359 Cf. S. Lane-Poole, loc. cit.

360 The exact date is uncertain.

361 This word may be read either Kuriltāy or Kurultāy. Cf. Pavet de Courteille, Dictionnaire Turk-Oriental, p. 429.

362 Cf. d’Ohsson, i. 86.

363 Ibid. p. 89.

364 Cf. Howorth, J.R.A.S., New Series VIII. p. 283.

365 The above facts are from the Jahān-Kushāy. Cf. Bretschneider, op. cit. i. 230, 231; the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 289; and d’Ohsson, op. cit. i. 166 et seq.

366 Cf. d’Ohsson, i. 170 et seq.; Bretschneider, op. cit. i. 231.

367 This occupied him between the years 1210 and 1214.

368 S. Lane-Poole, loc. cit. See also Gibbon’s 64th chapter.

369 Cf. Bretschneider, loc. cit.; and on the subject of the religious tolerance of Chingiz, Gibbon, chap. lxiv.

370 Cf. d’Ohsson, i. 204.

371 He had put his former ally `Othman to death in A.H. 607 (1210). See d’Ohsson, i. 183.

372 Abū-l-Ghāzi, ed. Desmaisons, p. 99.

373 Abū-l-Ghāzi, ed. Desmaisons, p. 100.

374 Abū-l-Ghāzi, loc. cit.

375 Abū-l-Ghāzi, pp. 101–103 of Desmaison’s text.

376 The route he took was Kazwīn, Gilān, and Māzenderān (Tarikh-i-Mukīm Khānī).

377 He is said to have died a lunatic. The island in question has long since been swallowed up by the sea. Cf. Tabakāt-i-Nāsiri, Major Raverty’s trans., vol. i. p. 278, note.

378 We refer the reader especially to Müller’s Geschichte des Islams, pp. 213–225.

379 Mohammedan Dynasties, p. 204.

380 The best account of this offshoot is to be found in an excellent paper entitled “The Chaghatai Mughals,” by W. E. E. Oliver, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xx. New Series, p. 72, sec. 9. It will be found in a condensed form in Ney Elias and Ross’s Introduction to the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, or “History of the Mughals of Central Asia.”

381 Vide ante on p. 155.

382 In the valley of the Upper Ili, near the site of the present Kulja.

383 During the reign of Chaghatāy Khān a curious rising occurred in the province of Bokhārā. A half-witted sieve-maker, from a village near Bokhārā, managed by various impostures to gather round him a number of disciples from among the common people, and so numerous and powerful did they become that in 630 (1232) they drove the Chaghatāy government out of the country, and, assuming the government of Bokhārā, proceeded to put to death many of its most distinguished citizens. They at first successfully repulsed the Mongol forces sent against them, but were finally vanquished, and order was again restored in Bokhārā. For this episode consult Vambéry, op. cit. p. 143 et seq.; Major Price’s Mohammedan History, iii. 2.

384 Tarikh-i-Rashidi, Introduction, p. 32.

385 Chaghatāy is said to have died from grief at his brother’s death (Habīb-us-Siyar).

386 For historical data we have already referred the reader to Mr. Oliver’s paper and Vambéry’s Bokhara. S. Lane-Poole, in his Mohammedan Dynasties, gives a list of twenty-six Khāns of this house who ruled in Central Asia from A.H. 624 to 771 (A.D. 1227 to 1358), i.e. 140 years. The Zafar-Nāmé of Nizām Shāmī (see note below, p. 168) gives a list of thirty-one Khāns of this line.

387 Cf. Müller’s Geschichte des Islams, ii. p. 217.

388 In A.H. 671 (1273) Bokhārā was sacked by the Mongols of Persia (Müller, op. cit. ii. p. 260).

389 Bokhara, pp. 159–60.

390 This Khānate embraced the present Zungaria and the greater part of Eastern and Western Turkestān; but the exact meaning of this geographical term is still undetermined. The subject has been fully discussed in the Tarikh-i-Rashidi (passim). Cf. also Bretschneider, op. cit. ii. 225 et seq.

391 See Tarikh-i-Rashidi, Introduction, p. 37.

392 The Calcutta text of the Zafar-Nāmé of Sheref ud-Dīn `Alī Yazdī, the famous biographer of Tīmūr, reads throughout Karān. S. Lane-Poole, op. cit., gives the date of his accession as 744 (A.D. 1343),—upon what authority it is not clear. Price (following the Khulāsat ul-Akhbār) is in agreement with the Zafar-Nāmé. We are, moreover, expressly told that he ruled fourteen years, and died in 747.

393 Zafar-Nāmé (ed. Calcutta), i. p. 27.

394 This took place in the plains round the village of Dara-Zangi (Zafar-Nāmé, ii. p. 28).

395 The third son of Chingiz, who had inherited the kingdom of Mongolia proper.

396 Zafar-Nāmé (ed. Calcutta) reads Dānishmand Oghlān.

397 Perhaps a corruption of the older form Berūlās.

398 The modern Shahr-i-Sabz.

399 Sheref ud-Dīn affirms that his love of wine was so inveterate that he was not sober for a week in the whole year (Zafar-Nāmé (Calcutta edition), i. p. 41).

400 He was born in A.H. 730. In 748 he became Khān of Jatah; in 754 he was converted to Islām; in 764 he died. His history, and the story of his conversion, is told at some length in the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, pp. 5–23.

401 Our readers will have traced for themselves the parallel afforded by France, exhausted by the horrors of the Revolution at the outset of Napoleon’s career.

402 The sources for the biography of Tīmūr are plentiful. The best known, both in the East and in Europe, is the Zafar-Nāmé, by Sheref ud-Dīn `Alī, of Yezd. This was completed in 1424 by the order of Ibrāhīm, the son of Shāh Rukh, the son of Tīmūr. It was first translated into French in 1722 by M. Petis de la Croix, whose work was in turn englished shortly afterwards. It is this history that has served as a basis for all European historians, Gibbon included. There is, however, an older biography of Tīmūr, which, owing to its scarcity, is very little known. The only MS. in Europe is in the British Museum. It, too, bears the title of Zafar-Nāmé, or Book of Victory. It was compiled at Tīmūr’s own order by a certain Nizām Shāmī, and is brought down to A.H. 806, i.e. one year before Tīmūr’s death. The MS. itself bears the date of A.H. 838 (1434). Owing to the vast interest attaching to such a contemporary account, Professor Denison Ross has undertaken to prepare an edition of the text for the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

403 He had gained the sobriquet “Leng” from a wound which caused him to halt through life, inflicted during the siege of Sīstān (Wolff, Bokhara, p. 243).

404 For example, the names Jalā´ir, Berūlās, and Seldūz are those of well-known Turkish tribes.

405 According to the Zafar-Nāmé of Sheref ud-Dīn `Alī Yazdi, and other historians who follow him, Hāji Birlās was the uncle of Tīmūr. The Zafar-Nāmé of Nizām Shāmī, however, states that he was Tīmūr’s brother.

406 He was at this period about twenty-seven years of age, and had served with some distinction under Amīr Kazghan (Wolff, Bokhara, p. 245).

407 We refer the reader to Gibbon’s 65th chapter for a striking account of Tīmūr’s wanderings in the desert, and to Petis de la Croix’s translation of the Zafar-Nāmé for Tīmūr’s thrilling adventures with his friend Amīr Husayn.

408 Bokhara, p. 244.

409 The famous order of dervishes called Nakshabandi was founded in Tīmūr’s reign by a certain Khwāja Bahā ud-Dīn, who died in A.H. 791 (1388). The three saints held in reverence by the dervishes next after him are Khwāja Ahrār (whose mausoleum is to be seen a few miles outside Samarkand), Ishān Mahzūm Kāshāni, and Sūfi Allah Yār. It is a group of members of this mendicant brotherhood which forms the subject of the frontispiece to this work by M. Verestchagin. There are two other sects of dervishes in Samarkand—(1) the Kādiriyya, whose founder was `Abd el-Kādiri Gīlāni, and (2) the Alf Tsāni, an order whereof the founder seems to be unknown, and which is sparsely represented.

410 “He was of great stature, of an extraordinary large head, open forehead, of a beautiful red and white complexion, and with long hair—white from his birth, like Zal, the renowned hero of Persian history. In his ears he wore two diamonds of great value. He was of a serious and gloomy expression of countenance; an enemy to every kind of joke or jest, but especially to falsehood, which he hated to such a degree that he preferred a disagreeable truth to an agreeable lie,—in this respect far different from the character of Alexander, who put to death Clitus, his friend and companion in arms, as well as the philosopher Callisthenes, for uttering disagreeable truths to him. Tīmūr never relinquished his purpose or countermanded his order; never regretted the past, nor rejoiced in the anticipation of the future; he neither loved poets nor buffoons, but physicians, astronomers, and lawyers, whom he frequently desired to carry on discussions in his presence; but most particularly he loved those dervishes whose fame of sanctity paved his way to victory by their blessing. His most darling books were histories of wars and biographies of warriors and other celebrated men. His learning was confined to the knowledge of reading and writing, but he had such a retentive memory that whatever he read or heard once he never forgot. He was only acquainted with three languages—the Turkish, Persian, and Mongolian. The Arabic was foreign to him. He preferred the Tora of Chingiz Khān to the Koran, so that the Ulemas found it necessary to issue a Fetwa by which they declared those to be infidels who preferred human laws to the divine. He completed Chingiz Khān’s Tora by his own code, called Tuzukat, which comprised the degrees and ranks of his officers. Without the philosophy of Antonius or the pedantry of Constantine, his laws exhibit a deep knowledge of military art and political science. Such principles were imitated successfully by his successors, Shāh Baber and the great Shāh Akbar, in Hindustān. The power of his civil as well as military government consisted in a deep knowledge of other countries, which he acquired by his interviews with travellers and dervishes, so that he was fully acquainted with all the plans, manœuvres, and political movements of foreign courts and armies. He himself despatched travellers to various parts, who were ordered to lay before him the maps and descriptions of other foreign countries” (Wolff’s Bokhara, p. 243).

411 Shāh Rukh was Tīmūr’s favourite son. He derived his name, which means “King and Castle,” from a well-known move in chess, which royal game was one of Tīmūr’s few amusements (Wolff’s Bokhara, p. 244).

412 Cf. Price’s Mohammedan History, iii. 492, quoting the Khulāsat-ul-Akhbār. As a fact, Pīr Mohammad only obtained the government of Balkh, and was murdered in Kandahār in A.H. 809 (1406). Cf. De Guignes, v. 79.

413 Cf. De Guignes, v. 81.

414 De Guignes, v. 81. Khalīl spent some years in Moghūlistan, but, unable to bear a longer separation from Shād Mulk, joined her in Herāt. Shāh Rukh gave him the government of Khorāsān, and he died the same year (A.H. 812).

415 His astronomical tables are amongst the most accurate and complete that come down to us from Eastern sources. They treat of the measurement of time, the course of the planets, and of the position of fixed stars. The best editions are those printed in Latin in 1642–48 by an Oxford professor named Greaves, and reprinted in 1767. The remains of his celebrated observatory still crown the hill known as Chupān Ata in an eastern suburb of Samarkand.

416 Shāh Rukh’s authority, to judge by the coins which have come down to us, extended nearly as far as his more celebrated father’s. We have his superscription on the issues of mints as widely distant as Shīrāz, Kaswīn, Sabzawār, Herāt, Kum, Shuster, and Astarābād.

417 Vambéry’s Bokhara, p. 223.

418 Ibid. p. 244.

419 The young prince was born in 1483, the son of `Omar Shaykh Mīrzā, whom he succeeded in the sovereignty of the eastern portion of Tīmūr’s dominions. His conquest of India, and foundation of the Moghul dynasty of Delhi, do not come within the scope of this work. He was equally great in war, administration, and literature: perhaps the most remarkable figure of his age.

420 A.H. 903 (1497).

421 An excellent table, showing the ramifications of the Tīmūrides, will be found in vol. vii. of the Mohammedan Coins of the British Museum.

422 In the case of possessive pronouns and verbal inflexions, for example, we find direct and obvious imitations of the Turkish grammar.

423 The “Great Caan” of Marco Polo.

424 Cf. Bretschneider, op. cit. ii. pp. 139, 140.

425 Cf. Bretschneider, loc. cit.

426 Idem. Tūkā Tīmūr, from whom sprang the Khāns of the Crimea, was the youngest son of Jūjī. Cf. Lane-Poole’s Mohammedan Dynasties, p. 233. Tokhtamish, the inveterate foe of Tamerlane, belonged to the Crimean branch of the Khāns of Dasht-i-Kipchāk. The Khānate of Kazan was founded in 1439, on the remains of the Bulgarian Empire, by Ulugh Mohammed of the same line.

427 Bretschneider, loc. cit.

428 There seems some confusion on this point; I have followed Veliaminof-Zernof, but Bretschneider does not call this movement a migration of Uzbegs but a flight of the White Horde, whom he says were expelled from their original seats by Abū-l-Khayr. Cf. Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 82.

429 The results of M. Veliaminof-Zernof’s careful researches into the history of the Kazāks were published in three volumes of the Memoirs of the Eastern Branch of St. Petersburg Archæological Society, under the title of The Emperors and Princes of the Line of Kasim. He called this dynasty the Kasimovski, after Kāsim Khān, the son of Jānībeg. Cf. also Levshin’s Description of the Hordes and Steppes of the Kirghiz-Kazaks, St. Petersburg, 1864. Mīrzā Haydar says: “The Kazāk Sultans began to reign in A.H. 870 (1465), and continued to enjoy absolute power in the greater part of Uzbegistān till the year A.H. 940” (1533). See Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 82.

430 Tarikh-i-Rashidi, pp. 82 and 92.

431 Thus according to both the Tārikh-i-Tīmūrī and the Tārīkh-i-Abū-l-Khayr, quoted by Howorth, op. cit. ii. 695.

432 There is in the British Museum a silver coin of Shaybānī Khān, dated A.H. 910: Merv.

433 An account of this campaign will be found in the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 243 et seq. The account of the Emperor Bāber’s doings at this period are all the more interesting and valuable from the fact that in the famous Memoirs of Baber a break occurs from the year 1508 to the beginning of the year 1519; though an account is also given in the Tārīkh-i-Ālam-Ārāy of Mirza Sikandar, which was used by Erskine in his History of India.

434 Lubb ut-Tawārīkh, book III. pt. iii. chap. vi.

435 Cf. Veliaminof-Zernof, op. cit. p. 247.

436 Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 245.

437 Cf. Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 259. Cf. also Veliaminof-Zernof (p. 353), who bases his statements on the `Abdullah Nāmé of Hāfiz ibn Tānish. Copies of this valuable work are very scarce. Its scope and contents have been described (from a copy in the Imperial Academy in St. Petersburg) by M. Veliaminof-Zernof. See Mélanges Asiatiques de St. Petersburg, vol. iii. p. 258 et seq.

438 “The Seven Wells.” V.-Zernof reads Yati Kurūk, which might mean “the Seven Walls.” The former reading seems more probable.

439 On the locality of this place, cf. Vambéry’s Bokhara, p. 257.

440 Cf. Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 260.

441 Probably to be identified with Panjakand, in the Zarafshān valley, forty miles east of Samarkand.

442 Some distance north of Bokhārā.

443 Cf. Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 261. Howorth (ii. 713) says `Ubaydullah was in this fort.

444 Mirza Haydar does hesitate to speak thus of the fortunes of his own cousin Bāber, who had in his opinion sold himself to the heretic Persians.

445 As Grigorieff suggested, the name Abū-l-Khayride would fit this dynasty far better than that of Shaybānide.

446 “Bokharan and Khivan Coins,” a monograph published in the Memoirs of the Eastern Branch of the Russian Archæological Society, vol. iv., St. Petersburg, 1859. This excellent and original monograph is extensively laid under contribution in the present chapter, as it was also by Sir H. Howorth in his chapter on the Shaybānides, pt. ii. div. ii. chap. ix.

447 See note, p. 190.

448 The Tazkira Mukīm Khānī, being a history of the appanage of Bokhārā, makes no mention of Kuchunji, or Abū Sa`īd, who ruled in Samarkand, though they both attained the position of Khākān. Cf. Histoire de la Grande Bokharie, par Mouhamed Joussouf el-Munshi, etc., par Senkovsky, St. Petersburg, 1824.

449 Their names were—Abū Sa`īd, `Ubaydullah, `Abdullah I., `Abd ul-Latīf, Nawrūz Ahmed, Pīr Mohammad, and Iskandar. All are described at some length by Vambéry and Howorth, the latter basing his account on a great variety of authorities.

450 P. 284 et seq.

451 Cat. Coins Brit. Mus. vii.

452 Cf. Howorth, ii. 876.

453 Khwārazm had never properly belonged to Chaghatāy’s territories in Transoxiana, and accordingly it is a common mint name on coinage of the Golden Horde (Cat. Orient. Coins Brit. Mus. vii. p. 26).

454 Vide ante, p. 169.

455 His genealogy is very doubtful; but, according to the best authorities, his ancestor was Jūjī Khān, one of the mighty conqueror’s sons, who had predeceased him (note at p. 304 of Vambéry’s History of Bokhara). Cf. Howorth’s Mongols, part ii. p. 744.

456 Vambéry relates that when, in the great mosque of Bokhārā, the public prayers were read for the first time for the new ruler, the whole congregation burst into sobs and bitter tears (History of Bokhara, p. 319).

457 Vambéry, p. 323.

458 This prince was famed throughout the East for his love of letters. He was a poet of no mean skill, and an adept at prose composition. His end was untimely. Enticed to give a private interview to some of his brother Subhān Kulī Khān’s party, he was foully murdered by them (Vambéry, P. 323).

459 Vambéry tells us that he was a man of amazing corpulence; and one of his historians avers that a child four years old could find accommodation in one of his boots! (History of Bokhara, p. 325).

460 Vambéry, History of Bokhara, p. 333.

461 History of Bokhara, p. 339.

462 Page 95, History of Central Asia, by `Abd ul-Kerīm Bokhārī; translated into French by Charles Schefer, Paris, 1876.

463 This throne was “so called from its having the figures of two peacocks standing behind it, their tails being expanded, and the whole so inlaid with sapphires, rubies, emeralds, pearls, and other precious stones of appropriate colours as to represent life. The throne itself was six feet long by four broad; it stood on six massive feet, which, with the body, were of solid gold, inlaid with rubies, emeralds, and diamonds. It was surmounted by a canopy of gold supported by twelve pillars, all richly emblazoned with costly gems, and a fringe of pearls ornamented the borders of the canopy. Between the two peacocks stood the figure of a parrot of the ordinary size, said to have been carved out of a single emerald. On either side of the throne stood an umbrella, one of the Oriental emblems of royalty. They were formed of crimson velvet, richly embroidered and fringed with pearls. The handles were eight feet high, of solid gold and studded with diamonds. The cost of this superb work of art has been variously stated at sums varying from one to six millions sterling. It was planned and executed under the supervision of Austin de Bordeaux, already mentioned as the artist who executed the Mosaic work in the Ám Khás” (Beresford’s Delhi, quoted by Mr. H. G. Keene at p. 20 of the third edition of his Handbook for Visitors to Delhi, Calcutta, 1876). Tavernier, who was himself a jeweller, and visited India in 1665, valued this piece of extravagance at two hundred million of livres, £8,000,000; Jonas Hanway estimated it as worth, with nine other thrones, £11,250,000 (Travels, ii. 383). It stood on a white marble plinth, on which are still to be deciphered the world-renowned motto in flowing Persian characters: “If there be a paradise on earth, it is even this, even this, even this.”

464 `Abd ul-Kerīm Bokhārī, p. 106.

465 Vambéry gives the date of this coup d’état as 1737 (p. 343); but `Abd ul-Kerīm Bokhārī makes it follow the assassination of Nādir Shāh, the epoch of which is not open to question (p. 110). The dates of events of the eighteenth century in Bokhārā are strangely uncertain, contemporary chroniclers rarely deigning to aid posterity by recording them.

466 “Bi” is an Uzbeg word meaning “judge.” It is not spelt “bai,” nor does it mean “superior grey-beard,” as M. Vambéry supposes (History of Bokhara, p. 347).

467 There are many versions of the death of `Abd ul-Mū`min. The most probable is that related by `Abd ul-Kerīm of Bokhārā, at p. 115, which is to the effect that Rahīm Bi had the young prince taken by his own followers on a pleasure-party, and then pushed into a well while he was dreamily peering into its depths.

468 This is the highest degree in the Bokhārān official hierarchy (see Khanikoff’s Bokhara: its Amir and People, p. 239; Meyendorff’s Voyage à Bokhara, p. 259).

469 Note at p. 120 of Schefer’s edition of `Abd ul-Kerīm Chronicles.

470 See note at p. 135, ibid. The editor corrects an obvious lapsus calami,—A.H. 1148 for 1184.

471 With characteristic Pharisaism, `Abd ul-Kerīm tells us that “fear and terror fell upon Ma´sūm’s brethren, even as they had possessed the brethren of Joseph. He set himself to repress their iniquities, and had their accomplices in crime put to death. He suppressed prostitution, and tolerated no disorders condemned by law. Bokhārā became the image of Paradise!” (p. 125).

472 `Abd ul-Kerīm, p. 132.

473 His mother belonged to the noble Salor tribe, ibid.

474 `Abd ul-Kerīm, p. 137. For descriptions of ancient Merv the reader is referred to vol. v. Dictionnaire géographique de la Perse, by C. Barbier de Meynard, p. 526; Burnes’ Travels into Bokhara, London, 1834; Khanikoff’s Mémoire sur la partie Méridionale de l’Asie Centrale, pp. 53, 57, 113, and 128; and Prof. Shukovski’s exhaustive work referred to on p. 144—note 3, supra.

475 `Abd ul-Kerīm assures us that this prince was the Plato of the century, a man full of wisdom and knowledge (p. 135).

476 `Abd ul-Kerīm tells us that the number of families then deported was 17,000, which would give a total of about 85,000 individuals (p. 142).

477 Vambéry, History of Bokhara, p. 354.