The curse of Timur's tomb

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• Gur-e-Amir mausoleum, Samarkand, Uzbekistan · Soviet and Central Asian legend

  The curse of Timur's tomb

  The curse of Tamerlane

  Told, never investigated

  

  A Soviet expedition opened the tomb of Timur in Samarkand in June 1941, and Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June, days later. The expedition's cameraman, Malik Kayumov, later said three old men had shown him a book warning that disturbing Timur would start a war; Sadriddin Ayni, a member of the expedition, dismissed it, and Ayni's son recalled his father identifying the book as a nineteenth-century collection of tales. Timur's remains were reburied in Samarkand in late 1942, a reburial the legend links to the turn of the war at Stalingrad.

  Earliest written source: Andrey Moiseenko, "Did Stalin believe in Tamerlane's curse?", Komsomolskaya Pravda, 23 November 2004, retelling the expedition cameraman Malik Kayumov's account

  Komsomolskaya Pravda, 23 November 2004 (in Russian)

  Tradition · not evidence