In the winter of 1400 AD, the Central Asian army led by the lame wolf Timur entered syria in a mighty way, the first of which was the Important Syrian Town of Aleppo, where the Mamluk defenders were almost completely destroyed after a desperate battle, and failed to stop Timur's army. After the fall of Aleppo, Timur ordered his soldiers to slaughter the city for three days, most of the buildings in the city were destroyed, and After Aleppo became a ruin, Timur led his army to continue south, and the troops pointed directly at Damascus.
Tamerlane
Damascus, the richest city in Syria, with strong walls and numerous fortifications, after Timur arrived at Damascus, the Mamluk Sultan Nasser led an army to break the siege, and the two sides did not distinguish between victory and defeat after several battles, and both armies suffered heavy casualties. At this time, news of the rebellion came from the direction of Cairo, and Sultan Nasser had to lead his army back to the division to quell the rebellion, leaving only the defenders of Damascus to resist Timur's army.
Most of the defenders of Damascus were warrior Mamluk soldiers from the Chincha steppe of Central Asia, and although many of the soldiers in Timurid's army were also Chincha, most of the Mamluk soldiers in Damascus were hostile to Timur of Mongol descent, so they planned to rely on the strong walls to resist to the end.
Timur's army
During the Siege of Tamerlane, the scholars of the city went to beg Timur under the leadership of Ibn Hellerton, and Timur agreed to their peace, but offered very harsh conditions if the inhabitants of Damascus surrendered
Timur was to pay a million dinars in reparations and to offer the list of rich merchants in the city
。 When the defenders of the city learned of Timur's harsh conditions, they strictly forbade the inhabitants of the city to surrender, intending to fight with Timur's army to the death.
At that time, there were not many Mamluk defenders in the city, so they commanded the residents of Damascus to climb the city wall to fight, and countless Damascus militiamen with rudimentary weapons attacked Timur's besieging soldiers, and Timur had to order a siege. At that time, the walls of Damascus were so strong that the siege equipment of Timurid's army failed to create a gap in the city wall, and after a day of continuous siege, a large number of soldiers had been killed, and the commander of the siege had to report to Timur that the wall was difficult to break.
Damascus City
Timur then went to inspect the position, and when he saw the strong walls of Damascus and the dead and wounded soldiers under the walls, he sneered and ordered his retinue:
"Then go buy some vinegar."
The retinue already understood that Timur was
Want to corrode the walls with vinegar,
So he ordered the doubtful soldiers to look for white vinegar. When the soldiers were ordered, they immediately went to the countryside around Damascus to buy white vinegar, but in Timur's army, there was no use of money to buy goods, and fierce Central Asian soldiers poured into the outskirts of Damascus to rob the local residents of their homes of white vinegar, and those who dared to stop them were killed on the spot.
Ancient siege hammers
When the stolen white vinegar was transported to Damascus, Timur ordered his soldiers to sprinkle white vinegar on one side of the city wall, and when the white vinegar corroded the city wall,
Soldiers began to use siege hammers to strike at the corroded walls. In this way, under the terrified eyes of the Mamluk defenders, Timur's soldiers used siege hammers to knock a gap in the corroded city wall, and the surrounding Central Asian soldiers immediately entered damascus from the gap.
The Mamluk defenders in the city saw that the situation was not good, so they hid in the fortress of the city to continue to resist, these Mamluk soldiers were indeed fierce warriors, and when Timur's army entered damascus, he still shot arrows at the Central Asian soldiers in the fortress. When Timur saw this, he was furious and ordered his soldiers to burn the fort, and when the fire broke out, the defenders in the fort were quickly burned to death, but because the fire could not be extinguished in time, the residential areas in Damascus were on fire, and most of the city was burned.