Mongols Invade Syria

At the turn of the fifteenth century the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur, known in the West as Tamerlane, ruled a vast empire centred on Samarkand. Having already campaigned across Persia, the Caucasus, and into Russia and India, he turned his armies westward against the Mamluk Sultanate that controlled Syria.

In 1400 Timur invaded Syria, and over the following year his forces stormed and devastated its great cities, sacking Aleppo and Damascus and massacring or enslaving much of their populations. He had earlier ravaged Georgia and Baghdad, leaving a trail of destruction across the Middle East.

In 1402 Timur turned against the rising Ottoman Empire and crushed the army of Sultan Bayezid I at the Battle of Ankara, taking the sultan prisoner. The defeat threw the Ottoman state into a decade of civil war and division, delaying its expansion. Timur died in 1405 while preparing to invade China, and his sprawling empire soon fragmented.