[7][8][9] Timur is also considered a great patron of art and architecture, for he interacted with intellectuals such as Ibn Khaldun, Hafez, and Hafiz-i Abru and his reign introduced the Timurid Renaissance.

From that base he led military campaigns across Western, South, and Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Southern Russia, defeating in the process the Khans of the Golden Horde, the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria, the emerging Ottoman Empire, as well as the late Delhi Sultanate of India, becoming the most powerful ruler in the Muslim world.

[22] By the end of his reign, Timur had gained complete control over all the remnants of the Chagatai Khanate, the Ilkhanate, and the Golden Horde, and had even attempted to restore the Yuan dynasty in China.

[27] He was the grandfather of the Timurid sultan, astronomer and mathematician Ulugh Beg, who ruled Central Asia from 1411 to 1449, and the great-great-great-grandfather of Babur (1483–1530), founder of the Mughal Empire.

[38] Timur was born in Transoxiana near the city of Kesh (modern Shahrisabz, Uzbekistan), some 80 kilometres (50 mi) south of Samarkand, part of what was then the Chagatai Khanate.

[55] The relationship between them became strained after Husayn abandoned efforts to carry out Timur's orders to finish off Ilya Khoja (former governor of Mawarannah) close to Tashkent.

[56] Timur gained followers in Balkh, consisting of merchants, fellow tribesmen, Muslim clergy, aristocracy and agricultural workers, because of his kindness in sharing his belongings with them.

[59] According to A. Azfar Moin, Sahib Qiran was a messianic title, implying that Timur might potentially be the "awaited messiah descended from the prophetic line" who would "inaugurate a new era, possibly the last one before the end of time.

[62] In memory of this miraculous deliverance of the Russian land from Timur on 26 August, the all-Russian celebration in honor of the Meeting of the Vladimir Icon of the Most Holy Mother of God was established.

[88] Sultan Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq and the army of Mallu Iqbal had war elephants armored with chain mail and poison on their tusks.

This is the excerpt from one of Timur's letters addressed to Ottoman sultan: Believe me, you are but pismire ant: don't seek to fight the elephants for they'll crush you under their feet.

[citation needed] In December 1402, Timur besieged and took the city of Smyrna, a stronghold of the Christian Knights Hospitalers, thus he referred to himself as ghazi or "Warrior of Islam".

Geographer Clements Markham, in his introduction to the narrative of Clavijo's embassy, states that, after Timur died, his body "was embalmed with musk and rose water, wrapped in linen, laid in an ebony coffin and sent to Samarkand, where it was buried".

[119] Pir Muhammad was unable to gain sufficient support from his relatives and a bitter civil war erupted amongst Timur's descendants, with multiple princes pursuing their claims.

[131] Timur is regarded as a military genius and as a brilliant tactician with an uncanny ability to work within a highly fluid political structure to win and maintain a loyal following of nomads during his rule in Central Asia.

Taking advantage of his Turco-Mongolian heritage, Timur frequently used either the Islamic religion or the sharia law, fiqh, and traditions of the Mongol Empire to achieve his military goals or domestic political aims.

[137][138] There is a shared view that Timur's real motive for his campaigns was his imperialistic ambition, as expressed by his statement: "The whole expanse of the inhabited part of the world is not large enough to have two kings."

However, besides Iran, Timur simply plundered the states he invaded with a purpose of enriching his native Samarqand and neglected the conquered areas, which may have resulted in a relatively quick disintegration of his Empire after his death.

According to Clavijo, Timur's good treatment of the Spanish delegation contrasted with the disdain shown by his host toward the envoys of the "lord of Cathay" (i.e., the Yongle Emperor), the Chinese ruler.

While Central Asia blossomed under his reign, other places, such as Baghdad, Damascus, Delhi and other Arab, Georgian, Persian, and Indian cities were sacked and destroyed and their populations massacred.

Thus, while Timur still retains a positive image in Muslim Central Asia, he is vilified by many in Arabia, Iraq, Persia, and India, where some of his greatest atrocities were carried out.

[145] Timur's short-lived empire also melded the Turko-Persian tradition in Transoxiana, and, in most of the territories that he incorporated into his fiefdom, Persian became the primary language of administration and literary culture (diwan), regardless of ethnicity.

[147] Tamerlane virtually exterminated the Church of the East, which had previously been a major branch of Christianity but afterwards became largely confined to a small area now known as the Assyrian Triangle.

William Jones remarked that the former presented Timur as a "liberal, benevolent and illustrious prince" while the latter painted him as "deformed and impious, of a low birth and detestable principles".

[29][149] The scholar Abu Taleb Hosayni presented the texts to the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, a distant descendant of Timur, in 1637–1638, supposedly after discovering the Chagatai language originals in the library of a Yemeni ruler.

[151]: 341 When Timur captured the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid at Ankara, he was often praised and seen as a trusted ally by European rulers, such as Charles VI of France and Henry IV of England, because they believed he was saving Christianity from the Turkic Empire in the Middle East.

His rise to power moved many leaders, such as Henry III of Castile, to send embassies to Samarkand to scout out Timur, learn about his people, make alliances with him, and try to convince him to convert to Christianity in order to avoid war.

[151]: 348–349 In the introduction to a 1723 translation of Yazdi's Zafarnama, the translator wrote:[152] [M. Petis de la Croix] tells us, that there are calumnies and impostures, which have been published by authors of romances, and Turkish writers who were his enemies, and envious at his glory: among whom is Ahmed Bin Arabschah ... As Timur-Bec had conquered the Turks and Arabians of Syria, and had even taken the Sultan Bajazet prisoner, it is no wonder that he has been misrepresented by the historians of those nations, who, in despite of truth, and against the dignity of history, have fallen into great excesses on this subject.Timur's body was exhumed from his tomb on 19 June 1941 and his remains examined by the Soviet anthropologists Mikhail M. Gerasimov, Lev V. Oshanin and V. Ia.

Gerasimov reconstructed the likeness of Timur from his skull and found that his facial characteristics displayed "typical Mongoloid features", i.e. East Asian in modern terms.

It is also said that when Gerasimov exhumed the body, an additional inscription inside the casket was found, which read, "Whomsoever [sic] opens my tomb shall unleash an invader more terrible than I.