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True Valor
Ninety-five elephants hauled the stone. The masons had been marched out of Delhi the year before.
In the winter of 1398 Timur destroyed Delhi. Among the things he took away were the craftsmen.
Within a year they were laying out a mosque in Samarkand.
Timur's Indian campaign is told, rightly, as an atrocity.
The massacre of captives at Loni before the battle. The sack of the city. The towers of heads. A capital that took a century to recover.
What is told less is what left with the column.
He deported skilled workers systematically, and not only from India. It was his standing practice. After each conquest, the artisans of the defeated city were identified, separated, and marched to Samarkand.
He intended to make it the most magnificent city in the world.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.