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Tatyana Fominykh · CC BY-SA 4.0
14th–15th century · 1320s–1405
Timur
Temür · Tamerlane · Uzbekistan
Founder of the Timurid Empire
Born in Kesh (today's Shahrisabz), about 80 km south of Samarkand. Around 1370 he took control of the western Chagatai Khanate and went on to defeat the Golden Horde, the Mamluks and other powers, building an empire over today's Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia with Samarkand as its capital. An early wound left him lame, earning him the name 'Timur the Lame', the origin of the Western name 'Tamerlane'. He died in 1405 and is buried in Gur-e-Amir.
Where the story happened
Los lugares que dejó
Historia · Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, Turkistan, Kazakhstan
The mausoleum Timur never finished
Khoja Ahmed Yasawi (1093–1166) was a famous Turkic poet and Sufi mystic. In 1389 Timur ordered his original small mausoleum demolished and a grand new one built. When Timur died in 1405 the work stopped, and the main portal remains unfinished to this day. Even so, it is one of the best-preserved buildings of the Timurid era and pioneered the Timurid architectural style.
Historia · Gur-e-Amir, Samarkand
A tomb built for a grandson became the resting place of three generations
In 1403 Timur's heir and favourite grandson, Muhammad Sultan, died suddenly, and Timur ordered a mausoleum built for him. Two years later Timur himself was buried here, and later his sons Shah Rukh and Miran Shah and his grandson Ulugh Beg were buried here too. During his reign Ulugh Beg placed a single block of dark-green jade on his grandfather's tomb.
Leyenda · Gur-e-Amir, Samarkand
Timur's curse
On 19 June 1941 the Soviet anthropologist Mikhail Gerasimov opened Timur's tomb to study his remains and reconstructed his face from the skull. Legend says the coffin bore the inscription: 'Whoever opens my tomb shall unleash an invader more terrible than I.' People around Gerasimov said this was a made-up story, but by coincidence, three days after the tomb was opened, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
