A Timurid era illustration of Emir Timur
Reign	1370-1405
Coronation	1370, Balkh
Born	(1336-04-08)April 8, 1336
Birthplace	Shahrisabz, Uzbekistan
Died	February 18, 1405(1405-02-18) (aged 68)
Place of death	Otrar, Syr Darya
Buried	Gur-e Amir, Samarkand
Predecessor	Amir Husayn
Successor	Khalil Sultan
Royal House	Timurid
Father	Muhammad Taraghai
Mother	Tekina Mohbegim
Religious beliefs	Islam

Timur (Turkish: Demir "iron", Persian: تمور‎ Timūr, Chagatai: Temür "iron"; 8 April 1336 – 18 February 1405), historically known as Tamerlane^[1] (from Persian: تيمور لنگ‎, Timūr-i Lang, Aksak Timur "Timur the Lame" in Turkish), was a Turkic^[2][3][4], who conquered West, South and Central Asia, and the founder of the Timurid dynasty. He was the grandfather of Ulugh Beg, who ruled Central Asia from 1411 to 1449,^[5][6][7] and the great-great-grandfather of Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire, which ruled South Asia for centuries.^{[8][9][10][11][12]}

Timur envisioned the restoration of the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan.^[13] Unlike his predecessors Timur was also a devout Muslim and referred to himself as the Sword of Islam.^[14] His armies were inclusively multi-ethnic and multicultural. During his lifetime Timur would emerge as the most powerful ruler in the Muslim world after defeating the formidable Mamluks of Egypt and Syria, the emerging Ottoman Empire and the declining Sultanate of Delhi; Timur had also decisively defeated the Knights Hospitaler at Smyrna and since then referred to himself as a Ghazi. By the end of his reign Timur had also gained complete suzerainty over all the remnants of the Chagatai Khanate, Ilkhanate, Golden Horde and even the Yuan Khanate.

Timur is regarded as a military genius and a tactician whose prowess made him one of the world’s great conquerors. Timur's armies were ferocious, feared throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe^[15]. Independent scholars estimate that his military campaigns caused the deaths of 17 million people, amounting to about 5% of the world population.^[16] The historian of Islamic Asia John Joseph Saunders summarized that "Till the advent of Hitler, Timur stood forth in history as the supreme example of soulless and unproductive militarism".^[17]

On the other hand, Timur is also recognized as a great patron of art and architecture, while he interacted with Muslim intellectuals such as Ibn Khaldun and Hafez.^[18]

Early history[link]

Timur was born in Transoxiana, in the City of Kesh (an area now better known as Shahrisabz, "the green city"), some 50 miles south of Samarkand in modern Uzbekistan, then part of the Chagatai Khanate. His father, Taraqai, was a small-scale landowner and belonged to the Barlas tribe. The Barlas was a Turko-Mongol tribe^[19] which was originally a Mongol tribe^[20] and was Turkified^[21] and/or became Turkic-speaking^[22] or intermingling with the Turkic peoples.^[23] According to Gérard Chaliand, Timur was a Muslim Turk^[24] but he saw himself as Genghis Khan's heir.^[24] Though not a Chinggisid,^[25] he clearly sought to evoke the legacy of Genghis Khan's conquests during his lifetime.^[26]

Timur was a Muslim, but while his chief official religious counsellor and advisor was the Hanafite scholar 'Abdu 'l-Jabbar Khwarazmi, his particular persuasion is not known. In Tirmidh, he had come under the influence of his spiritual mentor Sayyid Barakah, a Shiite leader from Balkh who is buried alongside Timur in Gur-e Amir.^[27][28][29] Despite his Hanafi background, Timur was known to hold Ali and the Shia Imams in high regard and has been noted by various scholars for his "pro-Alid" stance. Despite this, Timur was noted for attacking Shi’is on Sunni grounds and therefore his own religious inclinations remain unclear^[30].

Timur is also known to have devout Muslim inclinations regarding his personal life and according to his followers he restricted himself to only four wives, while most Mongol rulers during that period did not. According to his famous descendant Babur, Timur is known to have kept fine copies of both the Quran and the Yassa (a Mongol code of honor introduced by Genghis Khan).

Military leader[link]

Map of the Timurid Empire

In about 1360 Timur gained prominence as a military leader whose troops were mostly Turkic tribesmen of the region.^[24][31] He took part in campaigns in Transoxiana with the Khan of Chagatai. His career for the next ten or eleven years may be thus briefly summarized from the Memoirs. Allying himself both in cause and by family connection with Kurgan, the dethroner and destroyer of Volga Bulgaria, he was to invade Khorasan at the head of a thousand horsemen. This was the second military expedition which he led, and its success led to further operations, among them the subjugation of Khorezm and Urganj.

After the murder of Kurgan the disputes which arose among the many claimants to sovereign power were halted by the invasion of the energetic Chagtaid Tughlugh Temur of Kashgar, another descendant of Genghis Khan. Timur was dispatched on a mission to the invader's camp, the result of which was his own appointment to the head of his own tribe, the Barlas, in place of its former leader, Hajji Beg.

The exigencies of Timur's quasi-sovereign position compelled him to have recourse to his formidable patron, whose reappearance on the banks of the Syr Darya created a consternation not easily allayed. The Barlas were taken from Timur and entrusted to a son of Tughluk, along with the rest of Mawarannahr (Transoxiana); but he was defeated in battle by the bold warrior he had replaced at the head of a numerically far inferior force.

Rise to power[link]

Timur commanding the Siege of Balkh.

Timur besieges the historic city of Urganj.

Tughlugh's death facilitated the work of reconquest, and a few years of perseverance and energy sufficed for its accomplishment, as well as for the addition of a vast extent of territory. It was in this period that Timur reduced the Chagatai khans to the position of figureheads, who were deferred to in theory but in reality ignored, while Timur ruled in their name. During this period Timur and his brother-in-law Husayn, at first fellow fugitives and wanderers in joint adventures full of interest and romance, became rivals and antagonists. At the close of 1369 Husayn was assassinated and Timur, having been formally proclaimed sovereign at Balkh, mounted the throne at Samarkand, the capital of his dominions. This event was recorded by Marlowe in his famous play Tamburlaine the Great, Part 2:^[32]

Then shall my native city, Samarqand...
Be famous through the furthest continents,
For there my palace-royal shall be placed,
Whose shining turrets shall dismay the heavens,
And cast the fame of lion's tower to hell.

A legendary account of Timur's rise to leadership, recorded among the Tatar descendants of the Qıpchaq Khanate in Tobol, goes as follows:
One day Aksak Temür spoke thusly:

"Khan Züdei (in China) rules over the city. We now number fifty to sixty men, so let us elect a leader." So they drove a stake into the ground and said: "We shall run thither and he who among us is the first to reach the stake, may he become our leader". So they ran and Aksak Timur (since he was lame) lagged behind, but before the others reached the stake he threw his cap onto it. Those who arrived first said: "We are the leaders". (But) Aksak Timur said: "My head came in first, I am the leader". In the meanwhile an old man arrived and said: "The leadership should belong to Aksak Timur; your feet have arrived but, before then, his head reached the goal". So they made Aksak Timur their prince.^[33][34]

It is notable that Timur never claimed for himself the title of khan, styling himself amir and acting in the name of the Chagatai ruler of Transoxania. Timur was a military genius, but was sometimes lacking in political sense. He tended not to leave a government apparatus behind in lands he conquered and was often faced with the need to reconquer such lands after inevitable rebellions had taken place.

Period of expansion[link]

Timur orders campaign against Georgia.

Emir Timur's army attacks the survivors of the town of Nerges, in Georgia, in the spring of 1396.

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.

One of the most formidable of Timur's opponents was another Mongol ruler, a descendant of Genghis Khan named Tokhtamysh. After having been a refugee in Timur's court, Tokhtamysh became ruler both of the eastern Kipchak and the Golden Horde. After his accession, he then quarrelled with Timur over the possession of Khwarizm and Azerbaijan. However, Timur still supported him against the Russians and in 1382 Tokhtamysh invaded the Muscovite dominion and burned Moscow.^[35]

After the death of Abu Sa'id, ruler of the Ilkhanid Dynasty, in 1335, there was a power vacuum in Persia. In 1383 Timur started the military conquest of Persia. He captured Herat, Khorasan and all eastern Persia by 1385 and captured almost all of Persia by 1387. These conquests were characterised by exceptional brutality. For example, when Isfahan surrendered to Timur in 1387, he initially treated it with relative mercy as he commonly did with cities that surrendered without resistance. However, after the city revolted against Timur's punitive taxes by killing the tax collectors and some of Timur's soldiers, Timur ordered the complete massacre of the city, killing a reported 70,000 citizens. An eye-witness counted more than 28 towers, each constructed of about 1,500 heads.^[36]

In the meantime, Tokhtamysh, now khan of the Golden Horde, turned against his patron and invaded Azerbaijan in 1385. This action would cause a counter by Timur that would become the Tokhtamysh–Timur war. In the initial stage of the war, Timur won a victory at the Battle of the Kondurcha River, however Tokhtamysh and some of his army were allowed to escape. After Tokhtamysh's initial defeat, Timur then invaded Muscovy to the north of Tokhtamysh's holdings. Timur's army burned Raizan and advanced upon Moscow, only to be pulled away before reaching the Oka River by Tokhtamysh's renewed campaign in the south.^[35]

In the first phase of the conflict with Tokhtamysh, Timur led an army of over 100,000 men north for more than 700 miles into the uninhabited steppe, then west about 1,000 miles, advancing in a front more than 10 miles wide. The Timurid army almost starved, and Timur organized a great hunt where the army encircled vast areas of steppe to get food. It was then that Tokhtamysh's army was boxed in against the east bank of the Volga River in the Orenburg region and destroyed at the previously mentioned Battle of the Kondurcha River. During this march, Timur's army got far enough north to be in a region of very long summer days, causing complaints by his Muslim soldiers about keeping a long schedule of prayers in such northern regions.

It was in the second phase of the conflict that Timur took an easier route against the enemy, invading the realm of Tokhtamysh via the Caucasus region. The year 1395, saw the Battle of the Terek River, when Tokhtamysh's power was finally broken, concluding the titanic struggle between the two monarchs.

Tokhtamysh was not able to restore his power or prestige. He was killed about a decade after the Terek River battle in the area of present day Tyumen, by agents of an emir named Edigu.

Timur during the course of his campaigns destroyed Sarai, the capital of the Golden Horde, and Astrakhan, subsequently wrecking the Golden Horde's economy based on Silk Road trade. The Golden Horde saw political disintegration after such losses, with Mongol unity in the region shattered permanently.

In May 1393 Timur invaded the Anjudan, crippling the Ismaili village only one year after his assault on the Ismailis in Mazandaran. The village appears to have been prepared for attack, as it contained a fortress and an intricate system of underground tunnels. These devices were, however, unsuccessful in thwarting Timur’s soldiers, who flooded the tunnels by cutting into a channel overhead. Timur’s reasons for attacking this village are not yet well-understood, however it has been suggested that his religious persuasions and view of himself as an executor of divine will may have contributed to his motivations.^[37] The Persian historian Khwandamir explains that an Ismaili presence was growing more politically powerful in Persian Iraq. A group among the locals in this region was dissatisfied with this. Khwandamir writes that some of these locals assembled and brought up their complaint with Timur, possibly provoking his attack on the Ismailis there.^[37]

Campaign against the Tughlaq Dynasty[link]

Timur defeats the Sultan of Delhi, Nasir Al-Din Mahmud Tughluq, in the winter of 1397-1398, painting dated 1595-1600.

In 1398 Timur invaded northern India, attacking the Delhi Sultanate ruled by Sultan Nasir-u Din Mehmud of the Tughlaq Dynasty.^[38] The cambridge history says that he was opposed by Ahirs and Jats but Delhi Government did nothing to stop him.^[39] After crossing the Indus river on September 30, 1398, he sacked Tulamba and massacred its inhabitants.^[40] Then he advanced and captured Multan by October.^[41]

His campaign was officially justified by claims that the Muslim Delhi Sultanate was too tolerant toward its Hindu subjects, but was motivated greatly by the considerable wealth to be gained. By all accounts, Timur's campaigns in India were marked by systematic slaughter and other atrocities on a truly massive scale inflicted mainly on the subcontinent's Hindu population.^[42]

Timur crossed the Indus River at Attock (now Pakistan) on September 24, 1398, but Timur's invasion did not go unopposed and he did meet some resistance during his march to Delhi, by the Governor of Meerut. Timur was able to continue his relentless approach to Delhi, arriving in 1398 to combat the armies of Sultan Mehmud, already weakened by a succession struggle within the royal family.

The Sultan's army was easily defeated on December 17, 1398. On this day the army of Sultan Mahmud Khan had prepared 120 war elephants armored with chain mail. He had put poison on the tusks, which put fright into the Tatar lines. Timur took action and the Tatars dug out a trench in front of their positions. Timur then took his camels and placed all the wood and hay he could on their backs. When the war elephants charged he lit the camels on fire and then prodded them with iron sticks. They charged at the elephants howling in pain: Timur had understood that elephants were easily panicked. Faced with the strange spectacle of the burning camels flying straight at them with flames leaping from their backs, the elephants turned around and stampeded back toward their own lines. Timur entered Delhi and the city was sacked, destroyed, and left in ruins. Before the battle for Delhi, Timur executed 100,000 captives:^[11][38]

Timur defeating the Mamluk Sultan Nasir-ad-Din Faraj of Egypt.

"At this Court Amír Jahán Sháh and Amír Sulaimán Sháh, and other amírs of experience, brought to my notice that, from the time of entering Hindustán up to the present time, we had taken more than 100,000 infidels and prisoners, and that they were all in my camp. On the previous day, when the enemy's forces made the attack upon us, the prisoners made signs of rejoicing, uttered imprecations against us, and were ready, as soon as they heard of the enemy's success, to form themselves into a body, break their bonds, plunder our tents, and then to go and join the enemy, and so increase his numbers and strength. I asked their advice about the prisoners, and they said that on the great day of battle these 100,000 prisoners could not be left with the baggage, and that it would be entirely opposed to the rules of war to set these idolaters and foes of Islám at liberty. In fact, no other course remained but that of making them all food for the sword. When I heard these words I found them in accordance with the rules of war, and I directly gave my command for the Tawáchís to proclaim throughout the camp that every man who had infidel prisoners was to put them to death, and whoever neglected to do so should himself be executed and his property given to the informer. When this order became known to the gházís of Islám, they drew their swords and put their prisoners to death. 100,000 infidels, impious idolaters, were on that day slain. Mauláná Násiru-d dín 'Umar, a counsellor and man of learning, who, in all his life, had never killed a sparrow, now, in execution of my order, slew with his sword fifteen idolatrous Hindus, who were his captives."

The alleged "Memoirs" of Timur, or Tuzk-e-Taimuri, relate the sack of Delhi:^{[11][38][43][44]}

"On the 16th of the month some incidents occurred which led to the sack of the city of Delhí, and to the slaughter of many of the infidel inhabitants. One was this. A party of fierce Turk soldiers had assembled at one of the gates of the city to look about them and enjoy themselves, and some of them laid violent hands upon the goods of the inhabitants. When I heard of this violence, I sent some amírs, who were present in the city, to restrain the Turks. A party of soldiers accompanied these amírs into the city. Another reason was that some of the ladies of my harem expressed a wish to go into the city and see the palace of Hazár-sutún (thousand columns) which Malik Jauná built in the fort called Jahán-panáh. I granted this request, and I sent a party of soldiers to escort the litters of the ladies. Another reason was that Jalál Islám and other díwáns had gone into the city with a party of soldiers to collect the contribution laid upon the city. Another reason was that some thousand troopers with orders for grain, oil, sugar, and flour, had gone into the city to collect these supplies. Another reason was that it had come to my knowledge that great numbers of gabrs, with their wives and children, and goods, and valuables, had come into the city from all the country round, and consequently I had sent some amírs with their regiments (kushún) into the city and directed them to pay no attention to the remonstrances of the inhabitants, but to seize and bring out these fugitives. For these several reasons a great number of fierce Turkí soldiers were in the city. When the soldiers proceeded to apprehend the Hindus and gabrs who had fled to the city, many of them drew their swords and offered resistance. The flames of strife were thus lighted and spread through the whole city from Jahán-panáh and Sírí to Old Dehlí, burning up all it reached. The savage Turks fell to killing and plundering. The amírs who were in charge of the gates prevented any more soldiers from going into the place, but the flames of war had risen too high for this precaution to be of any avail in extinguishing them. On that day, Thursday, and all the night of Friday, nearly 15,000 Turks were engaged in slaying, plundering, and destroying. When morning broke on the Friday, all my army, no longer under control, went off to the city and thought of nothing but killing, plundering, and making prisoners. All that day the sack was general. The following day, Saturday, the 17th, all passed in the same way, and the spoil was so great that each man secured from fifty to a hundred prisoners, men, women, and children. There was no man who took less than twenty. The other booty was immense in rubies, diamonds, garnets, pearls, and other gems; jewels of gold and silver; ashrafís, tankas of gold and silver of the celebrated 'Aláí coinage; vessels of gold and silver; and brocades and silks of great value. Gold and silver ornaments of the Hindu women were obtained in such quantities as to exceed all account. Excepting the quarter of the saiyids, the 'ulamá, and the other Musulmáns, the whole city was sacked. The pen of fate had written down this destiny for the people of this city. Although I was desirous of sparing them I could not succeed, for it was the will of Allah that this calamity should fall upon the city."

Timur left Delhi in December 1398 and marched on Meerut. Then he rode up to Haridwar and sacked the holy city on January 23, 1399. Before he crossed the Ganges, he faced stiff resistance from natives at Bhokarhedi. In April he had returned to his own capital beyond the Oxus (Amu Darya). Immense quantities of spoils and slaves were taken from India. According to Ruy Gonzáles de Clavijo, 90 captured elephants were employed merely to carry precious stones looted from his conquest, so as to erect a mosque at Samarkand – what historians today believe is the enormous Bibi-Khanym Mosque.

Campaigns in the Levant[link]

Bayezid I being held captive by Emir Timur and his armies.

Before the end of 1399, Timur started a war with Bayezid I, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and the Mamluk sultan of Egypt Nasir-ad-Din Faraj. Bayezid began annexing the territory of Turkmen and Muslim rulers in Anatolia. As Timur claimed sovereignty over the Turkmen rulers, they took refuge behind him. 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. However, Ibn Khaldun praises Timur for having unified much of the Muslim world when other conquerors of the time could not.^[45]

In a form of rectification, 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.^[46]

He invaded Baghdad in June 1401. After the capture of the city, 20,000 of its citizens were massacred. Timur ordered that every soldier should return with at least two severed human heads to show him. (Many warriors were so scared they killed prisoners captured earlier in the campaign just to ensure they had heads to present to Timur.)^{[citation needed]}

Mosque of Timur.

In the meantime, years of insulting letters had passed between Timur and Bayezid. Finally, Timur invaded Anatolia and defeated Bayezid in the Battle of Ankara on July 20, 1402. Bayezid was captured in battle and subsequently died in captivity, initiating the 12-year Ottoman Interregnum period. Timur's stated motivation for attacking Bayezid and the Ottoman Empire was the restoration of Seljuq authority. Timur saw the Seljuks as the rightful rulers of Anatolia as they had been granted rule by Mongol conquerors, illustrating again Timur's interest with Genghizid legitimacy.

After the Ankara victory, Timur's army ravaged Western Anatolia, with Muslim writers complaining that the Timurid army acted more like a horde of savages than that of a civilized conqueror. But Timur did take the city of Smyrna, a stronghold of the Christian Knights Hospitalers, thus he referred to himself as ghazi or "Warrior of Islam".

Timur was furious at the Genoese and Venetians whose ships ferried the Ottoman army to safety in Thrace. As Lord Kinross reported in The Ottoman Centuries, the Italians preferred the enemy they could handle to the one they could not.

While Timur invaded Anatolia, Qara Yusuf assaulted Baghdad and captured it in 1402. Timur returned to Persia from Anatolia and sent his grandson Abu Bakr ibn Mirah Shah to reconquer Baghdad, which he proceeded to do. Timur then spent some time in Ardabil, where he gave Ali Safavi, leader of the Safaviyya, a number of captives. Subsequently, he marched to Khorasan and then to Samarkhand, where he spent nine months celebrating and preparing to invade Mongolia and China.^[47]

He ruled over an empire that, in modern times, extends from southeastern Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, through Central Asia encompassing part of Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, and even approaches Kashgar in China. The conquests of Timur are claimed to have caused the deaths of up to 17 million people; an assertion impossible to verify.^[48] Timur's campaigns sometimes caused large and permanent demographic changes, northern Iraq remained predominantly Assyrian Christian until attacked, looted, plundered and destroyed by Timur leaving its population decimated by systematic mass slaughter.^[49]

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 North India. Babur's descendants Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, expanded the Mughal Empire to most of the Indian subcontinent.

Markham, in his introduction to the narrative of Clavijo's embassy, states that his body "was embalmed with musk and rose water, wrapped in linen, laid in an ebony coffin and sent to Samarkand, where it was buried." His tomb, the Gur-e Amir, still stands in Samarkand, though it has been heavily restored in recent years.

Attempts to overthrow the Ming Dynasty[link]

By 1368, the new Chinese Ming Dynasty had driven the Mongols out of China. The first Ming Emperor Hongwu, and his successor Yongle demanded, and received, homage from many Central Asian states as the political heirs to the former House of Kublai. The Ming emperor's attempts to treat Timur as a vassal did not go well: when in 1394 Hongwu's ambassadors presented Timur with a letter addressing him in this way, he had the ambassadors Fu An, Guo Ji, and Liu Wei detained, and their 1,500 guards executed.^[50] Neither Hongwu's next ambassador, Chen Dewen (1397) nor the delegation announcing the accession of the Yongle Emperor fared any better.^[50]

Timur eventually planned to conquer China. To this end, Timur made an alliance with the Mongols of the Northern Yuan Dynasty and prepared all the way to Bukhara. The Mongol leader Enkhe Khan sent his grandson Öljei Temür, also known as Buyanshir Khan after he converted to Islam while he stayed at the court of Timur in Samarkand.^[51] In December 1404, Timur started military campaigns against the Ming Dynasty and detained the Ming envoy, but he was attacked by fever and plague when encamped on the farther side of the Sihon (Syr-Daria) and died at Atrar (Otrar) on February 17, 1405,^[52] without ever reaching the Chinese border.^[53] Only after that were the Ming envoys released.^[50]

Timur's scouts explored Mongolia before his death, and the writing they carved on trees in Mongolia's mountains could still be seen even in the twentieth century.^{[citation needed]}

Although he preferred to fight his battles in the spring, Timur died enroute during an uncharacteristic winter campaign against the ruling Chinese Ming Dynasty. It was one of the bitterest winters on record; his troops are recorded as having to dig through five feet of ice to reach drinking water. Records indicate though, that for part of his life at least, he was a surreptitious Ming vassal and that his son Shah Rukh visited China in 1420.^[54]

Contributions to the arts[link]

Timur became widely known as a patron to the arts. Much of the architecture he commissioned still stands in Samarkand, now in present-day Uzbekistan. He was known to bring the most talented artisans from the lands he conquered back to Samarkand, and is credited with often giving them a wide latitude of artistic freedom to express themselves. He also constructed one of his finest buildings at the tomb of Ahmed Yesevi, an influential Turkic Sufi saint who spread Sufi Islam among the nomads.

According to legend, Omar Aqta, Timur's court calligrapher, transcribed the Qur'an using letters so small that the entire text of the book fit on a signet ring. Omar also is said to have created a Qur'an so large that a wheelbarrow was required to transport it. Folios of what is probably this larger Qur'an have been found, written in gold lettering on huge pages.

Timur was also said to have created Tamerlane Chess, a variant of shatranj (also known as medieval chess) played on a larger board with several additional pieces and an original method of pawn promotion. These pieces included the camel, siege-weapon, giraffe, and several others as well as boasting a complicated system involving the ability to exchange pawns for certain pieces should they reach the other side of the board.

Timur's mandating of Kurash wrestling for his soldiers ensured for it a lasting and legendary legacy. Kurash is now a popular international sport and part of the Asian Games.

Exchanges with Europe[link]

Letter of Timur to Charles VI of France, 1402, a witness to Timurid relations with Europe.

Timur had numerous epistolary and diplomatic exchanges with Western, especially Spanish and French, rulers. There was the possibility of an alliance between Timur and the European states, against the Ottoman Turks that were attacking Europe. Therefore, there was a clear motive for Timur, who wanted to surround his Ottoman and Mamluk enemies in this offensive alliance.

The relations between the courts of Henry III of Castile and that of Timur constituted the most important episode of the medieval Spanish Castilian diplomacy. In 1402, the time of the Battle of Ankara, two Spanish ambassadors were already with Timur: Pelayo de Sotomayor and Fernando de Palazuelos. Later, Timur sent to the court of Castile and León a Chagatay ambassador named Hajji Muhammad al-Qazi with letters and gifts.

In return, the King Henry III of Castile sent a famous embassy to Timur's court in Samarkand in 1403-06, led by Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo, with two other ambassadors, Alfonso Paez and Gomez de Salazar. On their return, Timur affirmed that he regarded the king of Castile "as his very own son".

According to Clavijo, Timur's good treatment of the Spanish delegation contrasted with the disdain shown by his host toward the envoys of the "lord of Cathay" (i.e., the Ming Dynasty Yongle Emperor), the Chinese ruler. Clavijo's visit to Samarkand allowed him to report to the European audience on the news from Cathay (China), which few Europeans had been able to visit directly in the century that had passed since the travels of Marco Polo.

The French archives preserve:

• A July 30, 1402, letter from Timur to Charles VI, king of France, suggesting that he send traders to the Orient. It was written in Persian.^[55]
• A May 1403 letter. This is a Latin transcription of a letter from Timur to Charles VI, and another from Amiza Miranchah, his son, to the Christian princes, announcing their victory over Bayezid, in Smyrna.^[56]

A copy has been kept of the answer of Charles VI to Timur, dated June 15, 1403.^[57]

Legacy[link]

Emir Timur and his forces advance against the Golden Horde, Khan^{[disambiguation needed ]}, Tokhtamysh.

I am not a man of blood; and God is my witness that in all my wars I have never been the aggressor, and that my enemies have always been the authors of their own calamity.

—Timur, after the conquest of Aleppo^[58]

Timur's legacy is a mixed one. While Central Asia blossomed under his reign, other places such as Baghdad, Damascus, Delhi and other Arab, Georgian, Persian and Indian cities were sacked and destroyed and their populations massacred. He was responsible for the effective destruction of the Christian Church in much of Asia. Thus, while Timur still retains a positive image in Muslim Central Asia, Persia, and Arab countries, he is vilified by many in India, where some of his greatest atrocities were carried out.

Timur's military talents were unique. He planned all his campaigns years in advance, even planting barley for horse feed two-years ahead of his campaigns. He used propaganda, in what is now called information warfare, as part of his tactics. His campaigns were preceded by the deployment of spies whose tasks included collecting information and spreading horrifying reports about the cruelty, size, and might of Timur’s armies. Such psychological warfare eventually weakened the morale of threatened populations and caused panic in the regions that he intended to invade.^{[citation needed]}

Although Timur's uncharacteristic (for the time) concern for his troops inspired fierce loyalty, he did not pay them. Their only incentives were from looting captured territory — a bounty that included horses, women, precious metals and stones; in other words whatever they, or their newly captured slaves, could carry away from the conquered lands.^{[citation needed]}

Timur's short-lived empire also melded the Turko-Persian tradition in Transoxiania, and in most of the territories which he incorporated into his fiefdom, Persian became the primary language of administration and literary culture (diwan), regardless of ethnicity.^[59] In addition, during his reign, some contributions to Turkic literature were penned, with Turkic cultural influence expanding and flourishing as a result. A literary form of Chagatai Turkic came into use alongside Persian as both a cultural and an official language.^[60]

Timur became a relatively popular figure in Europe for centuries after his death, mainly because of his victory over the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid. The Ottoman armies were at the time invading Eastern Europe and Timur was ironically seen as a sort of ally.

Timur has now been officially recognized as a national hero of newly independent Uzbekistan. His monument in Tashkent now occupies the place where Marx's statue once stood.^[61]

Sir Muhammad Iqbal, whose Brahman ancestors converted to Islam during the Mughal era composed a notable poem entitle the Dream of Timur, the poem itself was inspired by a prayer of the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah II:

In 1794, Sake Deen Mahomed published his travel book, The Travels of Dean Mahomet. The book begins with the praise of Genghis Khan, Timur and particularly the first Mughal Emperor Babur. He also gives important details on the then incumbent Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II.

Biographies[link]

Ahmad ibn Arabshah's work on the Life of Timur.

Timur's generally recognized biographers are Ali Yazdi, commonly called Sharaf ud-Din, author of the Zafarnāmeh (Persian: ظفرنامه‎), translated by Petis de la Croix in 1722, and from French into English by J. Darby in the following year; and Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Abdallah, al-Dimashiqi, al-Ajami (commonly called Ahmad Ibn Arabshah) translated by the Dutch Orientalist Colitis in 1636. In the work of the former, as Sir William Jones remarks, "the Tatarian conqueror is represented as a liberal, benevolent and illustrious prince", in that of the latter he is "deformed and impious, of a low birth and detestable principles." But the favourable account was written under the personal supervision of Timur's grandson, Ibrahim, while the other was the production of his direst enemy.

Among less reputed biographies or materials for biography may be mentioned a second Zafarnāmeh, by Nizam al-Din Shami, stated to be the earliest known history of Timur, and the only one written in his lifetime. Timur's purported autobiography, the Tuzk-e-Taimuri ("Memoirs of Temur") is a later fabrication, although most of the historical facts are accurate.^[11]

More recent biographies include Justin Marozzi's Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World (2006)^[62] and Roy Stier's Tamerlane: The Ultimate Warrior (1998).^[63]

Exhumation[link]

A forensic facial reconstruction of Timur by communist officials such as M. Gerasimov (1941).

Timur's body was exhumed from his tomb in 1941 by the Soviet anthropologist Mikhail M. Gerasimov. From his bones it was clear that Timur was a tall and broad chested man with strong cheek bones. Gerasimov reconstructed the likeness of Timur from his skull. His height was 5 feet 8 inches (1.73 meters), very tall for his era. He also confirmed Timur's lameness due to a hip injury. Gerasimov also found that Timur's facial characteristics conformed to general Mongoloid features.^[52] In the study of "Anthropological composition of the population of Central Asia" shows the cranium of Timur predominate the characters of the South Siberian Mongoloid type.^[64] Timur is classified as being closer to the Mongoloid race with some admixture.

It is alleged that Timur's tomb was inscribed with the words, "When I rise from the dead, the world shall tremble." It is also said that when Gerasimov exhumed the body, an additional inscription inside the casket was found reading, "Who ever opens my tomb, shall unleash an invader more terrible than I."^[65] In any case, two days after Gerasimov had begun the exhumation, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, its invasion of the U.S.S.R.^[66] Timur was re-buried with full Islamic ritual in November 1942 just before the Soviet victory at the Battle of Stalingrad (ref Marozzi 2004).

In the arts[link]

• Tamburlaine the Great, Parts I and II (English, 1563–1594) - play by Christopher Marlowe
• Tamerlano (1724) - opera by George Frideric Handel, in Italian, based on the 1675 play Tamerlan ou la mort de Bajazet by Jacques Pradon.
• Bajazet (1735) - opera by Antonio Vivaldi, portrays the capture of Bayezid I by Timur
• Il gran Tamerlano (1772) - opera by Josef Mysliveček that also portrays the capture of Bayezid I by Timur
• Tamerlane - first published poem of Edgar Allan Poe (American, 1809–1849).
• Timur is the deposed, blind former King of Tartary and father of the protagonist Calaf in the opera Turandot (1924) by Giacomo Puccini, libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.
• Timour appears in the story Lord of Samarkand by Robert E. Howard.
• Tamerlan - novel by Colombian writer Enrique Serrano in Spanish ^[67]
• Timur Lang is also the name of the warlord that shall be defeated in the game Might and Magic IX, a sort of joke using the names of Timur Leng and this game's designer's one, Timothy Lang.
• Tamerlan appears in the Russian movie Dnevnoy Dozor (Day Watch), in which he steals the chalk of fate.
• Tamerlane is the name of the corporation which is taking over Central Asia in the 2008 satire War, Inc..
• Tamburlaine: Shadow of God by John Fletcher, BBC Radio 3 play broadcast 2008, a fictitious account of an encounter between Tamburlaine, Ibn Khaldun and Hafez.

Family of Timur[link]

View of the Registan.

Statue of Timur in Samarkand.

Sons of Timur[link]

• Jahangir Mirza ibn Timur
• Umar Shaikh Mirza ibn Timur
• Miran Shah ibn Timur
• Shahrukh Mirza ibn Timur

Sons of Jahangir[link]

• Pir Muhammad ibn Jahangir

Sons of Umar Shaikh Mirza I[link]

• Pir Muhammad ibn Umar Shaikh Mirza I
• Iskandar ibn Umar Shaikh Mirza I
• Rustam ibn Umar Shaikh Mirza I
• Bayqarah ibn Umar Shaikh Mirza I
  • Mansur ibn Bayqarah
    • Husayn ibn Mansur bin Bayqarah

Sons of Miran Shah[link]

• Khalil Sultan ibn Miran Shah
• Abu Bakr ibn Miran Shah
• Muhammad ibn Miran Shah
  • Abu Sa'id Mirza
    • Umar Shaikh Mirza II
      • Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur
      • Jahangir Mirza II ibn Umar Shaikh Mirza II

Sons of Shahrukh Mirza[link]

• Mirza Muhammad Taraghay - better known as Ulugh Beg
  • Abdul-Latif
• Ghiyath-al-Din Baysonqor
  • Ala-ud-Daulah Mirza ibn Baysonqor
    • Ibrahim Mirza
  • Sultan Muhammad ibn Baysonqor
    • Yadigar Muhammad
  • Mirza Abul-Qasim Babur ibn Baysonqor
• Sultan Ibrahim Mirza
  • Abdullah Mirza

See also[link]

• Ahmad (Jalayirids)
• Global Empire
• List of the Muslim Empires
• Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent

Notes[link]

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Timur

• Timur at Encyclopædia Britannica
• Timur's Life
• (Timur's) Towers of Terror - CASE STUDY OF CIVILIAN TARGETING IN WARTIME, The Department of Political Science at Duke University
• The Battle of Ankara
• The rise of Timur-i-Leng
• The Timurid Dynasty
• The Names and Titles used by Timur
• Memoir of the Emperor Timur (Malfuzat-i Timuri) Timur'. Compiled in the book: "The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians. The Muhammadan Period", by Sir H. M. Elliot, Edited by John Dowson; London, Trubner Company; 1867–1877
• Tamburlaine the Great Part One
• Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy Gonzalez De Clavijo to the Court of Timour, at Samarcand, A.D.1403-6 - Full text at Google Books.
• Nationality or Religion: Views of Central Asian Islam

Edgar Allan Poe
1848 "Ultima Thule" daguerreotype of Poe
Born	Edgar Poe (1809-01-19)January 19, 1809 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	October 7, 1849(1849-10-07) (aged 40) Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Nationality	American
Spouse(s)	Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe
Signature

Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.^[1] He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.^[2]

He was born as Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts; he was orphaned young when his mother died shortly after his father abandoned the family. Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia, but they never formally adopted him. He attended the University of Virginia for one semester but left due to lack of money. After enlisting in the Army and later failing as an officer's cadet at West Point, Poe parted ways with the Allans. His publishing career began humbly, with an anonymous collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian".

Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism. His work forced him to move among several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. In Baltimore in 1835, he married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. In January 1845 Poe published his poem, "The Raven", to instant success. His wife died of tuberculosis two years after its publication. He began planning to produce his own journal, The Penn (later renamed The Stylus), though he died before it could be produced. On October 7, 1849, at age 40, Poe died in Baltimore; the cause of his death is unknown and has been variously attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other agents.^[3]

Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in specialized fields, such as cosmology and cryptography. Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television. A number of his homes are dedicated museums today.

Life and career[link]

Early life[link]

This plaque marks the approximate location^[4] where Edgar Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts.

He was born Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809, the second child of English-born actress Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe and actor David Poe, Jr. He had an elder brother, William Henry Leonard Poe, and a younger sister, Rosalie Poe.^[5] Edgar may have been named after a character in William Shakespeare's King Lear, a play the couple was performing in 1809.^[6] His father abandoned their family in 1810,^[7] and his mother died a year later from consumption (pulmonary tuberculosis). Poe was then taken into the home of John Allan, a successful Scottish merchant in Richmond, Virginia, who dealt in a variety of goods including tobacco, cloth, wheat, tombstones, and slaves.^[8] The Allans served as a foster family and gave him the name "Edgar Allan Poe",^[9] though they never formally adopted him.^[10]

The Allan family had Poe baptized in the Episcopal Church in 1812. John Allan alternately spoiled and aggressively disciplined his foster son.^[9] The family, including Poe and Allan's wife, Frances Valentine Allan, sailed to Britain in 1815. Poe attended the grammar school in Irvine, Scotland (where John Allan was born) for a short period in 1815, before rejoining the family in London in 1816. There he studied at a boarding school in Chelsea until summer 1817. He was subsequently entered at the Reverend John Bransby’s Manor House School at Stoke Newington, then a suburb four miles (6 km) north of London.^[11]

Poe moved back with the Allans to Richmond, Virginia in 1820. In 1824 Poe served as the lieutenant of the Richmond youth honor guard as Richmond celebrated the visit of the Marquis de Lafayette.^[12] In March 1825, John Allan's uncle^[13] and business benefactor William Galt, said to be one of the wealthiest men in Richmond, died and left Allan several acres of real estate. The inheritance was estimated at $750,000. By summer 1825, Allan celebrated his expansive wealth by purchasing a two-story brick home named Moldavia.^[14] Poe may have become engaged to Sarah Elmira Royster before he registered at the one-year-old University of Virginia in February 1826 to study languages.^[15] The university, in its infancy, was established on the ideals of its founder, Thomas Jefferson. It had strict rules against gambling, horses, guns, tobacco and alcohol, but these rules were generally ignored. Jefferson had enacted a system of student self-government, allowing students to choose their own studies, make their own arrangements for boarding, and report all wrongdoing to the faculty. The unique system was still in chaos, and there was a high dropout rate.^[16] During his time there, Poe lost touch with Royster and also became estranged from his foster father over gambling debts. Poe claimed that Allan had not given him sufficient money to register for classes, purchase texts, and procure and furnish a dormitory. Allan did send additional money and clothes, but Poe's debts increased.^[17] Poe gave up on the university after a year, and, not feeling welcome in Richmond, especially when he learned that his sweetheart Royster had married Alexander Shelton, he traveled to Boston in April 1827, sustaining himself with odd jobs as a clerk and newspaper writer.^[18] At some point he started using the pseudonym Henri Le Rennet.^[19]

Military career[link]

Poe was first stationed at Boston's Fort Independence while in the army.

Unable to support himself, on May 27, 1827, Poe enlisted in the United States Army as a private. Using the name "Edgar A. Perry", he claimed he was 22 years old even though he was 18.^[20] He first served at Fort Independence in Boston Harbor for five dollars a month.^[18] That same year, he released his first book, a 40-page collection of poetry, Tamerlane and Other Poems, attributed with the byline "by a Bostonian". Only 50 copies were printed, and the book received virtually no attention.^[21] Poe's regiment was posted to Fort Moultrie in Charleston, South Carolina and traveled by ship on the brig Waltham on November 8, 1827. Poe was promoted to "artificer", an enlisted tradesman who prepared shells for artillery, and had his monthly pay doubled.^[22] After serving for two years and attaining the rank of Sergeant Major for Artillery (the highest rank a noncommissioned officer can achieve), Poe sought to end his five-year enlistment early. He revealed his real name and his circumstances to his commanding officer, Lieutenant Howard. Howard would only allow Poe to be discharged if he reconciled with John Allan and wrote a letter to Allan, who was unsympathetic. Several months passed and pleas to Allan were ignored; Allan may not have written to Poe even to make him aware of his foster mother's illness. Frances Allan died on February 28, 1829, and Poe visited the day after her burial. Perhaps softened by his wife's death, John Allan agreed to support Poe's attempt to be discharged in order to receive an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point.^[23]

Poe finally was discharged on April 15, 1829, after securing a replacement to finish his enlisted term for him.^[24] Before entering West Point, Poe moved back to Baltimore for a time, to stay with his widowed aunt Maria Clemm, her daughter, Virginia Eliza Clemm (Poe's first cousin), his brother Henry, and his invalid grandmother Elizabeth Cairnes Poe.^[25] Meanwhile, Poe published his second book, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems, in Baltimore in 1829.^[26]

Poe traveled to West Point and matriculated as a cadet on July 1, 1830.^[27] In October 1830, John Allan married his second wife, Louisa Patterson.^[28] The marriage, and bitter quarrels with Poe over the children born to Allan out of affairs, led to the foster father finally disowning Poe.^[29] Poe decided to leave West Point by purposely getting court-martialed. On February 8, 1831, he was tried for gross neglect of duty and disobedience of orders for refusing to attend formations, classes, or church. Poe tactically pled not guilty to induce dismissal, knowing he would be found guilty.^[30]

He left for New York in February 1831, and released a third volume of poems, simply titled Poems. The book was financed with help from his fellow cadets at West Point, many of whom donated 75 cents to the cause, raising a total of $170. They may have been expecting verses similar to the satirical ones Poe had been writing about commanding officers.^[31] Printed by Elam Bliss of New York, it was labeled as "Second Edition" and included a page saying, "To the U.S. Corps of Cadets this volume is respectfully dedicated." The book once again reprinted the long poems "Tamerlane" and "Al Aaraaf" but also six previously unpublished poems including early versions of "To Helen", "Israfel", and "The City in the Sea".^[32] He returned to Baltimore, to his aunt, brother and cousin, in March 1831. His elder brother Henry, who had been in ill health in part due to problems with alcoholism, died on August 1, 1831.^[33]

Publishing career[link]

After his brother's death, Poe began more earnest attempts to start his career as a writer. He chose a difficult time in American publishing to do so.^[34] He was the first well-known American to try to live by writing alone^[2][35] and was hampered by the lack of an international copyright law.^[36] Publishers often pirated copies of British works rather than paying for new work by Americans.^[35] The industry was also particularly hurt by the Panic of 1837.^[37] Despite a booming growth in American periodicals around this time period, fueled in part by new technology, many did not last beyond a few issues^[38] and publishers often refused to pay their writers or paid them much later than they promised.^[39] Poe, throughout his attempts to live as a writer, had to repeatedly resort to humiliating pleas for money and other assistance.^[40]

Poe married his 13-year old cousin, Virginia Clemm. Her early death may have inspired some of his writing.

After his early attempts at poetry, Poe had turned his attention to prose. He placed a few stories with a Philadelphia publication and began work on his only drama, Politian. The Baltimore Saturday Visiter awarded Poe a prize in October 1833 for his short story "MS. Found in a Bottle".^[41] The story brought him to the attention of John P. Kennedy, a Baltimorean of considerable means. He helped Poe place some of his stories, and introduced him to Thomas W. White, editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. Poe became assistant editor of the periodical in August 1835,^[42] but was discharged within a few weeks for being caught drunk by his boss.^[43] Returning to Baltimore, Poe secretly married Virginia, his cousin, on September 22, 1835. He was 26 and she was 13, though she is listed on the marriage certificate as being 21.^[44] Reinstated by White after promising good behavior, Poe went back to Richmond with Virginia and her mother. He remained at the Messenger until January 1837. During this period, Poe claimed that its circulation increased from 700 to 3,500.^[5] He published several poems, book reviews, critiques, and stories in the paper. On May 16, 1836, he had a second wedding ceremony in Richmond with Virginia Clemm, this time in public.^[45]

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket was published and widely reviewed in 1838.^[46] In the summer of 1839, Poe became assistant editor of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. He published numerous articles, stories, and reviews, enhancing his reputation as a trenchant critic that he had established at the Southern Literary Messenger. Also in 1839, the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque was published in two volumes, though he made little money off of it and it received mixed reviews.^[47] Poe left Burton's after about a year and found a position as assistant at Graham's Magazine.^[48]

In June 1840, Poe published a prospectus announcing his intentions to start his own journal, The Stylus.^[49] Originally, Poe intended to call the journal The Penn, as it would have been based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the June 6, 1840 issue of Philadelphia's Saturday Evening Post, Poe bought advertising space for his prospectus: "Prospectus of the Penn Magazine, a Monthly Literary journal to be edited and published in the city of Philadelphia by Edgar A. Poe."^[50] The journal was never produced before Poe's death. Around this time, he attempted to secure a position with the Tyler administration, claiming he was a member of the Whig Party.^[51] He hoped to be appointed to the Custom House in Philadelphia with help from President Tyler's son Robert,^[52] an acquaintance of Poe's friend Frederick Thomas.^[53] Poe failed to show up for a meeting with Thomas to discuss the appointment in mid-September 1842, claiming to be sick, though Thomas believed he was drunk.^[54] Though he was promised an appointment, all positions were filled by others.^[55]

Poe spent the last few years of his life in this small cottage in the Bronx, New York.

One evening in January 1842, Virginia showed the first signs of consumption, now known as tuberculosis, while singing and playing the piano. Poe described it as breaking a blood vessel in her throat.^[56] She only partially recovered. Poe began to drink more heavily under the stress of Virginia's illness. He left Graham's and attempted to find a new position, for a time angling for a government post. He returned to New York, where he worked briefly at the Evening Mirror before becoming editor of the Broadway Journal and, later, sole owner.^[57] There he alienated himself from other writers by publicly accusing Henry Wadsworth Longfellow of plagiarism, though Longfellow never responded.^[58] On January 29, 1845, his poem "The Raven" appeared in the Evening Mirror and became a popular sensation. Though it made Poe a household name almost instantly,^[59] he was paid only $9 for its publication.^[60] It was concurrently published in The American Review: A Whig Journal under the pseudonym "Quarles".^[61]

The Broadway Journal failed in 1846.^[57] Poe moved to a cottage in the Fordham section of The Bronx, New York. That home, known today as the "Poe Cottage", is on the southeast corner of the Grand Concourse and Kingsbridge Road. Virginia died there on January 30, 1847.^[62] Biographers and critics often suggest Poe's frequent theme of the "death of a beautiful woman" stems from the repeated loss of women throughout his life, including his wife.^[63]

Increasingly unstable after his wife's death, Poe attempted to court the poet Sarah Helen Whitman, who lived in Providence, Rhode Island. Their engagement failed, purportedly because of Poe's drinking and erratic behavior. However, there is also strong evidence that Whitman's mother intervened and did much to derail their relationship.^[64] Poe then returned to Richmond and resumed a relationship with his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Elmira Royster.^[65]

Death[link]

Edgar Allan Poe is buried in Baltimore, Maryland. The circumstances and cause of his death remain uncertain.

On October 3, 1849, Poe was found on the streets of Baltimore delirious, "in great distress, and... in need of immediate assistance", according to the man who found him, Joseph W. Walker.^[66] He was taken to the Washington College Hospital, where he died on Sunday, October 7, 1849, at 5:00 in the morning.^[67] Poe was never coherent long enough to explain how he came to be in his dire condition, and, oddly, was wearing clothes that were not his own. Poe is said to have repeatedly called out the name "Reynolds" on the night before his death, though it is unclear to whom he was referring. Some sources say Poe's final words were "Lord help my poor soul."^[67] All medical records, including his death certificate, have been lost.^[68] Newspapers at the time reported Poe's death as "congestion of the brain" or "cerebral inflammation", common euphemisms for deaths from disreputable causes such as alcoholism.^[69] The actual cause of death remains a mystery.^[70] Speculation has included delirium tremens, heart disease, epilepsy, syphilis, meningeal inflammation,^[3] cholera^[71] and rabies.^[72] One theory, dating from 1872, indicates that cooping – in which unwilling citizens who were forced to vote for a particular candidate were occasionally killed – was the cause of Poe's death. ^[73].

Griswold's "Memoir"[link]

The day Edgar Allan Poe was buried, a long obituary appeared in the New York Tribune signed "Ludwig". It was soon published throughout the country. The piece began, "Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it."^[74] "Ludwig" was soon identified as Rufus Wilmot Griswold, an editor, critic and anthologist who had borne a grudge against Poe since 1842. Griswold somehow became Poe's literary executor and attempted to destroy his enemy's reputation after his death.^[75]

Rufus Griswold wrote a biographical article of Poe called "Memoir of the Author", which he included in an 1850 volume of the collected works. Griswold depicted Poe as a depraved, drunk, drug-addled madman and included Poe's letters as evidence.^[75] Many of his claims were either lies or distorted half-truths. For example, it is now known that Poe was not a drug addict.^[76] Griswold's book was denounced by those who knew Poe well,^[77] but it became a popularly accepted one. This occurred in part because it was the only full biography available and was widely reprinted and in part because readers thrilled at the thought of reading works by an "evil" man.^[78] Letters that Griswold presented as proof of this depiction of Poe were later revealed as forgeries.^[79]

Literary style and themes[link]

1860s portrait by Oscar Halling after an 1849 daguerreotype

Genres[link]

Poe's best known fiction works are Gothic,^[80] a genre he followed to appease the public taste.^[81] His most recurring themes deal with questions of death, including its physical signs, the effects of decomposition, concerns of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning.^[82] Many of his works are generally considered part of the dark romanticism genre, a literary reaction to transcendentalism,^[83] which Poe strongly disliked.^[84] He referred to followers of the movement as "Frog-Pondians" after the pond on Boston Common.^[85][86] and ridiculed their writings as "metaphor-run mad,"^[87] lapsing into "obscurity for obscurity's sake" or "mysticism for mysticism's sake."^[84] Poe once wrote in a letter to Thomas Holley Chivers that he did not dislike Transcendentalists, "only the pretenders and sophists among them."^[88]

Beyond horror, Poe also wrote satires, humor tales, and hoaxes. For comic effect, he used irony and ludicrous extravagance, often in an attempt to liberate the reader from cultural conformity.^[81] In fact, "Metzengerstein", the first story that Poe is known to have published,^[89] and his first foray into horror, was originally intended as a burlesque satirizing the popular genre.^[90] Poe also reinvented science fiction, responding in his writing to emerging technologies such as hot air balloons in "The Balloon-Hoax".^[91]

Poe wrote much of his work using themes specifically catered for mass market tastes.^[92] To that end, his fiction often included elements of popular pseudosciences such as phrenology^[93] and physiognomy.^[94]

Literary theory[link]

Poe's writing reflects his literary theories, which he presented in his criticism and also in essays such as "The Poetic Principle".^[95] He disliked didacticism^[96] and allegory,^[97] though he believed that meaning in literature should be an undercurrent just beneath the surface. Works with obvious meanings, he wrote, cease to be art.^[98] He believed that quality work should be brief and focus on a specific single effect.^[95] To that end, he believed that the writer should carefully calculate every sentiment and idea.^[99]

In "The Philosophy of Composition", an essay in which Poe describes his method in writing "The Raven", he claims to have strictly followed this method. It has been questioned, however, if he really followed this system. T. S. Eliot said: "It is difficult for us to read that essay without reflecting that if Poe plotted out his poem with such calculation, he might have taken a little more pains over it: the result hardly does credit to the method."^[100] Biographer Joseph Wood Krutch described the essay as "a rather highly ingenious exercise in the art of rationalization".^[101]

Legacy[link]

Illustration by French impressionist Édouard Manet for the Stéphane Mallarmé translation of "The Raven", 1875. Digitally restored.

Literary influence[link]

During his lifetime, Poe was mostly recognized as a literary critic. Fellow critic James Russell Lowell called him "the most discriminating, philosophical, and fearless critic upon imaginative works who has written in America", suggesting – rhetorically – that he occasionally used prussic acid instead of ink.^[102] Poe's caustic reviews earned him the epithet "Tomahawk Man". A favorite target of Poe's criticism was Boston's then acclaimed poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who was often defended by his literary friends in what would later be called "The Longfellow War". Poe accused Longfellow of "the heresy of the didactic”, writing poetry that was preachy, derivative, and thematically plagiarized. Poe correctly predicted that Longfellow's reputation and style of poetry would decline, concluding that "We grant him high qualities, but deny him the Future".^[103]

Poe was also known as a writer of fiction and became one of the first American authors of the 19th century to become more popular in Europe than in the United States.^[104] Poe is particularly respected in France, in part due to early translations by Charles Baudelaire. Baudelaire's translations became definitive renditions of Poe's work throughout Europe.^[105]

Poe's early detective fiction tales featuring C. Auguste Dupin laid the groundwork for future detectives in literature. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said, "Each [of Poe's detective stories] is a root from which a whole literature has developed.... Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?"^[106] The Mystery Writers of America have named their awards for excellence in the genre the "Edgars".^[107] Poe's work also influenced science fiction, notably Jules Verne, who wrote a sequel to Poe's novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket called An Antarctic Mystery, also known as The Sphinx of the Ice Fields.^[108] Science fiction author H. G. Wells noted, "Pym tells what a very intelligent mind could imagine about the south polar region a century ago."^[109]

Like many famous artists, Poe's works have spawned innumerable imitators.^[110] One interesting trend among imitators of Poe, however, has been claims by clairvoyants or psychics to be "channeling" poems from Poe's spirit. One of the most notable of these was Lizzie Doten, who in 1863 published Poems from the Inner Life, in which she claimed to have "received" new compositions by Poe's spirit. The compositions were re-workings of famous Poe poems such as "The Bells", but which reflected a new, positive outlook.^[111]

Edgar Allan Poe photographed circa 1849

Even so, Poe has received not only praise, but criticism as well. This is partly because of the negative perception of his personal character and its influence upon his reputation.^[104] William Butler Yeats was occasionally critical of Poe and once called him "vulgar".^[112] Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson reacted to "The Raven" by saying, "I see nothing in it"^[113] and derisively referred to Poe as "the jingle man".^[114] Aldous Huxley wrote that Poe's writing "falls into vulgarity" by being "too poetical"—the equivalent of wearing a diamond ring on every finger.^[115]

It is believed that only 12 copies of Poe's first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems, have survived. In December 2009, one copy sold at Christie's, New York for $662,500, a record price paid for a work of American literature.^[116]

Physics and cosmology[link]

Eureka: A Prose Poem, an essay written in 1848, included a cosmological theory that presaged the Big Bang theory by 80 years,^[117][118] as well as the first plausible solution to Olbers' paradox.^[119][120] Poe eschewed the scientific method in Eureka and instead wrote from pure intuition.^[121] For this reason, he considered it a work of art, not science,^[121] but insisted that it was still true^[122] and considered it to be his career masterpiece.^[123] Even so, Eureka is full of scientific errors. In particular, Poe's suggestions opposed Newtonian principles regarding the density and rotation of planets.^[124]

Cryptography[link]

Poe had a keen interest in cryptography. He had placed a notice of his abilities in the Philadelphia paper Alexander's Weekly (Express) Messenger, inviting submissions of ciphers, which he proceeded to solve.^[125] In July 1841, Poe had published an essay called "A Few Words on Secret Writing" in Graham's Magazine. Realizing the public interest in the topic, he wrote "The Gold-Bug" incorporating ciphers as part of the story.^[126] Poe's success in cryptography relied not so much on his knowledge of that field (his method was limited to the simple substitution cryptogram), as on his knowledge of the magazine and newspaper culture. His keen analytical abilities, which were so evident in his detective stories, allowed him to see that the general public was largely ignorant of the methods by which a simple substitution cryptogram can be solved, and he used this to his advantage.^[125] The sensation Poe created with his cryptography stunt played a major role in popularizing cryptograms in newspapers and magazines.^[127]

Poe had an influence on cryptography beyond increasing public interest in his lifetime. William Friedman, America's foremost cryptologist, was heavily influenced by Poe.^[128] Friedman's initial interest in cryptography came from reading "The Gold-Bug" as a child—interest he later put to use in deciphering Japan's PURPLE code during World War II.^[129]

In popular culture[link]

As a character[link]

The historical Edgar Allan Poe has appeared as a fictionalized character, often representing the "mad genius" or "tormented artist" and exploiting his personal struggles.^[130] Many such depictions also blend in with characters from his stories, suggesting Poe and his characters share identities.^[131] Often, fictional depictions of Poe use his mystery-solving skills in such novels as The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl.^[132]

Preserved homes, landmarks, and museums[link]

The Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site in Philadelphia is one of several preserved former residences of Poe

No childhood home of Poe is still standing, including the Allan family's Moldavia estate. The oldest standing home in Richmond, the Old Stone House, is in use as the Edgar Allan Poe Museum, though Poe never lived there. The collection includes many items Poe used during his time with the Allan family and also features several rare first printings of Poe works. The dorm room Poe is believed to have used while studying at the University of Virginia in 1826 is preserved and available for visits. Its upkeep is now overseen by a group of students and staff known as the Raven Society.^[133]

The earliest surviving home in which Poe lived is in Baltimore, preserved as the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum. Poe is believed to have lived in the home at the age of 23 when he first lived with Maria Clemm and Virginia (as well as his grandmother and possibly his brother William Henry Leonard Poe).^[134] It is open to the public and is also the home of the Edgar Allan Poe Society. Of the several homes that Poe, his wife Virginia, and his mother-in-law Maria rented in Philadelphia, only the last house has survived. The Spring Garden home, where the author lived in 1843–1844, is today preserved by the National Park Service as the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site.^[135] Poe's final home is preserved as the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage in the Bronx, New York.^[62]

In Boston, a commemorative plaque on Boylston Street is a couple of blocks away from the actual location of Poe's birth.^{[136][137][138][4]} The house which was his birthplace at 62 Carver Street no longer exists; also, the street has since been renamed "Charles Street South".^[139][140] A "square" at the intersection of Broadway, Fayette, and Carver Streets had once been named in his honor,^[141] but it disappeared when the streets were rearranged. In 2009, the intersection of Charles and Boylston Streets was newly designated "Edgar Allan Poe Square".^[142]

Other Poe landmarks include a building in the Upper West Side, where Poe temporarily lived when he first moved to New York. A plaque suggests that Poe wrote "The Raven" here. The bar where legend says Poe was last seen drinking before his death still stands in Fells Point in Baltimore, Maryland. The drinking establishment is now known as "The Horse You Came In On", and local lore insists that a ghost they call "Edgar" haunts the rooms above.^[143]

Poe Toaster[link]

Adding to the mystery surrounding Poe's death, an unknown visitor affectionately referred to as the "Poe Toaster" paid homage to Poe's grave annually beginning in 1949. As the tradition carried on for more than 60 years, it is likely that the "Poe Toaster" was actually several individuals, though the tribute was always the same. Every January 19, in the early hours of the morning, the person made a toast of cognac to Poe's original grave marker and left three roses. Members of the Edgar Allan Poe Society in Baltimore helped protect this tradition for decades. On August 15, 2007, Sam Porpora, a former historian at the Westminster Church in Baltimore where Poe is buried, claimed that he had started the tradition in the 1960s. Porpora said the claim that the tradition began in 1949 was a hoax in order to raise money and enhance the profile of the church. His story has not been confirmed,^[144] and some details he gave to the press have been pointed out as factually inaccurate.^[145] The Poe Toaster's last appearance was on January 19, 2009, the day of Poe's bicentennial.

Selected list of works[link]