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Tamerlane   Listen
proper noun
Tamerlane  n.  A Tatar conquerer, also called Timur or Timour or Timur Bey, also Timur-Leng or Timur-i-Leng ('Timur the Lame'), which was corrupted to Tamerlane. He was born in Central Asia, 1333, a member of the Barslas, a Turkish Mongol tribe which had converted to Islam. He died 1405. Though he claimed descent from Jenghiz Khan, it is believed that he was in fact descended from a follower of the Khan. By 1370, Tamerlane, a renowned warrior, began consolidating his power among the various nomadic tribes of Central Asia by conquering the entire region. He became a ruler about 1370 of a realm whose capital was Samarkand; conquered Persia, Central Asia, and in 1398 a great part of India, including Delhi; waged war with the Turkish Sultan Bajazet I. (Beyazid), whom he defeated at Ankara in 1402 and took prisoner; and died while preparing to invade China. By the end of his life in 1405, after 35 years of campaigns and wars that left hundreds of thousands dead and enslaved, he had successfully defeated Ottoman Turks, Hindus, The Golden Horde, and other peoples and controlled an empire stretching from the Aegean to the River Ganges and threatened the trembling Kingdoms of Europe and the Eastern Roman Empire. He is the Tamerlaine of the plays. "Just at the moment when the Sultan (Bajazet) seemed to have attained the pinnacle of his ambition, when his authority was unquestioningly obeyed over the greater part of the Byzantine Empire in Europe and Asia, when the Christian states were regarding him with terror as the scourge of the world, another and greater scourge came to quell him, and at one stroke all the vast fabric of empire which Bayezid (Beyazid) had so triumphantly erected was shattered to the ground. This terrible conquerer was Timur the Tatar, or as we call him, "Tamerlane". Timur was of Turkish race, and was born near Samarkand in 1333. He was consequently an old man of 70 when he came to encounter Bayezid in 1402. It had taken him many years to establish his authority over a portion of the numerous divisions into which the immense empire of Chingiz Khan had fallen after the death of that stupendous conqueror. Timur was but a petty chief among many others: but at last he won his way and became ruler of Samarkand and the whole province of Transoxiana, or 'Beyond the River' (Ma-wara-n-nahr) as the Arabs called the country north of the Oxus. Once fairly established in this province, Timur began to overrun the surrounding lands, and during thirty years his ruthless armies spread over the provinces of Asia, from Delhi to Damascus, and from the Sea of Aral to the Persian Gulf. The subdivision of the Moslem Empire into numerous petty kingdoms rendered it powerless to meet the overwhelming hordes which Timur brought down from Central Asia. One and all, the kings and princes of Persia and Syria succumbed, and Timur carried his banners triumphantly as far as the frontier of Egypt, where the brave Mamluk Sultans still dared to defy him. He had so far left Bayezid unmolested; partly because he was too powerful to be rashly provoked, and partly because Timur respected the Sultan's valorous deeds against the Christians: for Timur, though a wholesale butcher, was very conscientious in matters of religion, and held that Bayezid's fighting for the Faith rightly covered a multitude of sins." Note: Timour, Timur, or TAMERLANE, was the second of the great conquerers whom central Asia sent forth in the middle ages, and was born at Kesh, about 40 miles southeast of Samarkand, April 9, 1336. His father was a Turkish chieftain and his mother claimed descent from the great Genghis-Khan. When he became tribal chieftain, Timour helped the Amir Hussein to drive out the Kalmucks. Turkestan was thereupon divided between them, but soon war broke out between the two chiefs, and the death of Hussein in battle made Timour master of all Turkestan. He now began his career of conquest, overcoming the Getes, Khiva and Khorassin, after storming Herat. His ever-widening circle of possessions soon embraced Persia, Mesopotamia, Georgia, and the Mongol state, Kiptchak. He threatened Moscow, burned Azoo, captured Delhi, overran Syria, and stormed Bagdad, which had revolted. At last, July 20, 1402, Timour met the Sultan Bajazet of the Ottoman Turks, on the plains of Ankara, captured him and routed his army, thus becoming master of the Turkish empire. He took but a short rest at his capital, Samarkand, and in his eagerness to conquer China, led his army of 200,000 across the Jaxartes on the ice, and pushed rapidly on for 300 miles, when his death, Feb. 18, 1405, saved the independence of China. Though notorious for his acts of cruelty he may have slaughtered 80,000 in Delhi he was a patron of the arts. In his reign of 35 years, this chief of a small tribe, dependent on the Kalmucks, became the ruler of the vast territory stretching from Moscow to the Ganges. A number of writings said to have been written by Timour have been preserved in Persian, one of which, the Institutions, has been translated into English. Note: There is a story about an incident when an archaeologist opened Timur's tomb at the Gur-Amir mausoleum in Samarkand, which was erected in 1404. Timur and several of his descendants, including Ulugh Beg, are interred in that magnificent structure in the south-western side of Samarkand. In the mausoleum, mosaics made out of light- and dark-blue glazed bricks decorate the walls and the drum, and the tiled geometrical designs of the cupola shine brightly in the sun. Restoration work was started in 1967; the exterior cupola and glazed decorations were restored before that, in the 1950s. The mausoleum holds tombstones made of marble and onyx, the tombstone of Timur is carved from a slab of nephrite. The burials proper are placed in a crypt under the mausoleum. In 1941, a distinguished Soviet scientist, M. Gerasimov, received permission to exhume Tamerlane's body. On June 22, 1941, working in the Samarkand crypt, he opened the sarcophagus to study the body and found the inscription: "Whoever opens this will be defeated by an enemy more fearsome than I". Hours later, Hitler invaded Russia. Five weeks after the great Emir was reinterred in 1942, the Germans surrendered at Stalingrad. Examination of the remains in Timur's tomb confirmed that the body was tall, as was reported in the histories, and had been wounded in the leg and arm. The actual inscription on the tomb has been reported variously: "He whomsoever shall disturb the earthly resting place of Timur-i-Lenk (Tamerlane), then his country shall suffer such terrible retribution as the Hand of Allah shall visit upon it." "When I rise, the World will Tremble". "Timur's Legacy: The Architecture of Samarkand Let he who doubt Our power and munificence look upon Our buildings Amir Timur, 1379 AD Timur, better known in the West as Tamerlane from his nickname Timur-i-leng or "Timur the Lame", was the last of the great nomadic warriors to sweep out of Central Asia and shake the world. As befits a man styled "World Conqueror", we know a lot about him and not all of it good. In 1336, at Shakhrisabz in present-day Uzbekistan, the wife of a minor chief of the Mongol Barlas clan gave birth to a son with blood-filled palms, a sure omen that the infant was predestined to cause the death of many. He was given an appropriate name Timur means "iron" in Turkish and raised in the Turkic-Islamic tradition of the surrounding steppe as a rider, archer and swordsman. Even by the harsh standards of the Mongol hordes, Timur excelled. Before he was twenty years old he had attracted a band of followers with whom he ranged across the steppe raiding caravans and rustling horses. In 1360 his skills as a commander were rewarded when he was recognised as chief of the Barlas clan. Over the next ten years he steadily extended his influence over Transoxiana the region between the Oxus and Jaxartes Rivers centred on present-day Uzbekistan acquiring wounds to his right arm and leg in the process, and hence his nickname. In 1370 he conquered Turkistan, the last surviving Mongol Khanate, and declared himself Amir or "Commander". He made the Silk Road city of Samarkand his capital, and then embarked on a series of military conquests that rocked Asia and Europe to their very foundations. For 35 years Timur's forces ranged far and wide, repeatedly sweeping across Central Asia, Iran, Turkey and northern India. In 1405 Timur was preparing his greatest expedition ever, aimed at conquering China, when he was struck down by fever. Despite the best efforts of his doctors, to the sound of massive thunderclaps and "foaming like a camel dragged backwards by the rein", Timur finally succumbed. The Ming Emperor must have breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief when he eventually heard the news. Historians estimate that Timur, who personally led his forces as far afield as Moscow and Delhi, may have been responsible for the death of as many as 15 million people. Yet he made little attempt to consolidate his conquests, preferring to mount regular, devastating attacks against his neighbours before returning to his native Transoxiana. As a consequence, the dynasty he established proved to be short-lived, though in 1526 Timur's great, great, great grandson Babur restored the family fortunes by conquering Delhi and founding the resplendent Mogul Empire. Timur must have been an enigma to his contemporaries. Brutal and utterly ruthless, he was nevertheless a man of culture. He is said to have been illiterate, but fluent in Turkish and Persian. Sources speak of his sharp wit and hunger for knowledge. When not out and about slaughtering his neighbours, he indulged in passionate debate with scholars of history, medicine and astronomy. He enjoyed playing chess. Above all, he seems to have loved his capital, Samarkand, and he spent much time between campaigns embellishing this previously undistinguished city. To help in this great enterprise, he plundered cities like Damascus, Baghdad, Isfahan and Delhi not just for the loot, but for their skilled artisans, who were brought back to make Samarkand a city worthy of the "World Conqueror". As a consequence the warlike Timur's most lasting and unlikely legacy remains the unsurpassed architectural jewel of Central Asia. With Timur's death Transoxiana began a long period of decline, culminating in gradual Russian conquest during the 19th century. Samarkand had long been inaccessible to outsiders because of the xenophobia and religious bigotry of the ruling amirs. This situation was compounded in 1920, when the Red Army seized control of the region and began a process of Sovietisation. In 1924 Samarkand was included within the frontiers of the new Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, and a curtain of silence fell across the region with Westerners, in particular, being rigorously excluded. Only in the 1980s did the veil begin to rise, and then within a few short years the former USSR disintegrated, resulting in the birth of independent Uzbekistan in 1991. Although ruled by a suspicious and innately cautious former Soviet aparatchik, Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan is today slowly opening to foreign tourism. It should do well. The cities of Bukhara and Khiva, together with Timur's capital at Samarkand, are truly magnificent. In places, it's as though time stood still. It didn't of course. The Soviets worked long and hard to restore what remained of Timurid Samarkand, and Uzbekistan stands to benefit greatly as a result. Moreover, the process continues apace, both in spiritual terms Timur is now an Uzbek national hero and at a more mundane level. Everywhere the chip of stonemasons' hammers is to be heard, and a whole new generation of skilled craftsmen is being trained to restore the architectural legacy of the "Iron Limper". The historic heart of Samarkand is the Registan, an open square dominated by three great madrassa, or Islamic colleges. George Curzon, later to become Viceroy of India, visited in 1899 and was moved enough to describe the Registan as "the noblest public square in the world". He continues: "No European spectacle can be adequately compared to it, in our inability to point to an open space in any western city that is commanded on three of its four sides by Gothic cathedrals of the finest order". The architecture is distinctively Timurid, being characterised by an extraordinarily lavish use of colour, especially emerald, azure, deep blue and gold. The great domes are fluted, the vast porticoes richly decorated with corkscrew columns and intricately-patterned glazed tiles. Astonishingly, the fa?ade of the Shir Dor Madrassa on the east side of the square is decorated with half-tiger, half-lion creatures stalking deer, whilst a blazing sun with a human face rises behind the beast of prey's back. In Islam, such representational art is generally forbidden, and it is wonderful that these clearly heretical images have survived through the long centuries since they were created. Samarkand let alone Uzbekistan has too many Timurid gems to describe in one short article, but after the Registan, the monumental Bibi Khanum Mosque is perhaps the most extraordinary sight in the city. Built for Timur's chief wife, Saray Mulk Khanum, this magnificent building was financed by the plunder brought back from Delhi in 1398; it is said that 95 elephants were used in hauling marble for the mosque. On Bibi Khanum's completion a chronicler was moved to write: "Its dome would have been unique had it not been for the heavens, and unique would have been its portal had it not been for the Milky Way". Even so, historians have shown that in his plans for the Bibi Khanum, Timur's vision exceeded the architectural possibilities of the time. Quite simply, the lofty iwan (portico) and the towering minarets were too ambitious for the technology of the time especially in a land prone to violent earthquakes. By all accounts, parts of the giant mosque began to collapse within months of its consecration. Today all three massive azure domes have been restored, and work still continues, though this time with ferro-concrete supports hidden behind the elaborate glazed tilework, on the lofty iwan and minarets. When the restoration is complete in around 2002, Uzbekistan will have yet another architectural marvel to draw visitors. Finally and fittingly we turn to the Gur-i Amir, or "Tomb of the Ruler", Timur's own last resting place. This fabulous structure, which was completed in 1404, is dominated by the octagonal mausoleum and its peerless fluted dome, azure in colour, with 64 separate ribs. Within lie the remains not only of Timur, but also of various members of his family, including his grandson the scholar-king Ulugh Beg. Timur's tomb is protected by a single slab of jade, said to be the largest in the world. Brought back by Ulugh Beg from Mongolia in 1425, it was broken in half in the 18th century by the Persian ruler Nadir Shah, who tried to remove it from the chamber. Carved into the jade is an inscription in Arabic: "When I rise, the World will Tremble". Coincidence, no doubt, but on the night of June 22, 1941, the Russian Scientist M. Gerasimov began his exhumation of Timur's remains. Within hours Hitler's armies crashed across the Soviet frontier signalling the beginning of the Nazi invasion. Gerasimov's investigations showed that Timur had been a tall man for his race and time, lame, as recorded, in his right leg, and with a wound to his right arm. Surprisingly, red hair still clung to the skull from which Gerasimov reconstructed a bronze bust. Eventually Timur's remains were reinterred with full Muslim burial rites, giving truth to the message thundered in Arabic script three metres high from the cylindrical drum of the great conqueror's mausoleum: "Only God is Immortal"."





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Tamerlane" Quotes from Famous Books



... Laureate Rowe was simultaneous with that of George I. His immediate claim to the honor dated back to the year 1702, when his play of "Tamerlane" had caught the popular fancy, and proved of vast service to the ministry at a critical moment in stimulating the national antipathy to France. The effect was certainly not due to artistic nicety or refinement. King ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... But such a showing can never be made; that page of history has never yet been written that records it. On these subjects, his history is as blank as that of the horse or the beaver. But we are not yet done with Ham's descendants. The great Turko-Tartar generals, Timour, Ghenghis Kahn and Tamerlane, the latter called in history, the scourge of God—the Saracenic general, the gallant, the daring, the chivalrous, the noble Saladin, he who led the Paynim forces of Mahomet, against the lion-hearted Richard, in the war of the Crusades, ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne
... fashionable, exquisitely anxious hearer, fearful lest your wife, or daughter, or sister shall be sullied by looking into your neighbors' faces at the ballot-box, you do not belong to the century that has ballot-boxes. You belong to the century of Tamerlane and Timour the Tartar; you belong to China, where the women have no feet, because it is not meant that they shall walk. You belong anywhere but in America; and if you want an answer, walk down Broadway, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... ... See, from afar off, how the valiant few Of old, each with a helmet on his head, Practiced their inconclusive feud Upon no battlefield of unfeeling dew— But on the prostrate stillness of the multitude! Even their knightliest prowess they must rear, Tamerlane, Alexander, Arthur, every king, Upon the common clay from which they spring. For see how slaves, on whom war falls, renew The strength of war and disappear Year after year Into the earth—fulfilling it to form and bear Democracy! Look nearer ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... less robust character, the enthusiast in him too far obscuring the organizer and commander. The Church is the thing to look at, rather than its leaders, when we consider duration—the soil rather than the plough. Why has Mohammed's creation lasted longer and spread wider than that of Charlemagne or Tamerlane? And is Smith's to have the like fortune, or to die out like those ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... year the scene of conspiracies, treasons, revolutions, parricides. Meanwhile a rapid succession of Alarics and Attilas passed over the defenceless empire. A Persian invader penetrated to Delhi, and carried back in triumph the most precious treasures of the House of Tamerlane. The Afghan soon followed by the same track, to glean whatever the Persian had spared. The Jauts established themselves on the Jumna. The Seiks devastated Lahore. Every part of India, from Tanjore to the Himalayas, was laid under contribution by the Mahrattas. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... purpose. To the children of Rome in her later days, Attila, the great Hun, was such a bogy, as was Narses, the Byzantian general (d. 568 A.D.), to the Assyrian children. Bogies also were Matthias Corvinus (d. 1490 A.D.), the Hungarian king and general, to the Turks; Tamerlane (Timur), the great Mongolian conqueror (d. 1405 A.D.), to the Persians; and Bonaparte, at the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, in various parts of the continent of Europe. These, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... Caligula was as cruel as her father. Marcus Aurelius inherited the virtues of his mother, and Commodus the vices of his. Charlemagne shut his eyes upon the faults of his daughters, because they recalled his own. Genghis-Khan, the renowned Asiatic conqueror, had for his mother a warlike woman. Tamerlane, the greatest warrior of the fourteenth century, was descended from Genghis-Khan by the female side. Catherine de Medicis was as crafty and deceitful as her father, and more superstitious and cruel. She had two ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... horse, whose arched forehead and peculiar mouse-color proclaimed his unmistakable descent from the swift hordes that scour the Kirghise steppes, and sanctioned the whim which induced his master to call him "Tamerlane." As Mr. Murray approached his horse, Edna walked away toward the house, fearing that he might overtake her; but no sound of hoofs reached her ears, and looking back as she crossed the avenue and entered the flower-garden, she saw horse and rider standing where ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... smooth as a mill-pond, though the leaden masses of cloud flying overhead and the muffled roar of the gale told eloquently of the unpleasant state affairs prevailing outside. Two whale-ships lay here—the TAMERLANE, of New Bedford, and the CHANCE, of Bluff Harbour. I am bound to confess that there was a great difference is appearance between the Yankee and the colonial—very much in favour of the former. She was neat, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... Firozkohi, a nobleman of high rank and fortune as well as great literary attainments, was born in Sebzwar, A. H. 786. He passed a part of his life at the courts of Baisankar (the son of Shahrukh Mirza, and grandson of Tamerlane) and of his son Abul Kasim Baber, during which time he held appointments of the highest trust and emolument, and was universally caressed. But, taking offense at an expression of Sultan Baber's, which he conceived reflected on his father, he quitted the court in disgust, and passed ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... as won for Poe the enthusiastic admiration of Charles Dickens, although they made him many enemies among the over-puffed minor American writers so mercilessly exposed by him; such poems of beauty and melody as "The Bells," "The Haunted Palace," "Tamerlane," "The City in the Sea" and "The Raven." What delight for the jaded senses of the reader is this enchanted domain of wonder-pieces! What an atmosphere of beauty, music, color! What resources of imagination, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Princes who, on the transfer of the sceptre of Tamerlane to the East India Company, became tributaries or rather slaves to that Honorable body, none seems to have been treated with more capricious cruelty than Cheyte Sing, the Rajah of Benares. In defiance of a solemn treaty, entered into between him ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... so bewildering a resemblance to the ruins of a gigantic city which had once been surrounded by strong walls and been full of temples and splendid buildings, that one is almost tempted to see in them memorials of the exploits of a Tamerlane or a Chingis Khan, up here in the ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... years old, mounted the tributary throne of Muscovy in 1462, the power of the Tartars, who for nearly two centuries and a half domineered over Russia, had visibly declined. Tamerlane, at the head of fresh swarms from the deserts of Asia, had stricken the Golden Horde which still held Russia in subjection; and having pursued its sovereign, Ioktamish Khan, into the steppes of Kiptchak and Siberia, turned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... and Venetians, the family of Courtenay and its pleasant digression. Then comes the slow agony of the restored Greek empire. Threatened by the Moguls, it is invaded and dismembered by the Ottoman Turks. Constantinople seems ready to fall into their hands. But the timely diversion of Tamerlane produces a respite of half a century. Nothing can be more artistic than Gibbon's management of his subject as he approaches its termination. He, who is such a master of swift narrative, at this point introduces ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... found their sympathies all on the side of peace and the preservation of the Union. Their uncle was for keeping the Union unbroken, and ran for the Convention against Colonel Richards, who was the chief officer of the militia in the county, and was as blood-thirsty as Tamerlane, who reared the pyramid of skulls, and as hungry for military renown as the great Napoleon, about whom the ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... sentiments of honor and fidelity. Towards the close of the campaign, the arms of Sapor incurred some disgrace by an unsuccessful enterprise against Virtha, or Tecrit, a strong, or, as it was universally esteemed till the age of Tamerlane, an impregnable fortress of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Hissar and Fatehabad, dug canals from the Jamna and the Sutlej, and carried out many other useful works. On his death the realm fell into confusion. In 1398-99 another appalling calamity fell upon it in the invasion of Timurlang (Tamerlane), Khan of Samarkand. He entered India at the head of 90,000 horsemen, and marched by Multan, Dipalpur, Sirsa, Kaithal, and Panipat to Delhi. What lust of blood was to the Mongols, religious hatred was to Timur and his Turks. ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... syl.), a Greek prince, betrothed to Arpasia, whom for the nonce he called his sister. Both were taken captive by Baj'azet. Bajazet fell in love with Arpasia, and gave Mon[e]s[^e]s a command in his army. When Tamerlane overthrew Bajazet, Mon[e]s[^e]s explained to the Tartar king how it was that he was found in arms against him, and said his best wish was to serve Tamerlane. Bajazet now hated the Greek, and, as ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... is the Mohammedan, with the crescent of Islam; then a negro slave, and then a Mongolian warrior, the ancient inhabitant of the sandy waste, a type of those Tartar hordes which swept Asia under Tamerlane and Genghis Khan. On the left of the Indian elephant are an Arab falconer, an Egyptian mounted on a camel and bearing a Moslem standard, then a negro slave bearing a basket of fruit on his head, and a sheik from the deserts of Arabia, all representing the Mohammedans of the nearer ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... as gunpowder is power; a dangerous invention which blew up the inventor. It requires to be wisely managed. English experience will tell you, more to the purpose, that 'perseverance is power;' for with it, all things can be done, without it nothing. I remember, in the history of Tamerlane, an incident which, to me, has always had the force of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... life on an island within the Tropics, at an immense distance from any land, cut off from all communication with the world, and every thing that I hold dear in it!—c'est pis que la cage de fer de Tamerlan. (It is worse than Tamerlane's iron cage.) I would prefer being delivered up to the Bourbons. Among other insults," said he,—"but that is a mere bagatelle, a very secondary consideration,—they style me General! they can have no right to call me General; they may as well call me Archbishop, for I was head of ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... of Circassians, who invaded and overran the country. Upon the expulsion of these barbarians, it acknowledged again the government of Cairo, under which it continued until the period of the more formidable irruption of the Mogul Tartars, led by the celebrated Tamerlane. At his death the Holy Land was once more annexed to Egypt as a province; but in 1516, Selim the Ninth, emperor of the Othman Turks, carried his victorious arms from the Euphrates to the Libyan Desert, ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... club-footed; some writers say that Shakespeare suffered in a slight degree from this deformity. Agesilas, Genserie, Robert II, Duke of Normandy, Henry II, Emperor of the West, Otto II, Duke of Brunswick, Charles II, King of Naples, and Tamerlane were victims of deformed feet. Mlle. Valliere, the mistress of Louis XIV, was supposed to have both club-foot and hip-disease. Genu valgum and genu varum are ordinary deformities and quite ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... still held firm. Russia lay under the vassalage of the khans. Central and Southern Asia trembled at the Mongol name. And at the very time that the Chinese were rising against and expelling their invaders, Timour, or Tamerlane, the second great conqueror of his race, was setting out from Central Asia on that mighty career of victory that emulated the deeds of the founder of the Mongol empire. Years afterwards Timour, after ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... which Tamerlane began and Shah Jehan finished; and is really reported to have cost a hundred and sixty millions and five hundred thousand livres of ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... Smyrna was taken by Tamerlane, and suffered very severely. The conqueror erected within its walls a tower constructed of stones and the heads of his enemies. Soon after, it came under the dominion of the Turks, and has been subsequently the most flourishing city in the Levant, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... like a monk, with a throne for wages, Stripped like the iron-souled Hindu sages, Draped like a statue, in strings like a scarecrow, His helmet-hat an old tin pan, But worn in the love of the heart of man, More sane than the helm of Tamerlane, Hairy Ainu, wild man of Borneo, Robinson Crusoe—Johnny Appleseed; And the robin might have said, "Sowing, he goes to the far, new West, With the apple, the sun of his burning breast— The apple allied to the thorn, Child of ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... some kind of heaven. They tell me this is easy work compared to the type they had to undergo. The Satheri like to get big bunches through in one conjuration, like the haul they made from the victims of somebody named Tamerlane." He tested a rope, then dropped to a sitting position on the edge of the block. "I'll let you stay up to call signals from here. Only watch it. That overseer has his eyes on you. Make sure the ropes stay tight while we see if the ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... bodies were not visible there. Because of this parallax, M. Bonilla placed the bodies "relatively near the earth." But when we find out what he called "relatively near the earth"—birds or bugs or hosts of a Super-Tamerlane or army of a celestial Richard Coeur de Lion—our heresies rejoice anyway. His estimate is "less distance than ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... factions' comprised Lord Chatham and Fox, the father, and that we live in gigantic and exaggerated times, which make all under Gog and Magog appear pigmean. After having seen Napoleon begin like Tamerlane and end like Bajazet in our own time, we have not the same interest in what would otherwise have appeared important history. But ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... period it has sustained, without any great injury, the assaults of war, the ravages of fire, and the wear and tear of time. Kief and Vladimir, prior to that reign, had each served in turn as the capital of the empire. After the removal of the capital to Moscow, that city was besieged and ravaged by Tamerlane, and suffered from time to time during every succeeding century all the horrors of war, fire, pestilence, and famine, till 1812, when it was laid in ashes by the Russians themselves, who by this great national ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... sold by the Company for money was the Great Mogul,—the descendant of Tamerlane. This high personage, as high as human veneration can look at, is by every account amiable in his manners, respectable for his piety, according to his mode, and accomplished in all the Oriental literature. All ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... closes the record of my journey in the Lands of the Saracen; for, although I afterwards beheld more perfect types of Saracenic Art on the banks of the Jumna and the Ganges, they grew up under the great Empire of the descendants of Tamerlane, and were the creations of artists foreign to the soil. It would, no doubt, be interesting to contrast the remains of Oriental civilization and refinement, as they still exist at the extreme eastern ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... ground where they had once stood. The three great capitals of Khorassan, and Maru, Neisabour, and Herat, were destroyed by the armies of Genghis, and the exact account which was taken of the slain amounted to four million three hundred and forty-seven thousand persons. Timur, or Tamerlane, was educated in a less barbarous age, and in the profession of the Mahometan religion; yet, if Attila equalled the hostile ravages of Tamerlane,[20] either the Tartar or the Hun might deserve the epithet of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... expedition on which he is bound, he finds it easy to transport with him the stock from which he derives his subsistence. The whole people is an army; the whole year a march. Such was the state of society which facilitated the gigantic conquests of Attila and Tamerlane. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... relations he is as conscienceless as Tamerlane, who built a mountain of skulls as a monument to himself. He is cold, calculating, and if opposed, vindictive. On occasion he is absolutely without heart: compassion, mercy or generosity are ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... askew, I must own, but he could not help smiling. . . I gave him an instance in point, which -was the reverse given by Mr. Law to the picture drawn by Mr. Burke of Tamerlane, in which he said those virtues and noble qualities bestowed upon him by the honourable manager were nowhere to be found but on ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... few armed police, but was in no sense independent. Its position in India was analogous to that of British capitalists in America who are operating a mine or factory and have been authorized to police their property. The mighty house of Tamerlane had become a political nonentity, the empire of the Great Mogul was divided among nominal viceroys who were really independent sovereigns, gorgeous but indolent. The teeming millions of India were, for the most part, as unfitted by nature and occupation for the fatigues of war, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann


Words linked to "Tamerlane" :   Timur, swayer


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