Latest / Tamerlane: The Conqueror Who Tried to Rebuild the Mongol Legacy — Fexingo History / The Sack of Delhi: Tamerlane's Invasion of India 1398
Transcript
- Lucas: So Luna, we've talked about a lot of the captives Tamerlane brought back to Samarkand — chess masters, elephant handlers, even calligraphers. But the campaign that netted many of those prizes was the invasion of northern India in 1398, culminating in the sack of Delhi. It's one of the most dramatic and brutal episodes of his career. Luna: I know he went down through the Hindu Kush, but what was the state of the Delhi Sultanate at that point? Lucas: Weakening would be an understatement. The Sultan was a man named nasir ud din Mahmud, but he was barely in control. His own nobles were fighting each other, and the sultanate had already lost much of its western territories to regional governors. Tamerlane's official excuse — at least according to his chronicler Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdi in the Zafarnama — was that the Delhi sultans were too tolerant of Hinduism, which he saw as a threat to Islam. But really, it was the wealth of India that drew him. Luna: The classic conqueror's motivation. How did he get there? Lucas: He set out from Samarkand in the spring of 1398, crossing the Hindu Kush passes — the same ones Alexander the Great had used centuries before. His army was massive, maybe ninety thousand men, including a siege train and war elephants. The first major obstacle was the fortress of Multan, in present-day Pakistan. It took months to subdue — the garrison held out until October. By the time Tamerlane reached the Chenab River, the Delhi Sultan's forces were scrambling to assemble. Luna: And the Sultan's army — did they have war elephants too? Lucas: They did, and Tamerlane's forces had encountered elephants before in Persia, but the Delhi army had hundreds of them, armored and carrying archers. The decisive battle took place on December 17, 1398, near the Yamuna River, just north of Delhi. Tamerlane knew his horses would be terrified of the elephants, so he ordered a trench dug in front of his lines, filled with spikes and covered with brush. Then he tied camels and oxen together to form a barrier. His archers and artillery mowed down the elephants, and when their mahouts were killed, the panicked animals turned and trampled their own ranks. Luna: So the elephants became a liability. What happened after that? Lucas: The Sultan's army collapsed. nasir ud din Mahmud fled to Gujarat, and Tamerlane marched into Delhi the next day. What followed was a three-day massacre. The Zafarnama says Tamerlane ordered the city to be sacked because some Indian soldiers had allegedly mistreated his envoys, but the real reason was to send a message and to collect booty. Contemporary accounts, including the hostile Ibn Arabshah, describe piles of heads, women and children enslaved, and the systematic destruction of temples and palaces. Luna: That's horrifying. But I remember earlier episodes said he also gathered skilled craftsmen from cities he captured. Lucas: Exactly. And Delhi was no exception. Along with gold, jewels, and elephants, Tamerlane's men rounded up hundreds of stone carvers, masons, weavers, and metalworkers — the same ones who later built the Bibi-Khanym mosque and the Registan in Samarkand. He also captured the entire elephant corps: about a hundred and twenty elephants, which he paraded through Central Asia. But the cultural impact was immense. Those artisans brought Indian motifs and techniques into Timurid art. Luna: It's fascinating how much of history comes down to resources and craftsmanship like that. Lucas: Absolutely. And you know, the real engines of these episodes — the research, the time to dig into these stories — listener support is what keeps it all going. If you've been stepping into history with us episode by episode, a couple of dollars a month genuinely makes a difference. Buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. Luna: Yeah, it's a small thing, but it adds up. Lucas: Exactly. So back to the aftermath: Tamerlane's Indian campaign didn't just enrich Samarkand — it also reshaped the political map. The Delhi Sultanate never fully recovered, and within a century, one of Tamerlane's descendants, Babur, would return to India and establish the Mughal Empire, using the same routes and tactics his ancestor had pioneered. Luna: So in a way, the 1398 invasion planted the seeds for the Mughals. Lucas: Exactly. Babur claimed descent from both Timur and Genghis Khan, and when he founded the Mughal dynasty in 1526, he explicitly saw himself as restoring Timur's legacy in India. The plunder from Delhi helped fund Samarkand's golden age, but the human cost was staggering — perhaps a hundred thousand people died in the sack alone. And that's the double-edged sword of Tamerlane's ambitions: astonishing cultural achievement built on unimaginable violence. Luna: It's a sobering reminder of what 'greatness' so often meant. Lucas: It is. And it's a story that echoes through the centuries — from the Hindu Kush passes to the gardens of Samarkand, right down to the Taj Mahal, which is itself a monument to the Timurid architectural tradition that Tamerlane's conquests helped spread. Luna: Wow. Thanks for walking us through that, Lucas. Lucas: My pleasure. That's all for this episode of Fexingo History. We'll be back next time with another story from the steppes.