WI No Timur

I was searching this forums and was surprised that this had not been discussed yet. So, what if Timur the Lame isn't born?

For one thing, the Ottomans will certainly be stronger ITTL, since they wont suffer the Timurid invasion. Constantinople will probably fall a lot sooner.

The Golden Horde will probably be better off as well...

Any other thoughts?
 
A few thoughts:

You'll also take out Mughal India, since the Mughals were of the Timurid ruling dynasty. Commerce and urban life in Central Asia may do better without the devastation inflicted by Timur, who spoiled half a dozen cities for every Samarkand he adorned. Possibly the Chagatai Khanate remnant in the east succeeds in reconquering its western territories, or perhaps the Golden Horde expands into central Asia. Georgia, which got quite a licking from Timur, might remain a regional power longer, or it might just get clobbered by the unhurt Ottomans earlier than OTL.

The Golden Horde being in better shape in turn delays the rise of Russia, and indeed may seriously butterfly it if they decide their Muscovite servants are getting too big for their britches and require being taken down in favor of some other city. It's likely that some other charismatic Muslim Mongol or Turk harnesses the pre-existing nomadic "forces in place" to build an empire on the fragments of the collapsed Ilkhanate, but odds are they won't be as effective a ball-buster as Timur. OTOH, they might establish a more lasting Iranian-Turanian united state and butterfly away the Safavids.

If the area between the Aral and eastern Anatolia remains disunited through the 1400s, it's possible that the Ottomans, running out of logistical steam with the long run accross the Balkans at some point in the 1400s, either in Hungary or SE Germany, and facing a Mamluk Egypt stronger than it would be in the early 1500s, might move east and lose interest in Europe pushing into an area which had not yet been "innoculated" against their rule by the triumph of Shi'aism (still a minority religion in Iran proper at the time, IIRC).

Bruce
 
You'll also take out Mughal India, since the Mughals were of the Timurid ruling dynasty.

Yeah, I wasn't really thinking that far ahead yet, since the effects just within Timur's lifetime would have been huge.

The Golden Horde being in better shape in turn delays the rise of Russia, and indeed may seriously butterfly it if they decide their Muscovite servants are getting too big for their britches and require being taken down in favor of some other city.

This is what I was thinking. Tokhtamysh seems to me to have been a very capable ruler, so without his disastrous war with Timur, he would have been more effective in other areas. How successful could the horde be against the Russians? In other areas, might Tokhtamysh try an invasion of Persia through the Caucasus when the Ilkhanate collapses?

Another thing I have to add: Wikipedia says that the population of Northern Iraq was predominantly Christian before Timur came in and slaughtered them. Since this is from Wiki, I'm pretty skeptical. Can anybody confirm or deny this?

Also, what happens to the post-Ilkhanid Persian dynasties?
 
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I generally agree with what's been said so far.

No Mughals in India is right, and the Delhi Sultanate will be positively affected by not experiencing Timur's attack. Butterflies in India will be significant.

Without Timur Tokhtamysh may take his place in history as the great Central Asian conqueror of the era. The Golden Horde will likely last longer than in OTL. Their decline and the eventual rise of the Russians is sort of inevitable but the butterflies will be huge and Russian history may still be significantly different.

Timur probably bought Constantinople another 50 years of independence. Without him Constantinople falls to the first Ottoman siege at the dawn of the 15th century. Don't know if the Ottomans expanding far into Iran is too likely, geography will make holding the Iranian plateau difficult. But still, no Safavids due to butterflies is a big boon to the Ottomans and Sunnism.

It's true that Timur slaughtered a lot of Assyrian Christians in Iraq, what proportion of the population they were before though I don't know.

The general material and infrastructural damage to Iran and Iraq will probably be less, Timur was super brutal and damaged the place on a scale only the Mongols exceeded.

I've heard it speculated that Timur's destruction of so much of southern Central Asia's Persianized urban areas accelerated the Turkification of the region, though this was already underway due to the Mongols and natural demographic forces.
 
Bumpage

Let us look at the ramifications more or less Chronologically.

  • Transoxania: Let's take it as given that someone less ambitious/megalomaniacal pulls a Charles Martel and takes over. Even without plunder and the like the main trade routes are going away and the Mongols did enough damage. The neo-Chagatai realms may be wealthier and may fend off expansion from elsewhere but in the long terms they are going to end up a realitive backwater.
  • Iran: The Il-Khanate was in collapse, and while disintergration into petty statelets in possible some dynasty will either gain predominance over the others or walk in to take over. Perhaps the Ak Koyunlu will get off the ground early and be forced to negotiate thier way into power. We can expect a lot more Assyrian Christians too.
  • The Golden Horde: Oh an intact one will seriously warp the rise of Russia-As-We-Know-It. It is probably far too late to render Muscovy impotent, but even if the rival Russian states are not actively played off against it then developing enough of an economic engine to maintain political control of the Steppe and Pontic/Caspian coasts.
  • The Dehli Sultanate: This is not my area of knowledge, but I understand there was a progress towards something akin to the Syncritism of the early Mughal era. Perhaps more of a merging will occur here earlier as well.
  • The Ottomans: There was by many reports an embassary from Constantinople on thier way to present Bayezid I with the keys to the city when he went off to face Timurs forces in OTL. No matter how you slice it the nominal end of the Roman Empire is bumped up a couple of generations. The question is if Bayezid bothers to consolidate things or charges off somewhere for more fighting (perhaps Iran?)

HTG
 
No second major influx of Turkic tribes into Anatolia slowing during the Turcization of the regime though that doesn't matter since you leave the Ottomans in a much stronger position.
 
Istr that Bayazid was about to beseige Constantinople in 1402 when Timur appeared on the scene. So it falls fifty years earlier. It's pretty much of a power vacuum on his eastern border, so he probably presses on into Iran. The Ottoman Sultanate ends up a bit like the Seljuk one, with a Balkan province tacked on. Maybe it never invades Hungary, whose border ebcomes its "North West Frontier".

The Golden Horde will probably go entually, when the development of firearms breaks the power of nomad horsemen. But as it crumbles, the OE may move in on it, absorbing its territory piece by piece. When Ivan the Terrible comes along, could he find Kazan an Ottoman province rather than a declining Khanate?

Toynbee discussed this in A Study of History. He suggested thta without Tamerlane, we could have ended up with apolitical entity similar in extent to the "present" Soviet Union, but one in which Samarkand would be ruling Moscow instead of Moscow ruling Samarkand. Interesting thought anyway.
 
Toynbee discussed this in A Study of History. He suggested thta without Tamerlane, we could have ended up with apolitical entity similar in extent to the "present" Soviet Union, but one in which Samarkand would be ruling Moscow instead of Moscow ruling Samarkand. Interesting thought anyway.

To stretch the analogy, a divided Russia (within pre-1550 borders) as the Warsaw Pact to our east-oriented Ottoman Empire's Soviet Union?

Bruce
 
For one thing, the Ottomans will certainly be stronger ITTL, since they wont suffer the Timurid invasion. Constantinople will probably fall a lot sooner.
IIRC wasn't getting beaten by Timur the impetus for a number of large military and civil reforms that the Ottoman's instituted? So they pick up Constantinople fifty years or so earlier, but then the next time they run into serious opposition will they be as strong as they were in our timeline?
 
IIRC wasn't getting beaten by Timur the impetus for a number of large military and civil reforms that the Ottoman's instituted? So they pick up Constantinople fifty years or so earlier, but then the next time they run into serious opposition will they be as strong as they were in our timeline?

They'll still end up conquering the Balkans. They just will have less of a reason to pay mind to Anatolia.
 
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