TAMERLANE: SWORD OF ISLAM, CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD By Justin Marozzi HarperCollins Price: £25 Pages: 449

Tamerlane, or to be politically correct Amir Temur-he found it insulting to be called Temur the Lame-is a particularly tricky subject for a sympathetic biography. He spent over 35 years rampaging in Asia and the Middle East, pillaging the most beautiful and civilised cities of the Islamic world, demonstrating their total destruction by sowing barley where they had stood and piling up towers made from the skulls of his victims. Moreover, nearly seven centuries separate us from his hordes and their complicated history. As Henry Howarth puts it in his History of the Mongols: "If we wish to enter upon a branch of inquiry which seems utterly wanting in unity, to be as disintegrated as sand, and defying any orderly or rational treatment, we can hardly choose a better one than the history of the Asiatic nomads."

Here in India we have a reason for wanting to know more about Temur. He did, after all, sack Delhi and his son Miranshah was the great-great-grandfather of emperor Babar. For Justin Marozzi, who has no background in Central Asia or Islam, Temur is an almost impossible Other and he has to struggle to comprehend him. Marozzi is understandably wary of confusing readers with a strange geography and endless lists of characters, or boring them with a string of military campaigns and massacres. To engage his readers he pumps up the opening battle scene between Temur and the Ottoman emperor as high as a Hollywood epic- not starring Brad Pitt, though, who would be desperately miscast as Temur. Marozzi then interpolates his biography with a chapter on Christopher Marlowe's play about the Turk and with accounts of his own journeys in Temur's footsteps, giving insights into modern Central Asia. It says, for example, how the rulers of Uzbekistan latched on to Temur's reputation to remain in power after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

PICTURE SPEAK

DESPOT'S RULE: Anthony Sher as Temur in Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great

The travelogue, however, is a distraction from the main subject. Temur, at 5 ft 7 inch, was a tall man for his age. From humble beginnings in Central Asia where the empire bequeathed by Genghis Khan was being torn apart by internecine strife, Temur singlehandedly constructed an invincible, highly mobile, disciplined fighting force fiercely loyal to him. This loyalty was reinforced by generous helpings of plunder and the fact that he always led from the front. Temur perfected the art of war and political intrigue. He often feigned retreat only to lure his enemies to destruction. He sent camels loaded with blazing straw into the ranks of the war elephants of the sultan of Delhi. He consumed boar's blood and vomited it in the presence of the emissary of an opponent who wrongly concluded that he was dying and, therefore, could easily be defeated. Despite the fact that any opposition was met with the threat of annihilation, the moment Temur turned his back local leaders tended to reassert themselves. So not only conquest, but reconquest also became a regular feature of Temur's campaigns. And the brutality of his hordes was a strategy to keep his vassals in line.

The difficulty Marozzi has is in making Temur appear human in the best sense of the word. He does reveal Temur's affection for his favourite children and grandchildren, but he doesn't describe their upbringing. Apart from the somewhat cliched image of Temur as a despot with a voracious appetite for women, he can throw no light on his relationship with his wives or their place in the court. Temur is presented as a patron of the arts in his beloved capital Samarkand, but many of the craftsmen and artists he employed came to him as part of the booty. Out of fear, they constructed the great mosque there in such haste that it soon began to collapse.

Some contemporary accounts come to Marozzi's aid. Arabshah, a Syrian who witnessed the hordes' devastation of Damascus, wrote a life of Temur revilinghim as a viper and a bastard. But even he acknowledged that Temur was never deceived by flattery, that truth, even if painful, delighted him, and that his balanced temperament ensured that he was never sad in adversity nor joyful in prosperity. Eventually, by the time Temur breathes his last, Marozzi succeeds, and admirably so, in reflecting the power of his indomitable spirit down the centuries.

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