diet or couroultai, he was invested with imperial command, but he affected to revere the house of Zingis; and while the emir Timour reigned over Zagatai and the East, a nominal khan served as a private officer in the armies of his servant. A fertile kingdom, five hundred miles in length and in breadth, might have satisfied the ambition of a subject; but Timour aspired to the dominion of the world, and before his death, the crown of Zagatai was one of the twenty-seven crowns which he had placed on his head. Without expatiating on the victories of thirty-five campaigns, without describing the lines of march which he repeatedly traced over the continent of Asia; I shall briefly represent his conquests in, I. Persia; II. Tartary; and, III. India; and from thence proceed to the more interesting narrative of his Ottoman war.

I. For every war, a motive of safety or revenge, of honour or zeal, of right or convenience, may be readily found in the jurisprudence of conquerors. No sooner had Timour reunited to the patrimony of Zagatai the dependent countries of Carizme and Candahar, than he turned his eyes towards the kingdoms of Iran or Persia. From the Oxus to the Tigris, that extensive country was left without a lawful sovereign since the death of Abousaid, the last of the descendants of the great Holacou. Peace and justice had been banished from the land above forty years; and the Mogul invader might seem to listen to the cries of an oppressed people. Their petty tyrants might have opposed him with confederate arms; they separately stood and successively fell; and the difference of their fate was only marked by the promptitude of submission, or the obstinacy hero; and he himself or his secretary (Institutions, p. 3-77), enlarges, with pleasure, on the thirteen designs and enterprises which most truly constitute his personal merit. It even shines through the dark colouring of Arabshah, p. 1, c. 1–12. [This refers apparently to the twelve rules, which, in the first chapter of the Book of Omens, Timour says, "I have constantly practised, and on account of which Almighty God hath conferred greatness on me." His narrative often differs from Gibbon's, especially in respect to Houssein, who was brought to trial by sound of trumpet, and condemned by the assembled chiefs. Timour wished to save his brother-in-law; but his accusers, whom he had injured, insisted on immediately executing the sentence. Memoirs, p. 130-131. -ED.] The conquests of Persia, Tartary, and India, are represented in the second and third books of Sherefeddin, and by Arabshah, c. 13-55. Consult the excellent indexes to the Institutions.

of resistance. Ibrahim, prince of Shirwan or Albania, kissed the footstool of the imperial throne. His peaceofferings of silks, horses, and jewels, were composed, according to the Tartar fashion, each article of nine pieces; but a critical spectator observed, that there were only eight slaves. I myself am the ninth, replied Ibrahim, who was prepared for the remark; and his flattery was rewarded by the smile of Timour.* Shah Mansour, prince of Fars, or the proper Persia, was one of the least powerful, but most dangerous, of his enemies. In a battle under the walls of Shiraz, he broke, with three or four thousand soldiers, the coul, or main body of thirty thousand horse, where the emperor fought in person. No more than fourteen or fifteen guards remained near the standard of Timour; he stood firm as a rock, and received on his helmet two weighty strokes of a scimitar; the Moguls rallied; the head of Mansour was thrown at his feet, and he declared his esteem of the valour of a foe, by extirpating all the males of so intrepid a race. From Shiraz, his troops advanced to the Persian Gulf and the richness and weakness of Ormuz ‡ were displayed in an annual tribute of six hundred thousand dinars of gold. Bagdad was no longer the city of peace, the seat of the caliphs; but the noblest conquest of Houlacou could not be overlooked by his ambitious successor. The whole course of the Tigris and Euphrates, from the mouth to the sources of those rivers, was reduced to his obedience; he entered Edessa, and the Turkmans of the black sheep were chastised for the sacrilegious pillage of a caravan of Mecca. In the mountains of Georgia, the native Christians still braved the law and the sword of Mahomet; by three expeditions, he obtained the merit of the gazie, or holy war, and the prince of Teflis became his proselyte and friend. II. A just retaliation might be urged for the invasion of

The reverence of the Tartars for the mysterious number of nine is declared by Abulghazi Khan, who, for that reason, divides his Genealogical History into nine parts. According to

Arabshah (p. 1, c. 28, p. 183), the coward Timour ran away to his tent, and hid himself from the pursuit of Shah Mansour, under the women's garments. Perhaps Sherefeddin (1. 3, c. 25) has magnified his courage. The history of Ormuz is not unlike that of Tyre. The old city, on the continent, was destroyed by the Tartars, and renewed in a neighbouring island, without fresh water or vegetation. The kings of Ormuz, rich in the Indian trade and the pearl fishery, possessed large territories both in Persia and Arabia;

Turkestan, or the Eastern Tartary. The dignity of Timour could not endure the impunity of the Getes; he passed the Sihoon, subdued the kingdom of Kashgar, and marched seven times into the heart of their country. His most distant camp was two months' journey, or four hundred and eighty leagues, to the north-east of Samarcand; and his emirs, who traversed the river Irtish, engraved in the forests of Siberia a rude memorial of their exploits. The conquest of Kipzak, or the Western Tartary, was founded on the double motive of aiding the distressed, and chastising the ungrateful. Toctamish, a fugitive prince, was entertained and protected in his court; the ambassadors of Auruss Khan were dismissed with a haughty denial, and followed on the same day by the armies of Zagatai; and their success established Toctamish in the Mogul empire of the North. But, after a reign of ten years, the new khan forgot the merits and the strength of his benefactor, the base usurper, as he deemed him, of the sacred rights of the house of Zingis. Through the gates of Derbend, he entered Persia at the head of ninety thousand horse; with the innumerable forces of Kipzak, Bulgaria, Circassia, and Russia, he passed the Sihoon, burnt the palaces of Timour, and compelled him, amidst the winter snows, to contend for Samarcand and his life. After a mild expostulation and a glorious victory, the emperor resolved on revenge; and by the east, and the west, of the Caspian and the Volga, he twice invaded Kipzak with such mighty powers, that thirteen miles were measured from his right to his left wing. In a march of but they were at first the tributaries of the sultans of Kerman, and at last were delivered (A.D. 1505) by the Portuguese tyrants from the tyranny of their own vizira. (Marco Polo, l. 1, c. 15, 16, fol. 7, 8.) Abulfeda, Geograph. tabul. 11, p. 261, 262, an original chronicle of Ormuz, in Texeira, or Stevens' History of Persia, p. 376-416, and the Itineraries inserted in the first volume of Ramusio, of Ludovico Barthema (1503), fol. 167, of Andrea Corsali (1517), fol. 202, 203, and of Odoardo Barbessa (in 1516), fol. 315-318. [See Bohn's edition of Marco Polo, p. 60-68, and 444, with the notes.-ED.]

Arabshah had travelled into Kipzak, and acquired a singular knowledge of the geography, cities, and revolutions, of that northern region (p. 1, c. 45-49). [The Sihoon was the ancient Jaxartes. The land of the Jetes intervened between this river and Kipzak, for which see ch. 64, p. 129. To the south of the Sihoon and north of the Jihoon (Oxus) lay the Maveralnaher, or that which is beyond the river (Stewart's Preface, p. 7), on which the Jetes were the aggressors. They were the first enemies whom Timour encountered; and his conquest of them preceded his attack on Persia.-ED.]

five months, they rarely beheld the footsteps of man; and their daily subsistence was often trusted to the fortune of the chase. At length the armies encountered each other; but the treachery of the standard-bearer, who, in the heat. of action, reversed the imperial standard of Kipzak, determined the victory of the Zagatais; and Toctamish (I speak the language of the Institutions) gave the tribe of Touschi to the wind of desolation.* He fled to the Christian duke of Lithuania; again returned to the banks of the Volga; and, after fifteen battles with a domestic rival, at last perished in the wilds of Siberia. The pursuit of a flying enemy carried Timour into the tributary provinces of Russia: a duke of the reigning family was made prisoner amidst the ruins of his capital; and Yeletz, by the pride and ignorance of the Orientals, might easily be confounded with the genuine metropolis of the nation. Moscow trembled at the approach of the Tartar, and the resistance would have been feeble, since the hopes of the Russians were placed in a miraculous image of the Virgin, to whose protection they ascribed the casual and voluntary retreat of the conqueror. Ambition and prudence recalled him to the south; the desolate country was exhausted, and the Mogul soldiers were enriched with an immense spoil of precious furs, of linen of Antioch,† and of ingots of gold and silver. On

Institutions of Timour, p. 123. 125. Mr. White, the editor, bestows some animadversion on the superficial account of Sherefeddin (1. 3, c. 12-14), who was ignorant of the designs of Timour and the true springs of action.

The furs of Russia are more credible than the ingots. But the linen of Antioch has never been famous; and Antioch was in ruins. I suspect that it was some manufacture of Europe, which the Hanse merchants had imported by the way of Novogorod. [The Antiochia, founded by the Greeks in Hyrcania, still existed in the days of Timour, under the name of Merve Shahjehan, on the river Mùrghab, a branch of the Jihoon (Memoirs, p. 64, and note). Its ancient name had probably attached to the manufactures brought there and thence conveyed northward by means of the trade on the Oxus. See ch. xlii. of this history, vol. iv. p. 476. In the thirteenth century the brocades of Yezd were carried by merchants to all parts of the world. Marco Polo, p. 52, edit. Bohn.-ED.]

M. Levésque (Hist. de Russie, tom. ii. p. 247. Vie de Timour, p. 64-67, before the French version of the Institutes) has corrected the error of Sherefeddin, and marked the true limit of Timour's conquests. His arguments are superfluous, and a simple appeal to the Russian annals is sufficient to prove that Moscow, which six years before had been taken by Toctamish, escaped the arms of a more

the banks of the Don, or Tanais, he received an humble deputation from the consuls and merchants of Egypt,* Venice, Genoa, Catalonia, and Biscay, who occupied the commerce and city of Tana, or Azoph, at the mouth of the river. They offered their gifts, admired his magnificence, and trusted his royal word. But the peaceful visit of an emir, who explored the state of the magazines and harbour, was speedily followed by the destructive presence of the Tartars. The city was reduced to ashes; the Moslems were pillaged and dismissed; but all the Christians, who had not fled to their ships, were condemned either to death or slavery. Revenge prompted him to burn the cities of Serai and Astrachan, the monuments of rising civilization; and his vanity proclaimed, that he had penetrated to the region of perpetual daylight, a strange phenomenon, which authorised his Mahometan doctors to dispense with the obligation of evening prayer.‡

III. When Timour first proposed to his princes and emirs the invasion of India or Hindostan,§ he was answered by a murmur of discontent: "The rivers! and the mountains and deserts! and the soldiers clad in armour! and the elephants, destroyers of men!" But the displeasure of the emperor was more dreadful than all these terrors; and his superior reason was convinced, that an enterprise of such tremendous aspect was safe and easy in the execution. He was informed by his spies of the weakness and anarchy of Hindostan; the soubahs of the provinces had erected the formidable invader. * An Egyptian consul from Grand Cairo is mentioned in Barbaro's Voyage to Tana in 1436, after the city had been rebuilt. (Ramusio, tom. ii. fol. 92.)

The sack of Azoph is described by Sherefeddin (1. 3, c. 55), and much more particularly by the author of an Italian chronicle. (Andreas de Redusiis de Quero, in Chron. Tarvisiano, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. xix. p. 802-805.) He had conversed with the Mianis, two Venetian brothers, one of whom had been sent a deputy to the camp of Timour, and the other had lost at Azoph three sons and twelve thousand ducats.

Sherefeddin only says (1. 3, c. 13), that the rays of the setting, and those of the rising sun, were scarcely separated by any interval; a problem which may be solved in the latitude of Moscow (the fiftysixth degree), with the aid of the aurora borealis, and a long summer twilight. But a day of forty days (Khondemir, apud D'Herbelot, p. 880) would rigorously confine us within the polar circle.

For the Indian war, see the Institutions (p. 129-139), the fourth book of Sherefeddin, and the history of Ferishta (in Dow, vol. ii. p. 1-20), which throws a general light on the affairs of Hindostan.