In the beginning of 1405, this man recollected that, among the many millions of unbelieving Christians and Hindoos ’whose souls he had sent to the abyss of hell’, there were many Muhammadans, who had no doubt whatever in the divine origin or co-eternal existence of the Koran; and, as their death might, perhaps, not have been altogether pleasing to his God and his prophet, he determined to appease them both by undertaking the murder of some two hundred millions of industrious and unoffending Chinese; among whom there was little chance of finding one man who had ever even heard of the Koran—­ much less believed in its divinity and co-eternity—­or of its interpreter, Muhammad.  At the head of between two and three hundred thousand well-mounted Tartars and their followers, he departed from his capital of Samarkand on the 8th of January, 1405, and crossed the Jaxartes[53] on the ice.  In the words of his judicious historian, ’he thus generously undertook the conquest of China, which was inhabited only by unbelievers that by so good a work he might atone for what had been done amiss in other wars, in which the blood of so many of the faithful had been shed’.

‘As all my vast conquests’, said Timur himself,[54] ’have caused the destruction of a good many of the faithful, I am resolved to perform some good action, to atone for the crimes of my past life; and to make war upon the infidels, and exterminate the idolaters of China, which cannot be done without very great strength and power.  It is therefore fitting, my dear companions in arms, that those very soldiers, who were the instruments whereby those my faults were committed, should be the means by which I work out my repentance, and that they should march into China, to acquire for themselves and their Emperor the merit of that holy war, in demolishing the temples of those unbelievers and erecting good Muhammadan mosques in their places.  By this means we shall obtain pardon for all our sins, for the holy Koran assures us that good works efface the sins of this world.’  At the close of the Emperor’s speech, the princes of the blood and other officers of rank besought God to bless his generous undertaking, unanimously applauding his sentiments, and loading him with praises.  ’Let the Emperor but display his standard, and we will follow him to the end of the world.’  Timur died soon after crossing the Jaxartes, on the 1st of April, 1406, and China was saved from this dreadful scourge.  But, as the philosophical historian, Sharaf-ud-din,[55] profoundly observes, ’The Koran remarks that if any one in his pilgrimage to Mecca should be surprised by death, the merit of the good work is still written in heaven in his name, as surely as if he had had the good fortune to accomplish it.  It is the same with regard to the “ghaza” (holy war), where an eternal merit is acquired by troubles, fatigues, and dangers; and he who dies during the enterprise, at whatever stage, is deemed to have