TIMUR BEG. 
25 
CHAPTER III. 
A.D. 1362 . 
About this period Timur was obliged to quit Samer- 
kund, in consequence of the Jete chiefs, who had 
carried off four hundred virgins from that city, hav- 
ing laid snares for his destruction. He had retired 
to the hill country ; while there, he received a com- 
munication from his brother-in-law, Amyr Hussyn, 
also at that same time a wanderer in the moun- 
tains, that it would be advisable to unite their small 
forces against the common enemy. The exiled amyrs 
met, and resolved upon the immediate invasion of 
Khuarazm, an extensive region of Tartary on the 
eastern side of the Caspian, and divided from Trans- 
oxiana by the river Jihun, or Oxus, which, after 
a course of two thousand miles, falls into the Aral 
sea. Whilst they were about to attack a fort, which 
was the key to their projected conquest, they per- 
ceived a cloud of dust rising from the desert. A troop 
of cavalry soon became visible ; it turned out to be a 
thousand Jetes, commanded by an able general, who 
had come in pursuit of Timur and Hussyn. These 
latter had but sixty troopers to oppose this formid- 
able squadron ; still they were not dismayed. Timur 
drew up his little band upon the summit of a hill, 
D 
