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Article: Lame but never halting; Tamerlane.(A kindly view of Tamerlane)(Book Review)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- August 28, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Horseman of the apocalyptic
HIS trademark was a pile of skulls, formed from the slaughtered inhabitants of cities that resisted him. He launched a fresh military campaign almost every spring, riding south one year to sack Delhi, then west to the shores of the Mediterranean, destroying every monument in Baghdad on the way, before setting off to loot Peking. The vast empire he established--though the term suggests an administrative unity it never possessed--started to disintegrate on the day of his death in 1405; 100 years later it had vanished entirely. To one historian, he represented the "supreme example of soulless and unproductive militarism" until the advent ...