Popular history is a tough field. The broad target audience usually precludes meticulous, detail-oriented research and analysis. Historical fidelity forbids (or should forbid) the imagination of speculative and interesting details. Unless the author can find an untold story (the recently reviewed Salt by Mark Kurlansky) or can make a novel historical argument without alienating readers (the fascinating Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze), a work of popular history will struggle to be either enlightening or entertaining.
Justin Marozzi’s recent history of Tamerlane
At its best, Tamerlane’s roving style gives the reader a fuller account of Tamerlane’s impact than a conventional biography would be able to. The inclusion of so much present-day material is also a valuable source of historical perspective. When Tamerlane is at its best, it’s a great reading experience.
But all too often, one part or another falls short. The historical research can be disappointing. For example, Marozzi often cites contemporary reports for the population of a city or the casualties in a battle. As Marozzi repeatedly concedes, such accounts are notoriously unreliable, but he goes on citing them without even attempting to provide more accurate figures. Worse, the writing often seems hastily put together and poorly edited. The arrival of a Spanish ambassador at Tamerlane’s court is described at length twice in the book, for no discernible reason. Occasionally jarring informalisms and the meandering organization of the book contribute to this impression.
Tamerlane is an intriguing departure from the norm of historical writing. Its blend of biography, travel writing, and modern politics is something I’d like to see more of. The book itself is less exciting, simply because it fails to do justice to its concept. If you’re a bored reader who wants to learn about Tamerlane, you could do worse than Marozzi’s book. And if you’re a popular history author looking for an idea, please read this book and write a better version!
July 24, 2007 at 11:34 pm |
You’ve reeled in your first customer from Nate’s legions of degenerate gambling peers.
Your review is spot on. The author takes a fascinating and neglected protagonist, a subject which held great promise, to which he adds precious little original scholarship.
The writing has little life and there’s not enough of a consistent attempt to try to bring context into the various florid descriptions of 14th century Central Asia. The descriptions of each given conquered metropolis or territory as progressively more grand than the next and each set of horrors more extreme than the last soon make the narrative lose color and run together.
Some of the more interesting pages deal with the author’s own travels in the region yet he touches only briefly and intermittently on his own journey. He occasionally interjects subject matter from his first hand experience but it doesn’t seem to fit particularly well with the rest of the narrative.
His attempt to work the historical treatment of Tamerlane into the early part of the work is somewhat clumsy as well.
Thankfully, the subject matter itself is enough to hold the readers interest, especially a reader with a predisposition towards the history of Central Asia. There are many easily recognized political, religious and cultural lessons which can be applied to our modern day in terms of the west’s dealings with the region and Islam.
One can only wonder what the incarnation that such a rich subject as Tamerlane may have taken had his life and times been chronicled by a Lattimore or Hopkirk. Perhaps it is the high bar of scholarship that has preceded Marozzi which makes his work seem relatively pedestrian in comparison. In one reader’s local library Marozzi’s work does not even qualify to sit among his fellow Central Asia historians and his work is shunted off to the fiction shelves.