Timur's Plague Towers: The Siege of Damascus Explained

Tamerlane: The Conqueror Who Tried to Rebuild the Mongol Legacy — Fexingo History · Sep 3, 2026 · 8m · transcript

In this episode, we turn our attention to one of the most chilling episodes in Timur’s campaign against the Mamluk Sultanate. We explore the siege of Damascus in 1401, focusing on the controversial use of biological warfare and the construction of plague towers. Lucas and Luna examine how Timur’s forces used infected corpses to break the city’s resolve, a tactic that shocked contemporaries and left a lasting mark on historical memory. We look at the accounts of Ibn Arabshah and Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdi, who describe the psychological terror inflicted upon the defenders. The conversation also…