World-changing1368 – 1405 · 37 years
Timurid Invasions
Central Asia · Persia · India · Syria · Anatolia
Timur the Conqueror carved a vast empire through devastation and strategic genius, reshaping Central Asia and the Middle East.
Estimated casualties
1.0M – 17Mestimated dead
HEADLINE5.0M — the single figure used on the map
commonly cited 17M (~5% of world population) is an upper estimate
SOURCEIslamic and Central Asian records; Clodfelter
What happened
Timur (Tamerlane), a Mongol-descended warlord from Samarkand, built an empire through ruthless military campaigns (1369-1405). He conquered the Ottoman Empire, defeated the Golden Horde, and invaded India and the Middle East. Timur's armies employed psychological terror—wholesale destruction of cities that resisted, pyramids of skulls—to discourage further opposition. Key victories included defeating the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I at Ankara (1402) and raiding Delhi (1398). Timur's sons inherited fragments of his empire; his grandson Ulugh Beg became a patron of astronomy and culture in Samarkand.
Why it mattered
Timur's conquests revitalized the Silk Road and made Samarkand a cosmopolitan center of learning and art. Although destructive, his reign temporarily unified Central Asia and influenced the rise of the Timurid dynasty (15th century) as patrons of Persian culture. Timur's legacy influenced Ottoman political strategy and demonstrated the vulnerability of empires to nomadic invasions.
Belligerents2
- Timurid Empire
- Various Middle Eastern states
ON THE MAPTimurid Empire
Sources
- Wikipedia: Timurid Invasions
- 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 1368 and opens this record.
Cite as: Timurid Invasions (1368 – 1405). War Atlas. https://waratlas.org/c/timurid-invasions · Sources & methodology