After taking 'Ayntáb, Tímúr besieged and reduced Aleppo in October, 1400, and there captured and sent with Aleppo and Damascus captured by Tímúr other spoils of war to Samarqand his future historian Mawláná Niẓámu'd-Dín called Shámí (the “Syrian”). Having next subdued in turn Ḥama, Ḥims (Emessa) and Ba'labakk (Baalbek) he proceeded to invest Damascus. Here an assassin, insti­gated by al-Maliku'n-Náṣir, Sulṭán of Egypt, attempted his life, but failed and was put to death. Damascus surrendered, but again revolted, and was again subdued in March, 1401, when it finally submitted, and suffered Tímúr's name to be inserted in the khuṭba, after it had suffered the horrors of Tartar incendiarism and looting. Another portion of Tímúr's army ravaged the Syrian coast as far south as 'Akká.

Tímúr next turned his attention to Baghdád, the capital of the recalcitrant Sulṭán Aḥmad Jalá'ir, and,

Sack of Baghdád by Tímúr having taken it, made, on June 20, 1401, a great massacre, in revenge for the many notable officers of his army who had perished in the siege. Each soldier was ordered to bring a head, * and in the words of Sharafu'd-Dín 'Alí Yazdí, “the market of retribution became so brisk that the broker of death sold at one price the old man of eighty and the child of eight, while the oven of wrath was so enkindled that it consumed in like manner the corporeal vestiture of the wealthy plutocrat and the wretched pauper.”*

Having left Baghdád a smoking charnel-house, Tímúr again turned his attention to the unfortunate Georgians,

The Battle of Angora until the approach of winter drove him in November, 1401, into his winter quarters at Qarábágh. About the middle of February, 1402, he prepared to attack the Ottoman Sulṭán Báyazíd, from whom he had received another defiant letter which goaded him to fury. On July 20, 1402, was fought the memorable battle of Angora, in which the Ottoman Turks were utterly defeated and their Sulṭán, Báyazíd, “the Thunderbolt,” taken prisoner. The well-known story that The story of Báyazíd and the Iron Cage Tímúr confined him in a cage and carried him about with him wherever he went is now gene­rally discredited. * No mention of this is made, I think, by Sharafu'd-Dín 'Alí of Yazd and other Persian historians of Tímúr, and the story may have arisen from an expression used by Ibn 'Arabsháh, who, as already mentioned, hated Tímúr, and sought always to represent his actions in the worst light. The expression in question is:

<text in Arabic script omitted>

“The son of 'Osmán fell into a hunter's snare, and became confined like a bird in a cage”—

a phrase which it is not necessary to take literally, and which may well have been employed metaphorically and to fulfil the exigencies of the rhymed prose in which Ibn 'Arabsháh's work is composed. Sharafu'd-Dín explicitly says * that when Báyazíd, with hands bound, was brought before Tímúr, the latter, after reproaching him for his previous contumacy, expressing his regret at having been compelled to make war on a fellow-believer who had rendered such signal services to Islám, and reminding him how he would have probably behaved to the conquered had their respective positions been reversed, concluded by saying that “in gratitude for the victory and help vouchsafed to him by the mercy of God” he would do naught but good to his captive and the other Turkish prisoners.

Be this as it may, the campaign against the Ottoman Turks continued; royal Broussa and “infidel” Smyrna were attacked and made desolate, the latter in December, 1402; and a little later, on February 26, 1403, the unfortunate Báyazíd died in captivity.

Seeing what had befallen the Turks, the Egyptian Sulṭán, al-Maliku'n-Náṣir Faraj, abandoned his former Submission of the Egyptian Sulṭán al­Maliku'n-Náṣir attitude of defiance, released Tímúr's ambas­sador, and sent his submission to the victor of Angora by an embassy which was graciously received. In August and September, 1403, Tímúr again raided Georgia, and, having wintered once more at Qarábágh, reached Ray on May 10 and Samarqand about the end of July, 1404. Here a month later arrived Clavijo's embassy to Tímúr the Spanish Mission headed by Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, who has left us an entertaining account of his journey from Spain to Samar-qand and back, and of his impressions of Tímúr, of which account an English translation, edited by Sir Clements R. Markham, was published by the Hakluyt Society in 1859. Clavijo sailed from Seville in company with an envoy, Muḥammad al-Qáḍí, whom Tímúr had sent to Spain, accompanied by Gomez de Salazar and an ecclesiastic named Fray Alonzo Paez de Santa Maria. Travelling by way of Constantinople, Trebizond, Erzeroum, Khúy, Tabríz, Ṭihrán and Mashhad, the Spanish envoys reached Samar-qand on August 31, 1404, in company with the ambassador of “the Sultan of Babylon,” and were received by Tímúr on Monday, September 8. He “was seated in a portal, in front of the entrance of a beautiful palace; and he was sitting on the ground. Before him there was a fountain, which threw up the water very high, and in it there were some red apples. The lord was seated cross-legged, on silken embroidered carpets, amongst round pillows. He was dressed in a robe of silk, with a high white hat on his head, on the top of which there was a special ruby, with pearls and precious stones round it.” The ambassadors were brought close before him that he might see them better; for his eyesight was bad, he being so old that the eyelids had fallen down entirely. He received them graciously, en­quiring, “How is my son the king? Is he in good health?” and then turned to the nobles who stood round him, saying, “Behold! here are the ambassadors sent by my son the King of Spain, who is the greatest King of the Franks, and lives at the end of the world. The Franks are truly a great people, and I will give my benediction to the King of Spain, my son. It would have sufficed if he had sent you to me with the letter, and without the presents, so well satisfied am I to hear of his health and prosperous state.”

The Spanish envoys were subsequently entertained at several banquets, of which Clavijo gives detailed descrip- Clavijo's de­scription of Tímúr's Court, his banquets and his “justice” tions, and saw Tímúr several times. They seem to have been much struck by the quantities of meat and wine consumed, and the frequent drunkenness. “The drinking,” says Clavijo (p. 148), “was such that some of the men fell down drunk before her” (Caño, wife of Tímúr); “and this was con­sidered very jovial, for they think there can be no pleasure without drunken men.” On another occasion (Oct. 9, 1404), besides the banquet, they were treated to an exhibition of Tímúr's “justice,” for “in the place where the traders had pitched their tents, he ordered a great number of gallows to be set up; and declared that, in this festival, he knew how to be merciful and kind to some, and how to be severe to others.” On these gallows he forthwith hanged several persons of quality, besides “certain traders who had sold meat for more than it was worth,” and some shoemakers. “The custom is,” adds Clavijo, “that, when a great man is put to death, he is hanged; but the meaner sort are be­headed”—a curious inversion of the mediaeval practice in England.

The ambassadors do not seem to have seen Tímúr after November 1, 1404, on the morrow of which day “he did not come out of his tent, because he felt ill.” They were bidden by the Mírzás, or Secretaries of the Court, to depart, but this they at first declined to do until they should receive their dismissal from Tímúr and his messages and compliments to their own King. Finally, however, they were compelled to leave without another audience (Tímúr being then, as they were led to believe, sick unto death) and quitted the city on November 18 with the “ambassadors from Turkey” and “the ambassador from the Sultan of Babylon.” After re­maining for three days in a garden outside the town, they started on their homeward journey on November 21, 1404. They reached Tabríz on February 28, 1405, and were delayed there and at the camp of 'Umar Shaykh Mírzá in Qarábágh for six months, not leaving Tabríz on their homeward march until August 22. After passing through Armenia, of whose inhabitants Clavijo says that “the Chris­tian Armenians are an evil race, who would not let the ambassadors pass until they had given up some of their property,” they reached Trebizond on September 17, Con­stantinople on October 22, 1405, Genoa on January 3, 1406, and San Lucar in Spain on March 1 of the same year, after an absence of nearly three years.