Timur-e-Lang is one of the most anti-human personalities born on this earth. Not only he was brutal killer, but he gave himself the title of ‘Sword of Islam’. In thirty five years of his reign, he slaughtered 17 million people which was around 5% of the total global population of his time.
In Arabic, Timur means iron. ‘Lang’ was suffixed with his name later and it means cripple. Historian Ibne Arab Shah writes that when Timur was young, a shepherd’s arrows hit him in the hip and right shoulder making his right side cripple.
Timur was born in 1336 to Amir Taraghai, who was from Barlas tribe which accepted Islam.
In 1398, when Timur had invaded most of the Islamic world, he decided to attack India due to political upheaval in Delhi. In the beginning of year, he sent his grandson to Multan who captured the city. In April, Timur started from Samarkand, Iran with a gigantic army, crossed Kandhar, Kabul and Afghanistan and by September, he crossed rivers – Sindhu, Jhelum and Ravi.
His army began the operation of merciless butchering countless Hindus in Baluch, Punjab, Sindh and Kashmir. In Kashmir, his army attacked Kator where all the men were killed, and all the women and children were held captive as war slaves.
The tyrants entered the populated towns massacring Hindus, looting their wealth, forcefully converting them to Islam, destroying temples and building mosques over their remains and preached Khutaba.
Thus, performing horrifying destruction, the army passed through Bhaṭaner where Rajputs accepted their defeat and they entered a peace treaty. As soon as the Rajputs became inattentive, Timur slaughtered 10,000 men and beheaded them. In his autobiography, Tuzūk-i Tīmūrī, Timur writes that ‘….Within some time, all the people in the fort were killed, ten thousand men were beheaded within an hour. The sword of Islam bathed in the blood of Kafirs. Their belongings, wealth, grains, whatever they had been collecting for years inside the fort was looted by my army. The houses were burnt and reduced to ashes. Buildings and the fort too was reduced to dust…’.
In Sarsuti and Panipat, he continued the same horrendous activities of killing Hindu men, looting wealth, burning the towns and taking women and children as war slaves.
After death of Delhi’s king, Firoj Shah Tugalak, revolts began everywhere in the kingdom. His heretic policies had created unrest everywhere due to which many small kingdoms came into existence and Delhi was reduced to a very small sultanate. Opportunist Timur took the benefit of this political upheaval in India.
The number of war slaves had reached around one lac in Loni near Delhi, Timur ordered to leave the isolated cases of Muslim slaves unharmed and ordered the massacre of one lac Hindus. Timur writes in his autobiography – ‘That’s why there was no other way apart from making them a food of sword. I declared in my camp that all the captive men must be killed and those who oppose these killings will also be killed and his entire wealth will be given to the one who reveals this. When the Ghazis of Islam got this news, they picked up their swords and killed their captives. That day, one lac impure idol worshipping Kafirs were killed.’
After Loni, Timur started moving towards Delhi. The battle took place on 17 December 1398. Sultan Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq and the army of Mallu Iqbal had war elephants armored with chain mail and poison on their tusks. As his Tatar forces were afraid of the elephants, Timur ordered his men to dig a trench in front of their positions. Timur then loaded his camels with as much wood and hay as they could carry. When the war elephants charged, Timur set the hay on fire and prodded the camels with iron sticks, causing them to charge at the elephants howling in pain: Timur had understood that elephants were easily panicked. Faced with the strange spectacle of camels flying straight at them with flames leaping from their backs, the elephants turned around and stampeded back toward their own lines. Timur capitalized on the subsequent disruption in the forces of Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq, securing an easy victory. Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq fled with remnants of his forces. Delhi was sacked and left in ruins.
As per his demonic personality, he continued carnage and destroyed Delhi in fifteen days. While devastating the town, he looted and burnt big houses, business centers and temples. He butchered countless men and women, burnt children and women alive by throwing them in inferno, made garland of thousands of skulls and put them on display in lifeless markets.
It is said that the city reeked of the decomposing bodies of its citizens with their heads being erected like structures and the bodies left as food for the birds by Timur’s soldiers.
In his autobiography, he states that the reason behind attacking India was waging a religious war on Kafir Hindus so that Islamic army would get wealth and other expensive belongings of Hindus.
He also captured Hindu architects and took them to Samarkand as there were no skilled men in his desert.
Everything didn’t go unopposed
After Delhi, he encountered stiff resistance from the Jats of Meerut. When Jats realized that Timur’s army was fast approaching them, they called a Sarvkhap Mahapanchayat, decided to form an army and deployed people amongst them on various posts. The governor of this army was Dadaveer Jograj Panwar. 40,000 women joined the army with weapons. This army gave an extremely tough fight to Timur and their general hit Timur with am armor in his chest in Haridwar. This attack was so brutal that it forced Timur to return to Samarkand.
Anyone who is Indian at heart would never name his/her child after this barbaric butcher!
References:
Kashi Martand (Book)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timr#cite_note-marozzi-2004-11
http://hindi.webdunia.com/indian-history-and-culture/tiur-lang-history-in-hindi-116122100048_1.html
https://owlcation.com/humanities/40-Facts-about-Tamerlane-Tmur-the-Lame
