The World полностью

The old historian was lowered from the Damascene walls in a basket and summoned into Tamerlane’s magnificent tent. ‘I found him reclining on his elbow, while platters of food were offered,’ recalled Ibn Khaldun. ‘I bowed. He raised his head and stretched out his hand for me to kiss which I did.’ Then Tamerlane asked him his life story, and the historian recounted his adventures. ‘That isn’t enough,’ said Tamerlane. ‘I want you to write down a detailed description of the Maghreb in such a way that I can see it with my own eyes.’

‘I’ve been wanting to meet you for thirty years,’ said the historian.

‘Why’s that?’

‘You’re the supreme sovereign of the universe. No one’s comparable – not Caesar, Khusrau, Alexander, Nebuchadnezzar … Sultan Timur’s invincible.’

Tamerlane shrugged modestly. ‘Me? I’m just an emperor’s deputy. There’s the sovereign!’ he said, pointing to a gawky Golden princeling, his stepson. Negotiating the surrender of Damascus and inviting the historian to join his council, Tamerlane discussed Babylonian history until an amir whispered that his forces were ready to storm the Damascene citadel that was still holding out.

The conqueror ‘was borne away, because of his bad knee, and mounted on his horse, sat upright and rode towards Damascus, bands playing in a triumphant frenzy’. Then, accompanied by Ibn Khaldun, he unleashed ballista catapults and naphtha flame launchers at the citadel. When it had fallen, Tamerlane ordered the sacking of the city, then the slaughter and burning alive of 30,000 people, their heads immured in the inevitable towers. Ibn Khaldun, chatting genially about history and life with the diabolic conqueror, knew he had to speak carefully to stay alive.

‘Ask for anything,’ Tamerlane said, as the city burned. ‘I’ll do it for you.’

‘My exile has made me forgetful,’ said Ibn Khaldun, an expert at appeasing lethal monarchs. ‘Perhaps you can tell me what I desire.’

‘Stay with me,’ said Tamerlane.

‘Is there any generosity left beyond that which you’ve already shown me? You’ve heaped favours upon me …’

Tamerlane understood. ‘You wish to return to Cairo?’

‘My only desire is to serve you. If my return to Cairo serves you, I’ll go. If not, I’ve no wish to go.’

‘I’ll fulfil your wish,’ said Tamerlane and sent Ibn Khaldun back to Cairo. He then swivelled towards the Ottomans. Thunderbolt now broke off the siege of Constantinople. At Ankara, Tamerlane’s 150,000 men with thirty-two elephants, their mahouts armed with flamethrowers, faced Thunderbolt’s 100,000.^* Thunderbolt was surrounded and his horse was shot from under him, before being captured by Tamerlane’s grandson Muhammad Shah (son of Jahangir and Khanzada), who was wounded and later died. Constantinople submitted to Tamerlane, who advanced to the Aegean, storming Smyrna (I˙zmir). Tamerlane treated Thunderbolt decently, but after he tried to escape he was confined in a barred carriage and died three months later. (His young Bavarian slave, Schiltberger, was inherited by Tamerlane.)

The Ottoman moment was surely finished.

WORLD EMPEROR: TAMERLANE IN SAMARKAND

The world was at Tamerlane’s feet. In Samarkand, he contemplated his next conquests while he supervised his Indian and Arab architects and artists and received an envoy from faraway Spain.^*

‘Samarkand was the most wonderful city in the world,’ reported that Castilian Clavijo who found the grizzled Tamerlane holding court in a paradisiacal garden. He was reclining under a canopy on an embroidered dais, wearing a plain silk coat and a white bejewelled hat, ‘so old and infirm that his eyelids barely stayed open’. The conqueror lived in domed, crimson tents while his wives resided in palaces. Tamerlane, ‘in excellent humour, drank much wine, making all his guests do the same’, as lambs (and criminals) were slaughtered. Every morning he inspected his building sites, ‘spending most of the day there’.

His most important visitors were from China. In 1403, Chinese envoys announced the accession of a new emperor and requested tribute. Tamerlane arrested them. A new emperor had had the impertinence to expel the Golden Family from China. Tamerlane claimed to be their heir and declared jihad against China.

Tamerlane was right to see China as a threat. Its emperor was at that moment preparing an astonishing enterprise – sending a vast fleet to advance Chinese power as far as Persia, right into the conqueror’s sphere. And the new dynasty had been founded by the humblest man who ever created a dynasty, the only emperor who literally started life as a beggar.

BEGGAR EMPEROR: DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS AND EXTERMINATION TO THE NINTH DEGREE