, warriors as hardy as his own Tartars, led by Toktamish, trained in the same hard school as Timur himself and formerly a friend and ally, was his greatest military achievement, for he took 90,000 horsemen into the centre of Russia, in winter, and defeated a numerically superior and better mounted enemy. After that, the capture of Persia was child's play. At Ispahan 70,000 persons lost their lives in a piece of deliberate " frightfulness " to punish the citizens for assaults on his soldiers. Shiraz paid ransom quietly and the famous Hafiz was brought before the iron Amir. He had written the following indiscreet verse :—

" If my mistress of Shiraz would take my heart in her hand

I would lay before her feet Bokhara or Samarkand."

Timur; outwardly unsmiling as usual, but with a grim fun that he surely had, inquired why the poet should offer the Tartar capital to a wench of Shiraz. But Hafiz, who was poor as a good poet should be, answered : " My Lord, by reason of that prodigality I have fallen into the plight in which you see Me." He received a handsome purse.

Timur, known to his enemies as " the Lame," and to 'hii followers as " the SpleUdid " was tall, with a massive head and high forehead. HIS beard was long, and his hair turned very white in his prime. He had enormous physical strength, and courage, a versatile mind, and a passion for chess playing. He slept little and rode so hard that on a forced march he left a trail of foundered horses in his wake. His voice was deep and his eyes very bright. According to Ibn Arabshah : - " He WAS not depressed .by misfortune and prosperity did not stir in him any exultation. He carried for device upon his seal two Persian words, Rasti Ransil : Strength 'is in Right He was very taciturn in conversation, and never spoke of slaughter, or Pillage, or the violation of women's sanctuaries. He loved brave soldiers."

Such was _the man who in the first years of the fifteenth century was probably the most powerful monarch in the world. No king in Europe had such riches, such military forces, or such an extent of territory. The (=ea, or red sign-manual of Tamerlane ran from the Mediterranean to India. If he bad lived he would also have conquered China. After out- manoeuvring and soundly trouncing the Turkish Sultan Bayazid at Angora (he who was called " the Thunder " and who defeated the last Crusade at Nicopolis) Tamerlane became a figure of awe and curiosity to the rulers of Europe. " Henry IV. of England wrote to Timur congratulating hint as one sportsman to another on his victory." Charles VI. of France wrote also and sent gifts by a Christian Bishop.

In August, 1404, he was back in Samarkand, then the best planned and most magnificent city in the world, as Tabriz was the greatest (ten times the size of London) with its million inhabitants. A fever of activity seemed to possess his ageing body. There were feasts and festivals, audiences and judgments, and Amir Timur Gurigan sat much alone. playing chess and thinking. He was planning, when over seventy, an invasion of China. In the early winter of 1405 he set out with two hundred thousand men. The great pavilion of the Amir and his guards reached Obrar and here the army halted for a time. On a certain day in March the forward movement had been planned to begin again : moving such a multitude of horses meant making arrangements weeks and even months ahead. The Great North Road to Cathay was thronged with horsemen. The kettledrums roared before Lord Timur's pavilion, his white horse was ready saddled under the yak-tailed standard. But the Lord Timur did not come, for he had died in the night.

Here we must leave him, with regret, paying this tribute to a great personality and a good book. We are sorry to be finished with Timur. Nothing more will probably ever be known of him beyond what Mr. Lamb has so cleverly discovered and so well set forth for us. We shall never know the soul of Thnur ; why he never smiled, nor why after he had wreaked his wrath on a city he should so carefully build it up again.