A Popular History of Unpopular Things
A podcast that makes history more fun and accessible - we love all things gory, gross, mysterious, and weird!
A Popular History of Unpopular Things
The Mongol Bone Pyramids
Join Kelli as she explores the history of the Mongol Empire and how we go from Genghis Khan to Timur, a Turco-Mongol leader who is responsible for building an empire off of the deaths of 17 million people in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. His infamous calling card? Leaving pyramids and towers made of the skulls of the dead he killed at the entrance to each city, a powerful reminder not to cross him or his empire.
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Intro
Welcome to A Popular History of Unpopular Things, a mostly scripted podcast that makes history more fun and accessible. My kind of history is the unpopular stuff - disease, death, and destruction. I like learning about all things bloody, gross, mysterious, and weird.
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So today, I want to talk about something that just sounds really metal - bone pyramids.
Just, picture that for a second.
Pyramids. Made of bone. Specifically, human skulls!
So when most people hear “The Mongols,” I’m sure they immediately go to Genghis Khan. He’s arguably the most famous of the Mongols, since he was the one who unified the whole lot together, became the ruler, and successfully invaded… well… a good chunk of Asia, the Middle East, and a tiny piece of Eastern Europe.
And I’m certainly going to talk about Genghis Khan when I dive into the historical context, but today I actually want to focus on another ruler who is tangentially related to the Mongol Empire - Timur.
He’s sometimes called Timur-i Lang, which translates to “Timur the Lame,” anglicized into “Tamerlane.” He earned this nickname because of an accident at a young age that crippled his right leg. Hence, you know, lame. Apparently his kneecap and thigh bone merged together and he had to keep it perpetually bent and walked with a limp. But hey, that didn’t stop him from conquerin’!
Timur, you see, was known for his brutal conquests of Central Asia. He built pyramids and towers out of the skulls of his slain enemies at the edge of a recently-slaughtered town as a warning to others that he would stop at nothing to conquer and spread his empire. And also that he wouldn’t tolerate opposition to his rule.
So today, fascinated by that one detail of the life of one conqueror, I want to explore the history of the Mongols and Timur to get a better sense of who they are, why they conquered, and perhaps even look at the positive things they did - they weren’t just conquerors, but also rulers that initiated a period of peace that saw a growth in trade, religious tolerance, education, and the spread of technology.
So let’s get started!
Historical Context
As always, let’s start with the historical context. Who were the Mongols, why are they a thing, and how do we start this story with Genghis Khan and end it with Timur creating pyramids out of the severed heads of his enemies?
So the Mongols as we know them, the ones who conquered and ruled over the largest contiguous land empire in history, only started to come together in 1206 with a man named Temujin. Prior to this, the people that we would come to know as the Mongols were an assortment of tribes. They lived off the land as pastoral nomads, meaning they relied on livestock for their survival. Wherever their goats, sheep, and horses grazed, the Mongols would follow.
One of the problems with this way of life is that it is easily threatened by drought and disease. If there are no grasses for their herding animals, their livelihood will literally die off. The Mongols, who lived in smaller family groups, would have a hard time surviving. So something needed to change.
But let me take a step back and get bigger with the scale here.
From 900 to 1300 CE, global temperatures were warmer than average. Naturally, not man-made like our current climate crisis. It wasn’t consistent, either; sometimes the weather would have long stretches of being warm and moist, and other times hot and dry. We call it the Medieval Warming Period.
For some regions, like Europe, this was overall a good thing - it led to a boom in grain crops like wheat, which then helped grow the population. But for the Mongols, the inconsistent weather was not super helpful for their nomadic lifestyle.
From 1180-1190, so the decades preceding Genghis Khan’s rise to power, there was a pretty bad drought that threatened the Mongolian livestock and way of life. Normally, when societies experience external stressors like this, they will also have political instability, economic tensions, and social issues. The Mongols were no exception; faced with environmental problems, rival family groups fought one another for control of land.
Enter Temujin. And I’m cutting out a lot of his backstory here to keep it simple. In a meeting of the Kuriltai, a political and military council, he took power and adopted the title Genghis Khan. There’s some disagreement over what that name means, but essentially, it’s meant to imply that he was the “universal ruler.” And this reads, because in addition to calling for the kuriltai and taking control of all Mongols, Genghis Khan had killed a bunch of his political rivals in battle so they couldn’t oppose him.
But now that Genghis Khan was in control, his plan was to unite the tribes and form a powerful, organized empire. Suddenly, he found himself in control of over 1 million people. To be successful, he would have to institute changes so the whole system didn’t just devolve back into tribal warfare.
So Genghis Khan got rid of aristocratic titles passed down through rich families, and instead honored promotions based on merit. Stealing livestock - you know, the thing they originally depended on for survival - was punishable by death. He adopted a formal and consistent writing system, encouraged foreign visitors, increased and protected trade, and even supported freedom of religion. In short, he tried to make life for the people living in the Mongol Empire a little more consistent and based on a set of rules applicable to everyone. And with foreigners coming into and out of Mongolia, coupled with a strong trading system over the Silk Roads, the Mongols adopted all manner of new technologies and ideas.
But, of course, the Mongols also wanted to expand their empire. To do this, they went to war with their neighbors. And man were they good at it. On horseback, there were no rivals. Mongol horsemen trained from a young, young age to be incredibly deadly with a bow on arrow, while moving, and aiming at moving targets. And since horses are native to the Central Asian steppes where the Mongols are from, they had a lot of cavalry units. Practically unstoppable.
The clans unified and the troops ready, Genghis Khan turned southward to China, which at that time was made up of several fractured dynasties: the Song Dynasty in the south, and the Xi Xia, the Jin, and the Liao in the north, bordering on Mongol lands. China’s lands were much more fertile and had plenty of goods and riches for the plundering, so Genghis Khan wanted them.
By the time the Mongols had finished expanding, first under Genghis Khan and later his successors, the empire had stretched from Mongolia in the northeast, down to China, west to the Middle East, and up into Russia and Eastern Europe. It was over a whopping 31 million square kilometers, or 12 million square miles - the largest contiguous empire ever. There were over 100 million people living in the Mongol Empire. And though they, of course, built this empire with brutal warfare, the empire it created flourished with peace and stability. The period of time from about 1279 until the Empire essentially ended was known as the Pax Mongolica - Mongol Peace. Travel and trade over the Silk Roads were protected. A really fast and efficient postal service helped to spread news throughout the empire. Culture diffused across the empire, allowing for religions to cross vast distances, for ideas to spread, and for goods to be bought and sold across Afro-Eurasia.
But things weren’t all good - the Empire itself was split into four parts when Genghis Khan’s grandson, Mongke Khan, died in 1259. A civil war broke out between Mongke’s younger brothers over who would become the next ruler of the empire, and ultimately what happened was that the whole thing divided into four parts. They were known as the four khanates: the Golden Horde, which was the Northwest chunk that included Russia and Eastern Europe; the Ilkhanate, which was a good portion of the modern-day Middle East; the Chagatai, which was the central portion of the Silk Roads trade network above the Himalayas and was named after Genghis Khan’s second son, and the Khanate of the Great Khan, also known as the Chinese Yuan Dynasty, which encompassed modern-day Mongolia, China, the Korean Peninsula, and portions of Southeast Asia.
But with today’s episode on Timur and his infamous pyramids of human skulls, we need to zoom in on that central Asian khanate, the Chagatai, and what happened when the Mongol Empire collapsed.
Timur and the Turco-Mongols
Now part of what makes the Mongols so interesting is how they merged with local groups to form new cultures. One of those subgroups was the Turco-Mongols, which is exactly what it sounds like - a synthesis of Mongols and the Turkic-speaking peoples who lived in Central Asia. Not the Turks who went on to conquer and rule the Ottoman Empire and later Turkey.
So the Mongol Empire essentially ended in 1368, leaving behind a power vacuum - a rush for the people living in and around the Mongol Empire to fill the void left behind when the empire finally collapsed.
The Turco-Mongol groups that lived in the former Chagatai Khanate rose to form their own empires. Our boy Timur, in 1370, established the Timurid Empire. At its height, it stretched from Iraq and Iran in the West to parts of Central Asia and portions of today’s Pakistan.
Though Timur is often associated with the Mongols, it’s important to distinguish that he is quite multicultural; he and his ancestors descended from both Turks and Mongols, and Timur demonstrated characteristics of both. The Turkic-speaking people who lived throughout central Asia were primarily Muslims, as they adopted the religion of the people in this region over a century ago when they first conquered the lands. The Chagatai Khanate and its descendants were also geographically close to the Persian heartlands in today’s Iran, so they adopted a lot of Persian culture as well.
But where Timur most displayed his Mongol-ness was in his desire to conquer.
Much like Genghis Khan more than a century and a half before him, Timur wanted to create a massive empire that stretched throughout Asia and the Middle East. He didn’t make quite the same-sized empire, but it was still pretty impressive. In the course of this campaign, historians estimate that he and his army are responsible for over 17 million deaths.
You see, both the Mongols and our friend Timur were known for massacring entire populations of people. In his campaigns across the Middle East and Central Asia, Timur reportedly killed about 70,000 people at Isfahan, which would later become the capital of the Safavid Empire, 90,000 in Baghdad, and around 50,000 while fighting against the Delhi Sultanate in India. And though, like the Mongols, he ended up creating a strong, centralized government that valued culture, the arts, religions, and a strong economy, he built this empire with his brutal takedown of anyone who got in his way. He reportedly once said that, quote, “There is only one God in the sky, and there should be only one king on the earth, the whole world does not deserve to have more than one king.” End quote. And presumably, he should be that King, right?
Growing up in the Chagatai Khanate, Timur was trained as many Mongols were trained - in riding horses, using a bow, and hunting. These skills, of course, got better over time and would come in handy when he started to grow his own empire. Through some political moves and, well, murdering his family and friends, Timur became the sole ruler of the region by the late 1360s. He married into a family that could prove a direct descendancy to Genghis Khan himself, which was all the political legitimacy he needed to maintain his rule.
However, it’s important to note, that although Timur could claim Mongol heritage, he was not related to Genghis Khan by blood, only by marriage. So while his heirs could claim they descended from Genghis Khan, he could not. Thus, he couldn’t take the title of “Khan” when he took over. Here’s where his Muslim heritage comes in - he instead took the title of Amir, which is Arabic for prince, or in this case, leader.
It’s also worth noting that even though he was a Muslim and described himself as the “sword of Islam,” his campaigns and territorial expansion killed more Muslims than Christians or Hindus. He wasn’t conquering in the name of Islam - he was conquering to take control of the Muslim lands in and around the old Chagatai Khanate. Islamic cities like Herat in Afghanistan, Aleppo and Damascus in Syria, and Baghdad in Iraq were all burned down by Timur and his army. He liked Samarkand, though, which is in modern-day Uzbekistan, and made it his capital city. It was a key trade city on the Silk Roads.
When he felt challenged, or was disrespected by things like rebellions or plots to overthrow his rule, Timur would come down hard. Here are some fun stories for you. And by fun, I mean bloody and violent, because you know what I’m like.
In 1400, Timur was on a campaign in Syria. The leader of Damascus didn’t want Timur or his empire there, so he cut one of Timur’s ambassadors in half. That’s right, chopped in half. And another ambassador was beheaded. When Timur found out, ohhhh boy. The entire city, as well as the more northern city of Aleppo, was punished.
He took down Aleppo first. Most of the people living there were killed, and a tower of 20,000 human heads was erected outside the city walls - a warning and reminder to everyone else that Timur would not be insulted, his rule would not be challenged, and everyone better just fall in line.
One of the more egregious things he did in Damascus, further to the south, was burning the Umayyad Mosque, one of the oldest and largest mosques in the world. It was rebuilt and repaired later in the 15th century, and is still around today. But it’s not only that he set the mosque on fire to punish the city - he trapped more than 30,000 people in there first, including imams, who are the ones who lead prayer in a mosque, women and children. He told them the mosques would be safe from harm, and when upwards of 30,000 people took shelter, he locked the doors and set the place on fire. Brutal.
A contemporary writer at the time, Ibn Taghribirdi, wrote the following of Damascus after Timur was finished with it. Quote: “There was nought but a desert waste darkened by fire, a lonely solitude where only the owl and the vulture took refuge.” End quote.
Can you imagine what that must have looked like? Mountains of dead, burned corpses. Heads, decapitated and put on display, the flesh rotting off the skulls. I can see why Ibn Taghribirdi mentioned the owls and vulture - birds that eat carrion, which is dead and decaying flesh. There must have been tons of birds and creatures that flocked there to take advantage of all the bodies that Timur and his army left in the wake of his destruction.
After his Syrian campaign, Timur went on to Baghdad. Tens of thousands were killed. Timur told his soldiers that they had to return with at least two severed heads each. Sources suggest that his soldiers were so afraid to come back empty handed, literally in this case, that they killed prisoners of war captured in other cities just so they could present the required to heads to their leader.
Another city, Isfahan, got similar treatment. Isfahan is in modern-day Iran, for reference. Timur conquered Isfahan, and like most cities, it was incorporated into the empire. Cities that surrendered without resistance were not typically destroyed, and this was initially the case with Isfahan. Timur levied taxes against his new city, as would be custom for any empire by the way, but the city revolted against him by killing his tax collectors and some of his soldiers. Uh-oh. In response, Timur massacred the city, reportedly killing over 70,000 people. An eye-witness counted more than 28 towers of human skulls stationed around the city, each with around 1,500 heads. Yikes.
After all that, he went on to fight against some Ottoman Turks in what is today’s Turkey - and he won that battle, but decided he didn’t even want the land - he just wanted to beat the other ruler down and show him who’s boss, which is wild. In one of the Ottoman cities he conquered, Smyrna, he massacred most of the population and tore the city down before leaving. And after his victory there, Timur just turned around and went home to Samarkand.
On the other side of his empire, when Timur marched into India, he was particularly cruel to his prisoners of war there. Just before a major battle, Timur rounded up all the Indian prisoners he had taken and killed them, publically, in view of his enemy. Somewhere between 40,000 to 100,000 prisoners were slaughtered. It must have had the desired effect of putting off his enemy because Timur was able to defeat his opponents shortly after.
Timur’s Death and Legacy
Timur might have gone on to take over more land in India and beyond into China, fulfilling his dream of recreating the might of the Mongol Empire, but he died unexpectedly in 1405 of natural causes. This is probably a good thing for the Ming Dynasty, who had taken over after Mongol rule in China crumbled, because Timur for most of his career never lost a battle. Only a few at the very beginning of his conquering days. But like Alexander the Great, in the midst of building his empire, he was undefeated.
While en route to China, Timur died at Syr Daria in today’s Kazakhstan. Much like with the Mongol Empire after Genghis Khan’s death, the Timurid Empire also couldn’t withstand the death of such a powerful leader, so it quickly divided among Timur’s sons and grandsons. A civil war broke out and by the time it ended with Timur’s youngest son as the new ruler, the damage had been done, and the Timurid Empire was on its way out.
Now when we sit back and look at Timur’s legacy, my mind of course instantly goes to the gross stuff - the bloody conquests, the tens of thousands dead at every city, the masses of bodies, decapitated heads piled into pyramids and towers meant to ward off future threats to Timur’s rule - I mean, that’s the entire essence of the APHOUT podcast!
But as a historian, it’s also important to point out that, like the Mongols before him, Timur’s empire wasn’t all doom and gloom and death and destruction. Centered on the Silk Roads, Timur’s people enjoyed the benefits of a prosperous trade network. They were introduced to all kinds of peoples and cultures and enjoyed relative peace (so long as they didn’t challenge Timur’s rule and stayed in line). His annihilation of the Ottomans inadvertently helped out Christian Europe, as Constantinople, which was under attack at the time, got a bit of a break. It ended up falling in 1453, but by then, the Ottoman forces were not nearly as strong or unified, thanks to Timur. It’s part of the reason that the Ottomans were not successful against the Europeans during later wars like the Siege of Vienna in 1683.
Samarkand, the capital city of Timur’s empire, continued to influence culture well past Timur’s death. Remember that Timur was Muslim, but also adopted a lot of Persian influence; this carried on after his death too. Scholars continued to come to Samarkand for its observatory to study both astronomy and mathematics, and Persian and Islamic scholars helped spread knowledge throughout the Silk Roads from there. Persian language, art, and poetry continued to thrive and spread as well.
And Timur’s great-great grandson, Babur, went on to found the Mughal Dynasty in India in 1526, using his familial connection to Genghis Khan and Timur as justification to rule. By then, Timur was as legendary as Genghis Khan himself.
So while the coolest part of the story for me is of course the bone pyramids, the historian in me needs to remind everyone that when we look at other groups in history, particularly non-Western groups, we need to consider that they, too, built powerful, organized empires that did both good and bad. The centralized empires that the Mongols and later the Timurids built, ran, and supported led to an increase in trade networks, which inevitably led to Western advancement and, eventually, the discovery of the Americas.
Outro
Thanks for joining me for this episode of A Popular History of Unpopular Things. My name is Kelli Beard, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the story of Timur and the Mongol Bone Pyramids. Thank you for supporting my podcast, and if you haven’t already checked out my other episodes, go have a listen!
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