Latest / Tamerlane: The Conqueror Who Tried to Rebuild the Mongol Legacy — Fexingo History / Tamerlane's Captive Scholars: The Samarkand Library
Transcript
- Lucas: So last time we talked about Tamerlane's astronomers and the observatory that Ulugh Beg would later build. But before that, there was another side to his intellectual ambition — something that doesn't get as much attention, but it's crucial to how he saw himself as a ruler. Luna: What do you mean? Lucas: I mean his library. Tamerlane was illiterate — he couldn't read or write. But he understood that books were power. And he wanted Samarkand to have a library that would rival anything in Cairo, Baghdad, or Damascus. So he did what he did best: he captured it. Luna: He captured books? Lucas: He captured the people who made them. When he sacked a city — say, Damascus in 1401, or Baghdad in 1393 — his soldiers were under orders to seek out scholars, scribes, calligraphers, and binders, and bring them back to Samarkand alive. Along with their manuscripts. The Zafarnama describes how he personally inspected the spoils and set aside rare books for his own collection. Lucas: But it wasn't just looting. He also hired scholars voluntarily — or at least, gave them the choice between working for him or worse. The historian Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdi, who wrote the Zafarnama, was one of those court intellectuals. He ran what we'd call the kitabkhana — the royal library and scriptorium. Luna: So the kitabkhana was like a library plus a publishing house? Lucas: Exactly. It was a workshop where manuscripts were copied, illustrated, translated, and bound. Tamerlane's kitabkhana in Samarkand employed dozens of scribes, painters, and bookbinders, many of them captives from Persia and Syria. And the collection grew fast. By the time the Spanish ambassador Ruy González de Clavijo visited Samarkand in 1403, he described a library that held works on astronomy, theology, history, and medicine — some of them unique copies. Lucas: Clavijo noted that Tamerlane would have books read aloud to him for hours. He particularly loved histories — especially the Persian epic Shahnameh, and chronicles of earlier conquerors like Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great. He saw himself in that lineage, the Sahib-i Qiran, the Lord of the Fortunate Conjunction. Luna: So even though he couldn't read, he was deeply engaged with the content. Lucas: Absolutely. And he used that knowledge in his campaigns. For instance, when he invaded India in 1398, he supposedly had passages from the Shahnameh read to his army to inspire them. He also consulted astrologers and historians before major battles. The library wasn't just for show — it was a strategic resource. Lucas: But there's a darker side too. The same Zafarnama that celebrates Tamerlane's library also records that he burned libraries in conquered cities. In Damascus, he ordered the destruction of the Umayyad Mosque's library — some accounts say thousands of volumes were lost. So he was selectively preserving and destroying knowledge, depending on what served his image. Luna: That's a really complicated legacy. Lucas: It is. And it's a thread we've seen throughout this series — Tamerlane building up Samarkand with the spoils of war, including human capital. The library was part of that project. And it didn't end with him. His grandson Ulugh Beg inherited many of those books and used them to build his observatory and compile the star catalogues we talked about earlier. Luna: The Gurkhani Zij used data from those manuscripts, right? Lucas: Right. The Zij-i Sultani drew on earlier works from the Maragha observatory and from Greek and Persian sources that were in the library. So Tamerlane's book collection directly enabled one of the greatest scientific achievements of the 15th century. Lucas: And here's something that ties back to the idea of support for shows like this. You know, we spend a lot of time digging into these stories — the details of how libraries were built, how scholars were moved across empires, how knowledge was preserved or destroyed. And we do it without any ads. No sponsor breaks, no commercials. A lot of listeners tell us they appreciate that, and honestly, it's how we want to keep it. If you'd like to help us stay ad-free, there's a link at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small way to keep these conversations going. Luna: Yeah, I think it makes a difference. Knowing that we can talk about whatever we find interesting without having to fit in a product plug. Lucas: Exactly. So back to the library — one of the more fascinating figures in this story is Ibn Arabshah. He was a Syrian historian who was captured as a child when Tamerlane sacked Damascus. He ended up in Samarkand, where he was educated in the library — he studied under scholars there. Later, he wrote a history of Tamerlane called Aja'ib al-Maqdur, which is openly critical of him. So the library educated a man who would become his harshest chronicler. Luna: That's ironic. Tamerlane's own library trained his biographer critic. Lucas: Exactly. Ibn Arabshah's work gives us a counter-narrative to the Zafarnama. He describes the destruction of Damascus in vivid detail, and he doesn't hold back. But at the same time, he acknowledges the scale of Tamerlane's library and the learning he encountered there. So even his critic benefited from the system. Lucas: What happened to the library after Tamerlane? Well, his heirs fought over Samarkand, and the library declined. Some manuscripts were dispersed. Others ended up in the hands of later rulers, like the Mughals in India. Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire, was a Timurid, and he took pride in his ancestor's cultural achievements. Some of Tamerlane's books may have ended up in Babur's library. Luna: So Tamerlane's library had a long afterlife, even if the physical collection scattered. Lucas: Right. And today, we have scattered remnants — manuscripts in Istanbul, in Tashkent, in London. The Topkapi Palace in Istanbul holds some Timurid manuscripts. But the original kitabkhana in Samarkand is gone. All we have are the accounts of visitors like Clavijo and the works produced by its scholars. Luna: It's amazing that we know this much about it, considering it was built by a man who couldn't read. Lucas: That's the paradox of Tamerlane. He was a destroyer and a builder, a patron and a pillager. His library is a perfect symbol of that. He wanted to be remembered as a great ruler, and he understood that books — and the scholars who wrote them — were how history would judge him. And in a way, it worked. We're still talking about him. Luna: And we're still reading the books he commissioned. Lucas: Exactly. The Zafarnama, the Aja'ib al-Maqdur, the works of Ulugh Beg — they all trace back to that library. So when we think about Tamerlane's legacy, it's not just the towers of skulls. It's also the books.