/pol/ - International /Pol/itics & /Bant/er

Timur's Sack of Delhi (1398)
On December 17, 1398, Timur defeated the Delhi Sultanate's army, famously using flaming camels loaded with hay to panic the Sultan's war elephants, causing them to trample their own lines. He entered the capital on December 18. Although he initially promised safety in exchange for tribute, resistance from citizens gave him the pretext to order a general massacre that lasted several days.

Timur ordered his soldiers to sever the heads of the slain and stack them into massive towers (pyramids) outside the city walls as a monument to his terror.

Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi (Zafarnama): Yazdi records that after the massacre, Timur commanded that "a tower be built with the heads of the infidels" (specifically noting multiple towers at the city gates).

Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo (Embassy to Tamerlane, 1404): While Clavijo did not visit Delhi himself, he documented seeing similar structures built by Timur across his empire, describing them as "towers built of the heads of men… cemented with clay… so high that they could not be reached by a stone thrown by hand."

The city was systematically looted, burned, and depopulated. Approximately 100,000 residents (specifically artisans and skilled workers) were enslaved and marched to Samarkand, while an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 were killed during the sack. The destruction was so absolute that the city remained a silent ghost town for months.