128 



CIVIL HISTORY AND 



Ganges to the distant wilds of Siberia. Penetrat 

 ing to the " regions of perpetual daylight/' he made 

 himself master of the Russian capital of Moscow ; 

 where the astonished Moslems found themselves for 

 the first time relieved from the obligations of even- 

 ing prayer. Every where his course was tracked by 

 desolation and blood. At Ispahan, Bagdad, and two 

 other places on the road to Delhi, pyramids of human 

 skulls, amounting to 70,000, 90,000, and 100,000, 

 respectively, were raised as the barbarous monuments 

 of his triumphs. The battle of Angora (A. D. 1402) 

 has immortalized the glory of Timur and the defeat 

 of his rival Bajazet, the fourth of the Ottoman emirs, 

 who gratified the pride and vengeance of his con- 

 queror in the captivity of an iron cage. This deci- 

 sive victory cost the lives of about 200,000 Turks, 

 and nearly as many Tartars. The dominions of this 

 wonderful man were inferior in extent only to those 

 of the Saracens in the zenith of their power. 



The star of Timur rose and set amidst scenes of 

 carnage; and his race, as well as his empire, might 

 have become extinct, had not Baber, the grandson 

 of Abu Seyd already mentioned, after a long and 

 noble struggle against the Uzbeck Tartars, the ene- 

 mies and subverters of his family, retired to India, 

 where his great talents obtained for him one of the 

 most splendid thrones in the world. This sultan was 

 the first that received the title of Emperor of Hin- 

 dostan, and with him commenced (A. D. 1526) the 

 sovereignty of the Great Mogul in that peninsula, 

 which flourished till the beginning of the eighteenth 

 century, when it received its deathblow in the fall 

 of Aurengzebe (A. D. 1707); a prince who raised it 

 to the zenith of its glory, and whose sway extended 





