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The Witch Doctor President and Other Horrific Rulers

Khalid Elhassan December 25, 2019 32 min

1. A Deadly Ghost?

A facial reconstruction of Tamerlane, based on his skull. Wikimedia

Tamerlane’s decades-long rampage finally came to an end in 1405, as he was preparing to invade China. Fortunately for the Chinese, Tamerlane took ill while encamped, and died before launching the campaign. Tamerlane’s grave was reportedly cursed. His body was exhumed by Soviet anthropologists on June 19th, 1941, and carved inside his tomb were the words “When I rise from the dead, the word shall tremble“.

Two days later, the Nazis launched the largest military operation of all time against the USSR, which the Soviets survived only by the skin of their teeth. Just to be on the safe side, in November of 1942, shortly before Operation Uranus which led to the first major Soviet victory at Stalingrad, Tamerlane was reburied with full Islamic ritual.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Abazov, Rafis – Tamerlane and the Timurid Empire in Central Asia (2008)

Biography – Idi Amin

Biography – Pol Pot

Bobrick, Benson – Fearful Majesty: The Life and Reign of Ivan the Terrible (1990)

Clements, Jonathan – The First Emperor of China (2006)

Cooper, Alan D. – The Geography of Genocide (2008)

Encyclopedia Britannica – Ivan the Terrible

Encyclopedia Britannica – Jean-Bedel Bokassa

Encyclopedia of War – Timur “The Lame”, 1336 – 1405

Gonick, Larry – The Cartoon History of the Universe II (1994)

Hinton, Alexander Laban – Why Did They Kill: Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide (2004)

JSTOR – Dark Age: The Political Odyssey of Emperor Bokassa

Lamb, Harold – Genghis Khan: The Emperor of All Men (2015)

Man, John – Attila: The Barbarian King Who Challenged Rome (2009)

Turnbull, Stephen – Genghis Khan and the Mongol Conquests, 1190 – 1400 (2003)

Wikipedia (Spanish) – Francisco Macias Nguema

Wikipedia – Muammar Gaddafi

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.