Tamburlaine the Great was an Islamic Turkic conqueror born in what is now Soviet Uzbekistan in 1336.
By 1400, he and his nomad warriors had conquered the whole area from Mongolia to the Mediterranean.
He died in 1405 while on his way to conquer China.
Known to historians as Timur Lenk, he is best known to students of literature as the hero of Christopher Marlowe’s 1590 tragedy Tamburlaine the Great.