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.
[Illustration: DERVISHES OF THE NAKSHABANDI ORDER]
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!_
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF TAMERLANE’S MAUSOLEUM, BOKHĀRĀ]
[Illustration: THE TOMB OF TAMERLANE]