Probably true. Though it probably wasn’t purely a factor of nomadic invasion. For example there is some suggestion that soil salinization caused by millenia of over irrigation combined with limited drainage was increasingly depressing agricultural production in Iraq. Further the political disruptions from 9th century on ( the chaos and violence of the Fourth Fitna + praetorization of the Caliphate with a concommittant decrease in infrastructure spending ) were taking a very serious toll - the land revenue of Iraq in the 10th century was probably ~1/3 what it had been in the 7th. Also there was a persistent climatological trend towards increasing aridity in the region.
But the nomadic eruptions did hurt badly. From mid-Abbasid times on the Turkish horse-archer ( at first imported mercenaries and slave-soldiers ) became the gold standard for Middle Eastern militaries. Once the Seljuqs advanced into the ME they cemented this and henceforth the new pastoral Turkic populations would function as the military elite until at least the fifteenth century and as an important military institution into the 20th ( the pastoral Bakhtiyari tribal confederacy in Iran played a major role in the Constitutional crisis in the1920’s ). As such the pastoralists were dominant over sedentary populations and rulers were frequently obliged to cede land to these groups that provided them with their primary reservoir of military manpower. So large, formerly cultivated areas were given over to pasturage - much of Azerbaijan, large chunks of Iran, Iraq, Anatolia ( in Iraq for example, an agricultural juggernaut in ancient times, economic engine of a half-dozen major empires, fully 50% of the population in south and 23% of the population in the center were still nomadic in 1867 - aggressive late Ottoman sedenterization policies led to that declining to 19% and 7% respectively by 1905 - as a side note this is when the majority of Iraq’s population shifted to Shi’ism and it was exactly those seedentarizing tribes that converted ). Khurasan, a relatively peaceful and prosperous oasis from the troubles in the west up to that point, was, as mentioned, subject to a incredibly damaging scorched earth campaign from the Mongols an suffered a similar fate.
The qanats, the underground irrigation canals in Khurasan weren’t as vulnerable to governmental neglect ( unlike riverine irrigation ), as they were a de-centralized system maintained by the local populace. But aside from destroying many, by driving the settled populace from the land or otherwise disrupting them, neglect would eventually cause the qanat to fail. And then you have something of a death spiral, as the failure of qanats led to a decline to semi-desert in which pastoralism became the only viable economic activity, which sometimes meant more nomads would be encouraged to move into the area ( in order to extract some revenue ), which could lead to more disruptions of sedentary populations, etc.
[c]China Guy** - Thanks for the correction/addition - those posthumous titles do get a bit confusing :).
The sack of Delhi was pretty horrific, surely one of the most traumatic events in northern India:
Delhi was so spent in the wake of his orgiastic attack that for months the city lay in the death throes of famine and pestilence, “not a bird moving.”
From A New History of India by Stanley Wolpert ( 1977, Oxford University Press ).
However it wasn’t prompted by any accusations against Timur’s impiety. Rather that was the charge leveled by Timur against Delhi and used as his justification to attack the Sultanate. The already declining Sultanate had fallen into chaos after the death of Firoz Tughluq ( 1351-1388 ) with various claimants fighting over the throne for a decade. Timur claimed that they were disrupting trade and were insufficiently harsh with their Hindu subjects.
The actual sack, again, appears to have been a rare mistake - Timur apparently wanted that particular ( exceptionally wealthy ) city intact, at least for the nonce. But to save supplies during the run up to the climactic finale of the assault he ordered the massacre of thousands of captives, which resulted in an explosion of bloodlust that got out of hand and ended up venting itself on Delhi.
Samarqand was an ancient city. The original one was laid to waste by Tolui in 1220, dropping to maybe a quarter of its original inhabitants and shifted site slightly. Timur didn’t re-found it himself, but he did vastly revitalize it.
Actually though illiterate, he was apparently fascinated with learing and was quite the intellectual in some respects:
What is most impressive, because least expected, is the scope of Temur’s intellectual interest and ability. Although he could neither read or write he had the use of those that could, and he was thus effectively literate in Turkic and Persian. The histories of his reign extol his knowledge of medicine, astronomy and particularly of the history of the Arabs, Persians and Turks. His delight in debating with scholars was inexhaustible and in his opinion at least he often had the better of them. The Timurid histories might be expected to present a favorable picture of Temur’s intellectual abilities, but they are born out by an independent source: the autobiography of Ibn Khaldun, who met Temur after the siege of Damascus in 1400-1. The two men discussed a number of topics and Ibn Khaldun remarked on Temur’s impressive intelligence and fondness for argumentation.
From the aforementioned Manz cite.
I might mention that Ibn Khaldun was one of the great political and social theorists produced by the Islamic world, though his ideas mostly languished after his death.
Correct, but it isTamerlane. The last part isn’t derived directly from the English word “lame”, but rather was just a euphonius transliteration for “lang” or “lenk”, which means lame.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say it is probably highly unlikely he ever heard of Attila or his Huns. Even if he had, he would have been unlikely to pay him higher praise than Genghis, a much more immediate and impressive predecessor.
“The Scourge of God” moniker was given to him by Christopher Marlowe.
The Scythians were Indo-Iranians, relatives of the early Persians and Medes. The Parthians started as a Scythian tribe. They were displaced on the Russian steppe by first the Sarmatians ( a people that were perhaps somewhat culturally distinct, but ethnically and linguistically probably pretty similar ) and then eventually Altaic ( Turkic ) speaking peoples.
The “Black Huns” of Europe ( Attila et al ) as a state were eventually something of a multi-ethnic confederacy that included East Germans, probably Indo-Iranians ( like the Alans ) and Finno-Ugrian peoples like the Magyars. However the stereotypical Huns were probably Altaic speakers ( i.e. Turco-Mongols ). They left no good records as to their language, but circumstantial evidence points in that direction - descriptions report them as being distinctly Mongoloid in appearance and it is possible the Onogur Bulgars, a better attested Turkic people, were a native rump of the old Hunnish state.
The “White Huns” or Hephthalites that bedeviled Persia and India around the same period were at one time thought to be primarily Indo-Iranian based on some coins, but now some think they may have been primarily Turkic as well ( possibly related to the later Avars of eastern Europe ). It is pretty plausible that they were also somewhat multi-ethnic, with both Turkic and Indo-Iranian elements. Again it is hard to say for sure. The superficially similar names ( “Huna” in Sanskrit ) might indicate a weak political kinship to the Black Huns or might mean nothing.
- Tamerlane