Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

rot was not limited to the Far East. In Persia the Mongol Ilkhanate had dissolved into a patchwork of petty warlord fiefdoms by the 1330s, with the last undisputed Ilkhan dying in 1335—more or less at the same time that Temür was born.43 The Golden Horde was increasingly riven by faction and infighting, and so the Chagatai khanate, where Temür had been born, was effectively partitioned. To Genghis, Ögödei, or even Kublai Khan this would have all been unrecognizable. The Mongol successor states no longer remotely resembled the superpower they had once comprised. But spectacularly, if momentarily, Temür rolled back the years. Between 1360, when he first took to the battlefield, and his death in the early fifteenth century, Temür swept up the jagged shards of the great Mongol empire and pieced them back together under his own charismatic rule. His route to preeminence was a familiar one. Having risen in the tribal society of central Asia thanks to his skill in battle and talent for diplomacy, Temür then set his sights outward. He gathered and motivated a large, multiethnic army that roved far and wide, terrorizing those who refused to bow to its approach. He justified his aggression with direct reference to history: although he was not descended from Genghis, two of his four-dozen wives or concubines were from the old khan’s line. Temür insisted that this gave him the right to restore what the old man had once assembled. He labeled himself as a son-in-law (küregen) of Genghis...