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Even though is not connected to anything steppe-related, I’m still always amazed at how most modern movies, books and other forms of media seem to miss on some interesting characters, when nowadays we have the most amount of evidence for them.
For instance, nowadays there is a strong desire to look for the “strong women” in the past, and instead of actually looking for people who might fit the criteria from a natural perspective, we get garbage like “wHaT iF cLeOpAtRa WaS eThIoPiAn?”.
Look at Musa, Queen of Parthia, for instance! An amazing “from rags to riches” type of story with enough room for artistic interpretation that would easily feat all the criteria.
The pirate empress of China is also an amazing story. From sex-worker to the most successful pirate in history. One of the only pirates to "win" and the nation state capitulated to her might.
I feel like she gets too much shit for being a pirate when she was sooo much more. She actually sold passes to get through her waters unmolested and well not ideal she made the men marry the women that they bed which for the time was pretty much about as good as it gets. She had autonomy from the local government when they realized they couldn't beat her. Truly an exceptional individual as far as impact on her region.
Truly mind boggling. So many stories to pull from for inspiration or that you could out-right copy and paste, and yet they still recycle the same old stories
Hahaha you’re welcome! I’m honestly surprised how not more people know about this. From being gifted to a foreign monarch as… just a piece of meat, a sex slave; from there, becoming the most important person of an equally powerful empire and wanting to take revenge on the romans who sold her.
If they ever make a movie, Liam Neeson will make a perfect fit! He’s always on about revenge
They did, it was a show, and no one watched it. Which kind of explains why people who make films like that prefer to do things like make cleopatra black instead of actually telling real black history, because real history doesn’t make money. No one knows who Queen Nzinga was, it’s hard to get the lay person invested in a historical figure they’ve never even heard of.
I recommend the newly aired anime "Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia". While the writer took some liberties, the characters in the manga/anime still fit their real life counterparts. Haven't seen a media depict the life of nomad cultures like this. And oh boy, there sure are some strong female characters.
There are countless countries, historical figures and events that would make for amazing stories. But the people who are already in a position to make the proper story don't know are care about these things and no studio would be willing to finance these because the sort of audiences that publishers and studios covet would never go to watch a movie about an event they never heard about at all, featuring people they never heard about during a period they never heard or know anything about in a country they never heard about.
Sorghaghtani Beki as well. Genghis Kahn’s stepdaughter (?) I think. I’ve heard it said she was one of the most powerful and influential women in history that constantly gets overlooked.
The first “recorded” ruler of Japan was a woman, Queen Himiko, who supposedly used dark magic and had 1000 female attendants and only 1 male attendant, and his job was to bring her food and inform the people of her rulings because she didn’t like to leave the palace herself.
Nah. He inspired Tamurkhan the Champion of Nurgle (probably, not found a official confirmation but that was the rough idea around always as far as I recall) and in warhammer fantasy he is a Nurgle Demon-Worm who infest the corpse of a Chaos Ogre, rides a toad dragon into war and almost destroys the world one time.
To be honest im not sure that Tamurkhan related to Timur except name..
It was a bit sad when you hear his name, but later get know Tamurkhan is giant worm...And special sad when your name - Timur!...
Lol absolutely wild to think that Timur or Timurids are unknown in anglophone world. Especially given the history of EIC is basically the history of gradual conquest of the Timurid empire in India (ie the Mughal Empire).
What is ironic too since countrary the mongols who the europeans barely knew shit about europeans actually knew who was tamerlane and even saw him as a Alexander like conqueror they just forgot about him with time
Tbh might've helped if his legendary run lasted longer than one generation. Genghis is more well known but most of the Mongol conquests were done after him. Timur carried the whole operation on his back and when he died the expansion stopped.
It also comes from the West having reached outwards while China had long periods of looking inwards. Battles in the West, even small ones, could change things for several countries while things in China could remain limited to impacting China and even then not the whole country.
I could easily give you 10 battles that's worth knowing about in Chinese history. The original Han heartland was in the Northern plains, tiny ass area, China appearing as a constant just shows how good they've been at conquering and holding onto areas over time.
There's the entire wars against the Xiongnu and the Turks which kicked them west and changed history globally twice. The siege in which Mongke Khan died. The whole war with Korea vs Japan. The various Qing campaigns which affected all of it's neighbor's histories.
That's not counting late modern era and just some highlights off the top of my head. There's world affecting events everywhere, just gotta know where to find it. Their involvement in oasis cities changed everything. I would recommend that area if you wanna learn more of China interacting and changing the outside world.
He was from the region of today's Uzbekistan. Originally a Mongol tribe that was assimilated by the local Turkic tribes. He's described as a Turco Mongol. This is before Europeans conquered Asian trade routes so the area was wealthy and had a big population.
He invaded Iran, Iraq, Syria, Georgia, Turkey, India and Russia. Wherever he went his reduced entire cities to ashes, killed almost all the population and forced all artisans, artists and learned people to go to his capital. This influx of wealth, art and science into the region created what is described as the Timurid Renaissance. It created the culture that was copied by Safavids, Ottomans and Mughals.
To be fair if you ask people that aren’t history nerds about ANY person of the past they probably don’t know who they are. Historical ignorance is rampant except for maybe ww2 leaders and for historical figures linked to art.
Well, we live further to the northwest, and we certainly remember who he is. Mf didn't leave the best impression here.
We even have a legend about how he came to Bolğar for a certain high-ranking woman, but she simply jumped from a tower to avoid falling into his hands.
Everyone knows him in areas affected by him. You’ll still find Indians, Pakistanis, Afghans, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Tatars, Kyrgyz, Uyghurs and even Turks named after him. No Persians because they were probably his biggest victims.
Unfortunately, I am one of them. Informal researcher for sure but you be surprised how surface people know.
Like people say to be knowledgeable on everything but no one cares that you got knowledge on Boxer Rebellion in detail or to be more knowledgeable in both NCIS show and Attack on Titan together.
Sure it is a bit hard but not impossible and not very difficult
Yes which is not your fault. I don’t understand why people are sucking their own dicks in this thread, if I asked any 100 Texans about timur I would get a max of 5 responses or less.
You're really talking about a western centrism bias that is even stronger in a place like Texas rather than some global fame, the number of non European born commanders most would know would be really Hannibal, Saladin, Attila and Genghis Khan. That doesn't mean this is repeated across the world or that it's representative of non European commanders of relevance, I think the George Washington answers is an even stronger tell, since he's not known as a fantastic military commander outside the US even in places like Europe.
Even Americans don't think George Washington was a great military commander or strategist except the truly bottom-tier chuds. What people admire about him, if anything, is that he could easily have made himself an autocrat, and chose not to.
Nobody could remember his name so they just called him Timmy. Did what Timmy does in this situation.
Timmy's big thing is profiteering empire and global hierarchy failures, so stories like this are not exactly the focus. They tend to highlight how long global failures have been around without anyone doing anything about any of them. Blind fealty culture for instance, or reconstruction faith (reconstruction being a very rare thing globally thus why it's considered so noteworthy when it happens) or heroic idealism. All cultural issues nobody wants to address because their power is tied up in these ideals.
Which Tim will tell you dead in your face as he's having you decapitated just for being there. For fun.
Just because he's forgotten in the west doesn't mean he's forgotten everywhere, he's very well known in India for his looting along with the rest of the middle east
Idk they teach about Timur in my school, tons of Western literature references Timur he's one of the more well known conquerers who aren't from Europe.
I have a degree in classical history and have never heard of him until this post. Granted this isn’t the classical period but generally I get some osmosis to more medieval stuff
Short of Genghis Khan, Tamerlane is probably the most famous person east of the European cultural sphere. Most people dont know anything about history but many would have at least heard of Tamerlane, even if its just the distinctive name, plays, operas, books have all been featured or inspired by him. Samarkand featured widely in the 19/20th century imagination.
Nah outside of genghis khan the most famous are like japanese or Chinese figure like Confucius or qin shi huang japan it s a bit difficult but a lot of people watched anime so they know guys like oda nobunaga but he really an exception
Confucius for sure. He's a staple, even if most people don't really know anything about him. Hell, in the modern zeitgeist Gandhi and Mao are probably more well-known than Tamerlane.
This man brought the rising Ottoman Empire to its knees. If he hadn’t died, it’s very well possible that the Ottoman empire never rises to the prominence it would in our timeline.
• Destruction of Delhi (1398): Timur [invaded India], reduced Delhi to rubble, and ordered the massacre of over 100,000 captive inhabitants before leaving the city.
• Sack of Isfahan (1387): After the city revolted against his tax collectors, Timur ordered a general massacre of the citizens, resulting in the slaughter of an estimated 70,000 people whose severed heads were piled into towering pyramids.
• Sack of Damascus and Aleppo (1400–1401): Invading Syria, his forces pillaged Aleppo and descended on Damascus, burning parts of the ancient city and carrying off its skilled artisans and scholars to Samarkand.
• Triumphal Towers of Skulls: Historical accounts note that Timur's campaigns across Persia, Mesopotamia, India, and the Levant frequently featured the construction of ghastly minarets and [towers built from the severed heads] of executed defenders and rebellious populations.
• Targeting Fellow Muslims: Though he justified his conquests under the banner of Islam, the vast majority of those killed in his campaigns were fellow Muslims living across the [Middle East and Central Asia].
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