Tīmūr and His Successors

Abstract

A new scourge for the country now appears on the scene in the person of the formidable warrior Tīmūr (b. 736/1336; in power 771–807/1370–1405). He was a Moslem who, solely for political reasons, feigned subservience to the theologians and Sufi Shaykhs. It may have been with Tīmūr in mind that Hafiz coined the phrase sūfī-i dajjāl-fi‹l-i mulhid-shakl, ‘Sufi with the deeds of the anti-Christ and in the shape of an infidel’¹, for in bestial cruelty Tīmūr even managed to outdo the Mongols of unhappy memory. He spoke Turkish and Mongolian, knew Persian but no Arabic. On his military campaigns he had Persian books read aloud to him, but for the rest he must be regarded as a primitive being. It would be impossible to explain his behaviour otherwise than by the assumption that he succeeded in winning over the population of Transoxania because his aims and means suited it: Transoxania most probably sanctioned his attempts to bring about the political unification of a dismembered Iran mainly by means of plundering expeditions. While the southern regions had on the whole been spared the Mongol storm, the whole of Iran now fell a prey to Tīmūr. All the regional dynasties into which post-Īl-Khān Persia had been split up were now swept away. Whether or not they deserved credit for promoting culture, either in their own kingdoms or in Iran as a whole, was immaterial. The old country of the Samanids once again came to the fore, this time with Samarkand, the town so dear to the Amīr, as metropolis. There too the gravitational centre of cultural activity was transferred-for the most part automatically but in some cases by force, such as when Tīmūr ordered craftsmen and artists from Fars and Iraq to settle there - an ancient oriental custom of which the Sasanians had already made use.²