Tam·er·lane

(tăm′ər-lān′) or Tam·bur·laine (-bər-) Originally Timur. 1336-1405.

Mongolian conqueror who led his nomadic hordes from their capital at Samarqand in central Asia to overrun vast areas of Persia, Turkey, Russia, and India.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Tamburlaine

(ˈtæmbəˌleɪn)

(Biography) another name for Tamerlane

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

Tam•er•lane

(ˈtæm ərˌleɪn)

also Tamburlaine

(Timur Lenk) 1336?–1405, Tartar conqueror in S and W Asia.

Also called Timur.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

Tamburlaine - Mongolian ruler of Samarkand who led his nomadic hordes to conquer an area from Turkey to Mongolia (1336-1405)

Tamerlane, Timur, Timur Lenk

Translations

Tamburlaine

[ˈtæmbəˌleɪn] N → Tamerlán

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

There, probably the same year and the next, he astonished the public with the two parts of 'Tamburlaine the Great,' a dramatization of the stupendous career of the bloodthirsty Mongol fourteenth-century conqueror.

The Prolog to 'Tamburlaine' makes pretentious announcement that the author will discard the usual buffoonery of the popular stage and will set a new standard of tragic majesty:

Tamburlaine himself as Marlowe presents him is a titanic, almost superhuman, figure who by sheer courage and pitiless unbending will raises himself from shepherd to general and then emperor of countless peoples, and sweeps like a whirlwind over the stage of the world, carrying everywhere overwhelming slaughter and desolation.

For several other reasons 'Tamburlaine' is of high importance.

The greatest significance of 'Tamburlaine,' lastly, lies in the fact that it definitely established tragedy as a distinct form on the English popular stage, and invested it with proper dignity.

These are Marlowe's great achievements both in 'Tamburlaine' and in his later more restrained plays.

Tamburlaine the man is an exaggerated type; most of the men about him are his faint shadows, and those who are intended to be comic are preposterous.

View in context

Naumann has been painting the Saints drawing the Car of the Church, and I have been making a sketch of Marlowe's Tamburlaine Driving the Conquered Kings in his Chariot.

Do you intend Tamburlaine to represent earthquakes and volcanoes?"

View in context

Tamburlaine, the Eastern conqueror in Marlowe's play, presents the problem of a uniquely savage portrayal of the anti-hero that violates all the moral and historical expectations of the audience.

Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine and the Politics of English Trade

This article shows how Marlowe departs from his primary historical sources (Mexia and Perondinus) in his retelling of the life of Tamburlaine. Marlowe employed the heavily ironic tone of Lucan's discussion of Julius Caesar's apparently 'divine' barbarism in his characterization of tyranny, obedience, and rebellion in Tamburlaine.

Lucanic irony in Marlowe's Tamburlaine