Tamerlane : Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World - Hardcover

Marozzi, Justin

3.89

856 ratings by Goodreads

9780007116119: Tamerlane : Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 000711611X ISBN 13: 9780007116119

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2004

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

New

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Justin Marozzi is contributing editor of the Spectator. He used to sell tobacco to Libya and was the Financial Times's correspondent in the Philippines for two years. He writes regularly for the Financial Times and has also written for The Times and The Economist and broadcast for the BBC World Service and Radio Four. He is the author of South from Barbary, an account of a journey along the old slave routes of the Libyan Sahara.

From Publishers Weekly:

By the time of his death in 1405, the Mongol conqueror Tamerlane-a pejorative derivative of the nickname "Temur the Lame"-commanded as much land and fear as any ruler in history. Literally following in the footsteps of Ghengis Khan, he built his empire with one invasion after the next, eventually amassing a kingdom that stretched "from Moscow to the Mediterranean, from Delhi to Damascus." Nonetheless, Tamerlane remains relatively unknown in the Western world, taking a historical backseat to Ghengis despite a reign and ruthlessness every bit as remarkable. Faced with such a complex and underreported subject, Marozzi delivers an exceptional account of the emperor's life, revealing him to be both an extravagantly merciless tyrant and tireless proponent for the cultural and architectural progress in his beloved Samarkand (in modern day Uzbekistan). One peculiar choice, however, is the book's subtitle, as Tamerlane killed tens of thousands of his fellow Muslims along his so-called "pilgrimage of destruction," including a particularly bloody massacre of Baghdad that left 90,000 dead, "their heads cemented into 120 towers." The subtitle certainly wasn't chosen for a lack of nicknames, as Tamerlane's life produced plenty: "Lord of the Fortunate Conjunction." "Emperor of the Age." "Unconquered Lord of the Seven Climes." "Scourge of God." The list goes on, too, leading one to wonder how it is that such a large part of the world hardly recognizes name.
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.