The empire gets established in 1370 when he gets effective power over much of the western Shagatai Khanate. He comes from a Turko-Mongol tradition. Now you'll hear these terms Turko-Mongol a lot because even though the Mongols conquered this large swath of territory, they did so with the significant help of people speaking Turkic languages from Central Asia, Turkish being the most well-known of the Turkic languages. And so many of the conquerors, especially the Muslim conquerors of Central Asia and Persia of this period are of a Turko-Mongol ethnicity. Even though there's no evidence of him being a direct descendant of Genghis Khan or Genghis Khan, he views himself as the successor. He wants to recreate the great Mongol Empire. By the time of Timur's death, the Timurid Empire encompasses much of Persia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Middle East.