Timur is almost the archetype of the cruel Central Asian conqueror, building on a tradition started with Alp Arslan and ended with Nader Shah. As a military commander, he was unparalleled by his contemporaries, and often used his military brilliance as evidence of his divine eminence, supported faithfully by God, and argued his (spousal) Chinggisid (Mongol) lineage further enhanced him and his power.

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I would argue Timur's use of imagery, his cultural policies, and his religious policies, are far more interesting than his military campaigns. Don't let that diminish his achievements - Timur was a fantastic general and strategist, and created a very impressive empire. However, none of the battles had quite the same tactical brilliance as, say, Nader Shah's efforts at Karnal. Many of the enemies Timur fought were weaker than him, wracked by internal conflict, or heavily outnumbered. This can be seen with the Battle of Ankara in 1402, where Timur's 140,000 men slaughtered the 85,000 strong Ottoman force led by Sultan Bayezid. And, given that the Empire collapsed very quickly after his death, it is hard to argue that the military campaigns provided much fruit in the long term. The most notable effect of his military campaigns, in fact, was giving Constantinople an extra 50 years of pseudo-sovereignty, as Bayezid I had been planning a huge campaign to kick the Byzantines out, but after his capture at Ankara, the Ottoman state fell into disarray.

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Timur's most lasting achievements are, therefore, not his Empire, which fell apart very quickly, but rather less tangible but crucial effects that he had in Central Asia, Iran, the Mashriq and India. Firstly, there was the massive depopulation his invasions caused, especially in Iran, which, although a process started by the Mongols, were made worse by Timur. Historian Steven Ward reckons Iran lost 75% of its population due to the wars of the period, and he among others have estimated that Iran's population did not recover until the 20th Century. Timur was an especially cruel conqueror, massacring 70,000 in Esfahan in response to a rebellion against his rule, for example, emulating the brutality of his idol Genghis Khan, and inspiring the brutality of the later, greater conqueror Nader Shah. I would argue that much of the reason Iran, despite its wealth and power, never held the prestigious level of influence that it had held in the ancient, classical, and early-mediaeval periods, was because of this massive depopulation.

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Second would be his promotion of both Islam and Mongolness. Timur referred to himself as "Gurkan", meaning son-in-law, and that was the official appellation for his Empire. This referred to his marriage to Saray Mulk, a direct descendent of Genghis Khan. This is why you'll hear the turm "Turco-Mongol" thrown around a lot when talking about the Timurids - Timur based much of his legitimacy to rule on his claimed succession of the Khanate of the Mongols, as the successor states of the Mongol Empire had more or less fragmented by this point. He sought to recreate the Mongol Empire, and his invasions reflect this, attempting to conquer the various lands the Mongols had once laid claim to. Even more crucial, however, was his propagation of Islam as a part of his legitimacy. As a Turk of minor nobility, he could not claim familial relation to Banu al-Quraysh, the tribe to which the Prophet Muhammad belonged, which was crucial to claiming the Caliphate and thus primacy over all Sunni Muslims. Timur, as a result, made great efforts to Islamize his territories to burnish his Islamic credentials, and essentially make himself Caliph in all but name. He took the title Amir, a distinctly Arab (ergo Islamic) title, over Khan (a Turkic title) and also called himself as-Sayf al-Islam (the Sword of Islam), portraying himself as a righteous Mujahid who would spread the faith of Muhammad across all the territory of a renewed Mongol Empire.

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This caused quite a dramatic change in the fates of religious minorities in the Middle East, Iran, and Central Asia, more or less signalling their death knell. Before Timur, Iraq and Syria were home to large Christian communities belonging to the Church of the East (nowadays called Syriac Christians). Their populations were not wiped out in such severity by the initial Islamic raids of the Rashidun, Umayyads or Abbasids, (indeed, Syriac Christians often held high positions as secretaries and viziers in the Arab caliphates, and actually lost many of the opportunities they had under Islamic rule when the Crusaders took Jerusalem), but rather by Timur's mass killings and forced conversions. To a lesser extent (insofar as the population had already greatly dwindled), the already weakened Zoroastrian population of Iran suffered massively by Timur's conquests. The religious homogeneity of the Islamic world (in terms of non-Islamic minorities, rather than the Sunni-Shia divide) can be mainly attributed to Timur, which has contributed massively to world history subsequent to this. I would argue that the idea of Islamic nationalism, i.e. the idea that Muslims can be bound together into one state solely on their religious connections, has a lot to lend thanks to Timur, as he bound his state of myriad people groups on a zealous devotion to Islam, and moreover a hostility towards the infidel in lands where Islam stood.

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In conclusion, Timur was a great conqueror, and built a powerful empire, but his legacy lies in the dominance of Islam in the Near East and Central Asia, whose effects are all the more relevant today.

EDIT: spelling and grammar

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