According to scholarly estimates, what percentage of the world population at the time died due to Tamerlane's conquests?

The story behind the answer

5% is correct because historians estimate that Tamerlane’s (Timur’s) campaigns caused roughly 17 million deaths in the late 14th and early 15th centuries—about one in twenty people when the world population was around 350 million. His strategy of deliberate terror amplified casualties, with massacres following sieges to deter resistance.

Timur, a Turkic-Mongol conqueror who invoked Genghis Khan’s legacy, ravaged Persia, Mesopotamia, Central Asia, and northern India, sacking cities like Isfahan, Baghdad, and Delhi and famously building towers of skulls. Paradoxically, his capital Samarkand later flourished, fostering art, architecture, and learning under the Timurid Renaissance. Memory hook: “Timur took one in twenty”—a stark way to recall the estimated global toll of his conquests.