Major conflict1370 – 1405 · 35 years
Timurid Conquests
Central Asia · Samarkand · Transoxiana
Timur's empire stretched from Anatolia to India, establishing a legacy of military innovation and cultural achievement.
Estimated casualties
1.0M – 17Mestimated dead
HEADLINE5.0M — the single figure used on the map
commonly cited 17M is an upper estimate; duplicate of timurid-invasions (see review)
SOURCEIslamic and Central Asian records
What happened
Timur (1336-1405) was a military genius who unified fragmented Turco-Mongol tribes through conquest. His campaigns from 1370-1405 conquered Mesopotamia, the Levant, Anatolia (defeating Bayezid I in 1402), Persia, and India. Timur's strategy combined rapid cavalry deployment with siege engineering; his forces sacked Damascus, Baghdad, and Delhi. The conquest of the Ottoman Sultan demonstrated Timur's supremacy even over established empires. His court at Samarkand gathered architects, poets, and scholars. After his death in 1405, his sons divided the empire; the Timurid dynasty (especially under Ulugh Beg and later patrons) became celebrated for astronomy, mathematics, and Persian art.
Why it mattered
Timurid rule established Samarkand as a center of Islamic learning and art (the Timurid Renaissance). The conquest temporarily unified Central Asia and influenced Ottoman administrative practices. Timur's legacy shaped the political development of the Middle East and Central Asia, and his military innovations influenced subsequent empires.
Belligerents2
- Timurid Empire
- Various Central Asian states
ON THE MAPTimurid Empire
Conflict graph
SUB-CONFLICTS · 14
- Battle of Balkh1370
- Battle of Herat1383
- Battle of Isfahan1387
- Battle of Syr Darya1389
- Battle of Kunduzcha1391
- Battle of Shiraz1393
- Battle of Multan1398
- Battle of Meerut1399
- Battle of Vorskla1399
- Battle of Aleppo1400
- Battle of Baghdad1401
- Battle of Damascus1401
+ 2 more in the atlas.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Timurid Conquests
- Clodfelter, Warfare and Armed Conflicts (4th ed., 2017)
- Wikipedia — text reused under CC BY-SA 4.0
Open in the atlas →Seeks the timeline to 1370 and opens this record.
Cite as: Timurid Conquests (1370 – 1405). War Atlas. https://waratlas.org/c/timurid-conquests · Sources & methodology