Latest / Tamerlane: The Conqueror Who Tried to Rebuild the Mongol Legacy — Fexingo History
Tamerlane's Captive Persian Astronomers and the Samarkand Observatory
In this episode of Tamerlane: The Conqueror Who Tried to Rebuild the Mongol Legacy, we explore a lesser-known facet of Timur's empire-building: his obsession with the heavens. Long before his grandson Ulugh Beg built the famous observatory, Tamerlane himself gathered captive Persian and Chinese astronomers in Samarkand to compile a new star catalog, the Zij-i Sultani. We discuss how Timur used astrological predictions to justify his campaigns, the role of scholars like Jamshid al-Kashi and Qadi Zada al-Rumi, and the controversial theory that the conqueror's limp (he was lame in one…
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