centre of a great and brilliant court, and was embellished with palaces, mosques, and colleges which extort the admiration of those who view them in their decay.

It is the hard fate of a conqueror that he can never pause in his onward progress. The fierce passions let loose by war can be assuaged only by their repeated exercise; and Tīmūr's hordes were ever clamouring to be led to fresh victories. Thus, when he had restored peace and prosperity to Central Asia, he set out on a triumphant march which threatened to include the whole inhabited world. In A.H. 793 (1390) Persia and the Caucasus, that halting-place in the migration of human masses westwards, were overrun by his armies. Then, in A.H. 798 (1395), he attacked the Kipchāks, a Mongolian tribe firmly settled in South-Eastern Russia and the lower Volga, which for the first time in history were united under their great chief, Tokhtamish Khān. Long and desperate was the struggle between the rivals, but it ended in Timur's triumph. His eyes now turned to India, whose fabulous wealth had attracted other adventurers such as he. The Panjab and the whole Gangetic Delta fell an easy prey to his legions; and in A.H. 801 (1398) he returned to Samarkand laden with spoils. The Egyptian dynasty established in Syria and the Turkish lords of Asia Minor alone retained their independence. Timur stormed Damascus and broke the Mamluk power. Then, on the field of Angora, A.H. 805 (1402), he utterly defeated the Sultan Bāyazid I., a conqueror of a renown only second to his own. ConKhwaja Ahrar (whose mausoleum is to be seen a few miles outside Samarkand), Ishān Mahzūm Kāshāni, and Sufi Allah Yār. It is a group of members of this mendicant brotherhood which forms the subject of the frontispiece to this work by M. Verestchagin. There are two other sects of dervishes in Samarkand—(1) the Kadiriyya, whose founder was 'Abd el-Kadiri Gīlāni, and (2) the Alf Tsāni, an order whereof the founder seems to be unknown, and which is sparsely represented.

stantinople and the empire of the East lay at his mercy. Happily for European civilisation, his darling Samarkand attracted the war-spent conqueror. He returned thither in triumph, and three years later died at Otrar, while on his way to subdue China, A.H. 807 (1404)1—

Mors sola fatetur

Quantula sunt hominum corpuscula!

1 "He was of great stature, of an extraordinary large head, open forehead, of a beautiful red and white complexion, and with long hair-white from his birth, like Zal, the renowned hero of Persian history. In his ears he wore two diamonds of great value. He was of a serious and gloomy expression of countenance; an enemy to every kind of joke or jest, but especially to falsehood, which he hated to such a degree that he preferred a disagreeable truth to an agreeable lie,-in this respect far different from the character of Alexander, who put to death Clitus, his friend and companion in arms, as well as the philosopher Callisthenes, for uttering disagreeable truths to him. Timur never relinquished his purpose or countermanded his order; never regretted the past, nor rejoiced in the anticipation of the future; he neither loved poets nor buffoons, but physicians, astronomers, and lawyers, whom he frequently desired to carry on discussions in his presence; but most particularly he loved those dervishes whose fame of sanctity paved his way to victory by their blessing. His most darling books were histories of wars and biographies of warriors and other celebrated men. His learning was confined to the knowledge of reading and writing, but he had such a retentive memory that whatever he read or heard once he never forgot. He was only acquainted with three languages-the Turkish, Persian, and Mongolian. The Arabic was foreign to him. He preferred the Tora of Chingiz Khan to the Koran, so that the Ulemas found it necessary to issue a Fetwa by which they declared those to be infidels who preferred human laws to the divine. He completed Chingiz Khān's Tora by his own code, called Tuzukat, which comprised the degrees and ranks of his officers. Without the philosophy of Antonius or the pedantry of Constantine, his laws exhibit a deep knowledge of military art and political science. Such principles were imitated successfully by his successors, Shah Baber and the great Shah Akbar, in Hindustan. The power of his civil as well as military government consisted in a deep knowledge of other countries, which he acquired by his interviews with travellers and dervishes, so that he was fully acquainted with all the plans, manoeuvres, and political movements of foreign courts and armies. He himself despatched travellers to various parts, who were ordered to lay before him the maps and descriptions of other foreign countries" (Wolff's Bokhara, p. 243).