Timor, sometimes known as Tamerlane, carved out one of history's largest empires through sweeping military campaigns and ruthless violence.

In this episode of the History Extra podcast, I spoke with writer, journalist and historian Justin Marozzi to explore Timur's rise from the

Central Asian steppe, his extensive conquests from Delhi to Damascus, and the complicated

legacy of a ruler remembered both as a cultural patron and a bloodthirsty tyrannical conqueror.

Thank you so much for joining me to talk all about the life of Tim Moore.

Or, I think as we should probably set up at the start of this episode, many people might know him as

Tamerlane. Can I ask Justin, why is he known by both of these names, Timor and Tamerlane?

Yeah, it's a good point to deal with straight away. Timor is Turkic Chagaitai language,

and it means iron, basically. So that was his name, Timor. His enemies from a fairly early age

gave him this derogatory nickname Timoriang, which in English is Timor the

lame. And then you go from Timor the Lame to Tamerlane and Christopher Marlowe's famous play,

Tamblain. But the fact of the matter is, in the West, he's much better known as Tamerlane.

But if you speak to people in Central Asia and in the

Muslim world generally, they will know him as Timor. So in this episode, we may be using them

interchangeably because he's known by both. To start this episode, then, why should we know

about Timor or Tamerlane? I think he's important because for me, at least, he is one of the

three greatest military conquerors and leaders in history. So everyone knows Alexander the

great. Everyone's heard of Genghis Khan. I think Timor is right up there in that top trio,

but outside the Islamic world, he's just not as well known.

There are various reasons for that. It struck me when I was researching him that in a way,

he's more impressive than either Alexander or Genghis. Genghis had one sort of homogenous people

to lead in battle and to build up his empire. Alexander was the son of a king, Philip, of Macedon.

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