Customer Reviews

Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World

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The exploits of Genghis Kahn in the 1200's are well known in the west, there was even a movie about him starring John Wayne. About a numdred and fifty years later Tamerlane, almost repeated his conquests. Tammerlane got into Turkey, down to Damascus, almost to Moscow.

Unlike many biographies, particularly from strange parts of the world, Mr. Marozzi traveled to the places where Tamerlane traveled. He reports on what the area looks like today, and what remains from the time when Tamerlane and his army went through. It serves as a good reminder that the Middle East has changed less than nearly anywhere else in the world.

I like the writing style Mr. Marozzi uses. It is a well researched, well written biography, but written almost like a novel. You are left wondering what he was going to do next. Particularly when he had come close to entering Europe, the kings of England, France and Spain could really offer little or no resistance to such an army as his. It was only Tamerlane's decision that Europe wasn't worth bothering with that prevented a dramatic change in how history played out.

If you're looking for a detailed, clear narrative of Tamerlane's life and achievements, Justin Marozzi's book is not it. Failing to develop Tamerlane as an individual from his youth onward, and failing to explain exactly how he came to be so successful, Marozzi diverts perhaps half the book to recounting his own travels in Tamerlane's homeland. As descriptive and rare the author's experiences may be, a journalistic description of former metropolises in modern-day Central Asia does not provide a better understanding of the Lord of the Fortunate Conjunction. Throughout the book, Marozzi views Tamerlane more through the distant lens of someone in awe of his achievements, rather than the skeptical and down-to-earth approach necessary for biographers to truly evaluate who their particular subject really was.
This is the flow of the book: a few very narrowed down pieces of Tamerlane's life, each separated by an equally large amount of journalism. The reader can neither fully assess the achievements of Tamerlane's career, nor gain a certain familiarity with his personality.
The purpose of biography is to find out what kind of person the subject of the book was, and evaluate his/her achievements. In the case of Tamerlane, the reader is never really given an explanation for how someone conquered territory so successfully and rapidly, or how a man could rise from the status of desperado to all-powerful emperor. The main argument presented is that Tamerlane, while committing atrocities, also had many cultural achievements, most notably the building of several Islamic monuments now mostly in ruins or completely nonexistent. There is no assessment of Tamerlane's psyche, what led him to believe in his destiny, just how he outwitted his opponents, and what his legacy was. Why are western scholars, even military theorists, so unfamiliar with someone whose military career was as successful and immaculate as Alexander's? How did Tamerlane as a politician manage to rise so far and fast? What psychological condition could Tamerlane have had that may have motivated his ambition, and more significantly, the genocides he so ruthlessly committed? What aspect of his personality made him an electrifying leader, and gave him the energy to vigorously campaign even up to his death as an old man? These are essential questions about Tamerlane that should be answered, or at least examined, so that readers can analyze Tamerlane with the same level of understanding as western heroes such as Alexander and Napoleon.
Instead, Justin Marozzi gives a hollow carcass of a biography, decorated with fanciful quotations and literary comparisons, but completely lacking in the real substance essential to a book that seeks to give the public an understanding of one of the greatest conquerors in history. In studying Tamerlane, we shouldn't look for the decrepit and virtually forgotten ruins and former cities of Central Asia. That does not highlight our understanding of him as a man. We need to know what he did, how he did it, why he did it, and what affect it had. We need to know these things as much as possible so that we may truly form an accurate perception of him as a statesman, soldier, and human being.

This book is a great read for anyone wanting to understand Temur and how he became the leader he was. The book is well written and conveys interesting perspectives on Temurs life, conquests and thinking. All in all a thoroughly good read.

It might be inappropriate to say I >enjoyed< a book about a protagonist who decorated the scenes of his victories with pyramids of skulls. However, the book is absorbing. The author writes well, with skill, knowledge, and at times quiet humor. His comments on conditions in Temur's lands today were very interesting, connecting the past to the present.

I probably had better than average knowledge of Temur, knew about his coffin lid, and so forth, but my knowledge was, at best sketchy. Didn't Handel have a hand in writing an opera about him? I had never figured out what Mongols were doing ruling India. This book filled in vivid details about this fascinating, but almost forgotten, page of history.

Fortunately, my decision to buy the book was not influenced by the reviewer who complains about Marozzi's use of Marlowe's play. Actually, the play figures very briefly in the book. It provides an intriguing contrast of the perception or dramatization of Temur and the historical facts. For that matter, I wish he had commented on Handel's opera, too.

Readers are sure to ... well, I shouldn't say enjoy it, but you will want to read this book.

The only thing that kept me from reading it in one day was the authors deviation from Temur when he was talking about modern day uzbekistan(it slowed me down) other then that fantastic book one of the best I ever read, Temur in my opinion is a more complex and fascinating personality then Genghis Khan if you love history get this book but look around get a good price.

Just finished Marozzi's book. I can see why some people grew annoyed...its not arranged like a typical history title. But I liked it for that reason. Marozzi's writing is solid too, and the book breezed by. When I finished I was actually a little sad!

Marozzi definitely seemed to be in awe of Tamerlane, and his enthusiasm in turn made me excited for each new chapter. While most of Tamerlane's historic career was quite bloody and brutal, I couldn't help but be enthralled by it. I also couldn't help but be fascinated by Tamerlane's cultural combination of Muslim and Mongol traditions...really interesting reading.

If you like your history on the straight and narrow with little or no author commentary, then you won't like this book. But if you're willing to go off the beaten path a little and read some personal travel musings sprinkled in with the main story, you will enjoy Marozzi's efforts here.

The Good:

Tamerlane changed the face of the world, and yet remains virtually unknown in the west. He conquered almost the entire word, crippled empires, decimated the Golden Horde, stalled the Ottoman expansion, and turned glorious cities into desolate fields.

This book could have been little more than a catalogue of cities and dates, but instead we get the global view: what Temur changed, and what he did not. His empire was gone within a century. His memory was virtually erased. His recent revival is limited to Uzbekistan.

More importantly, we get the facts needed, good and bad, to assess Temur for ourselves. However Marozzi weighs the carnage against the cultural developments, the reader is fully equipped to make his or her own determination. In the end, I found Temur a wholly unsympathetic character based on the same data that led Marozzi to the opposite conclusion.

The Bad:

The critics of the book are correct in their complaints: the chronology skips around, the book includes a lengthy discussion of a historically inaccurate play, some of the prose is a little too florid.

If you can look past that, you'll enjoy the book. Chronology isn't much of a problem, because most of the jumps are between Temur's time and much later accounts, including the present day. I liked reading about modern Uzbekistan, as it fleshed out the precise nature of Temur's legacy. The other big timeline issue, beginning the book with the battle against Sultan Bayezid, is a stylistic attention-getter, and eminently excusable.

I rank the discussion of Marlowe's play with the author's discussion of modern Uzbekistan: he's telling us about Temur's legacy, which (like any historical figure) involves inaccurate information. That said, the chapter on Marlowe would have benefitted significatly from more aggressive editing. Reading what C.S. Lewis said about what Marlowe said about Tamerlane is a bit much.

While Marozzi knows his subject well, and a glance at his list of acknowledgments suggests he has studied the materials carefully, the book is practically worthless for citations. When he attributes his quotations at all, it is with a general reference to the source, without page number. For example, he has an indented quote on pages 277-78 which, from the context, I assume is a quote from Clavijo, but even if that is correct, I don't know where in his 268 pages (in the English translation) to find it. And where Marozzi doesn't quote, I can only assume his source is somewhere in one of the dozens of books listed at the end.

If you are more interested in an interesting history/travelogue about a pivotal figure in an exotic location, you'll find it in this book. If you're looking for well-sourced, narrowly focused academic work, look elsewhere.

It feels like the author had a ton of information but did not know how to organize it. There were times when the footnotes seemed to be more relevant than what was above them. Also it felt like he did not know what he wanted the book to be. Chapters seemed to wander from the story line of Tamerlane to the author's travels to architecture without any direction. If he simply broke up the chapters, grouped relevant information together and incorporate the footnotes (instead of having some of them span two pages) that would have made this book a more coherent read. The editors really failed on this one.

The author obviously knows an incredible amount of information on the subject and the book is very interesting none-the-less.

In principle the idea to make a mix of a travel book with a history book does not sound so bad - but it does not quite work in this case. The author's travels have little historical relevance, are wordy, and in most (not all) cases simply detract. I ended up just skipping them. The historical part itself is somewhat better, but is badly in the need of editing. The author apparently can't decide whether to give a chronological narrative, and runs back and forth in time with confusing consequences. The citations from contemporary sources are far too long, especially ones from the Spanish Ambassador, whose story of travel to meet Temur is told in similar words at least three times throughout the book. I fully agree with a previous reviewer about too many pages (the whole chapter, actually) being devoted to analysis of the Marlowe play - with no useful information, whatsoever. I would advise to skip the whole chapter, but, confusingly, quite a few pages in the middle and the end of the chapter "forget" about Marlowe and just address Temur himself. Adding to a feel of unfinishness are the maps: they are never referred to in the text, are somewhat redundant, and randomly distributed throughout the book.
On a historical level, although the author, to his credit, does not diminish the atrocities caused by this monster, still, the author clearly finds Temur a more positive figure than the book itself portrays, emphasizing his building legacy and patronage of arts. I am sure this came as a great relief to hundreds of thousands slaughtered by Temur's orders in most cruel manner, in cold blood.
Still, overall, much of this book reads relatively well, and it's only one currently available. Maybe the author will tweak the next edition to make it better......

This book was about Tamur/Timur Lang/Lane who became ruler of Persia. Timur means Iron, Lang means he was limping which was caused when he was a young man, and was involved in robbery, he was fleeing the scene as one person aim an arrow at him, which gave him limping for rest of his natural life.

He was born in Uzbekistan, he was able to become governor. Then evetually he became ruler of Persia/Iran.

He had no mercy for anyone, as he would order to kill people in mosque, plundering their wealth, and taking their wife and daughter. Even, he would order his conquered army to destroy inhabitant so the place would become unsuitable for anyone to live afterward. He would make large minaret from captured people's head.

It really came down to Machiavelli point that a ruler has power but not glory, or a ruler has glory but not power. In this case, Timur had power, but not glory, as Iran's history does not look at him kindly.

This book had one problem, this author was keep going back forth between current time and Timur's time. He was explaining concept of political culture, but it was really hard to get into the book.