I was thinking the same as well. Timur was called Timur the Lame as he was crippled from an injury in his childhood. Despite being crippled he was very cruel and killed many people in the neighbor of 14 to 30 million. He easily ranks right up there with other evil figures like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Nero, and Pol Pot.
http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm
http://www.bookofhorriblethings.com/ax01.html
http://moralcompassblog.com/2013/04/19/tamerlan-tamerlane-whats-in-a-slayers-name-a-muslim-warriors-systematic-use-of-terror/
The muslims and atheist have been busy thru the years.
â—¦World Christian Encyclopedia (2001): This book is the standard reference work for religious statistics of all kinds, and both Britannica and the World Almanac cite from it. It has a single page [http://gem-werc.org/gd/gd16.pdf] estimating the number of martyrs since the origin of each religion: â—¾Muslim martyrs: 80M
â—¾Christian martyrs: 70M â—¾20th Century: 45.4M
â—¾At the hands of...â—¾Atheists: 31,689,000
â—¾Muslims 9,121,000
â—¾Ethnoreligionists: 7,469,000
â—¾Christians: 5,538,000
â—¾Quasi-religionists 2,712,000
â—¾Mahayana Buddhists: 1,651,000
â—¾Hindus: 676,000
â—¾Zoroastrians: 384,000
â—¾Hindu martyrs: 20M
â—¾Buddhist martyrs: 10M
â—¾Jewish: 9M
â—¾Ethnoreligious: 6M
â—¾Sikh: 2M
â—¾Baha'i: 1M
â—¾Other religious martyrs: 5M
â—¦ The book defines martyrs as 1.Believers in Christ (U.O.N.)
2.Who have lost their lives
3.Prematurely
4.In situations of witness
5.As a result of human hostility.
â—¦World Christian Trends by Barrett et al: Apparently this book gives more details about martyrdom statistics, but so far, I haven't found it in a library (even our local seminary), and I can't afford to buy it myself. (But see
http://gem-werc.org/gd/listings.pdf) Here are some of the major episodes that I've been able to scrounge from websites and articles. Some of my sources have been somewhat ambiguous in their wording, so I honestly don't know whether they mean to say that the Amerindians and Baghdadians, for example, are meant as Christian martyrs or Muslim or Shamanist, or whether the various subclasses who died at Soviet or Nazi hands are already included in the largest number or meant to be added to it. â—¾Martyrdom at Soviet hands: â—¾1921-50: 15M Christians in prison camps
â—¾1950-80: 5M Christians in prison camps
â—¾Orthodox: 14.5M k. by Stalin, 2.7M of them martyrs (1929-37)
â—¾Roman Catholics (1925): 1.2M martyrs
â—¾By Mongols â—¾1214: Genghiz Khan massacres 6M Christians: 4M martyrs
â—¾1214: Diocese of Herat sacked by Genghiz Khan: 1M
â—¾1258: massacre in Baghdad by Hulaku Khan: 1.1M
â—¾1358: Tamerlane destroys 15-million-strong Nestorians: 4M martyrs
â—¾Conquistadors kill 15 million Amerindians: 2M martyrs (1560)
â—¾Christians executed by Nazis in death camps: 1M â—¾Nazis exterminate 0.5M Gypsies
â—¾Khmer Rouge slaughter 2M (1975)
â—¾Kurds massacre 20,000 Nestorians (1843)
â—¾Massacre of 40,000 Vietnamese Catholics (1970)
•The Ottawa Citizen (20 Dec. 1998) ◦15M Christians d. in Soviet prison camps because of their faith.
â—¦citing Paul Marshall, Their Blood Cries Out â—¾ca. 400,000 Chinese Christians died during the Cultural Revolution.
â—¾ca. 100,000 Christians k by Idi Amin (out of 300,000 total k.)
â—¾Up to 500,000 Rwandan Christians died as witnesses to their faith (out of 700,000 total k.) (1994)
•The Ottawa Citizen (6 Feb. 1993) ◦Citing D. Barret, Our Globe and How to Reach It ◾40M Christians martyred throughout history.
â—¾ca.
24M by secular governments and atheistsâ—¾ca. 8M k. by other Christians