CHAPTER XXIV

TĪMŪR, THE GREAT AMĪR

In the year A.H. 733 Kazān Khān[392] mounted the throne of the western Chaghatāy 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 _Kurultāy_, or general assembly, they made their wills before leaving their homes.[393] 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 Amīr Kazghan, and broke into open revolt. The Khān at once set out with his troops to crush them. In the first encounter[394] he gained the upper hand, and Amīr Kazghan lost an eye from an arrow shot by the Khān himself. The conqueror thereupon retired to Karshī; but, owing to the severity of the winter, most of his horses and transport cattle perished. Amīr Kazghan, hearing of the Khān’s misfortunes, took courage and, in the following year, A.H. 747 (1346), attacked Karshī. The fortune of war on this occasion veered towards his side. He defeated and slew the tyrant, becoming thus master of Transoxiana and Turkestān. He next assumed the rôle of king-maker, and placed on the throne one of the descendants of Ogdāy,[395] named Dānishmandja,[396] whom, however, he put to death two years later, setting up in his place Bayān Kulī, a Chaghatāy by descent, A.H. 749 (1348). For ten years this prince sat upon the throne of the Chaghatāy Khāns, but he governed in name only, for all the affairs of the state were directed by the skilful hand of Amīr 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 Amīr Kazghan’s peculiar office of Prime Minister. The residence of the Khāns--in fact the capital of the western branch of Chaghatāys--had lately been Sālī Sarāy, but was transferred to Samarkand, owing, we are told, to `Abdullah’s great love for that town. Thither he carried his puppet, Bayān Kulī; but, falling in love with the Khān’s wife, he put the ill-starred husband to death, and set up in his stead Tīmūr Shāh Oghlān, 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 Bayān Seldūz, raised an army and marched on Samarkand. On his way thither he was joined by Hāji Birlās[397] in Kesh,[398] and the united forces 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 Amīr Kazghan were now scattered far and wide, and the government of Transoxiana passed into the hands of Bayān Seldūz[399] and Hāji Birlās. The former, however, was a hopeless drunkard, and utterly unfit to rule in times so charged with storm. The western Chaghatāy 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 Moghūlistan, was Tūghluk Tīmūr Khān.[400] 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 Amīr Bāyazīd Jalā´ir, and they proceeded together in the direction of Shahr-i-Sabz. Hāji Birlās, hearing of the Khān’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 hands of a man of destiny than was the shattered empire of the Chaghatāy Khāns in the middle of the fifteenth century.[401]

The early biographers[402] of him whom his contemporaries styled Tīmūr Leng, the “Lame Tīmūr,”[403] delighted to give him a common ancestry with Chingiz Khān, and traced his descent from a vezīr in the service of Chaghatāy named Karāchār Nuyān, whose genealogy merges with that of the earlier conqueror. This, however, is a long-exploded myth; for Tīmūr 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 Amīr Kazghan, gained the mastery over all Transoxiana and Turkestān.[404] Tīmūr was the son of Amīr Turghāy, who had preceded Hāji Birlās in the government of the province of Kesh and its dependencies.[405] He was born in the town of Kesh, now called Shahr-i-Sabz, the Green City, in the year A.H. 736 (1333). According to his autobiography, he became conscious of his own powers at an early age, and distinguished himself alike in council and in the hunting-field.

When Hāji Birlās reached the Oxus in his flight from the army of Tūghluk Tīmūr Khān, the young Tīmūr,[406] who had accompanied him, requested leave to return to his native city and seek an audience of the Khān, in order to intercede for his suffering fellow-townsmen. Having obtained the required permission, he hastened to the camp of the allied Amīrs, whom he so favourably impressed by his earnestness and eloquence that they not only desisted from their hostile intentions, but conferred upon him the government of his native city. Tīmūr took leave of the Amīrs of Jatah, and entered upon the administration of his state and the levy of troops in the country between Kesh and the Oxus. Meanwhile the Amīrs quarrelled, withdrew their troops from Transoxiana, and returned to headquarters in Kāshghar.

In the following year, A.H. 762 (1361), the Khān of Jatah again entered Transoxiana, and, after a successful campaign against various rebellious nobles, took possession of Samarkand. He intrusted the government of the conquered districts to his son Iliyās Khwāja Oghlān, while Tīmūr, whose sagacity had attracted the Khān’s attention, was appointed chief councillor to the young prince. Tīmūr, however, was disgusted with the conduct of certain of his colleagues, and fled the country in search of his brother-in-law Amīr Husayn, the grandson of Kazghan.[407] After a career of marvellous adventure in company with Amīr Husayn, he had by the year A.H. 765 (1363) collected sufficient troops round him to make a stand against Iliyās Khwāja, whom in an encounter near Kunduz he entirely routed, and compelled to withdraw across the Oxus.

At the close of A.H. 771 (1370) he had made himself absolute master of the dominions of the western Chaghatāys, and had restored order in the state. He did not, however, place himself on the throne of the Chaghatāys, but made another rightful descendant of that line nominal head of the empire.

This apparent self-abnegation was probably due to the universal respect enjoyed by the house of Chaghatāy as descendants of Chingiz, and to the associations which clustered round their name. Be this as it may, it is certain that Tīmūr was content with the absolute power won by his genius, and scorned the sounding style of emperor. That his rule made for the happiness of the peoples who owned his sway is evidenced by the hold which his personality had, and still retains, on the fickle population of Central Asia. “The love and attachment of the army to Tīmūr,” writes Wolff,[408] “was so great and so unlimited that they would forego plunder in time of need if ordered by him; and the subjection to him was so blind and unconditional that it would only have cost him an order to cause himself to be proclaimed not only as emperor, but even as Prophet of the Tartars. He endeavoured to soften the inclination to cruelty of his soldiers, composed of so many nations, by poets and learned men, by musicians and _sufis_, who came in swarms to the army and wandered with him through Asia.”[409] Under his enlightened rule Samarkand became the 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 Tīmūr’s triumph. His eyes now turned to India, whose fabulous wealth had attracted other adventurers such as he. The Panjāb 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. Tīmūr stormed Damascus and broke the Mamlūk power. Then, on the field of Angora, A.H. 805 (1402), he utterly defeated the Sultan Bāyazīd I., a conqueror of a renown only second to his own. Constantinople 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 Otrār, while on his way to subdue China, A.H. 807 (1404)[410]--

_Mors sola fatetur Quantula sunt hominum corpuscula!_