The story goes like this. Russian Archaeologist in Mid June, 1941 were excavating a old tomb or something of one of Genghis Khan's sons. After a bit of digging they discovered his final burial spot. They dig it up, take the body and leave the sight. Just as they are about the exit the sight, they read an inscription above the door. It reads something like "Whoever disturbs my rest will unleash and enemy greater then I." They don't really care though and they take the body. Three days after they leave with the body, German invades. They keep the body but were kinda freaked out when they found out about the invasion. Germany kept pushing and the farther they got, the more they got scared. Eventually in late January they all finally agreed to bring the body back, They get to the sight and place the body there. 2 days after they place the body back, Russia wins the battle of Stalingrad.
I have no idea where I heard this story from or if it is even true. If it is, nice, great creepy story I can scare kids with. If not then still cool story. If anyone know anything about this, that would be amazing. Ill answer any questions you have about it to the best of my ability.
P.S. I am currently going to college to get my masters in history (Thank god its not English) and try to reserch every little story I hear. History is my huge passion but this one has got me stumped...
-Thank you, TheSleepyAmerican
Sorry to burst the bubble here but most of this is an urban legend.
The tomb in question was Tamerlane's / Timur's mausoleum in in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, also known as Gur-e-Amir. While Tamerlan / Timur was a Mongol-Turkic conquerer who envisioned himself as an heir of Genghis Khan, in the sense of his wish of resurrecting Genghis' Empire, he was no blood relative.
It's also true that a Soviet team of archaeologists did open the tomb in June 1941 as part of the "faces of kings" initiatives where Mikhail Mikhaylovich Gerasimov and other aracheologist studied the remains and burial grounds of rulers of the Timurid dynasty, the inscriptions you mention can not be confirmed. Both Denise Aigle's book The Mongol Empire between Myth and Reality: Studies in Anthropological History and Oleg Grabar's Islamic Visual Culture, 1100-1800, Volume 2 contain in-depth studies of the inscriptions found in the mausoleum and recorded by Gerasimov in his studied of the tomb and the sarcophagus. Both groups of inscriptions attempt to forge a connection between Timur and Genghis as well as between Timur and Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammed. No warning of any kind is mentioned.
Reviewing the sources of the books that mention the episode (those that give sources) I am unable to trace the alleged episode further back than Fitzroy Maclean's To the Back of Beyond: An Illustrated Companion to Central Asia and Mongolia, which cites the episode as something told by the local guide in Samarkand.
The Soviet's reburied Timur and other Timurid remains in the fall of 1942, in case of Timur with a full Islamic ritual. Hence it is likely that the story originated with the local population who objected to the mausoleum be opened. Evidence for it, however, can not be found.
The Central Asian conqueror in question was Timur, sometimes called Tamerlane, of the fourteenth and fifteenth century. His burial place and that of his sons was no secret. He was entombed in the Gur Emir mausoleum in Samarkand. Mikhail Gerasimov led an expedition to exhume the body of the conqueror in June 1941. This was a minor Soviet media sensation in June and featured in a number of Soviet newspapers. Gerasimov had made a name for himself for his forensic reconstruction of dead Russian princes and now he was going to use the skull of Timur to reconstruct the image of the Timurid conqueror. There was an alleged curse on the tomb as well as folk traditions against disturbing his body, albeit studies of the inscriptions showed no curses.
The media sensation around the tomb helped to affix these boilerplate warnings against disturbing the past within the wider Soviet collective memory about the start of the war. While it was clear that Gerasimov did disinter Timur's corpse for his forensic studies in early June 1941, the Soviets returned his corpse to Gur Emir before the Battle of Stalingrad. Nonetheless, the idea that Stalingrad was connected to Timur's return helped assume the form of an urban legend within the USSR and outside of it.
