It's Not About Taimur Ali Khan but it's about the Real Timur or Tamerlane
It's cliche....but I was inspired from Taimur ali Khan to write this blog....By the way for those who don't know who is he ? He is India's celebrity kid.
India's divided on many things--freedom of speech, feminism, GST. But, there's one cause we can all get behind, united: Taimur Ali Khan. From baby Taimur's airport looks to his 1st birthday celebration, there is absolutely nothing the Indian media hasn't reported about, when it comes to the junior Khan.
He was Temur(whole blog is about him), while india's celebrity kid is Taimur. Perhaps the root is similar but it's not the same name.Taimur is an ancient Persian name meaning iron.
Ok... leave him behind...My blog is on the real Temur.
Temur is the national hero of Uzbekistan and has a prominent Statue in the main square of Tashkent but he is also known as the scourge of the Gods or the Scourge of the Hindus.
Temur was one of the last great “Horseback” adventurer/conquerors who laid waste to most of Asia and died on the way to Conquering China.
He was lame in his right foot and hence the epithet- Temur the Lame.
He was born in 1336, and he soon expanded into Iran, Iraq, parts of Russia and vast parts of central Asia before turning towards Afghanistan and finally gravitated towards sacking India for the Gold. After the capture of Delhi in 1398, he put to sword over 100000 people in a single day and so many corpses were rotting in the streets that diseases spread due to the rot and stench and killed more.
By the time of his death he ruled- Uzbekistan, parts of Turkey, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Krygystan, Pakistan and even the western parts of China (modern Uighir Lands), in 1405 he set out to conquer the Chinese and died on the way.
He was a brilliant chess player and planned his campaigns in advance, he always attacked in summer and sowed barley for his horses a year or more in advance along the path of conquest, however his last campaign was one undertaken in winter.
But this is not the main reason for his mystery, his death is.
He died in 1405, over 500 years passed and his body was more or less undisturbed, during this time period, the Tsar of all Russia and later the USSR came to own the Central Asian provinces, which were called as - Trans-Turkestan in the Russian Empire.
In 1941, under the orders from Joseph Stalin himself, Mikhail Gerasimov a pre-eminent anthropologist his body was exhumed on the 19th of June 1041 -
It is alleged that Timur's tomb was inscribed with the words, "When I rise from the dead, the world shall tremble."
It is also said that when Gerasimov exhumed the body, an additional inscription inside the casket was found, which read,
"Whomsoever opens my tomb shall unleash an invader more terrible than I."
Gerasimov was a staunch communist and atheist who didn’t mind these words, he didn’t care for these words nor did Stalin. He studied the skulls and meticulously reconstructed the faces of more than 200 people, including Yaroslav the Wise, Ivan the Terrible, Friedrich Schiller and, most famously, Timur (Tamerlane).
That is Gerasimov and the below is his reconstruction of Timur-
However, Temur’s warning came TRUE- this is the real mystery.
Legend has it that people of Samarkhand protested this exhumation of the corpse and Gerasimov ignored it.
On 22nd of June 1941, Adolf Hitlerlaunched Operation Barbarossa, the greatest invasion the world has ever seen for the annihilation of the USSR. It took nearly 4 years for the Nazis to be defeated and the USSR lost nearly 30 million dead (far more than the 17 million killed by Temur).
Stalin himself asked Gerasimov to - Timur was re-buried with full Islamic ritual in November 1942 just before the Soviet victory at the Battle of Stalingrad.
Here is an interesting article on Timur and his life and modern Uzbekistan -
Temur in his life was a scourge and even 500 years after his death came down as a scourge upon the world. He now rests forever in his tomb and may he remain so.
Summary- There are some mysteries which lie buried. History acts in strange ways and perhaps we should let the “Sleeping dogs lie”.
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