Timur

Timur, also known as Tamerlane, was a Turco-Mongol conqueror born in the 1320s near Kesh in what is now Uzbekistan, who built the Timurid Empire across more than three decades of campaigning and is regarded as undefeated in battle and among the greatest and most brutal military leaders in history. Proclaimed sovereign at Balkh around 1370, he first consolidated control of the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia before conquering Persian territories including Herat, Isfahan and Shiraz through the 1380s. From 1385 to 1395 he fought a prolonged war against the rival khan Tokhtamysh, defeating him in multiple battles and destroying the Golden Horde's capitals of Sarai and Astrakhan, a blow from which that khanate never recovered. In 1398 and 1399 he invaded India with a reported 90,000 troops, defeating the Delhi Sultanate's war elephants by driving flaming camels at them and sacking Delhi. Between 1400 and 1402 he campaigned in the Levant and Anatolia, conquering Aleppo, Damascus and Baghdad and defeating the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I at the Battle of Ankara. He died on 17 or 18 February 1405, with his campaigns estimated to have caused millions of deaths across Asia.