Emir Timur

Timur was born in Transoxiana, in the City of Kesh Samarkand in modern Uzbekistan in 1370. His father, Taraqai, was a small-scale landowner and belonged to the Barlas tribe. He was a fourteenth-century conqueror of Western, South and Central Asia, founder of the Timurid Empire and Timurid dynasty  in Central Asia, and great, great grandfather of Babur, the founder of the Mughal Dynasty. Timur was a Muslim, but while his official religious counselor was the Hanafite , his particular persuasion is not known.

In about 1360 Timur gained prominence as a military leader whose troops were mostly Turkic tribesmen of the region He took part in campaigns in Transoxiana with the Khan of Chagatai.Timur spent the next 35 years in various wars and expeditions. He not only consolidated his rule at home by the subjugation of his foes, but sought extension of territory by encroachments upon the lands of foreign potentates. His conquests to the west and northwest led him to the lands near the Caspian Sea and to the banks of the Ural and the Volga. Conquests in the south and south-West encompassed almost every province in Persia, including Baghdad, Karbala and Northern Iraq.

Before the end of 1399, Timur started a war with Bayezid I, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and theMamluk sultan of Egypt.Timur invaded Syria, sacked Aleppo and captured Damascus after defeating the Mamluk army. The city's inhabitants were massacred, except for the artisans, who were deported to Samarkand. This led to Timur's being publicly declared an enemy of Islam, as he was no longer only killing non-Muslims.

In 1400 Timur invaded Christian Armenia and Georgia  Of the surviving population, more than 60,000 of the local people were captured as slaves, and many districts were depopulated.

He invaded Baghdad in June 1401. After the capture of the city, 20,000 of its citizens - even Muslims - were massacred. Timur ordered that every soldier should return with at least two severed human heads to show him.

Timur died in 1405 en route during an uncharacteristic winter campaign against the ruling Chinese Ming Dynasty.

Of Timur's four sons, two (Jahangir and Umar Shaykh) predeceased him. His third son, Miran Shah, died soon after Timur, leaving the youngest son, Shah Rukh. Although his designated successor was his grandson Pir Muhammad b. Jahangir, Timur was ultimately succeeded in power by his son Shah Rukh. His most illustrious descendant Babur founded the Islamic Mughal Empire and ruled over most of Afghanistan and India. Babur’s descendants Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, expanded the Mughal Empire to most of the Indian