Taraghai Barlas

Taraghai Barlas was Timur's father, and what is recorded about him mostly explains what his son was not. The Barlas were a Mongol tribe that had settled in Transoxiana after the conquests, taken up the Turkic language of the region and converted to Islam, and by the fourteenth century held land around Kesh, south of Samarkand, as minor nobility within the Chagatai khanate. Taraghai was a chief of a sub-clan there - a landholder of local consequence and no more, which is the point. Timur was born around 1336 into a family with a name, a following of a few hundred, and no claim whatever to the throne of Chagatai, which belonged by descent to the house of Genghis. That accident of birth determined his entire career: he never took the title of khan, ruling instead as amir and as guardian of a puppet Chagatayid, and he married a princess of the line to style himself Gurkani, son-in-law of the imperial house. Later court historians writing under his descendants supplied Taraghai with a pious reputation, an interest in scholarship and a genealogy connecting the Barlas to a common ancestor with Genghis Khan several generations back, none of which appears in earlier sources and all of which was useful. He is said to have died around 1360, before his son took Balkh and began the conquests. His tomb is at Shahrisabz. Timur's own name means iron in Turkic, and Tamerlane derives from Timur-i Lang, Timur the lame, after the injuries to his right side. Nothing survives written by or for Taraghai himself. What is known of him comes from histories composed after his son had conquered from Delhi to Anatolia, and reads accordingly.

• Nationality: Chagatai
• Roles: other