In foot, his form and stature were not unworthy of his rank; and his vigorous health, so essential to himself and to the world, was corroborated by temperance and exercise. In his familiar discourse he was grave and modest, and, if he was ignorant of the Arabic language, he spoke with fluency and elegance the Persian and Turkish idioms. It was his delight to converse with the learned on topics of history and science; and the amusement of his leisure hours was the game of chess, which he improved or corrupted with new refinements.75 his religion, he was a zealous, though not perhaps an orthodox, Musulman; 7 but his sound understanding may tempt us to believe that a superstitious reverence for omens and prophecies, for saints and astrologers, was only affected as an instrument of policy. In the government of a vast empire, he stood alone and absolute, without a rebel to oppose his power, a favourite to seduce his affections, or a minister to mislead his judgment. It was his firmest maxim that, whatever might be the consequence, the word of the prince should never be disputed or recalled; but his foes have maliciously observed that the commands of anger and destruction were more strictly executed than those of beneficence and favour. His sons and grandsons, of whom Timour left six-and-thirty at his decease, were his first and most submissive subjects; and, whenever they deviated from their duty, they were corrected, according to the laws of Gibbon's account of Timur and his work is deficient. He has not realised, or brought out, the fact that the greatest result of Timur's empire was the victory of Islam in Central Asia. Timur acted from the beginning in close co-operation with the Musulman ecclesiastics of Transoxiana, and when he won supreme power, he did away with the Mongol and Turkish legislative system of Chingiz and substituted the law of Islam. In regard to the very foundations of the political constitution there is a vast difference between the two systems. Chingiz and his successors were subject to the law (the Yasak) and bound by its provisions; whereas according to the principles of Islam the head of the state is not bound by the law, but is responsible only to God. Thus the will of the sovereign is set above the law. Timur then broke completely with the Mongol tradition, such as it had been developed under Chinese influence, and drew the Turks of Central Asia out of touch with the far East. As the Mongol power in China was overthrown about the same time by the revolution which set the Ming dynasty on the throne (A.D. 1370), this period marks a general decline of Mongol influence in Asia.] 75 His new system was multiplied from 32 pieces and 64 squares, to 56 pieces and 110 or 130 squares. But, except in his court, the old game has been thought sufficiently elaborate. The Mogul emperor was rather pleased than hurt with the victory of a subject; a chess-player will feel the value of this encomium! 76 See Sherefeddin, l. v. c. 15, 25. Arabshah (tom. ii. c. 96, p. 801, 803) reproves the impiety of Timour and the Moguls, who almost preferred to the Koran the Yacsa, or Law of Zingis (cui Deus maledicat): nor will he believe that Sharokh had abolished the use and authority of that Pagan code. Zingis, with the bastonade, and afterwards restored to honour and command. Perhaps his heart was not devoid of the social virtues; perhaps he was not incapable of loving his friends and pardoning his enemies; but the rules of morality are founded on the public interest; and it may be sufficient to applaud the wisdom of a monarch, for the liberality by which he is not impoverished, and for the justice by which he is strengthened and enriched. To maintain the harmony of authority and obedience, to chastise the proud, to protect the weak, to reward the deserving, to banish vice and idleness from his dominions, to secure the traveller and merchant, to restrain the depredations of the soldier, to cherish the labours of the husbandman, to encourage industry and learning, and, by an equal and modern assessment, to increase the revenue without increasing the taxes, are indeed the duties of a prince; but, in the discharge of these duties, he finds an ample and immediate recompense. Timour might boast that, at his accession to the throne, Asia was the prey of anarchy and rapine, whilst under his prosperous monarchy, a child, fearless and unhurt, might carry a purse of gold from the East to the West. Such was his confidence of merit that from this reformation he derived excuse for his victories and a title to universal dominion. The four following observations will serve to appreciate his claim to the public gratitude; and perhaps we shall conclude that the Mogul emperor was rather the scourge than the benefactor of mankind. 1. If some partial disorders, some local oppressions, were healed by the sword of Timour, the remedy was far more pernicious than the disease. By their rapine, cruelty, and discord, the petty tyrants of Persia might afflict their subjects; but whole nations were crushed under the foot steps of the reformer. The ground which had been occupied by flourishing cities was often marked by his abominable trophies, by columns or pyramids of human heads. Astracan, Carizme, Delhi, Ispahan, Bagdad, Aleppo, Damascus, Boursa, Smyrna, and a thousand others, were sacked, or burnt, or utterly destroyed, in his presence, and by his troops; and perhaps his conscience would have been startled if a priest or philosopher had dared to number the millions of victims whom he had sacrificed to the establishment of peace and order." 77 Besides the bloody passages of this narrative, I must refer to an anticipation in the third volume of the Decline and Fall, which, in a single note (p. 452, note 26), 2. His most destructive wars were rather inroads than conquests. He invaded Turkestan, Kipzak, Russia, Hindostan, Syria, Anatolia, Armenia, and Georgia, without a hope or a desire of preserving those distant provinces. From thence he departed, laden with spoil; but he left behind him neither troops to awe the contumacious, nor magistrates to protect the obedient, natives. When he had broken the fabric of their ancient government, he abandoned them to the evils which his invasion had aggravated or caused; nor were these evils compensated by any present or possible benefits. 3. The kingdoms of Transoxiana and Persia were the proper field which he laboured to cultivate and adorn as the perpetual inheritance of his family. But his peaceful labours were often interrupted, and sometimes blasted, by the absence of the conqueror. While he triumphed on the Volga or the Ganges, his servants, and even his sons, forgot their master and their duty. The public and private injuries were poorly redressed by the tardy rigour of inquiry and punishment; and we must be content to praise the Institutions of Timour, as the specious idea of a perfect monarchy. 4. Whatsoever might be the blessings of his administration, they evaporated with his life. To reign, rather than to govern, was the ambition of his children and grandchildren,78 the enemies of each other and of the people. A fragment of the empire was upheld with some glory by Sharokh, his youngest son; but after his decease, the scene was again involved in darkness and blood; and before the end of a century Transoxiana and Persia were trampled by the Uzbeks from the North, and the Turkmans of the black and [Babar, his white sheep. The race of Timour would have been extinct, if an hero, his descendant in the fifth degree, had not fled before the Uzbek arms to the conquest of Hindostan. His successors (the Great Moguls 79) extended their sway from the moun flight, A.D. 1504] accumulates near 300,000 heads of the monuments of his cruelty. Except in Rowe's play on the fifth of November, I did not expect to hear of Timour's amiable moderation (White's preface, p. 7). Yet I can excuse a generous enthusiasm in the reader, and still more in the editor, of the Institutions. 78 Consult the last chapters of Sherefeddin and Arabshah, and M. de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. iv. I. xx.), Fraser's History of Nadir Shah (p. 1-62). The story of Timour's descendants is imperfectly told; and the second and third parts of Sherefeddin are unknown. 79 Shah Allum (Shāh-Ālam, A.D. 1759-1806], the present Mogul, is in the fourteenth [rather fifteenth from Babar, who was fifth from Timur] degree from Timour by Miran Shah, his third son. See the iid volume of Dow's History of Hindustan. [The shadowy survival of the Mogul empire ceased to exist in 1857.] zib, A.D. tains of Cashmir to Cape Comorin, and from Candahar to the Gulf of Bengal. Since the reign of Aurungzebe, their empire (Auranghas been dissolved; their treasures of Delhi have been rifled by 1659-1707) a Persian robber; and the richest of their kingdoms is now possessed by a company of Christian merchants, of a remote island in the Northern Ocean. The Civil wars of the sons the of Bajazet, A.D. 1403 and 1421 pha Far different was the fate of the Ottoman monarchy. massy trunk was bent to the ground, but no sooner did hurricane pass away than it again rose with fresh vigour more lively vegetation. When Timour, in every sense, had evacuated Anatolia, he left the cities without a palace, a treasure, or a king. The open country was overspread with hordes of shepherds and robbers of Tartar or Turkman origin; the recent conquests of Bajazet were restored to the emirs, one of whom, in base revenge, demolished his sepulchre; and his five sons were eager, by civil discord, to consume the remnant of their patrimony. I shall enumerate their names in the order of their age and actions.80 1. It is doubtful, whether I 1. Mustarelate the story of the true Mustapha, or of an impostor who personated that lost prince.81 He fought by his father's side in the battle of Angora; but, when the captive sultan was permitted to inquire for his children, Mousa alone could be found; and the Turkish historians, the slaves of the triumphant faction, are persuaded that his brother was confounded among the slain. If Mustapha escaped from that disastrous field, he was concealed twelve years from his friends and enemies, till he emerged in Thessaly and was hailed by a numerous party as the son and successor of Bajazet. His first defeat would have been his last, had not the true, or false, Mustapha been saved by the Greeks and restored, after the decease of his brother Mahomet, to liberty and empire. A degenerate mind seemed to argue his spurious birth; and, if, on the throne of Hadrianople, he was adored as the Ottoman sultan, his flight, his fetters, and an ignominus gibbet delivered the impostor 80 The civil wars, from the death of Bajazet to that of Mustapha, are related, according to the Turks, by Demetrius Cantemir (p. 58-82,. Of the Greeks, Chalcondyles (1. iv. and v.), Phranza (1. i. c. 30-32) and Ducas (c. 18-27), the last is the most copious and best informed. 81 [It is difficult to decide whether he was an impostor, as the Ottoman, or genuine, as the Greek, historians allege. Zinkeisen leaves the question open (i. 383-384), but with an inclination to the former opinion; Hammer argues for the view that the claimant was the true Mustapha, i. 297.] 2. Isa 82 to popular contempt. A similar character and claim was asserted by several rival pretenders; thirty persons are said to have suffered under the name of Mustapha; and these frequent executions may perhaps insinuate that the Turkish court was not perfectly secure of the death of the lawful prince. 2. After his father's captivity, Isa 2 reigned for some time in the neighbourhood of Angora, Sinope, and the Black Sea; and his ambassadors were dismissed from the presence of Timour with fair promises and honourable gifts. But their master was soon deprived of his province and life by a jealous brother, the sovereign of Amasia; and the final event suggested a pious allusion that the law of Moses and Jesus, of Isa and Mousa, had been abrogated by the greater Mahomet. 3. 3. Soliman, Soliman is not numbered in the list of the Turkish emperors; 1410 yet he checked the victorious progress of the Moguls, and after their departure united for a while the thrones of Hadrianople and Boursa. In war, he was brave, active, and fortunate; his courage was softened by clemency; but it was likewise inflamed by presumption, and corrupted by intemperance and idleness. He relaxed the nerves of discipline in a government where either the subject or the sovereign must continually tremble; his vices alienated the chiefs of the army and the law; and his daily drunkenness, so contemptible in a prince and a man, was doubly odious in a disciple of the prophet. In the slumber of intoxication, he was surprised by his brother Mousa; and, as he fled from Hadrianople towards the Byzantine capital, Soliman was overtaken and slain in a bath, after 4. The investiture of A.D. 1403 4. Mousa, a reign of seven years and ten months. A.D. 1410 Mousa degraded him as the slave of the Moguls; his tributary kingdom of Anatolia was confined within a narrow limit, nor could his broken militia and empty treasury contend with the hardy and veteran bands of the sovereign of Romania. Mousa fled in disguise from the palace of Boursa; traversed the Propontis in an open boat; wandered over the Walachian and Servian hills; and, after some vain attempts, ascended the throne of Hadrianople, so recently stained with the blood of 82 Arabshah, tom. ii. c. 26, whose testimony on this occasion is weighty and valuable. The existence of Isa (unknown to the Turks) is likewise confirmed by Sherefeddin (1. v. c. 57). 83 [Mohammad defeated Isa in battle at Ulubad, A.D. 1403, and again in 1404 (Sad ad-Din, transl. Bratutti, p. 284).] |
