Karabakh-2020: Turks regain favorite winter quarters of the ruler of Asia

The result of the Karabakh war in 2020 was not only the de-occupation of the sovereign territories of Azerbaijan, recognized as such by four UN Security Council resolutions, but also the return of the Turkic civilization to one of the most iconic places in its history.

“Timur’s favorite wintering place was Karabakh…”, “… in general, he wintered quite often in Karabakh”, – noted the outstanding Soviet orientalist Vasily Barthold about one of the most famous and successful commanders in world history – Tamerlane, also known as Timur. 

Often the decisions that influenced the further course of the history of Asia and Eastern Europe were made by Timur in Karabakh. Here he held meetings with his allies, foreign ambassadors, and prominent representatives of the Muslim clergy.

In 1386, from Karabakh, Timur issued the first orders concerning the beginning of a confrontation with the Golden Horde [Collection of materials related to the history of the Golden Horde, Moscow-Leningrad, 1941. P. 110]. At the end of 1399, messengers brought him news of the change of power in the Chinese Empire [Barthold 1964, p.68]. In the spring of 1402, it was from Karabakh that Timur launched his famous campaign against the Ottoman Empire [Barthold 1963, p. 745]. As a result, Sultan Bayazid I was captured, and all of Asia Minor submitted to Timur. In the winter of 1403-1404, seyids (descendants of the Prophet Muhammad) and famous Sufi sheikhs from Termez, Bukhara, and Samarkand visited Timur in the Karabakh headquarters
[Barthold 1964, pp. 43-44, 122].

[Collection of materials related to the history of the Golden Horde, Moscow-Leningrad, 1941. P. 188]

“The stay in Karabakh … remained for Ulugbek a memory of his early childhood,” noted orientalist Vasily Barthold
[Barthold 1964, P.65].

Another well-known researcher of the East, and the Caucasus in particular, Ilya Petrushevsky, who led an ethnographic expedition to Karabakh in the summer of 1928, reported that the cults of two Holy places revered by the inhabitants of the local mountains originate from the legends associated with the stay of Timur and his troops here [Petrushevsky I. Pre-Christian beliefs of the peasants of Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku, 1930. Pp. 23, 26-27].

Thus, as a result of the Karabakh war in 2020, the lands where one of the brightest pages of its history was written were returned to the Turkic civilization.