He carved a swath of terror from India to the Mediterranean and left pyramids of skulls in his wake - a 14th-century terminator who ranks high in the annals of world butchery.
Now, six centuries after his death, the man known to the West as Tamerlane has achieved one of his most surprising feats of all: a legacy as a kind and virtuous leader who freed much of the civilized world of tyranny.Taking a page from their Soviet predecessors, Uzbekistan's leaders have put their own spin on history to rehabilitate the feared conqueror as a new hero, supplanting fallen idols Marx and Lenin. In his still-glorious home city of Samarkand and elsewhere, Timur, as Uzbeks know him, is making a well-orchestrated comeback.
"He is our George Washington, our Napoleon," says Buriboy Akhmedov, author of "Timur the Great," an officially sanctioned new biography in this nation of 23 million people.
But Tamerlane acquired such lofty status only under authoritarian President Islam Karimov. While Karimov says the Tamerlane campaign is a matter of national pride, it also provides him with an ideal poster boy for unyielding leadership.
While critics say the rehabilitated warlord provides a conveniently harsh role model for Karimov to lean on, the president maintains Tamerlane inspires Uzbeks "in their quest for unity, loyalty, friendship and for the creation of a mighty future for our country."
Tamerlane, a Mongol Turk called Timur the Lame (presumably not to his face) after he suffered severe arrow injuries, ruled a vast if short-lived kingdom.
After acquiring absolute power in Central Asia through years of fighting over Genghis Khan's fractured empire, he led his warriors on ruthless offensives abroad.
He captured Baghdad and Damascus, routed the Turkish and Egyptian armies, sacked and destroyed Delhi, extended his domain to within striking distance of Moscow and was moving to conquer China when he died of fever in 1405.
According to Western historians, he left pyramids of skulls behind as warnings in cities he overran, including 90,000 in the ruins of Baghdad. His armies, which fired severed heads at besieged cities, are estimated to have massacred as many as 17 million people.
Saying the atrocities were blown out of proportion, Uzbek authorities decided to emphasize his good points.
Their Timur was a well-educated, devout Muslim driven by a thirst for knowledge and culture, not blood. He ended feudal disunity and anarchy, restored roads connecting East and West, collected art and turned Samarkand from a mud city into a dazzling center of Islam, trade and learning.