Creating an image of Tamerlane

Join Emeritus Professor Charles Melville (Pembroke 1969) as he explores the image of Tamerlane through Persian manuscripts from the 14th to 17th century.

By all accounts, the Chagahtay Mongol warlord Timur or Tamerlane was fearsome, brutal and violent. He sacked cities, massacred populations, built towers of the skulls of his victims and left a swathe of devastation across western Asia, from Delhi to Damascus. The chronicles of his life of conquest do not flinch from recording his atrocities, but couch them in terms of his empire building and personal heroics. His military triumphs made him a model for later conquerors establishing new dynasties (and he is now idolised as the hero of modern Uzbekistan) – but how was all this depicted? The illustrated Persian chronicles of his history-turned-legend seize on certain actions that seemed to define or encapsulate his career and go some way to softening the image of the conqueror. This illustrated talk explores the evolution of the image of Tamerlane from the 14th to the 17th century in Persian manuscripts.