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While going through Tamerlane's article on Wikipedia I found

It is also said that when Gerasimov exhumed Timur's body, an additional inscription inside the casket was found reading, "Who ever opens my tomb, shall unleash an invader more terrible than I." In any case, two days after Gerasimov begun the exhumation, Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the largest military invasion of all time, upon the USSR.

The claim was ftom Mark Stratton's article

Have there been more sources or works appreciating the irony, or presenting it atleast? Or is it just pseudo history?

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  • It might be argued that Timur was rather more terrible than Hitler. – jamesqf Mar 6 '15 at 18:42
  • He was in power roughly 4 times as long - Does one calculate terribleness per year as a simple arithmetic mean or is a more complex measure warranted? – Pieter Geerkens Mar 6 '15 at 20:51
  • A lame curse if the Soviets could beat off this terrible invader. – Oldcat Mar 7 '15 at 0:57
  • @Pieter Geerkens: But Timur also had a much smaller population on which to exercise his terribility (if I can use the term). Do we figure terror in absolute numbers, or by percentage of population killed? – jamesqf Mar 7 '15 at 5:19
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The Wikipedia article on M. Gerasimov requests a citation. The source cited in the Tamerlane article is a news article from 2006 that mentions the prophecy as hearsay. Unless something else comes out, we have no proof that this isn't fabricated.

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