TIMUR BEG. 
127 
former. The ground which had been occupied by 
flourishing cities was often marked by his abomina- 
ble trophies, by columns or pyramids of human heads. 
Astracan, Carizme, Delhi, Ispahan, Bagdad, Aleppo, 
Damascus, Boursa, Smyrna, and a thousand others, 
were sacked, or burned, or utterly destroyed, in his 
presence and by his troops ; and perhaps his conscience 
would have been startled, if a priest or philosopher 
had dared to number the millions of victims whom 
he had sacrificed to the establishment of peace and 
order. Secondly: His most destructive wars were 
rather inroads than conquests. He invaded Turkes- 
tan, Kipzak, Russia, Hindostan, Syria, Anatolia, 
Armenia, and Georgia, without a hope or a desire 
of preserving those distant provinces. From thence 
he departed laden with spoil j but he left behind 
him neither troops to awe the contumacious, nor 
magistrates to protect the obedient, natives. When 
he had broken the fabric of their ancient government, 
elsewhere said, “ being prejudiced against Timur for having con- 
quered his country, he takes all occasions to vilify and blacken 
his character.” Now as, according to their own showing, that his- 
torian has done justice to the merits of this hero, the fair inference 
is, that if his enmity did not prevent him from being just to the 
merits of the man who had conquered his country, his general 
veracity cannot be fairly questioned. The writers of the Universal 
History, moreover, pronounce the author of the work whence 
they drew their materials for a memoir of the Jagatay conqueror, 
to have been ‘ ‘ his friend and flatterer.” Is not the integrity 
of such a historian as fairly open to question, as that of an 
avowed enemy? A flatterer’s authority is at best equivocal. 
After all, I suspect we shall come full as near the truth in the 
life of Timur by his enemy and detractor Arabshah, as in that of 
his friend and flatterer Shureef-ood-Deen Ally. 
