Timur (1336-1405), the lame warlord from a minor clan near Samarkand who spent thirty-five years in almost ceaseless war, claiming the mantle of Genghis Khan he could not legally wear. He ruled as emir behind puppet khans, turned terror into policy by piling the heads of cities that resisted into towers, shattered the Golden Horde, sacked Delhi in 1398, captured the Ottoman sultan Bayezid at Ankara in 1402, and died at nearly seventy while marching on China. He was both one of history's most destructive conquerors and a patron of beauty who funneled the plunder of a continent into Samarkand, and his memory remains split between scourge and national hero.
He could not call himself khan, so he made the world fear him as something worse. Barred from the title because he was no son of Genghis, Timur ruled through puppet khans and married into the line — and for thirty-five years he marched, sparing the cities that surrendered and stacking the heads of those that resisted into towers.