4 
LIVES OF THE MOGHUL EMPERORS. 
When we entered his apartment he was reading aloud 
the sixty-seventh chapter of the Koran, and was 
repeating this verse. f Are you sure that He who 
dwelleth in heaven will not cause the earth to swal- 
low you up, and behold, it shall shake (Tamuru)/ 
The Shaikh then stopped, and said, f We have named 
your son Timur/ M * The word Tamerlane, by which 
designation this prince is more familiarly known in 
Europe, is said to be compounded of two Turkish 
words, timur, signifying iron, and lank or lenk, lame. 
He is supposed to have been so called because his 
whole life was spent amid the din of arms, and on 
account of a defect in one of his legs. He was born 
at a small village forty miles to the south of Samer- 
kund, in Kesh, a province in a district of Independ- 
ent Tartary, known to the Greeks under the name of 
Transoxiana, because it was situated on the other side 
of the river Oxus, but called by the Arabs and Per- 
sians, Maveralnaher, that is, ff The country beyond 
the river/' It is identical with the modern Bukhara. 
A singular legend relative to the birth of Timur 
has been received with great faith by the Orientals as 
an imperishable testimony of the pre-eminent distinc- 
tion of their favourite hero. It is said, that the 
mother of this warlike prince appearing suddenly preg- 
nant before her marriage, her father became so exas- 
perated at her dishonour, that he was about to put 
her to death. The princess, conscious of her own 
purity, flung herself at the feet of her excited parent, 
and disclosed to him the miraculous cause of her con- 
dition. She assured him that, while she was lying 
on her couch, a sunbeam, piercing through an opening 
* See Memoirs of Timur, p. 21. 
