Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdi wrote the Zafarnama (Book of Victory) for Timur's grandson Ibrahim Sultan about twenty years after Timur's death, using court records and earlier accounts. François Pétis de la Croix translated it into French (1722), adding footnotes, and an English version followed in 1723. The volume in this corpus begins at Book IV: Timur's invasion of India and sack of Delhi (1398), the building of the great mosque at Samarkand, the wars in Syria, the sack of Baghdad (1401) and the war with the Ottoman sultan Bayezid. Throughout, Timur's own army is 'the Tartars'.
How they knew
Compiled from others
Who “Tartar” means here
Timur's own Turkic and Mongol army and people of Transoxiana (the Chaghatay 'Tartars'), as the court historian and his French translator call them. A translator's footnote distinguishes Turks (descended from Moguls and Tartars) from Tajiks.
Why read it
A rare view from inside the 'Tartar' camp: the conqueror's own historian describes his stone mosque at Samarkand and the craftsmen who built it, and records enemies mocking Tartar homes of rope and canvas.
Watch out
This is court propaganda written for Timur's family, filtered through a French translation and its footnotes. The manifest calls this volume I, but the text begins at Book IV. The OCR prints the long s and has many broken words.
Baghdad razed, except mosques, colleges and hospitals
Editorial contextAfter Baghdad fell by storm, each Tartar soldier was ordered to bring a head, and towers of heads were built as a warning. Timur then ordered every house razed but the mosques, colleges and hospitals spared. A footnote from the translator adds Ibn Arabshah's figures: 90,000 killed and 120 towers of heads.
Afterwards Timur gave orders that there shou'd not remain one single house in the city unraz'd ; but that the mosques, colleges and hospitals shou'd be spar'd. Accordingly they ruin'd the markets, caravanseras, hermitages, cells, monasterys, palaces, and other edifices.
Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdi (English of 1723, via Pétis de la Croix)
Editorial contextAs Timur approached Syria, the Mamluk governors rejected advice to make peace. Yazdi gives them a proud speech: other kingdoms fell because their towns were mud and brick, but Syria's fortresses are cut from solid rock. The Tartars, they sneer, live in homes and walls of rope and canvas, meaning tents. The boast was followed by defeat.
Their towns were built only of mud and brick ; but ours are all of solid stone, cut out of the almost impenetrable rock ;… The houses and walls of these Tartars are only of cords and canvas ; while we live in good fortresses, which are of hewn stone
Speech Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdi puts in the mouths of the Mamluk emirs (English of 1723, via Pétis de la Croix)
Foreign masons build Timur's great mosque at Samarkand
Editorial contextBack from India, Timur ordered a congregational mosque for Samarkand. Yazdi says the foundations were laid at an astrologically chosen moment and that the work was done by masons brought from foreign countries, 200 from Azerbaijan, Persia and India inside alone. On the next page he adds 500 men cutting stone in the mountains, 95 elephants hauling blocks, and a finished hall of 480 hewn-stone pillars, a carved marble roof, four minarets and brass doors. Earlier (p. 67) he records that Timur kept the captured masons of Delhi for this very building.
The masons, brought from foreign countrys, as mention'd before, gave the greatest proofs of their art and skill, as well in the solidity and beauty of the angles, as in the strength of the foundations of this noble edifice. In the inside of the mosque were employ'd two hundred masons from Azerbijana, Persia and India:
Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdi (English of 1723, via Pétis de la Croix)
Editorial contextTwo footnotes explain the troops sent to scout the mountains of Kafiristan. 'Turks' are the descendants of Moguls and Tartars; 'Tadgics' (Tajiks) are the Persian-speaking townspeople of Transoxiana and Iran, who are neither. It is a neat 1720s key to how Tartar, Mogul and Turk overlapped.
The Turks are those who descend from the Moguls and Tartars… The Tadgics are the inhabitants of the towns of Transoxiana, and all the country of Iran, who are neither Tartars, Moguls, nor Turks.
Translator's footnote (François Pétis de la Croix, carried into the 1723 English)