2. Tamerlane’s Savagery Was Fiendish Even by the Standards of a Savage Era
Tamerlane sought to justify his conquests with the claim that he was on a mission to reimpose legitimate Mongol rule over lands that had been seized by usurpers. He then then spent 35 years sowing death and destruction far and wide. Among the cities he left depopulated and wrecked were Baghdad in Iraq; Damascus and Aleppo in Syria; Sarai, capital of the Golden Horde, and Ryazan, both in Russia; India’s Delhi, outside whose walls he massacred over 100,000 captives; and Isfahan in Iran, where he massacred 200,000.
Among his atrocities, Tamerlane liked to cement live prisoners into the walls of captured cities, pile up pyramids of severed heads, and erect towers of his victims’ skulls. His greatest victory came at the expense of the Ottoman Turks, a rising power in their own right. Tamerlane and the Ottoman Sultan, Bayezid I, had exchanged insulting for years, until Tamerlane finally showed up and defeated the Ottomans in 1402. Taken captive, Bayezid was humiliated and displayed in a cage at court, while his favorite wife was made to serve Tamerlane and his courtiers, naked.
