provinces in its possession. As for the history of the western branch, it is only necessary to mention that during the fifty years of their rule, which continued until Timur made himself master of the country, we find no less than fifteen Khāns recorded-some of them strangers in blood to the Chaghatay line-and long periods of anarchy.1 Leaving, then, this confused chapter of Central Asian history, we will pass to the rise of the mightiest of her

conquerors.

term is still undetermined. The subject has been fully discussed in the Tarikh-i-Rashidi (passim). Cf. also Bretschneider, op. cit. ii. 225 et seq.

1 See Tarikh-i-Rashidi, Introduction, p. 37.

CHAPTER XXIV

TIMUR, THE GREAT AMIR

1

IN the year A.H. 733 Kazan Khān1 mounted the throne of the western Chaghatay family. He is described by his contemporaries as a cruel and tyrannical villain, who inspired so general a terror that when his nobles were summoned to a Kurultay, or general assembly, they made their wills before leaving their homes. To such a pitch did the dissatisfaction of his nobles rise, that in the year A.H. 746 (1345) they banded together under the leadership of a certain Amir Kazghan, and broke into open revolt. The Khan at once set out with his troops to crush them. In the first encounter 3 he gained the upper hand, and Amir Kazghan lost an eye from an arrow shot by the Khan himself. The conqueror thereupon retired to Karshi; but, owing to the severity of the winter, most of his horses and transport cattle perished. Amir Kazghan, hearing of the Khan's misfortunes, took courage and, in the following year, A.H. 747 (1346), attacked Karshi. The fortune of war on

1 The Calcutta text of the Zafar-Nămé of Sheref ud-Din 'Ali Yazdi, the famous biographer of Timur, reads throughout Karān. S. LanePoole, op. cit., gives the date of his accession as 744 (A.D. 1343),—upon what authority it is not clear. Price (following the Khuläsat ul-Akhbār) is in agreement with the Zafar-Nāmé. We are, moreover, expressly told

that he ruled fourteen years, and died in 747.

2 Zafar-Namé (ed. Calcutta), i. p. 27.

3 This took place in the plains round the village of Dara-Zangi (ZafarNăme, ii. p. 28).

this occasion veered towards his side. He defeated and slew the tyrant, becoming thus master of Transoxiana and Turkestan. He next assumed the rôle of king-maker, and placed on the throne one of the descendants of Ogday,1 named Dānishmandja,2 whom, however, he put to death two years later, setting up in his place Bayān Kulī, a Chaghatay by descent, A.H. 749 (1348). For ten years this prince sat upon the throne of the Chaghatay Khāns, but he governed in name only, for all the affairs of the state were directed by the skilful hand of Amir Kazghan, who made himself loved and respected by his prudence and equity.

In A.H. 759 (1357) this worthy chief was murdered while hunting in the vicinity of Kunduz, to the deep regret of the people.

His son 'Abdullah was universally recognised as the successor to Amir Kazghan's peculiar office of Prime Minister. The residence of the Khans-in fact the capital of the western branch of Chaghatāys-had lately been Sālī Saray, but was transferred to Samarkand, owing, we are told, to 'Abdullah's great love for that town. Thither he carried his puppet, Bayan Kuli; but, falling in love with the Khan's wife, he put the ill-starred husband to death, and set up in his stead Timūr Shāh Oghlan, A.H. 759 (1357). The nobles were deeply incensed at this arbitrary and cruel deed, and, with the intent of avenging their prince's death, one of their number, named Bayan Seldūz, raised an army and marched on Samarkand. On his way thither he was

joined by Haji Birlās in Kesh, and the united forces

1 The third son of Chingiz, who had inherited the kingdom of Mongolia proper.

2 Zafar-Nāmé (ed. Calcutta) reads Dānishmand Oghlān.

3 Perhaps a corruption of the older form Berūlās.

4 The modern Shahr-i-Sabz.

administered a crushing defeat to 'Abdullah, who fled across the Oxus to Andarāb, where he remained in obscurity till his death. The family and partisans of Amir Kazghan were now scattered far and wide, and the government of Transoxiana passed into the hands of Bayān Seldūz1 and Hāji Birlās. The former, however, was a hopeless drunkard, and utterly unfit to rule in times so charged with storm. The western Chaghatay states were parcelled out among a host of prominent nobles, whose rivalries plunged the country into the throes of civil war ; and the town of Kesh, with its immediate dependencies, was all that Hāji Birlās could call his own.

At this period the chief of Jatah, or Moghulistan, was Tughluk Timur Khan.2 Perceiving the state of disruption into which the kingdom of Transoxiana had lapsed, he resolved to take up the fallen sceptre. Gathering round him a large army, he set out from Kāshghar for the Khojend River, A.H. 761 (1360). After crossing it he was joined by Amir Bāyazid Jala'ir, and they proceeded together in the direction of Shahr-i-Sabz. Hāji Birlās, hearing of the Khan's approach, attempted to organise resistance; but, at the last moment, he deemed discretion the better part of valour, and fled towards Khorāsān ere the two armies had come into conflict.

The darkest period of a country's annals is often illumined by the light of a better time to come. Transoxiana, torn by civil war, and a prey to the worst form of tyranny, that of a horde of greedy and imperious nobles, sighed not in vain for a deliverer. Rarely in history do we find a state of society readier to deliver itself into the 1 Sheref ud-Din affirms that his love of wine was so inveterate that he was not sober for a week in the whole year (Zafar-Nāmé (Calcutta edition), i. p. 41).

* He was born in A.H. 730. In 748 he became Khan of Jatah; in 754 he was converted to Islām; in 764 he died. His history, and the story of his conversion, is told at some length in the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, pp. 5-23.

hands of a man of destiny than was the shattered empire of the Chaghatay Khāns in the middle of the fifteenth century.1

The early biographers 2 of him whom his contemporaries styled Timur Leng, the " Lame Timur,"3 delighted to give him a common ancestry with Chingiz Khān, and traced his descent from a vezir in the service of Chaghatay named Karachār Nuyān, whose genealogy merges with that of the earlier conqueror. This, however, is a long-exploded myth; for Timur was certainly a Turk by descent, and belonged to one of the numerous tribes which participated in the Mongol occupation of Central Asia, and, after the downfall of Amir Kazghan, gained the mastery over all Transoxiana and Turkestan. Timur was the son of Amir Turghāy, who had preceded Hāji Birlās in the government of the province of Kesh and its dependencies.5 He was born in the town of Kesh, now called

1 Our readers will have traced for themselves the parallel afforded by France, exhausted by the horrors of the Revolution at the outset of Napoleon's career.

2 The sources for the biography of Timur are plentiful. The best known, both in the East and in Europe, is the Zafar-Namé, by Sheref ud-Din 'Ali, of Yezd. This was completed in 1424 by the order of Ibrāhīm, the son of Shah Rukh, the son of Timur. It was first translated into French in 1722 by M. Petis de la Croix, whose work was in turn englished shortly afterwards. It is this history that has served as a basis for all European historians, Gibbon included. There is, however, an older biography of Timur, which, owing to its scarcity, is very little known. The only MS. in Europe is in the British Museum. It, too, bears the title of Zafar-Namé, or Book of Victory. It was compiled at Timur's own order by a certain Nizam Shāmī, and is brought down to A.H. 806, i.e. one year before Timur's death. The MS. itself bears the date of A.H. 838 (1434). Owing to the vast interest attaching to such a contemporary account, Professor Denison Ross has undertaken to prepare an edition of the text for the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

3 He had gained the sobriquet "Leng" from a wound which caused him to halt through life, inflicted during the siege of Sistān (Wolff, Bokhara, p. 243). For example, the names Jala'ir, Berūlās, and Seldüz are those of wellknown Turkish tribes.

According to the Zafar-Name of Sheref ud-Din 'Ali Yazdi, and other historians who follow him, Haji Birlas was the uncle of Timur. The ZafarNămé of Nizam Shāmi, however, states that he was Timur's brother.