Devenu émir de Transoxiane4, Tamerlan se révèle un redoutable chef de guerre, bâtissant un immense empire reposant sur la puissance militaire et sur la terreur. Les historiens parlent souvent de « catastrophe timouride » tant ses destructions et massacres ont été spectaculaires ; les estimations sur le nombre de morts de ses campagnes militaires vont de 1 million5 à 17 millions de personnes (soit environ 5 % de la population mondiale de l'époque)6. Lors de ses conquêtes, il n'hésite pas à massacrer la totalité de la population des villes qui lui résistent, à l'exception des artisans qu'il déporte à Samarcande, sa capitale. C'est à ce titre qu'il se montra aussi protecteur des arts et des lettres qui firent la grandeur de Samarcande.
Après la mort de Tamerlan en 1405, son empire, gouverné par ses descendants (les Timourides), est grignoté par les puissances voisines jusqu'à l'assaut final des Ouzbeks de la dynastie des Chaybanides.
En 1387, Tamerlan effectue des raids en Iran. Il fit ainsi le
siège de la ville perse d'Ispahan. Lorsque les habitants se rendirent, Tamerlan
exigea qu'ils lui versent un impôt en échange de leurs vies et de leurs biens.
Durant la nuit du 16 novembre, un soulèvement se produisit dans la ville et les
rebelles massacrèrent de nombreux percepteurs ainsi que des soldats. En
représailles, Tamerlan ordonna l'extermination de la population d'Ispahan. Bien
qu'on rencontre fréquemment une estimation de 70 000 victimes, des évaluations
plus précises chiffrent le massacre à 40 000 morts. Cette comptabilité macabre
est établie à partir du récit d'un témoin oculaire évoquant 28 pyramides
d'environ 1 500 crânes chacune.
Sources :
Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo to the Court of
Timour at Samarcand, A.D. 1403-6, de Ruy González de
Clavijo, Clements Robert Markham [archive]
[en] Fisher,
W.B.; Jackson, P.; Lockhart, L.; Boyle, J.A. : The Cambridge History of Iran, p. 55.
Commentaires :
1)L’impôt mentionné s’appelle la jizya ou capitation.
« Combattez ceux qui ne croient ni en Allah ni au Jour
dernier, qui n’interdisent pas ce qu’Allah et son messager ont interdit et qui
ne professent pas la religion de la vérité, parmi ceux qui ont reçu le Livre
(les Juifs et les Chrétiens), jusqu’à ce
qu’ils versent la capitation par leurs propres mains, après s’être humiliés ».
(Coran, Sourate 9, 29)
2) J’ai déjà lu ce raisonnement : « La population s’est
rendu de son plein gré. Donc l’Islam s’est répandu sans violence. » L’Islam
propose trois choix aux gens du Livre : l’affrontement, la conversion ou
le paiement de la jizya. Un peu comme un bandit qui propose la bourse ou la
vie. Celui qui choisit ne pas donner sa bourse a choisi l’affrontement, c’est
lui le vrai provocateur.
3) Les décapitations ne sont pas une invention de Tamerlan. En
bon musulman, il suit simplement l’exemple du prophète Mahomet (massacre
des Banu Qurayza).
Peter Ford, “Ex-Russian Satellite Enjoys Setting Its Own Agenda,” Christian Science Monitor, June 3, 1997: “Tamerlane… was responsible for the deaths of as many as 20 million people...”
Stephen Kinzer, "A Kinder, Gentler Tamerlane Inspires Uzbekistan," New York Times, November 10, 1997: “His Turkish and Mongol army is said to have killed 17 million men, women and children in his 14th century rampage…” [http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/53/107.html]
Dave Carpenter, "Barbaric Tamerlane anointed a whitewashed hero in Uzbekistan," Associated Press, January 5, 1998: “His armies… are estimated to have massacred as many as 17 million people.”
Colin McMahon, "The Rehabilitation of Tamerlane," Chicago Tribune, January 17, 1999: "...an estimated death toll of as many as 17 million people..."
Jonathan Fenby, "Crossroads of conquest," Hong Kong: South China Morning Post, November 20, 1999: "...a local warrior with a limp from arrow wounds marched north, east, west and south to found an empire of his own on some 17 million corpses."
H.D.S. Greenway, "New waves across the steppes," Boston Globe, May 27, 1998: "He is said to have killed 15 million people..." (incl. 90,000 in Baghdad.)
Allen Howard Godbey, The Lost Tribes a Myth: Suggestions Towards Rewriting Hebrew History, p.385 (1974): "Genghis Khan is estimated to have destroyed twenty million people, Tamerlane twelve million."
Israel Smith Clare, Library of universal history: containing a record of the human ..., v.7, p.2474 (1906): "... his ambition and cruelty brought twelve million human beings to violent deaths..."
Ian McWilliam, "Uzbekistan Restores Samarkand To Boost Nationalist Pride," Los Angeles Times, August 23, 1994: "... a ruthless conqueror who, by one estimate at least, caused the deaths of about 7 million people."
Individual events:
Delhi (1398)
James Trager, The People's Chronology (1992): 100,000 Hindu prisoners massacred at Delhi
Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage: 100,000 POWs massacred
Frank Smitha [http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h13tt.htm]
Isfahan: 70-100,000 massacred
Sabzavar: 2,000 slaves massacred
Baghdad (1401): 20,000
1 Feb. 2005 History Today: "At Baghdad he had 90,000 of the inhabitants beheaded so that he could build towers with their skulls. At Sivas in Turkey, where he promised no bloodshed in return for surrender, he had 3,000 prisoners buried alive and pointed out that he had kept to the letter of his oath."
9 Aug. 2004 Evening Standard (London) review of Marozzi's Tamerlane
Baghdad: 90,000
Isfahan: 70,000
outside Aleppo: 20,000
Delhi: more than 100,000 executions
The (London) Independent (1 June 1998): 5M k. in 6 mos. in 1398 in India
The Rehabilitation Of Tamerlane
January 17,
1999|By Colin McMahon. Colin McMahon is the Tribune's Moscow correspondent.
SAMARKAND,
Uzbekistan — The first picture in the book "Amir Temur in World
History" does not show Amir Temur, the legendary Central Asian warlord
known in the West as Tamerlane. Nor does the second. Nor the third.
In fact,
none of the opening photos of this government-approved hero-ography features
the image of the 14th Century conqueror. Instead, they show the current
president of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov.
At first
blush, Tamerlane and Karimov hardly make a natural pair. One was a nomadic
adventurer and empire builder, not to mention a frightful butcher. The other is
a former Communist Party climber described as cautious and pragmatic.
Yet
Tamerlane serves Karimov today as a kind of poster boy for unbending leadership.
And both men are riding high.
Since the
fall of the Soviet Union, Tamerlane has been rehabilitated as a symbol of Uzbek
pride, never mind that he was not Uzbek but a Mongol Turk. The nation is
counseled to turn to him for inspiration, almost paradoxically, even as it
struggles to build a modern economy, a civil society and a political system
with a whiff of democracy about it.
Monuments
honor Tamerlane in the Silk Road city of Samarkand, where his tomb is a tourist
draw. In Tashkent, in a spot where a statue of Karl Marx once stood, a somewhat
European-looking Tamerlane sits on a very European-looking horse. A gleaming
museum, built in record time by three shifts working around the clock,
propagates the Tamerlane myth.
Karimov,
meanwhile, is always somewhere in the picture, his wisdom and image sharing
space with Tamerlane's.
"If
somebody wants to understand who the Uzbeks are," Karimov said in words
immortalized on the Tashkent museum walls, "if somebody wants to
comprehend all the power, might, justice and unlimited abilities of the Uzbek
people, their contribution to the global development, their belief in the
future, he should recall the image of Amir Temur."
What image
depends on who does the recalling.
Amir Temur
was born April 8, 1336, near Kesh, what is now Shahrisabz in southeastern
Uzbekistan. His father and grandfather were devout Muslims, and at an early
age, he was sent to religious school.
The history
that follows is more open to interpretation.
Many
independent scholars see in Tamerlane a lust for power, conquest and blood.
They point not only to Tamerlane's remarkable military campaigns and an
estimated death toll of as many as 17 million people but also to his words.
"The
inhabited quarter of the world isn't such a place that two men can claim,"
Tamerlane is said to have said. "The only creator of the world is God, so
there should be only one king in the world."
The
Tamerlane coffee-table book counters reassuringly that its hero "had no
intention to take possession of the world." His subjugation of what are
now Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, southern Russia, Syria, India and
elsewhere, like his final, unrealized campaign to China that ended with his
death in 1405, were driven mostly by a desire to help the oppressed and build civilizations,
the book claims.
The book
indicates he was also a great thinker (experts say he probably was illiterate),
and a pocket version of "The Utterances of Amir Temur" (with,
naturally, an introduction by Karimov) collects his wisdom along the lines of Mao
Tse-tung's Little Red Book.
"In
ruling the country, I was guided by gentleness, goodwill and patience," is
one utterance.
The dead of
Baghdad, whose skulls were built into pyramids by Tamerlane's soldiers as a
message to other future subjects, might have quibbled. So too the Indians.
Tamerlane's armies massacred much of the population when they took Delhi in
1398, but in the coffee-table book, the India campaign is said merely to have
been "full of adventures."
If
Tamerlane's ways are sometimes misunderstood, if his excesses exaggerated,
Karimov says he can relate.
The Uzbek
political opposition has been whittled to irrelevancy through harassment,
repression and media censorship. Devout Muslims are detained or jailed without
charges amid a campaign that Karimov says is aimed at controlling Islamic fundamentalism.
Karimov
scrapped the last presidential election by putting forth a referendum proposal
to extend his term. He got 99 percent of the vote in favor, and here is why:
Those who wanted to support the president merely had to turn in their ballots
unmarked. Those voting against the proposal were made to take a ballot from
government officials supervising the vote, then go into a special
"no" booth to mark the sheet. There were few takers.
Karimov
dismisses complaints. His heavy hand, he says, is employed to ensure economic
justice and to pave the way for democracy.
"I
understand that some forces are anxious to present Karimov as a dictator,"
he said. "I agree that some of my actions seem authoritarian. But I can
easily explain this:
"In
historic periods, especially when a people attains statehood or in transition
periods from one system to another, a strong executive power is indispensable.
It is necessary to avoid confrontations and bloodshed."
Tamerlane
knew about historic periods, about strong executive power, about bloodshed.
Despite suffering battle wounds--his name in the West comes from Temur the
Lame--he built a vast empire encompassing competing ethnic groups and warring
khans and emirs.
He also
forcibly gathered the best architectural and design talent of the time to turn
Samarkand into a treasure. Its mosques remain a marvel, as does the Tamerlane
mausoleum.
Nearby is a
huge monument of Tamerlane seated on a throne. In a city thousands of years
old, in a land where most traditions date back centuries, a new custom has been
born.
Newlyweds
and their wedding parties gather at the site for photos, taking turns in groups
to huddle at Tamerlane's knee and smile for the camera.
Tsarnaev defense keeps focus on brother’s influence
FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER OFFICE
A defense exhibit presented Tuesday showed Tamerlan Tsarnaev holding a gun.
Defense lawyers in the death penalty trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev spent Tuesday focusing their case on the domineering influence of Tsarnaev’s older brother, Tamerlan, and suggested that their client was not the only vulnerable college student who fell under his sway.
Another target, they suggested, was Tamerlan’s wife.
The name of Katherine (Russell) Tsarnaeva — who dropped out of Suffolk University, converted to Islam, married Tamerlan in a mosque, and had a baby with him — has emerged with regularity this week as the defense began trying to persuade jurors to impose a life sentence without parole for Tsarnaev, rather than the death penalty.
On Tuesday, Mark Spencer, a forensics specialist and one of seven witnesses for the day, showed jurors Skype messages exchanged between the couple during the six months in 2012 that Tamerlan was in southern Russia, while she was in Cambridge with their baby.
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Tamerlan Tsarnaev frequently sent pictures and articles with Islamic-themed political messages, echoing testimony from Monday that showed he sometimes sent similar material to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan’s wife. In 2012, her computer, according the defense, shows searches for the question, “If your husband becomes a Shahid what are the rewards for you?” Shahid is an Arabic word for martyr.
The defense may be highlighting the religious conversion of Katherine Tsarnaeva to show that Tamerlan had an outsized influence not just on his brother but also on her, a legal analyst said. “It’s a way to show this can happen even to an all-American girl with none of the difficult family stuff,” said Mark Pearlstein, a former federal prosecutor in Boston.
In court Tsarnaev, 21, exhibited the same behavior he has over the last eight weeks, looking straight ahead and not at witnesses as they testify. The jury convicted him of 30 counts related to the Marathon bombing, the killing of an MIT police officer, and a shootout with police; the same jury must now decide his sentence. The defense has suggested that Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s radicalization led to the bombing and that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a follower of his brother’s plan, and less culpable.
On Tuesday, the defense focused such little attention on their client — and so much on his older brother and his transformation into a jihadist — that it almost seemed that Tamerlan was the one on trial. He was killed in a shootout with police in Watertown days after the Marathon bombing.
Tsarnaev brothers at Brighton boxing gym
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From several witnesses, the jury heard that the older brother was a once-talented boxer who won a regional Golden Gloves tournament in Lowell, but who lost interest in the sport when he was denied the opportunity to compete in a national competition due to his lack of American citizenship.
One of his former boxing coaches, John Curran, said he had little contact with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, though saw him a couple times at a Somerville boxing club. The coach recalled that he “looked like a puppy following his brother.”
Jurors also saw a video taken at an Allston boxing and martial arts facility, Wai Kru, on April 12, 2013, three days before the bombing. In it, Tamerlan Tsarnaev enters with his brother and a friend, Magomed Dolakov.
In the video, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Dolakov hang back, while Tamerlan works out.
In subsequent testimony, jurors heard about three interviews that Dolakov later gave to the FBI when the agency learned he had been with the Tsarnaev brothers before the bombing. In those interviews, Dolakov spoke about the older brother’s growing radicalization and how on that April visit to the gym, “Jahar was very quiet and didn’t say much.”
Dolakov’s statements, which were documented in an FBI form, were read to jurors by a paralegal from the public defender’s office on Tuesday. Defense lawyers had informed the judge that they could no longer locate Dolakov to testify, according to a transcript of a dialogue between the lawyers and the judge.
According to the transcript, the defense had also intended to call a witness, Viskhan Vakhabov, who reportedly received a phone call from Tamerlan Tsarnaev while he and his brother were trying to flee the area on April 18, 2013. Jurors were also read an FBI report of an interview with Vakhabov in which he talked about witnessing Tamerlan’s personality change.
The judge told jurors Vakhabov has told lawyers he will not testify and if forced to take the stand, he would cite his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Some other defense witnesses have said they appeared only because they were subpoenaed.
According to the court transcript, prosecutor William Weinreb suggested Vakhabov was unreliable but might have other information, saying, “I think it’s undisputed that Tamerlan Tsarnaev contacted him on April 18th, I believe, between the time that Officer [Sean] Collier was murdered and the time that Dun Meng [was] carjacked.”
That phone call and other testimony have raised the prospect that others may have known about the plot or assisted the brothers, including Vakhabov and Katherine Tsarnaeva. When asked whether she might still face charges, the FBI referred questions to the US attorney’s office, which said Tuesday the office does not confirm or deny the targets of any investigation.
Still, the defense has used every opportunity to elicit more detail about Katherine Tsarnaeva and her background, as well as her response to the bombing.
On the day of the explosions, according to testimony on Monday, she texted with a close friend, saying in part, “a lot more people are killed every day in Syria and other places.”
Her lawyer, Amato (Bud) DeLuca, said she now lives in New Jersey with the couple’s daughter. Her mother, Judith Russell, testified Monday that her daughter is still a practicing Muslim and is healing from the trauma of the loss and circumstances of her husband’s death.
Witnesses on Tuesday who spoke of Katherine Tsarnaeva referred mostly to her demure disposition in the presence of her husband, including stepping back if he was engaged in a conversation with someone else, or preparing a meal, serving it and then leaving the room if he had a guest.
Rogerio Franca, one of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s former friends, testified Tuesday that when he first knew Tamerlan, he was a partier who smoked and drank and that he once saw him with illicit drugs. Their relationship faltered when Franca moved to Stoughton, but he ran into Tamerlan in Boston in 2012. He had changed, Franca testified.
“He looked different. Big beard. Dressed in white,’’ Franca recalled. Standing next to him, with her head covered, was Tsarnaev’s wife, he said.
The conversation was brief. “You are not Muslim yet?” Franca, who is Catholic, recalled being asked. “I said, ‘No.’”
He testified that he was surprised by the question.
“I didn’t think he could ask me such a thing,’’ Franca said.
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