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The Witch Doctor President and Other Horrific Rulers

Khalid Elhassan December 25, 2019 32 min

4. History’s Deadliest Ruler

Tamerlane (1336 – 1405) was history’s deadliest ruler, when seen from the perspective of the percentage of the global population of his era that was killed by his depredations. He was the last of the great Eurasian Steppe conquerors to terrify the civilized world through widespread devastation and butchery.

Tamerlane is chiefly remembered for his savagery. His wide-ranging rampage, from India to Russia and the Mediterranean, and points in between, is estimated to have killed about 17 million people, amounting to 5 percent of the world’s population at the time. To put that in perspective, prorating Tamerlane’s figures to 2019’s global population would be the equivalent of killing about 385 million people – a figure exceeding the total victims of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, combined.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.