CHAP. warded by the smile of Timour". Shah Mansour, LXV. 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 scymetar': 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. M. Of II. A just retaliation might be urged for the invasion of Turkestan, or the eastern Tartary. The dignity of TiA. D. 1370 mour could not endure the impunity of the Getes: he pass stan, -1383: 14 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. 15 According to Arabshah (P. i. 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 (l. iii. c. 25.) has magnified his courage. 16 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; 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 vizirs (Marco Polo, 1. i. c. 15, 16. fol. 7. 8. Abulfeda Geograph. tabul. xi. 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). LXV. ed the Sihoon, subdued the kingdom of Cashgar, and CHAP. 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 Tartary1, 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 an 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 of Kipzak, glorious victory, the emperor resolved on revenge: and Russia,&c. by the east, and the west, of the Caspian, and the Vol-1396. ga, he twice invaded Kipzak with such mighty powers, that thirteen miles were measured from his right to his left wing. In a march of 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 Toushi 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 17 Arabshah had travelled into Kipzak, and acquired a singular knowledge of the geography, cities, and revolutions, of that northern region (P. i. c. 45-49). 18 Institutions of Timour, p. 123. 125. Mr. White, the editor, bestows some animadversion on the superficial account of Suerefeddin (1. iii. c. 12, 13, 14), who was ignorant of the designs of Timour, and the true springs of action. A. D. 1390 LXV. CHAP. 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 Russions 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 Antioch1, and of ingots of gold and silver20. On 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 slavery22. 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 19 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. 20 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 formidable invader. 21 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). 22 The sack of Azoph is described by Sherefeddin (1. iii. c. 55); and much more particularly by the author of an Italian chronicle (Andreas de Redusiis ae 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 12,000 ducats. strange phenomenon, which authorised his Mahome- CHAP. tan doctors to dispense with the obligation of evening LXV. prayer23. Hindos. 1398. 1399. III. When Timour first proposed to his princes and III. Of emirs the invasion of India or Hindostan24, he was tan, answered by a murmur, of discontent: "The rivers! A. D. "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 standard of rebellion; and the perpetual infancy of sultan Mahmoud was despised even in the haram of Delhi. The Mogul army moved in three great divisions: and Timour observes with pleasure, that the ninety-two squadrons of a thousand horse most fortunately corresponded with the ninety-two names or epithets of the prophet Mahomet. Between the Jihoon and the Indus, they crossed one of the ridges of mountains, which are styled by the Arabian geographers, the stony girdles of the earth. The Highland robbers were subdued or extirpated; but great numbers of men and horses perished in the snow; the emperor himself was let down a precipice on a portable scaffold, the ropes were one hundred and fifty cubits in length; and, before he could reach the bottom, this dangerous operation was five times repeated. Timour crossed the Indus at the ordinary passage of Attok; and successively traversed, in the foot-steps of Alexander, the Punjab, or five rivers25, that fall into the master-stream. From Attok to Delhi, the high road measures no more than six hundred miles; but the two 1 23 Sherefeddin only says (l. iii. c. 13), that the rays of the setting, and those of the rising sun, were scarcely separated by an interval; a problem which may be solved in the latitude of Moscow (the 56th 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. 24 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. 25 The rivers of the Punjab, the five eastern branches of the Indus, have been laid down for the first time with truth and accuracy in Major Rennel's incomparable map of Hindostan. In his Critical Memoir, he illustrates with judgment and learning the marches of Alexander and Timour. CHAP. Conquerors deviated to the south-east; and the motive LXV. of Timour was to join his grandson, who had achieved by his command the conquest of Moultan. On the eastern bank of the Hyphasis, on the edge of the desert, the Macedonian hero halted and wept: the Mogul entered the desert, reduced the fortress of Batnir, and stood in arms before the gates of Delhi, a great and flourishing city, which had subsisted three centuries under the dominion of the Mahometan kings. The siege, more especially of the castle, might have been a work of time; but he tempted, by the appearance of weakness, the sultan Mahmoud and his vizir to descend into the plain, with ten thousand cuirassiers, forty thousand of his foot-guards, and one hundred and twenty elephants, whose tusks are said to have been armed with sharp and poisoned daggers. Against these monsters, or rather against the imagination of his troops, he condescended to use some extraordinary precautions of fire and a ditch of iron spikes, and a rampart of bucklers; but the event taught the Moguls to smile at their own fears; and as soon as these unwieldy animals were routed, the inferior species (the men of India) disappeared from the field. Timour made his triumphal entry into the capital of Hindostan; and admired, with a view to imitate, the architecture of the stately mosch but the order or license of a general pillage and massacre polluted the festival of his victory. He resolved to purify his soldiers in the blood of the idolaters, or Gentoos, who still surpass in the proportion of ten to one, the numbers of the Moslems. In this pious design, he advanced one hundred miles to the north-east of Delhi. passed the Ganges, fought several battles by land and water, and penetrated to the famous rock of Coupele, the statue of the cow, that seems to discharge the mighty river, whose source is far distant among the mountains of Thibet26. His return was along the skirts of the northern hills; nor could this rapid campaign of one year justify the strange foresight of his emirs, that their 26 The two great rivers, the Ganges and Burrampooter, rise in Thibet, from the opposite ridges of the same hills, separate from each other to the distance of 1200 miles, and, after a winding course of 2000 miles, again meet in one point near the gulf of Bengal. Yet so capricious is Fame, that the Burrampooter is a late discovery, while his brother Ganges has been the theme of ancient and modern story. Coupele, the scene of Timour's last victory, must be situate near Loldong, 1100 miles from Calcutta ; and, in 1774, a British camp! (Rennel's Memoirs, p. 7. 59. 90, 91. 99). |