The Towers of Samarcand (57 page)

In the Ottoman camp, Bayezid is depicted in the book as past his best. Certainly he’d been a man of rapid and unexpected conquest in his youth, earning for himself the name of Yildirim, or ‘Thunderbolt’. His heir Suleyman was a good soldier but, after the Battle of Ankara, became debauched. Suleyman’s brother Mehmed was the clever one who ultimately triumphed in the civil war that engulfed the Empire after the death of Bayezid. Bayezid’s mother, the Valide Sultan Gülçiçek, certainly existed, although whether she was quite as nasty as depicted in the book is a matter for conjecture. The Valide Sultan, mother of the ruling Sultan, was always a very powerful figure whose power held sway far beyond the harem walls.

Tamerlane was an odd mixture of psychopathic cruelty and cultural sensibility. He was a brilliant strategist who rarely
lost a battle and the stories of his military ruses described in this book are all true. He was intelligent, could speak several languages, and did invent a new version of chess. His son Miran Shah was as mad as depicted and lacked any of his father’s genius. Miran Shah’s wife Khan-zada was said to be beautiful and brave and did warn Tamerlane of his son’s intrigues against him. Tamerlane’s grandson and heir, Mohammed Sultan, known as a paragon of virtue, did die from his wounds after Ankara. Much of the description of the extraordinary court of Tamerlane, including the feast on the plain of Kanigil (which happened in 1404, rather than 1399 in this book), comes from the diaries of the Castilian envoy, Ruy González de Clavijo, who arrived at Samarcand with the Ambassador Sotomayor. His diaries describe Angelina of Hungary and Maria from Trebizond, both captured on the field of Ankara. They are an entertaining read.

I have been inaccurate as to the timing of the Chinese Emperor’s death to fit in with the narrative. In fact the Hongwu Emperor, the first of the astonishing Ming Dynasty, died in 1398, three years before I describe.

One of the more intriguing characters in the book is the historian Ibn Khaldun. He led a strange and peripatetic life, including holding the position of Kadi to the Mamluk Sultan, before he sat down to write his extraordinary histories. The story of him being lowered from the walls of Damascus to meet Tamerlane is entirely true, as was his success in securing the release of his compatriots in the city.

Yakub II of the Germiyans existed and his capital was Kutahya in the Anatolian steppe. He hated Bayezid, who had imprisoned him for three years in the castle of Ipsala after annexing his beylik, only slightly less than he hated Allaedin ali-Bey of the
neighbouring Karamanid tribe, which had yet to fall beneath the Ottoman yoke.

King Giorgi of Georgia also existed and Tamerlane’s campaign into Georgia took place as described, although it wasn’t led by Mohammed Sultan. The story of the baskets lowered to smoke out King Giorgi’s army in the caves of Vardzia is completely true as is the story of his escape with Prince Tahir.

Little is known about Qara Yusuf of the Qara Qoyunlu (or Black Sheep) tribe who had his capital in Tabriz. The Black Sheep formed a buffer state between the Ottoman and Timurid Empires and Qara Yusuf tried desperately to play one power off against the other. Amazingly, he survived to die in 1420.

Another fascinating character was Hasan-i Sabah, founder of the assassin cult. He was a brilliant mathematician, astronomer and alchemist who, in the late eleventh century, gathered a following of fanatical Ismai’li diehards who were prepared to die for the Shia cause, their main targets being the ruling Sunni Seljuk Turks of Persia. He captured the impregnable stronghold of Alamut in the Alburz Mountains and used it to send forth his assassins to do their work. It is said that they would first be drugged with hashish, then led into a garden where they would awake to beautiful women. Then they were told that they were in paradise and could only return having performed their deed.

Apart from the wily Doge Venier of Venice, the main Italian of the book is the Genoese Marchese Giustiniani Longo, Lord of Chios. By the end of the fourteenth century, Venice was pulling ahead of its fierce trade rivals, the Genoese. The two republics had gone to war in 1378 and a Genoese fleet had actually entered the Venetian lagoon, briefly occupying the island of Choggia. But Venice had won the war and, at this time, was
busy trying to prise as much territory and trade as it could from Genoa. Chios was one of the few Mediterranean islands still controlled by the Genoese, most of their colonies now being in the Black Sea. It was held under a long lease from the Byzantine Empire by a joint stock company, the Mahona, which was the first of its kind and a forerunner of the England’s East India Company. The Mahona had been formed in the mid-fourteenth century by twelve Genoese families under the collective name of Giustiniani in deference to the great Byzantine Emperor Justinian. Its purpose was to exploit the trade of alum, mined in neighbouring Phocaea on the Turkish mainland, which was the valuable substance used to fix dye in clothing. Its other purpose was to trade mastic and it is entirely true that Chios produced a kind of mastic found nowhere else in the world. Mastic was used as a breath freshener, a wound sealant, an embalmer and, in India at least, a filler for tooth cavities. At the time of this book, the Genoese had already begun to build extraordinary maze-like villages in the south of the island to protect their workforce from Turkish corsairs. The ‘Mastic Villages’ of Chios can still be visited today.

The book reaches its climax with the extraordinary battle of Ankara, one of the greatest and most important battles ever fought in history. The story of the interchange of slanderous letters between Tamerlane and Bayezid is well documented, as is the way that Tamerlane persuaded Bayezid to abandon his position in front of the fortress to follow him around Anatolia in a wild goose chase. The diversion of the Cubuk Creek by Tamerlane did happen and Bayezid’s army was forced to fight without water. Most telling for the outcome of the battle, however, was the defection of the gazi tribes to Tamerlane at the height of the battle. Afterwards, Bayezid was placed inside
a cage for Tamerlane to gloat over. Bayezid died of the shame a year after the battle.

Whether or not Tamerlane intended to march on Constantinople after Ankara is unknown, although he did take Smyrna from the Hospitallers and the story of the defenders’ heads being hurled from the battlements to land on the decks of the relieving Hospitaller fleet is true.

What is also true is that the only time a Mongol horde had turned back from invasion of Europe before was on the death of the Khan. This was Ögedei Khan, third son of Genghis, who gave permission for his sons Kadan and Güyük to conquer all the way to the ‘Great Sea’ or the Atlantic Ocean. They were on the point of taking Vienna in 1241 when the death of their father forced their recall to Karakorum to crown his successor. The Mongols never again reached further west.

So, by the end of
The Towers of Samarcand
, Tamerlane has gone home and Constantinople is still free. The first of Manuel’s plans has worked but Bayezid’s son, Suleyman, unwisely ferried to Europe in Byzantine ships, has lived to fight another day. The next book will see Luke and the Varangians continue their mission to secure the future of the beleaguered Byzantine Empire.