The Greatest Genocide of all Time (and unknown to most in the West)

Pavel Mosko · Jun 26, 2019

After reading and sometimes participating in threads about Christianity and warfare, especially in regards to the Crusades and Islam... I just wanted to correct the record especially for those who tend to make moral equivalency arguments between Christianity (at its worst) and Islam.

Timur[3] (Persian: تیمور‎ Temūr, Chagatai: Temür; 9 April 1336 – 18 February 1405), sometimes spelled Taimur and historically best known as Amir Timur or Tamerlane[4] (Persian: تيمور لنگ‎ Temūr(-i) Lang, "Timur the Lame"), was a Turco-Mongol Persianate [5][6]conqueror. As the founder of the Timurid Empire in and around modern-day Iran and Central Asia, he became the first ruler of the Timurid dynasty.[7] According to John Joseph Saunders, Timur was "the product of an Islamized and Iranized society", and not steppe nomadic.[8]

Born into the Barlas confederation in Transoxiana (in modern-day Uzbekistan) on 9 April 1336, Timur gained control of the western Chagatai Khanate by 1370. From that base, he led military campaigns across Western, South and Central Asia, the Caucasus and southern Russia, and emerged as the most powerful ruler in the Muslim world after defeating the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria, the emerging Ottoman Empire, and the declining Delhi Sultanate.[9] From these conquests, he founded the Timurid Empire, but this empire fragmented shortly after his death.

"....Scholars estimate that his military campaigns caused the deaths of 17 million people, amounting to about 5% of the world population at the time.[18][19]"

(That I believe is a conservative estimate. I've heard estimates that are much, much more than that).

"Timur's legacy is a mixed one. While Central Asia blossomed under his reign, other places, such as Baghdad, Damascus, Delhi and other Arab, Georgian, Persian, and Indian cities were sacked and destroyed and their populations massacred. He was responsible for the effective destruction of the Nestorian Christian Church of the East in much of Asia. Thus, while Timur still retains a positive image in Muslim Central Asia, he is vilified by many in Arabia, Iraq, Persia, and India, where some of his greatest atrocities were carried out. However, Ibn Khaldun praises Timur for having unified much of the Muslim world when other conquerors of the time could not.[95]The next great conqueror of the Middle East, Nader Shah, was greatly influenced by Timur and almost re-enacted Timur's conquests and battle strategies in his own campaigns. Like Timur, Nader Shah conquered most of Caucasia, Persia, and Central Asia along with also sacking Delhi.

Timur's short-lived empire also melded the Turko-Persian tradition in Transoxiana, and in most of the territories that he incorporated into his fiefdom, Persian became the primary language of administration and literary culture (diwan), regardless of ethnicity.[96] In addition, during his reign, some contributions to Turkic literature were penned, with Turkic cultural influence expanding and flourishing as a result. A literary form of Chagatai Turkic came into use alongside Persian as both a cultural and an official language.[97]"

Emir Timur and his forces advance against the Golden Horde, Khan Tokhtamysh.
Tamerlane virtually exterminated the Church of the East, which had previously been a major branch of Christianity but afterwards became largely confined to a small area now known as the Assyrian Triangle.[98]

Timur - Wikipedia

Not David · Jun 26, 2019

Pavel Mosko said:
After reading and sometimes participating in threads about Christianity and warfare, especially in regards to the Crusades and Islam... I just wanted to correct the record especially for those who tend to make moral equivalency arguments between Christianity (at its worst) and Islam.

Timur[3] (Persian: تیمور‎ Temūr, Chagatai: Temür; 9 April 1336 – 18 February 1405), sometimes spelled Taimur and historically best known as Amir Timur or Tamerlane[4] (Persian: تيمور لنگ‎ Temūr(-i) Lang, "Timur the Lame"), was a Turco-Mongol Persianate [5][6]conqueror. As the founder of the Timurid Empire in and around modern-day Iran and Central Asia, he became the first ruler of the Timurid dynasty.[7] According to John Joseph Saunders, Timur was "the product of an Islamized and Iranized society", and not steppe nomadic.[8]

Born into the Barlas confederation in Transoxiana (in modern-day Uzbekistan) on 9 April 1336, Timur gained control of the western Chagatai Khanate by 1370. From that base, he led military campaigns across Western, South and Central Asia, the Caucasus and southern Russia, and emerged as the most powerful ruler in the Muslim world after defeating the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria, the emerging Ottoman Empire, and the declining Delhi Sultanate.[9] From these conquests, he founded the Timurid Empire, but this empire fragmented shortly after his death.

"....Scholars estimate that his military campaigns caused the deaths of 17 million people, amounting to about 5% of the world population at the time.[18][19]"

(That I believe is a conservative estimate. I've heard estimates that are much, much more than that).

"Timur's legacy is a mixed one. While Central Asia blossomed under his reign, other places, such as Baghdad, Damascus, Delhi and other Arab, Georgian, Persian, and Indian cities were sacked and destroyed and their populations massacred. He was responsible for the effective destruction of the Nestorian Christian Church of the East in much of Asia. Thus, while Timur still retains a positive image in Muslim Central Asia, he is vilified by many in Arabia, Iraq, Persia, and India, where some of his greatest atrocities were carried out. However, Ibn Khaldun praises Timur for having unified much of the Muslim world when other conquerors of the time could not.[95]The next great conqueror of the Middle East, Nader Shah, was greatly influenced by Timur and almost re-enacted Timur's conquests and battle strategies in his own campaigns. Like Timur, Nader Shah conquered most of Caucasia, Persia, and Central Asia along with also sacking Delhi.

Timur's short-lived empire also melded the Turko-Persian tradition in Transoxiana, and in most of the territories that he incorporated into his fiefdom, Persian became the primary language of administration and literary culture (diwan), regardless of ethnicity.[96] In addition, during his reign, some contributions to Turkic literature were penned, with Turkic cultural influence expanding and flourishing as a result. A literary form of Chagatai Turkic came into use alongside Persian as both a cultural and an official language.[97]"

Emir Timur and his forces advance against the Golden Horde, Khan Tokhtamysh.
Tamerlane virtually exterminated the Church of the East, which had previously been a major branch of Christianity but afterwards became largely confined to a small area now known as the Assyrian Triangle.[98]

Timur - Wikipedia

Because current society associates Christianity with White people and Islam with brown people and White people are "tyrants" while brown people are "victims"

Quid est Veritas? · Jun 27, 2019

"Greatest Genocide of all time" is a bit hard to qauntify. Yes, Timur killed many people on the Iranian plateau, of which the Church of the East was disproportionately involved. He also killed many in Southern Russia, when he campaigned against Toktamish around the Caspian Sea.

However, when the Mongols took Baghdad they built a pyramid of severed heads, or when they took Northern China, they killed millions too. In fact, they argued whether they shouldn't just cleanse the entire area of population. Timur was merely working to type, as a Mongol/Turkic conqueror nominally under a Genghiside, though his religious component was also more prominent.

What of the sheer speed of Rwanda, where millions were hacked apart by machetes in six weeks; or the ruthless banal efficiency of Auschwitz? Timur killed millions over a long career, for pacification; these others were purely idealogical, and comparable numbers in a much shorter time period. Timur was anyway pragmatic, with a multi-ethnic force, utilising religion or his Mongol or Turkic heritage as required for his political aims. He frankly almost exterminated the Church of the East, but that was because although it was geographically widespread, it was thin on the ground - thus an easy target to cement his local position as a Gazi Muslim conqueror. His Transoxianan court blossomed, and his relations with Western Europe was good (as an enemy of the Ottomans).

To say he is unknown is also not true. Tamberlaine is a well known form, with plays on him by Elizabethan playwrights, poems such as by Poe, Operas by the likes of Handel, for instance. In Russia, he was quite well known, as he played an important role in weakening the Golden Horde, so excavating his tomb was a big deal and is frequently mentioned in Russian literature.

I think this is more the modern tendency to forget history that wasn't recent, to lump together all the ancient world into a Greco-Roman caricature or the entire Mediaval period into a vague Robin Hood/Arthur set-piece, so Timur gets subsumed into Genghis Khan or Atilla the Hun, as we already have vague Steppe conquerors to hang stereotypes on. I doubt most people with more than a passing interest in history, don't know a little about him. Saying "unknown in the West" is really not true, although popularly less known perhaps - but this is true for any specifics prior to the last couple of centuries barring one or two figures like Julius Caesar or Genghis Khan, that act as mascots for millenia of human history. Timur was a military genius, a bloody Mongol conqueror, a Muslim Gazi, presided over a Scientific and Artistic Golden Age in central Asia, so is a man of many facets. Popular conceptions like nice clean cut villains or heroes, and he really is superfluous to Genghis Khan as figurehead for central Asian conquerers.

Personally, many of the Genocides of the 20th century were much quicker, comparably bloody, and more purely about eliminating a people or idealogy completely, so I would still rate them 'worse' in some sense than Timur's pragmatic, though still unbelievably cruel and destructive, campaigns - though such juxtaposing things from different eras and contexts inevitably is a tad invalid and anachronistic.

Pavel Mosko · Jun 27, 2019

Quid est Veritas? said:
"Greatest Genocide of all time" is a bit hard to qauntify.

I thought a bit about changing or qualifying the title. But sometimes having some imperfection or inaccuracy is good as far as prompting discussion so I left it in. Thanks for the lengthy and thoughtful response.

Quid est Veritas? said:
I think this is more the modern tendency to forget history that wasn't recent,

Pretty much the reason for the thread.

But another is how this all affected our understanding and depictions of Church History etc. I considered myself, fairly educated most of my life. Going to college, even graduate school, reading history books, watching TV documentaries. I never heard of the Church of the East until I was near my mid 20s in the early 90s and even then I did not comprehend it. I happened to meet a bishop in a westernized branch of it when I was actually attending a Charismatic conference. And even then, I really did not know what to make of it, I think I wanted to classify it as some kind of Eastern Orthodox Church etc.

But anyway for many many years, Christianity has been depicted as a Western only thing. It's just about the Europe, Roman Catholics and later Protestants, sometimes about the Greeks and maybe a little about the Russians. That point of view is largely based on two things. The Nestorian heresy conflict, but also the fact that Christians were actually largely eradicated in Asia. The internet seems to be greatly changing things slowly, but this Western only depiction is still very prevalent in the minds of many folks.

Resha Caner · Jun 28, 2019

There are many misconceptions about history. We should make a list. Timur's impact was global, but many people look at "back then" as primitive in all aspects. How often do you hear comments about the Bible being a "bronze-age book"? - the implication being that the authors were naive idiots and we're so much smarter.

One misconception of history is that no one ever traveled more than 6.2 meters from their birthplace. The Columbus myth contains within it the idea that Europe was completely ignorant of anything outside Europe. That is much too simplistic a view of antiquity. While it is true that most (the unwashed masses so to speak) did not travel far and were often illiterate, there were always a few within the world power structures who were intelligent, well-traveled, and well-educated. As such, during most of history there was an awareness of the length and breadth of much of the globe; there was a continual diffusion of cultures from one to another; ongoing influences of a conqueror from over there on life here.

I remember clearly my epiphany about Napoleon - when he transformed from that comic character in a Bugs Bunny cartoon to someone whose impact spread across the entire planet.

mathinspiration · Jul 3, 2019

Didn’t Mohammad prohibit persecution of the people of the Book? Most Westerners aren’t familiar with this or Muslims.

Ignatius the Kiwi · Jul 3, 2019

Certainty seems like an unequal comparison. The height of Christian holy war is the Crusades and it didn't result in the level of death and carnage that Timur or Ghenghis Khan brought on the world. Anyone who is especially critical of Christian Holy war, of which there were many, need only recognize that both WW1 and WW2 combined put the numbers kill in offensive Christian Holy war to shame.

The Islamic Jihad was far more prolonged than any of the Christian holy wars I can think of and still hasn't ended. This is why there is a problem with Islamic extremism, because it's built into the core of their religion. Christians by in large need a secular state to facilitate any effort of holy war, hence the isn't a Christian terrorism problem comparable to that of Islam.

Quid est Veritas? · Jul 4, 2019

mathinspiration said:
Didn’t Mohammad prohibit persecution of the people of the Book? Most Westerners aren’t familiar with this or Muslims.

Early in his career when his position was weak. Then he brutally crushed the Jewish tribes at Mecca. It is an example of his convenient revelations, how you can only have four wives till a revelation made exception for him; or how you can't marry consanguineously, till Mohammed wanted to. Mohammed was a Warlord, Jesus turned the other cheek.

Resha Caner · Jul 5, 2019

Quid est Veritas? said:
Early in his career when his position was weak. Then he brutally crushed the Jewish tribes at Mecca. It is an example of his convenient revelations, how you can only have four wives till a revelation made exception for him; or how you can't marry consanguineously, till Mohammed wanted to. Mohammed was a Warlord, Jesus turned the other cheek.

Many people also fail to realize Islam is a progressive religion. In other words, if Mohamed says something on Monday, then contradicts that statement on Tuesday (or his succeeding caliphs), only the statement on Tuesday need be obeyed. So, Muslims can persecute Christians on Monday and then declare themselves peaceful and tolerant on Tuesday.

I'm glad someone else recognizes Mohamed as a warlord. I once made such a statement to a professor of Muslim history and was berated.

grandvizier1006 · Aug 3, 2019

I can relate to what the OP is saying about how unknown the Church of the East is (was?) and Timur/Tamerlane. I learned about all of this history just a few years before ISIS appeared and got a little depressed wondering why we in the West just sat there and let it happen. I think the simple truth is that we didn’t know and we were too far away to do anything about it. The same goes for every Christian who lived in an era conquered by Islam. Our Eastern brothers and sisters in Christ learned a lot about living under a foreign oppressor and it affected their theology as a result. Nowadays, in a time where we can rediscover old ideas, we’d do well to look to history and prevent this from happening again. As awful as ISIS was, at least now the West knows about the Eastern church and can do something to ensure the safety of some of its members that are still surviving.

angelsaroundme · Aug 20, 2021

I think Christians and Muslims would have better relationships if we viewed history with a fairer eye. Both have done things we wouldn't look back on favorably. By treating one as blameless and the other as awful they only create animosity.

Jesus is my Superhero · Aug 20, 2021

Sometimes it's just the Christian name attached to a secular power. take a peak at the Russian Orthodox Church during the Soviet Union era and you'll undoubtedly find that the head of the Church and many priests were KGB informers.

The Liturgist · Aug 21, 2021

Quid est Veritas? said:
"Greatest Genocide of all time" is a bit hard to qauntify. Yes, Timur killed many people on the Iranian plateau, of which the Church of the East was disproportionately involved. He also killed many in Southern Russia, when he campaigned against Toktamish around the Caspian Sea.

However, when the Mongols took Baghdad they built a pyramid of severed heads, or when they took Northern China, they killed millions too. In fact, they argued whether they shouldn't just cleanse the entire area of population. Timur was merely working to type, as a Mongol/Turkic conqueror nominally under a Genghiside, though his religious component was also more prominent.

What of the sheer speed of Rwanda, where millions were hacked apart by machetes in six weeks; or the ruthless banal efficiency of Auschwitz? Timur killed millions over a long career, for pacification; these others were purely idealogical, and comparable numbers in a much shorter time period. Timur was anyway pragmatic, with a multi-ethnic force, utilising religion or his Mongol or Turkic heritage as required for his political aims. He frankly almost exterminated the Church of the East, but that was because although it was geographically widespread, it was thin on the ground - thus an easy target to cement his local position as a Gazi Muslim conqueror. His Transoxianan court blossomed, and his relations with Western Europe was good (as an enemy of the Ottomans).

To say he is unknown is also not true. Tamberlaine is a well known form, with plays on him by Elizabethan playwrights, poems such as by Poe, Operas by the likes of Handel, for instance. In Russia, he was quite well known, as he played an important role in weakening the Golden Horde, so excavating his tomb was a big deal and is frequently mentioned in Russian literature.

I think this is more the modern tendency to forget history that wasn't recent, to lump together all the ancient world into a Greco-Roman caricature or the entire Mediaval period into a vague Robin Hood/Arthur set-piece, so Timur gets subsumed into Genghis Khan or Atilla the Hun, as we already have vague Steppe conquerors to hang stereotypes on. I doubt most people with more than a passing interest in history, don't know a little about him. Saying "unknown in the West" is really not true, although popularly less known perhaps - but this is true for any specifics prior to the last couple of centuries barring one or two figures like Julius Caesar or Genghis Khan, that act as mascots for millenia of human history. Timur was a military genius, a bloody Mongol conqueror, a Muslim Gazi, presided over a Scientific and Artistic Golden Age in central Asia, so is a man of many facets. Popular conceptions like nice clean cut villains or heroes, and he really is superfluous to Genghis Khan as figurehead for central Asian conquerers.

Personally, many of the Genocides of the 20th century were much quicker, comparably bloody, and more purely about eliminating a people or idealogy completely, so I would still rate them 'worse' in some sense than Timur's pragmatic, though still unbelievably cruel and destructive, campaigns - though such juxtaposing things from different eras and contexts inevitably is a tad invalid and anachronistic.

You would have a point if Timur the Lame had not killed all the Christians in China, Mongolia, Tibet and Central Asia. But he did; all these Christians spoke Syriac. There is also substantial reason to believe he exterminated any surviving Manichaeans. It was definitely a genocide.

Also I am deeply troubled that you don’t mention the Genocide of Armenians, Syriac Orthodox, Assyrians and Pontic Greek Christians by the Turks, which was as vicious as the Rwandan Genocide, in your list. Entire villages were subjected to murder and mayhem. 95% of the Syriac Orthodox and Assyrian Christians in Ottoman ruled areas were killed. The Armenians lost I think somewhere around 75% and also had the highest total number of casualties. And the Pontic Greeks, due to a combination of the Genocide with the forced population transfer after WWII, were completely ethnically cleansed, so even though some descendants of the Pontic Greeks remain alive, there are no Christians left in places like Ephesus or Antioch.

Christians were also ethnically cleansed from Azerbaijan, although recently an attempt has been made by a small number of Azeri Nationals who are Christian to restart the Caucasian Albanian Orthodox Church.

Some other Christians churches which were exterminated include the Church of Socotra, the Namibian Orthodox Church, and all of the ancient North African churches (not counting the Roman Catholic churches re-established in Libya, Algeria, etc, by the French and Italians, or the small Spanish population in Ceuta).

Quid est Veritas? · Aug 24, 2021

The Liturgist said:
You would have a point if Timur the Lame had not killed all the Christians in China, Mongolia, Tibet and Central Asia. But he did; all these Christians spoke Syriac. There is also substantial reason to believe he exterminated any surviving Manichaeans. It was definitely a genocide.

Also I am deeply troubled that you don’t mention the Genocide of Armenians, Syriac Orthodox, Assyrians and Pontic Greek Christians by the Turks, which was as vicious as the Rwandan Genocide, in your list. Entire villages were subjected to murder and mayhem. 95% of the Syriac Orthodox and Assyrian Christians in Ottoman ruled areas were killed. The Armenians lost I think somewhere around 75% and also had the highest total number of casualties. And the Pontic Greeks, due to a combination of the Genocide with the forced population transfer after WWII, were completely ethnically cleansed, so even though some descendants of the Pontic Greeks remain alive, there are no Christians left in places like Ephesus or Antioch.

Christians were also ethnically cleansed from Azerbaijan, although recently an attempt has been made by a small number of Azeri Nationals who are Christian to restart the Caucasian Albanian Orthodox Church.

Some other Christians churches which were exterminated include the Church of Socotra, the Namibian Orthodox Church, and all of the ancient North African churches (not counting the Roman Catholic churches re-established in Libya, Algeria, etc, by the French and Italians, or the small Spanish population in Ceuta).

I don't understand your response. I can find nowhere where I denied it was a genocide, I just do not think it was the 'greatest genocide of all time'. I mean, he didn't completely wipe them out in many areas, either. Similarly, that Timur killed Syriac Christians wherever he found them is exactly my point - they were thin on the ground, though widespread, and thus perfect victims to cement his Gazi role for his Turkic troops without too much disruption of his rule. His Islamic credentials clearly took a backseat to his political ends, as his attempted alliances in the West and his tolerance of Shia in Iran makes plain.

Likewise I did not list genocides, only mentioned two bad ones as examples: the Holocaust for its thoroughness, and the Rwandan for its rapidity. I could have mentioned Cambodhia or the Herero in Namibia, etc. That I didn't mention the Armenian makes no difference to my argument of how terrible 20th century ones were, and see no reason this should 'deeply trouble' you. Alas, we are spoilt for choice in the 20th century where genocides are concerned.

Lastly, the Namibian Orthodox Church? What? That makes no sense. Do you know where Namibia is? By that time it was thoroughly under the rule of the Union of South Africa under Louis Botha, and there is no Orthodox church established there that I am aware of. If I am mistaken, please supply a source, as that would be a wartime story from my neck of the woods that I am unaware of.

Daniel Marsh · Sep 4, 2021

Pavel Mosko said:
After reading and sometimes participating in threads about Christianity and warfare, especially in regards to the Crusades and Islam... I just wanted to correct the record especially for those who tend to make moral equivalency arguments between Christianity (at its worst) and Islam.

Timur[3] (Persian: تیمور‎ Temūr, Chagatai: Temür; 9 April 1336 – 18 February 1405), sometimes spelled Taimur and historically best known as Amir Timur or Tamerlane[4] (Persian: تيمور لنگ‎ Temūr(-i) Lang, "Timur the Lame"), was a Turco-Mongol Persianate [5][6]conqueror. As the founder of the Timurid Empire in and around modern-day Iran and Central Asia, he became the first ruler of the Timurid dynasty.[7] According to John Joseph Saunders, Timur was "the product of an Islamized and Iranized society", and not steppe nomadic.[8]

Born into the Barlas confederation in Transoxiana (in modern-day Uzbekistan) on 9 April 1336, Timur gained control of the western Chagatai Khanate by 1370. From that base, he led military campaigns across Western, South and Central Asia, the Caucasus and southern Russia, and emerged as the most powerful ruler in the Muslim world after defeating the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria, the emerging Ottoman Empire, and the declining Delhi Sultanate.[9] From these conquests, he founded the Timurid Empire, but this empire fragmented shortly after his death.

"....Scholars estimate that his military campaigns caused the deaths of 17 million people, amounting to about 5% of the world population at the time.[18][19]"

(That I believe is a conservative estimate. I've heard estimates that are much, much more than that).

"Timur's legacy is a mixed one. While Central Asia blossomed under his reign, other places, such as Baghdad, Damascus, Delhi and other Arab, Georgian, Persian, and Indian cities were sacked and destroyed and their populations massacred. He was responsible for the effective destruction of the Nestorian Christian Church of the East in much of Asia. Thus, while Timur still retains a positive image in Muslim Central Asia, he is vilified by many in Arabia, Iraq, Persia, and India, where some of his greatest atrocities were carried out. However, Ibn Khaldun praises Timur for having unified much of the Muslim world when other conquerors of the time could not.[95]The next great conqueror of the Middle East, Nader Shah, was greatly influenced by Timur and almost re-enacted Timur's conquests and battle strategies in his own campaigns. Like Timur, Nader Shah conquered most of Caucasia, Persia, and Central Asia along with also sacking Delhi.

Timur's short-lived empire also melded the Turko-Persian tradition in Transoxiana, and in most of the territories that he incorporated into his fiefdom, Persian became the primary language of administration and literary culture (diwan), regardless of ethnicity.[96] In addition, during his reign, some contributions to Turkic literature were penned, with Turkic cultural influence expanding and flourishing as a result. A literary form of Chagatai Turkic came into use alongside Persian as both a cultural and an official language.[97]"

Emir Timur and his forces advance against the Golden Horde, Khan Tokhtamysh.
Tamerlane virtually exterminated the Church of the East, which had previously been a major branch of Christianity but afterwards became largely confined to a small area now known as the Assyrian Triangle.[98]

Timur - Wikipedia

Thanks for the information, I am not sure if I ever read about that. Since my study of the history of Islam was decades ago.

But, if you think about it. what does one expect from the peaceful religion of Islam?

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