 Tamerlane
took a while to settle in his tomb, according to Hails Schiltberger, a
German who had served at his court: 'After he was buried the priests that
served the temple heard Tilnur howl every night for a year. Finally, they
went to his son and begged that he set free the prisoners taken by his
father in other countries, especially those craftsmen he had brought to
his capital to work. He let them go, and as f Boon as they were free Timur
did not howl any more.'
Now that he lay at peace he was not to be disturbed. Legend
had it that, engraved 'On the underside of his tombstone, was the epitaph,
'If I am roused from my grave the earth will tremble'. He was not roused
for rive and a half centuries. Then a dis-tinguished Russian anthropologist,
Mikhail Gerasimov, obtained permission to exhume the body. In order not
to offend local sensibilities Gerasimov entered the crypt in secret, on
the night of 22 June 1941. He opened the coffin around 3 am- and within
minutes an assistant burst in with the news that Kiev and Minsk were being
bombed and that Hitler's armies had invaded Russia. Gerasimov's examination,
which confirmed that Tamerlane had indeed, been lame from a wound to his
right leg, took nearly two years. Within days of the skeleton being reinterred,
the Germans surrendered after losing nearly a million men at Stalingrad.
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