In the year A.H. 733 Kazan Khan392 mounted the throne of the western Chaghatay 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 Kurultay, 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 Amir Kazghan, and broke into open revolt. The Khan at once set out with his troops to crush them. In the first encounter394 he gained the upper hand, and Amir Kazghan lost an eye from an arrow shot by the Khan himself. The conqueror thereupon retired to Karshi; but, owing to the severity of the winter, most of his horses and transport cattle perished. Amir Kazghan, hearing of the Khan’s misfortunes, took courage and, in the following year, A.H. 747 (1346), attacked Karshi. The fortune of war on this occasion veered towards his side. He defeated and slew the tyrant, becoming thus master of Transoxiana and Turkestan. He next assumed the rÔle of king-maker, and placed on the throne one of the descendants of Ogday,395 named Danishmandja,396 whom, however, he put to death two years later, setting up in his place Bayan Kuli, a Chaghatay by descent, A.H. 749 (1348). For ten years this prince sat upon the throne of the Chaghatay Khans, but he governed in name only, for all the affairs of the state were directed by the skilful hand of Amir 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 Amir Kazghan’s peculiar office of Prime Minister. The residence of the Khans—in fact the capital of the western branch of Chaghatays—had lately been Sali Saray, but was transferred to Samarkand, owing, we are told, to `Abdullah’s great love for that town. Thither he carried his puppet, Bayan Kuli; but, falling in love with the Khan’s wife, he put the ill-starred husband to death, and set up in his stead Timur Shah Oghlan, 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 Bayan Selduz, raised an army and marched on Samarkand. On his way thither he was joined by Haji Birlas397 in Kesh,398 and the united forces administered a crushing defeat to `Abdullah, who fled across the Oxus to Andarab, where he remained in obscurity till his death. The family and partisans of Amir Kazghan were now scattered far and wide, and the government of Transoxiana passed into the hands of Bayan Selduz399 and Haji Birlas. The former, however, was a hopeless drunkard, and utterly unfit to rule in times so charged with storm. The western Chaghatay 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 Haji Birlas could call his own.

At this period the chief of Jatah, or Moghulistan, was Tughluk Timur Khan.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 Kashghar for the Khojend River, A.H. 761 (1360). After crossing it he was joined by Amir Bayazid Jala´ir, and they proceeded together in the direction of Shahr-i-Sabz. Haji Birlas, hearing of the Khan’s approach, attempted to organise resistance; but, at the last moment, he deemed discretion the better part of valour, and fled towards Khorasan 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 Chaghatay Khans in the middle of the fifteenth century.401

The early biographers402 of him whom his contemporaries styled Timur Leng, the “Lame Timur,”403 delighted to give him a common ancestry with Chingiz Khan, and traced his descent from a vezir in the service of Chaghatay named Karachar Nuyan, whose genealogy merges with that of the earlier conqueror. This, however, is a long-exploded myth; for Timur 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 Amir Kazghan, gained the mastery over all Transoxiana and Turkestan.404 Timur was the son of Amir Turghay, who had preceded Haji Birlas 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 Haji Birlas reached the Oxus in his flight from the army of Tughluk Timur Khan, the young Timur,406 who had accompanied him, requested leave to return to his native city and seek an audience of the Khan, in order to intercede for his suffering fellow-townsmen. Having obtained the required permission, he hastened to the camp of the allied Amirs, 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. Timur took leave of the Amirs 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 Amirs quarrelled, withdrew their troops from Transoxiana, and returned to headquarters in Kashghar.

In the following year, A.H. 762 (1361), the Khan 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 Iliyas Khwaja Oghlan, while Timur, whose sagacity had attracted the Khan’s attention, was appointed chief councillor to the young prince. Timur, however, was disgusted with the conduct of certain of his colleagues, and fled the country in search of his brother-in-law Amir Husayn, the grandson of Kazghan.407 After a career of marvellous adventure in company with Amir Husayn, he had by the year A.H. 765 (1363) collected sufficient troops round him to make a stand against Iliyas Khwaja, 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 Chaghatays, and had restored order in the state. He did not, however, place himself on the throne of the Chaghatays, 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 Chaghatay as descendants of Chingiz, and to the associations which clustered round their name. Be this as it may, it is certain that Timur 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 Timur,” 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 Timur’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 Kipchaks, 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 Khan. Long and desperate was the struggle between the rivals, but it ended in Timur’s triumph. His eyes now turned to India, whose fabulous wealth had attracted other adventurers such as he. The Panjab 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. Timur stormed Damascus and broke the Mamluk power. Then, on the field of Angora, A.H. 805 (1402), he utterly defeated the Sultan Bayazid 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 Otrar, while on his way to subdue China, A.H. 807 (1404)410—