1876,] E. Maclagan— On Harly Asiatic Mre Weapons. 



33 



of more effective kinds for creating the alarm that was desired. Such fire- 

 missiles were familiar to Timnr himself and his predecessors. At the siege 

 of Otrar by Chingiz Khan, A. D. 1219, the defenders made good use of 

 burning darts, to the injury of the besiegers' engines. The following year, 

 in besieging the citadel of Bukhara after gaining the town, he threw in 

 pots of burning naphtha. He used Greek Fire in his attack on Khiva, the 

 same year, and it was used by and against him on other occasions. # Timur 

 eight years before his invasion of India, had made use of Greek Fire dis- 

 charged from his boats in his attack on a small town on the shores of the 

 Caspian.f In India he encountered fire missiles of other kinds at his attack 

 on Bhatnir, when " the besieged cast down in showers arrows and stones and 

 fireworks upon the heads of the assailants. "J Timur himself relates that 

 Sultan Mahmud, when he attacked him at Dihli, had elephants covered with 

 armour, most of them carrying howdas " in which were throwers of grenades 

 (ra? d-anddz) , fireworks (atash-Mz) , and rockets (takhsTi-anddz) ." § Timur, 

 in his engagement with Bayazid I., before Angora, three years after the Dihli 

 battle, had a special body of men for throwing Greek Fire.]] What was 

 the nature of the various fireworks used by Sultan Mahmud at Dihli, and 

 by the defenders of Bhatnir, is not indicated. In the regions where Greek 

 Fire was used by Chingiz and Timur, naphtha abounded or was readily ob- 

 tainable, and it is, in some of the instances, named as the material used. 

 There does not seem to be reason to believe that Timur was acquainted with 

 gunpowder, as General Cunningham has supposed. 1 ^ The use of Greek Fire, 

 or of missiles answering to the descriptions of the fire generally so designat- 

 ed, was practised chiefly in countries where naphtha, petroleum, or bitumen, 

 is produced, and more rarely elsewhere. It is stated that Edward I., when 

 besieging Stirling Castle in 1304, after calling for large supplies of balistse, 

 quarrells, bows, and arrows, from York, Lincoln, and London, " gave orders 

 for the employment of a new and dreadful instrument of destruction, the 

 Greek Fire, with which he had probably become acquainted in the East. 9 ' ## 

 There is nothing to show what the composition was, but it is most probable 

 that this, as well as the fireworks which Timur encountered at Dihli and at 

 Bhatnir, was composed of some of the dry materials used elsewhere combin- 

 ed with naphtha, — the ingredients of the future gunpowder, 



* Petis de la Croix, History of Genghisean, pp. 166, &c, and 190, &c, from Mir- 

 khwand and others, 



f Life of Timour Beg, prefixed to Markham ? s translation of Clayijo. 



X Malfuzdt i Timiiri, in Sir H. Elliot's Historians of India, by Prof, Dowson, 

 III, 424. 



§ The same, III, 439. 



II Langles, Yie de Timour, p. 88, (quoting Sharafuddin). 



nr Essay on the Arian Order of Architecture, J. A. S. B., XVII, 1848, ii., 244. 



** For this statement Tytler refers to the Liber Garderohae, or "Wardrobe Book, of 

 Edward I, p. 52 (Hist, of Scotland, I, 181). 

 E 



