Vasily Veresfcfagin won fame through works which asserted in Russian art the theme of the Orient. The Doors of Tamerlane’s Mausoleum takes the spectator back to the epoch of the great conqueror. “The heavy, unbelievably old doors with their fascinating ornamentation, the drowsy still figures,… like pieces of furniture, like some sort of adjunct to that ornament – they just carry one away to Central Asia, to that old and immobile civilization; you can write any number of books, but you’ll never convey the same impression as does this one painting,” wrote Kramskoy, amazed by Vereshchagin’s skill, by his penetration into the “historical mentality”. With amazing expressiveness and ethnographic accuracy the painter portrayed the figures of the guards, as they stand absolutely motionless under the scorching sun in their heavy, bulky armour.
Tamerlane, anglicized form of Timur-i-Lang ('Lame Timur' or 'Timur the Lame') (1336-1404), was a Turkic conqueror, born in Kash near Samarkand. He waged several devastating wars, conquering Persia (1392-96) and northern India (1398), and defeating the Ottomans and the Mamlukes (1402). He died leading campaign against China. His capital, Samarkand, profited greatly from his conquests.
Timur became widely known as a patron to the arts. Much of the architecture he commissioned still stands in Samarkand, now in present-day Uzbekistan. He was known to bring the most talented artisans from the lands he conquered back to Samarkand, and is credited with often giving them a wide latitude of artistic freedom to express themselves.
Timur's body was exhumed from his tomb in 1941 by the Soviet anthropologist Mikhail M. Gerasimov.
Timur's tomb is protected by a slab of jade in which are carved the words in Arabic: "When I rise, the World will Tremble". It is said that when Gerasimov exhumed the body, an additional inscription inside the casket was found reading "Whosoever opens my tomb shall unleash an invader more terrible than I.". In any case, two days after Gerasimov had begun the exhumation, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, its invasion of the U.S.S.R.
Timur was re-buried with full Islamic ritual in November 1942 just before the Soviet victory at the Battle of Stalingrad.
