Timur the Great looks very Mongolian to me.
{...
Timur[3] ( 9 April 1336 – 18 February 1405), sometimes spelled
Taimur and historically best known as
Amir Timur or
Tamerlane[4] ( "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.
Timur was the last of the great
nomadic conquerors of the
Eurasian Steppe, and his empire set the stage for the rise of the more structured and lasting
Gunpowder Empires in the 16th and 17th centuries.
[10][11]:1 Timur envisioned the restoration of the
Mongol Empire of
Genghis Khan (died 1227) and according to
Gérard Chaliand, saw himself as Genghis Khan's heir.
[12] Though not a Borjigid or a
descendant of Genghis Khan,
[13] he clearly sought to invoke the legacy of the latter's conquests during his lifetime.
[14] According to
Beatrice Forbes Manz, "in his formal correspondence Temur continued throughout his life to portray himself as the restorer of
Chinggisidrights. He justified his Iranian, Mamluk, and Ottoman campaigns as a re-imposition of legitimate Mongol control over lands taken by usurpers."
[15] To legitimize his conquests, Timur relied on Islamic symbols and language, referred to himself as the "Sword of Islam", and patronized educational and religious institutions. He converted nearly all the
Borjigin leaders to
Islam during his lifetime. Timur decisively defeated the Christian
Knights Hospitaller at the
Siege of Smyrna, styling himself a
ghazi.
[16]:91 By the end of his reign, Timur had gained complete control over all the remnants of the
Chagatai Khanate, the
Ilkhanate, and the
Golden Horde, and even attempted to restore the
Yuan dynasty in China.
Timur's armies were inclusively multi-ethnic and were feared throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe,
[16] sizable parts of which his campaigns laid to waste.
[17] Scholars estimate that his military campaigns caused the deaths of 17 million people, amounting to about
5% of the world population at the time.
...}
