ABSTRACT
Assuming that there were several hundred thousand Jews in Tamerlane’s domains, 1 the following question arises, how did they subsist? The Jews, who for centuries were much in demand for the provision of doctors, interpreters and scholars of various kinds to the Islamic world, were not organised under one authority in the new massive empire of Timur. Also, as is well known, Diaspora Jews, including the Asian Diaspora, were mainly artisans and city-dwellers. Timur’s stable empire demonstrated both the humane flexibility and the practical good sense of the Timurid administration in its policies toward the status of its non-Muslim subjects. Under the principle ‘the bent head is not to be stricken off, all Muslims were bound to spare the ‘Peoples of the Book’, provided they agreed to pay djiziya, (if indeed this poll-tax survived in the empire in its initial Islamic meaning), and provided they gave no trouble. These religious communities were accorded a surprising degree of autonomy in the conduct of their affairs and it is most probable that each community had its own leader, as there is no direct evidence in regard to the Chief Rabbi, Exilarch, or any other similar Jewish authority in the empire.
