TIMUR BEG. 
67 
were realised by the death of his first-born, which was 
announced to the father when he arrived in the vi- 
cinity of Samerkund. The prince, who was but twenty 
years old when he died, left two sons. Peer Mohammed, 
to whom Timur gave the title of his father Jehangire, 
which signifies “Conqueror of the World,” and Mo- 
hammed Sultan. To both he assigned offices of dis- 
tinction in his court. 
Two years after this melancholy event, another son 
was born to the emperor, Mirza Shah Rukh. During 
this year he adorned the imperial city of Samerkund 
with several splendid monuments, among which was a 
sumptuous palace which he called “ The Garden of 
Paradise.” 
Timur’s ambition now leading him to entertain 
hopes of universal dominion, he turned his thoughts 
towards the empire of Iran, or Persia. Having first 
made his third son, the Mirza Miran Shah, then only 
fourteen years old, governor of Khorassan, a valuable 
district of that country, he despatched him thither 
with fifty troops of horse. Towards the end of 
the year, the emperor assembled a numerous army 
of Turks and Tartars, and, crossing the Oxus, march- 
ed into Khorassan. Here his devotion prompted 
him to visit an illustrious Santon.* This person, in a 
fit of holy enthusiasm, flung a breast of mutton at the 
head of his imperial master, who, believing it to be 
a good augury, said, “ I am persuaded that God will 
grant me the conquest of Khorassan because this king- 
dom has been called the breast, or middle, of the ha- 
* The Santons are a tribe of Mohammedan priests who de- 
vote their lives to the practice of religious austerities. 
