Tamerlane's Boys 1

By Pueros

Chapter 1 – Caucasians

(Samarkand, Uzbekistan, February 2002)

The magnificent Gur-Emir mausoleum in Samarkand, with its splendid blue ribbed cantaloupe dome, houses Tamerlane’s remains, entombed under the largest block of green jade in the world. An engraving in Arabic sums up the great conqueror’s philosophy to life by stating ‘A wise and powerful man shall seek the advantage in every situation and act on his own, whereas a fool waits upon the action of others’. However, perhaps more pertinently, the entrance displays another saying, authored by Tamerlane himself. It reads ‘Happy is he who renounced the world before the world renounced him’.

(Foothills of the Pamir Mountains, July 1347)

11 years old Timur was frolicking naked with his similarly aged best friend in a lonely mountain stream high above their hometown of Shakhrisabz, south of Samarkand. It was a hot summer’s day and the boys were enjoying the refreshing coolness of the clear water on their nude bodies.

Timur was finally recovering from the shock a year previously of the death of his beloved father, a pious Muslim leader of the Barlas tribe, a settled agricultural Turkicised Mongol people living close to one of the great Silk Roads leading from China to Europe. At the same time, the nomadic Mongol hordes had lost control of the surrounding country, called at that period Transoxonia. However, a small mounted raiding party had chosen this moment to return to secure some plunder and came across the two carefree boys.

Three hours later, Timur was hobbling back to his town, his left leg maimed for life and with semen dribbling down his chin and legs. His friend was dead.

Timur the Lame (Tamerlane) swore vengeance not only on the Mongols but, raging at life’s injustices and cruelties, at all who crossed him in future.

(Tiflis, Georgia, June 1386)

The Macedonians had had Alexander the Great, the Romans Julius Caesar, the Mongols Genghis Khan and the French would later have Napoleon. The people of Samarkand now had Tamerlane.

The dreaded Tamerlane, dressed splendidly in colourful silk gown with matching bejewelled turban and scabbard, was personally inspecting the latest large group of Georgian captives who had failed to flee in time from Tiflis [now Tbilisi] before the city was overrun by the conqueror’s feared army. All of the captured Christians were terrified except for 10 years old Vissarion, son of a local noble. The boy did not think that the bearded Tamerlane’s appearance matched his notorious reputation. However, the innocent pretty blonde-haired and blue-eyed lad was soon to discover otherwise as his compatriots, including most of his family, were beheaded in front of his appalled eyes.

Vissarion had heard tales about Tamerlane’s apparent bloodlust, especially that of the sacking of Zarendj, capital of Sistan [now Zahedan in Iran, close to the border with Afghanistan], where the whole population was massacred for resistance and where the loot that could not be carried away was burnt. The boy had also learnt about the lesson given to potentially rebellious slaves when the bodies of 2000 who had revolted at Sabzavar [now Meshed in Iran] were mixed with mortar and brick to form a suitably salutary monument. The young Georgian now thought that the man who claimed descent from Genghis Khan (actually a false boast although the lad was not to know) was truly a monster but could not understand why he was spared the massacre of his fellow captives. The 10 years old was not to wait long for the answer.

Tamerlane, now 50 years old, had many wives, including some who were the widows of rivals he had slain during his ascent from obscure robber baron to feared ruler of swathes of Asia. However, most were acquired for reasons of state, not least the production of sons to inherit his conquests, as the conqueror preferred boys to women. The female consorts were kept within the confines of their homes, magnificent palaces located throughout the subjugated lands, whilst Tamerlane was accompanied by a coterie of young male catamites during his frequent campaigns away from his main base at Samarkand [now in Uzbekistan].

Vissarion’s superlative beauty had caught Tamerlane’s eye. Instead of having the boy decapitated, to add his young head to the pile that would form a tower outside the walls of Tiflis, the conqueror had the now traumatised 10 years old taken to his resplendent tent by two members of his personal bodyguard. The soldiers were attired in splendid uniforms, which included hats ringed with fur and crowned with metal spikes.

Vissarion was stripped of his plain apparel within the ornate canopy to have his sumptuous body carefully surveyed by Tamerlane who, as the boy was a Christian and not a Moslem and could be so changed, ordered a certain alteration to the lovely form. The conqueror considered that the amendment would be useful to preserve the 10 years old’s immaculate loveliness far longer into the future than would otherwise occur and that having it performed sooner rather than later was best for all concerned.

The deeply humiliated Vissarion, completely unaccustomed to such naked display and handling, which had caused him to become shamefully erect, was then escorted by his guards to another tent. The boy’s acute embarrassment was now compounded by being led nude through the huge military encampment to regular raucous commentary, which he could not translate but gained the gist of, from many of Tamerlane’s soldiers.

The tent to which Vissarion was taken was not large and its sole furnishing, an old bloodstained collapsible trellis table with manacles fixed to each corner, increased the boy’s deep unease. The young nude was rapidly chained face up and spreadeagled on the table whilst the overseer of the mobile facility withdrew his knife from the scabbard attached to his belt. The venerable implement had already gelded hundreds, including all of Tamerlane’s previous eunuchs, and was to perform its function once more.

The aghast Vissarion, who had never heard of eunuchs but had guessed that something terrible was about to happen to him, struggled against his restraints as the blade was introduced to his small smooth ball sac. However, the boy found that movement, let alone escape, was impossible. The castrator proceeded quickly and expertly with his task as he cut open the 10 years old’s scrotum and located the little testicles, which soon rested on the tabletop amongst some spilt blood. The man had been helped by the fact that the lad’s cock had remained erect and was so out of the way as he castrated the youngster.

Some expert yet agonising stitching, using a needle and very thin cord made from gut, produced from the castrator’s pocket, completed the man’s task as he left an assistant to perform the necessary bandaging. Vissarion’s sobbing and screaming had now stopped as the boy had fainted whilst his genital wound was being repaired.

(Tiflis, Georgia, August 1386)

Tamerlane had been keen to display his credentials as a warrior for Islam and was intent on destroying the Christian presence in Georgia. Having laid waste to Vissarion’s home city, the conqueror had been engaged for the last two months on mopping up pockets of Georgian resistance in smaller communities before returning to his main encampment outside the desolated capital. The strong contingent that Tamerlane had left behind in Tiflis, sheltered by the Caucasus foothills and rising in terraces above the valley of the River Kura, had been busy whilst their leader was away. They had completed the thorough looting of the city, including the plunder of the magnificent Sion cathedral, which dated from the 5th century, and enslaving those not needed for construction of the skull tower, meant as a warning to those who might try to repel the conqueror.

Tamerlane found that making war gave him a voracious sexual appetite and so, on the evening of his return, he had the latest addition to his boy harem brought to his tent.

Vissarion’s wound had healed and he had been well trained over the last two months in the full range of demeaning tasks that he would be expected to perform for the man who had murdered his family. The young Georgian, deliberately selected for his role at such a young age so that he would be too frightened and immature to consider matters such as vengeance, had been housed during this period in a large well-equipped opulent tent with the five catamites not taken on Tamerlane’s countryside campaign. The other boys ranged in age from 11 to 14 years of age and came from various conquered peoples. Two other non-Moslems, both from northern India, had also been castrated.

The catamites were each closely supervised by a richly dressed emasculated adult, with Vissarion’s personal attendant providing the 10 years old with verbal and practical instructions regarding his new duties, as well as seeing that the lad’s genital healing process went without mishap. By the time of Tamerlane’s reappearance, the older eunuch was very pleased with the younger eunuch’s recovery. The scar on youngster’s empty scrotum was barely visible and the forever flaccid cock dangling above, surprisingly big for one so young, provided pleasant ornamentation.

Vissarion was dressed for his first assignment with Tamerlane in a small but rich turban and short matching cloak and minuscule silk briefs, but nothing else. The boy had previously been subjected to an enema and careful bathing and grooming. The latter included the delicate light oiling of his body so that it glistened under both sun and torch light and the application of blue mascara to the lids and brows of his lovely sensuous eyes and of rouge to his sweet dimpled cheeks and upright nipples. The 10 years old’s ears had already been pierced so that they could be adorned with small circular gold rings.

The new eunuch’s virgin anus had also now been discreetly greased.

(Erivan, Armenia, June 1387)

Vissarion no longer considered Tamerlane to be monster, even though the man had killed his family and regularly debauched his body. The boy had come to realise that the great conqueror was a much more complex character. The 11 years old, who now spoke good Turkish, Tamerlane’s native tongue, had seen and heard his master enjoy pleasant discourse with people of intellect and take great interest in ensuring that scholars, artists, scientists and artisans were not butchered during his campaigns but instead recruited to adorn the many cities within his vast Empire, especially his beloved Samarkand. The conqueror’s lovemaking was also not brutal but rather gentle and considerate, as was his attitude to his young catamites and closest servants.

It was as if Tamerlane had two distinct personalities, the brutal soldier and the artistic aesthete. Vissarion also now appreciated, from performing cup bearing duties whilst the conqueror confided with his closest generals, that the former had a purpose. Tamerlane’s armies were not huge in number compared with his potential enemies and so, in order to keep his conquered territories subdued and encourage other lands to succumb quickly to his invasions, terror was employed, usually in the form of threat, reinforced by occasional terrible example, rather than action.

This policy had recently worked in Armenia where the capital city of Erivan [now Yerevan] had meekly opened its gates to Tamerlane’s forces and given up their Emir and his family and followers. The ruler had angered Tamerlane by attacking and looting some caravans making the pilgrimage to Mecca and the conqueror responded by absorbing Armenia into his domains. The Emir and all his retinue were beheaded, apart from his son, Arman.

Vissarion was never to hear the words of the Arab poet, Zaid Vosifi, who described the consequences of the appearance of Tamerlane’s armies as ‘Blood poured from the people as from vessels’ and ‘The sky was the colour of a field of tulips’. If the eunuch had heard these lines, he would have considered them, even at the end of his years of service, as exaggerated, apart from a few notable exceptions. However, he was also aware that, for some dark reason, his master actually enjoyed inflicting awful revenge on those who crossed him, as the Emir of Armenia had just discovered and the people of the Persian city of Isfahan were soon to do.

Vissarion, dressed in splendid finery, was standing in the middle of Tamerlane’s encampment located outside the walls of Erivan on the banks of the River Zanga. The boy was situated near the conqueror’s tent, looking at the distant sacred mountain, for Mount Ararat was usually visible on clear sunny summer days such as this, when he saw pretty 11 years old brown-haired brown-eyed Arman, naked and escorted by two guards, emerge from within. The young Armenian Prince, clearly frightened and ashamed, was being led towards the nearby canopy of the castrator. The young Georgian eunuch shivered in sympathy.

(To be continued in chapter 2 – ‘Retributions’)