The rise of Temür
Although those who wrote about Temür’s career during his lifetime gave no date for the conqueror’s birth, a convention among his later biographers would place it in 736 H./1335–6. The year was highly emblematic: it had witnessed the death of the last undisputed Ilkhan, Abu Sa?id, the effective collapse of the Ilkhanate and the division of its territories among a number of largely non-Mongol dynasties.2 Temür and his political opponents within the Mongol world acted out their lives on a stage dominated by the figure of Chinggis Khan.3 He and his historians believed (or wanted others to believe) that he was engaged in the restoration of Chinggis Khan’s world-empire.4 Temür’s own origins lay not in Ilkhanid Persia but in the Chaghadayid khanate in Central Asia, the territory known to Western Europeans as Medium Imperium, ‘the Middle Empire’, or (much less accurately) as Media and Imperium Medorum.5 The history of this polity is ill-documented and more obscure than that of any of the other Mongol states, but it seems that from c.1347 it was split into two khanates. In the western part, comprising Transoxiana, the tribal amirs disputed power in the name of a series of feeble and ephemeral khans belonging to the lines of Chaghadai and (sometimes) of Ögödei. Here Islam had made significant advances, and the rulers were semi-sedentarized. In the east, by contrast, where Islam was only beginning to make any headway, the Chaghadayid khans retained real power and their lifestyle was characteristically that of the steppe nomad. This region was popularly called Mughalistan (‘Mongolia’), though to their western neighbours in Transoxiana, its Mongol inhabitants were known as Jata (allegedly ‘robbers’).6
Temür belonged to the ruling clan of the Turkicized Mongol tribe of the Barlas, which occupied the pasturelands around Shahr-i Sabz (Kish) in Transoxiana.7 In the upheavals which followed the murder of the leading warlord and khan-maker, Qazaghan, in 1358, he first collaborated with the Chaghadayid khan of Mughalistan, who invaded and briefly subdued Transoxiana in 1361–2 and then allied with Qazaghan’s grandson ?usayn in order to defeat and expel the invaders. It was in the course of a local conflict in eastern Persia, where the two men had taken temporary refuge, that Temür received the wounds which partially disabled him and gave rise to his sobriquet ‘the Lame’ (Persian, -i lang; Turkish, aksak). By 1370, when he broke with ?usayn and overthrew him, Temür had become the paramount figure in the western Chaghadayid polity.
During the next few decades, Temür welded the Chaghadayid nomads into a more effective war-machine by gradually transferring administrative offices and military command from the old tribal leaders to men chosen from his own personal following.8 To cement his authority over the military, he led them in successful expeditions against external enemies: the khans of Mughalistan; the successor dynasties that had arisen from the débris of the Ilkhanate; the Sultanate of Delhi, which had defied numerous Chaghadayid attacks in the past; and the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria. We have seen how he intervened, too, in the politics of the Blue Horde, where he promoted his client Toqtamish, and was drawn into attacks on the Golden Horde when Toqtamish turned against him. Temür’s policy was one of indirect rule: he replaced his vanquished enemies with princes – usually from the same dynasty – who would act as his dutiful subordinates, furnishing troops for his campaigns and guaranteeing the payment of tribute. The plunder and slaves from the cities sacked by Temür’s troops flowed back to adorn and enrich his ‘capital’ at Samarqand. At the time of his death in February 1405, he was on the threshold of an ambitious campaign to reduce China, the only constituent part of the former Mongol empire that he had not so far attacked.
Temür’s historians would embellish the role played by his thirteenth- century forebear, Qarachar of the Barlas tribe, one of Chaghadai’s leading noyans, in the history of the Chaghadayid khanate. And twenty years or more after Temür’s death, a bogus claim to common ancestry with Chinggis Khan himself would be advanced for him and his dynasty. His marriage to two Chaghadayid princesses entitled him to the style of küregen (‘son-in-law’) traditionally borne by those who married into Chinggis Khan’s dynasty. Yet Temür was not of Chinggisid descent. He ruled but did not reign. His title was simply ‘Great Amir’, and at no time did he assume the dignity of khan. Down until 1402, at least, he acted in the name of two successive shadow khans of Chaghadai’s ulus, on whose behalf he asserted that Persia belonged to the Chaghadayids by virtue of Chinggis Khan’s original distribution of territories.9 Both these shadow khans were members, in fact, of Ögödei’s line, and on occasions Temür claimed to be redressing the displacement of that branch of the Chinggisid dynasty by the Toluids in the 1250s (p. 119), a posture that may have been designed to enhance the universalist character of Temür’s rule.10
However Turkicized his ancestry, Temür was – and acted like – a Mongol noble. Though not untouched by sedentary culture, he was the nomadic leader of an army of nomads.11 A Muslim, he was accompanied on his campaigns by a portable mosque.12 His forces were known as ‘Chaghatays’, both to their enemies in Asia and to the Latin observers who brought back reports about the conqueror; they also appear in Western sources under the time-honoured guise of ‘Tartars’. The roots of Timurid military success which attracted the attention of these Europeans were those we have earlier met with in the campaigns of Chinggis Khan: tight discipline, skilful tactics, superb generalship and techniques of terror designed to obtain rapid submission and to deter future revanchisme. In this last respect, Temür may have consciously emulated Chinggis Khan. The question whether Temür’s bad faith towards some of those who accepted his guarantee of safety and yielded to his forces or the sadistic cruelty which made his name a byword renders him less worthy of admiration than his model is not one that can detain us here. What should be said is that he was undeniably inferior in administrative genius to his great precursor, so that when he died his empire splintered far more rapidly.
His operations in Mesopotamia and the Caucasus eventually brought Temür into conflict with the Ottoman Turks in Anatolia. Under Sultan Murad I (1359–89) and his son and successor, Bayezid I Yilderim (‘the Thunderbolt’), the Ottomans had made spectacular territorial gains at the expense of the Byzantine empire and other Christian powers of the Balkans and had even begun to threaten Latin Europe. In 1396, Bayezid had scored a decisive victory at Nicopolis, on the Danube, over a crusading army led by King Sigismund of Hungary and including French and Burgundian contingents. By the turn of the century, the Ottoman Sultan’s meteoric advance was a matter of grave concern to all the Christian powers in the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea regions, whether the Byzantine empire, the Latin kingdom of Cyprus, Venice and Genoa and their colonies, the autonomous Venetian and Genoese lords of the various Aegean islands or the Knights Hospitallers at Rhodes.
Temür’s first overtures towards the Ottomans were amicable in tone. As early as c.1395 he was endeavouring to draw Bayezid into his struggle with the recalcitrant Toqtamish by offering him all the Golden Horde’s territory west of the Dnieper.13 The Sultan, apprehensive regarding Temür’s activities on his eastern flank, did not respond. Temür required no pretext to attack the Ottomans, since their core territories had once formed part of the Ilkhanate, but their readiness to shelter fugitive princes whom he had displaced and Bayezid’s attack on Temür’s protégé, the ruler of Arzinjan (Erzincan), provided an additional incentive. Temür began in 1400 with the reduction of Sivas, which Bayezid had recently occupied but then turned his attention to the Mamluks, invading Syria and sacking Damascus in 1401. Only thereafter did he deal decisively with the Ottomans. On 28 July 1402, the Chaghatay army crushed Bayezid’s forces near Ankara, and the Sultan spent the last few months of his life as a captive accompanying Temür on his travels, while his sons fought over their inheritance. This did not amount to much, since one result of the Chaghatay victory was that the Ottomans’ Anatolian provinces largely passed back into the hands of the various Turkish dynasties which had ruled there prior to the conquests of Bayezid and his father; Temür further fuelled the brothers’ squabble by accepting pledges of allegiance from each of them in return for promises of his support.14 Temür’s last operation in Anatolia was an attack in December 1402 on the Latin Christian fortress of Smyrna (now Izmir), which was held by the Knights Hospitallers. The castellan defiantly rejected his demand for surrender, and the place was taken by storm. The sources suggest that the knights themselves escaped by sea, though we do not have to believe the allegation that they had made a pact with the conqueror; in any event, the Greek refugees left behind were slaughtered.15 Shortly afterwards an advance on Phocaea, where a great many ‘Franks’ had taken refuge, was bought off with the offer of tribute; representatives from one or two of the Latin-held islands in the Aegean also waited on the conqueror.16 Then Temür, who lacked the naval power necessary to proceed beyond the Straits and may have anticipated a dearth of pasturage for his forces in the Balkans,17 withdrew eastward on the first stages of his long return march to Samarqand.
Temür and the Christian powers
The Byzantine capital of Constantinople had been under siege by Ottoman forces since 1394, and the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus (1391–1425) had left in 1399 on a tour of Western Europe with the aim of securing desperately- needed assistance. The Castilian envoy Clavijo subsequently heard that the emperor’s nephew and regent, John VII, had reached an agreement with Bayezid, undertaking to surrender Constantinople and become his subordinate if the Ottoman Sultan was victorious over Temür.18 But John and the Genoese in Pera were simultaneously in diplomatic contact with the Central Asian conqueror.19 In the summer of 1401, Temür had sent to Constantinople two envoys, the Dominican Francis and a Muslim, to discourage them from making peace with Bayezid, on the grounds that Temür himself was about to attack the Sultan.20 John and the Genoese may have incited Temür against the Ottomans; they had certainly promised him the tribute hitherto yielded to the Sultan and acquiesced in his demand to bar the Straits in order to prevent Turkish forces in Europe crossing to Bayezid’s assistance.21 In August 1402, after his victory over Bayezid, Temür again sent word to Constantinople and Pera, warning the authorities there to keep their galleys in readiness so that the remnants of the defeated Ottoman army could not flee across the Straits.22 Further embassies from the conqueror were in Pera in January 1403 and in the late summer; we do not know whether they came with the same purpose.23
On two occasions – in May and in August 1402 – Venetian galleys complied by sailing to the Dardanelles.24 A Genoese annalist reports that in the wake of Temür’s first embassy the colonists at Pera hoisted his banner,25 and Temür’s court historians record the arrival of envoys from ‘the king [malik] of Istanbul’ (presumably John VII) offering submission and tribute in October 1402.26 Yet overall the response to the conqueror’s overtures was ambivalent. Certain Genoese and Venetian sea-captains, alert to the possibilities of profit, disregarded all these undertakings, first allowing reinforcements to reach Bayezid and later shipping fugitives from his shattered army to safety.27 The Venetians on the island of Samos, too, gave asylum to Turkish refugees.28
The Emperor Manuel had been cheered, it seems, by the news of Temür’s capture of Sivas.29 And he and his beleaguered subjects rejoiced when reports reached them of Bayezid’s downfall at Ankara: for one Greek writer, Temür’s victory signalled an intervention by the Virgin herself.30 But the Byzantine rulers were under no illusions. Early in 1403, Manuel, who had not yet arrived back in his capital, was urging that the Straits be blocked against Temür.31 Two years later, his ambassador assured newly-elected Roman Pope Innocent VII that the purpose of the conqueror and his Tartars was not merely to overwhelm Constantinople and the neighbouring region but to attack all Christian territory and destroy Christians everywhere. The pope in response granted Manuel what was in fact a highly unusual privilege for a Byzantine emperor, namely the right to select churchmen to preach the crusade against Temür and his armies in the Two Sicilies, Hungary, the Balkans and Romania.32 Even allowing for hyperbole that was designed to elicit the fullest Western assistance, Byzantine anxiety about Chaghatay operations, it seems, had not abated significantly.
Reports of Temür’s advance had been reaching the West since his first campaigns of devastation in the Caucasus. As early as 1394 the Venetian Senate was urging Manuel II to stand firm against the Ottomans, on the grounds that Bayezid was distracted by Temür’s activities.33 Then in 1395 the Chaghatay forces sacked Tana, on the Sea of Azov, and destroyed the Venetian outpost there; despite the friendly assurances given earlier to Tana’s envoys, the representative of Temür who escorted them back to the town proved to have been spying with a view to the impending attack.34 It has been suggested that the attack sprang simply from Temür’s policy of wrecking the economy of the Golden Horde khanate rather than out of any hostility specifically towards Europeans,35 though this would hardly have softened the blow. Among the Venetian possessions lost in the flames were the privileges conferred on the community by successive khans of the Golden Horde.36 In January 1401, the Venetian Senate, alarmed by fresh reports of Chaghatay operations in the Near East, instructed its representatives in Crete to send up-to-date information on his movements and authorized its consul in Alexandria to withdraw to Crete should Temür reach the city.37
Around this time the Mamluk Sultan, who was at Damascus seeing to the city’s defences, received an offer of naval assistance against Temür from the king of Cyprus and the Genoese at Famagusta, but such was the disarray within the Egyptian high command that the approach was ignored.38 Both Venetian and Catalan merchants suffered losses when the Chaghatay army sacked Damascus in the first months of that year.39 And in a highly garbled account, an English chronicler alleged that pilgrimage to the Holy Places had become more difficult as a result of the sack of Jerusalem.40 The Roman Pope Boniface IX drew attention to the fact that ‘the son of Perdition, Thamurlang, known as Themir Aksak, the oppressive conqueror of Asia’, was persecuting Christians and threatening the very survival of the faith in those parts.41 In 1403, Venetians in Syria reported fears of a fresh invasion by Temür.42
King Martin I of Aragon would have been kept abreast of events in the Near East by the Catalan mercantile communities in Damascus and Alexandria.43 Writing to the Avignonese Pope Benedict XIII in March 1403 after learning of the sack of Smyrna from its castellan, Iñigo d’Alfaro (who may have been Aragonese), he described the perpetrator as ‘the arrogant Belial called Tamerlan’.44 At this stage it is possible that Martin, who for some years had been concerned to provide aid for the Byzantine empire, was told by Greek envoys of the presence of one of Bayezid’s sons at Temür’s headquarters and was misled into thinking that Temür had made common cause with the Ottomans.45 When in June the king responded to a letter from Emperor Manuel announcing the joyful news of Bayezid’s overthrow, he expressed pleasure but referred, in measured tones, to the Sultan’s capture by ‘an infidel like himself ’.46 And although the letter which Martin wrote to Temür in April 1404 addressed him cordially, it pointedly attributed Bayezid’s defeat to the hand of God, who ‘does not permit unjust aggression long to flourish or ill-will against Christians who serve the Lord to be spread’ – a thinly-veiled warning, perhaps, that Temür’s own conduct risked bringing down on him the fate of his vanquished enemy.47
Whatever his usefulness in ridding Christendom of the Ottoman Sultan, Temür represented potentially an even greater menace, and his presence in Anatolia posed a serious dilemma for all the Christian powers.48 According to Clavijo, he reacted angrily to the news that the Greeks and Genoese had helped the fleeing Ottomans and thereafter conceived a deep antipathy towards Christians;49 a later writer blamed the sack of Smyrna on this assistance given to Temür’s enemies.50 The biographer of Jean Le Maingre, the celebrated Maréchal de Boucicaut and governor of Genoa for Charles VI of France, believed that Christendom had no reason to expect better treatment from Temür than it would have received from Bayezid, had he lived.51 In January 1403, Boucicaut deputed a group of ambassadors to negotiate with various powers in the East, including the Turks and Temür; they were to make alliances and wage war as they saw fit.52 As a result, within the next few months, John VII, Venice, Genoa and the Hospitallers of Rhodes entered into a treaty with Bayezid’s son Süleyman Çelebi, who controlled the Ottoman possessions on the European side of the Straits: one object of the agreement was to secure his assistance against Temür with ships and men if need arose. According to a contemporary report by the Venetian lord of Andros, Pietro Zeno, the Christian powers decided to send galleys to rendezvous with Süleyman should Temür display any intention of crossing into Europe.53
The apprehensions roused among the Latins by Temür’s operations, however, were by no means invariably mirrored in the rumours that circulated in Western circles or in the diplomatic activity which followed. We know nothing of the purpose of the embassy which Venice had sent to him late in 1399 or early in 1400; nor are we told the errand of the three emissaries from the Master of the Hospital who were with him by April 1403.54 But the sack of Damascus in 1401 and the massacre there of a group of Muslim divines, which was rumoured to have shocked the Islamic world, may well have helped to nurture a more favourable impression of the conqueror in the West.55 The chance fact, too, that some houses in the Christian quarter escaped the conflagration, as reported several years later by an Italian merchant who had been resident in Damascus, possibly reached Europe at an earlier date.56 And as the news of the Ottoman débâcle at Ankara reverberated far and wide, some reacted more positively than the Aragonese king. Sigismund of Hungary wrote in 1404 that divine clemency had used the Tartars to eliminate the Turkish savagery. We might discount this on the grounds that the principal aim of his letter was to denounce the enmity of Pope Boniface IX, which prevented him moving against the Turks.57 But already in the late summer of 1402, rumours were current that Temür was well disposed towards the Christian powers and sought perpetual peace with them; a report from Constantinople that Temür had offered to restore to Manuel II all the territories lost to Bayezid gave rise to considerable optimism in the West.58
Doubtless for this reason, other states, apart from those with vital interests in the Levant, were keen to make contact with the newcomer. At the very beginning of the century, the Castilian King Enrique III had sent out two ambassadors to ascertain the relative strength of Temür and of Bayezid, and after his triumph at Ankara, the victor sent them back to Castile with a Muslim envoy of his own, bearing gifts and a cordial letter. Enrique responded with a further embassy, which embarked near Cadiz in May 1403, was well received by the conqueror in Samarqand and began its return journey in November 1404, though without having received from Temür any reply to the Castilian king’s missive.59 Temür, who was said to have fallen gravely ill, was probably no longer interested in campaigning against the Ottoman Sultanate and in any case may simply have turned his attention to the campaign against China.60 The chief Castilian envoy, Ruy González de Clavijo, has left us an account of the mission, which is usually regarded as the most important single Western source on Temür and his empire.61
Of greater significance in the contemporary diplomatic context than the Castilian embassy, however, were the peregrinations of the Dominican John, archbishop of Sul?aniyya. In 1398/9 John, accompanied by his fellow Dominican, Francis, had headed an embassy from Temür to Charles VI of France and had also visited Henry IV of England, taking letters from both monarchs back to the conqueror. In the wake of Ankara, John was despatched to France and Italy a second time, with letters from Temür and his son Miran Shah (whose appanage included the archbishop’s own seat, Sul?aniyya) and spent several years travelling around Western capitals. During this time he wrote two works: a short account of Temür (1403), of which a partial Latin translation was later incorporated in the Chronographia regum Francorum, and a longer description of the world, entitled Libellus de notitia orbis (1404). He left the courts of France, England and Aragon (1404), as well as the headquarters of the Teutonic Order in Prussia (1407), with letters for Temür; but in 1412 he had still not returned to the Near East.62 By this juncture, Temür had in any case been dead for seven years, and Miran Shah had fallen in battle (1408) with the Qara Qoyunlu Türkmens, who were busy appropriating the westernmost regions of the Timurid empire.
The roots of misperception
The mission of John of Sul?aniyya appears to have been designed to counter hostile perceptions of Temür in the West. Alongside the Persian original of Temür’s letter to Charles VI there has survived a contemporary Latin translation drafted, in all probability, by John; it is followed by the Latin version of a letter to the Frankish kings and princes in general from Miran Shah, of which the original is no longer extant. Significantly, whereas the Persian text of Temür’s letter mentions only the desirability of commercial relations between Temür’s dominions and the Franks (as does Miran Shah’s letter), the Latin rendering goes beyond this and speaks of a common hostility to Bayezid.63 The reply of Henry IV of England suggests that the translation of Temür’s letter to him (assuming it was identical with that to Charles VI) had been similarly doctored.64 Like the Westerners who had accompanied Ilkhanid embassies in an earlier generation (p. 211), John of Sul?aniyya embellished the messages entrusted to him in order to elicit a warmer response.
In some degree, of course, John’s élan fed on the elimination of Bayezid, which had brought a reprieve for the Byzantines and other Christians in the Balkans. He observed, for instance, that the Albanians hoped now to be delivered from the Ottoman yoke by the Serbian prince Stefan Lazarevich.65 But when it came to Temür’s more direct impact on Christians, John may have been somewhat disingenuous. He was perfectly well aware that Christians were to be numbered among the victims of Temür’s cruelty alongside Muslims.66 Yet he alleged that at Sivas the conqueror had spared the Greeks among the population when the rest were buried alive.67 He claimed too that, as a result of conversations with himself and his fellow Dominican Francis, Temür’s animosity towards Christians had been mitigated: now far more tolerant, he was especially well disposed towards Latins.68 The archbishop further professed to believe that Temür had attacked Bayezid out of affection for the Christians who were allied with him.69 But John was sufficiently realistic, of course, when taking charge of the English king’s reply, to delete a sentence that warmly urged Temür to accept baptism.70 He was keener, perhaps, to trumpet the virtues of the conqueror’s son Miran Shah. Miran Shah is described as a wholehearted Christian and as much loved by Latin Christians in the east71 – an assertion readily taken up by the Western rulers whose courts the archbishop visited.72 Clavijo, who met the prince, says nothing whatever of any Christian leanings, merely describing the insane conduct for which Temür eventually removed him from the governorship of Tabriz. Since this included the destruction of mosques,73 it conceivably promoted the idea that Temür was pro-Christian. John’s propaganda was ably seconded by others with whom he made contact during his tour of Western Europe or whom he may have influenced indirectly. The compiler of the Chronographia regum Francorum, in reproducing the archbishop’s memoir on Temür, omits the statement that Christians too suffered from the conqueror’s savagery.74 And Dietrich von Nyem, who had become a close friend of John, claimed that Smyrna would have escaped destruction had the Hospitaller castellan only hoisted Temür’s standard on the walls, as advised by ‘a Christian bishop’ (probably Francis, who had been briefly bishop of Nakhchivan).75 Wild rumours that Temür’s forces had taken Jerusalem and that he and his troops had converted to Christianity reached England and found their way into the historical works of Thomas Walsingham (d. c.1422).76 For the Genoese annalist Giorgio Stella, writing around 1405, Temür was neither a Muslim nor a ‘Tartar’.77
One piece of information which circulated as a result of John’s journeyings in Latin Europe was that Temür and his son had released the Christian slaves they found in the defeated Ottoman army and had sent them in the direction of Constantinople.78 In this context, at least, Dietrich von Nyem sounded a more sober note, giving the Chaghatay forces no credit and instead ascribing the safe arrival of these Christian slaves solely to the intervention of Latin (i.e. probably Genoese) ships from Pera.79 Some confusion may have arisen from the fact that Temür’s embassy to the Castilian king was accompanied by two high-born Christian women who were believed to have been slaves in Bayezid’s household at the time of his defeat.80 Around this time, too, some of the Frankish soldiers taken at Nicopolis in 1396 made their way home to Europe. The chronicle of S. Denis, specifying ‘the Great Count of Hungary’ and an illegitimate son of the late count of Savoy, claims that Temür had released both of them from captivity at Bursa.81 The second can be identified as Humbert, count of Romont (son of Amadeus VII), who arrived back in Chambéry in February 1404.82 The first has been identified as the Palatine Eustache of Illsua, though the evidence suggests that he died in Ottoman captivity.83 In any case, no other source confirms that the prisoners owed their deliverance to the Chaghatay forces. It is more likely, on chronological grounds, that they were released, rather, by Süleyman when he occupied Bursa, as part of his attempt to reach an accommodation with the Christian powers; his treaty with them in 1403 certainly provided for the release of Greek and Italian prisoners.84 Whatever the truth and whoever the ‘Great Count’, the two prisoners were more fortunate than lower-ranking soldiers captured at Nicopolis. Far from gaining his freedom after Ankara, the Bavarian Johann Schildtberger, who later wrote an account of his adventures, simply exchanged one master for another.85 A similar fate may have befallen the Hungarian knight Nicolaus Gerecz.86
We have encountered these themes – especial favour towards Christians, the release of Christian slaves found in the army of a defeated Muslim enemy – before, in various contexts: the first rumours of Mongol conquests that reached Damietta in 1221; the efforts of the Ilkhans Hülegü and Abaqa to secure Latin assistance against the Mamluks; and especially the stories that rapidly grew up around Ghazan’s spectacular Syrian campaign of 1299–1300, when Jerusalem had passed, if only for a few months, into Mongol hands. The enthusiastic reception which Temür’s operations met with in the West should be viewed through a similar lens. No more than his Mongol precursors was he actuated by a sense of equal status in dealing with European powers. The nineteenth-century editor of his letter to Charles VI commented on the superior, even careless, tone in which the French king was addressed.87 And in fact Clavijo several times heard Temür refer to Enrique III of Castile, whom he allegedly saw as the greatest of Western potentates, as his ‘son’ – just as his model Chinggis Khan had addressed the Khwarazmshah on the eve of their conflict (see p. 48).88
How should we assess Temür’s approach to religious matters? A second-generation Muslim at the very least, he justified his conquests, in part, by the duty to safeguard and expand Islam. A Western author depicts him as taking pride in the capture of Smyrna, which had defied successive Muslim Ottoman Sultans, and there is nothing inherently implausible in this.89 Temür relied in some degree on Muslim spiritual advisers, frequented the company of Muslim theologians and enjoyed taking part in religious debate.90 He also set great store, apparently, by the support and guidance of sufis and dervishes – Muslim holy men – and sought their support prior to particular campaigns.91 The tale of his meeting with Khwaja ?Ali, head of the community at Ardabil and a successor of Shaykh ?afi al-Din (the ancestor of the Safawid dynasty, which would rule over Persia from c.1500), is probably apocryphal, but Clavijo heard that the conqueror had lodged with the leading dervish of a village near Erzurum.92 We might expect to find this preoccupation with religious guidance and legitimation in any ambitious Muslim prince. Yet conversely there was nothing intrinsically Islamic about such attachments. Pagan Mongol rulers had patronized saints from different religious communities, including Muslims. No doubt Temür’s favour towards John of Sul?aniyya and his fellow Dominican Francis sprang from the same roots. The sanction of holy men was an essential element in a steppe leader’s claim to rule.93 That Temür had by no means abandoned the more traditional beliefs of the steppe peoples is clear from his fascination with magic.94 He claimed in addition to possess supernatural powers, to experience visions and to have mounted to Heaven on a ladder under the guidance of an angel.95
Temür’s attitude towards Christianity is somewhat difficult to fathom. His early correspondence with Bayezid in 1395 had praised the Ottoman Sultan as a holy warrior against the infidel and had alluded to the presence of infidels (i.e. Christian Poles and Lithuanians) among the confederates of Temür’s own enemy Toqtamish.96 In a more recent letter, on the eve of his attack on Bayezid, he again mentioned with approval the Sultan’s conflicts with the Franks and expressed reluctance to embark on a campaign in Anatolia which could only hearten Islam’s enemies, and he subsequently issued a similar disclaimer when addressing Ottoman envoys.97 All this, of course, could have amounted to little more than subterfuge. Temür’s court histories and his own record alike suggest that he was content to leave Christian rulers in place, subject to the provision of tribute (generally interpreted as the Islamic poll-tax on unbelievers, the jizya) – rather as his Ottoman antagonist was accustomed to do. Thus Temür was perfectly willing to accept the submission and tribute of the Frankish island of Saqiz (Chios) at the end of 1402.98 It is true that after his defeat in 1394, the Georgian King Bagrat V had been obliged not only to pay an annual tribute but also to become a Muslim. But although the king subsequently apostatized and Georgia thereby incurred further attacks, this was probably an isolated case. The same stipulation to abjure the Christian faith does not appear to have been imposed on his son and successor, Giorgi VII.99 Nor was the Emperor of Trebizond, in becoming tributary to Temür, additionally required to become a Muslim.100 Given that the only Christian power on the Asiatic mainland which Temür eliminated was the tiny Hospitaller enclave at Smyrna, his hostility towards Christianity begins to seem less striking. But against this it could be argued that Smyrna was the sole Christian-ruled bastion which the conqueror’s armies were really in a position to destroy prior to his withdrawal from Anatolia.
Where Christians were not the sovereign authority, moreover, they undoubtedly fared badly. This was not just an incidental result of the havoc wrought by Temür’s troops, to which Armenian writers bear eloquent witness.101 It was part of a deliberate policy. At Tana, Persian sources indicate that the Muslim population was separated from the infidels and was spared; the rest were massacred and their goods pillaged.102 In the towns of Anatolia, similarly, the Christians were enslaved while the Muslims merely paid a ransom.103 Clavijo heard that Temür had ordered the demolition of Christian churches in Greater Armenia.104 The policy does not appear to have been implemented universally: the Armenian lord of Maku and his subjects (including a Dominican convent) were left unharmed,105 and Clavijo found ‘a fine church’ still standing at Erzurum.106 Yet overall there can be little doubt that the Chaghatay campaigns had gravely disrupted the fortunes of the Eastern churches and had hamstrung the endeavours of Latin missionaries (see Chapter 11). As late as 1406, King Martin was responding to an appeal for financial assistance from the monastic community of St Catherine on Mount Sinai, who had been impoverished thanks to Chaghatay depredations.107 Apart from an extremely terse allusion in the Libellus,108 however, John fails to notice the deleterious effects of Temür’s campaigns on Eastern Christians.
It is, in fact, difficult to resist the impression that this solitary – though extremely active and well travelled – churchman was largely responsible for the persistent and widespread view of Temür not merely as a potential ally but also as a potential convert to Christianity. He may, of course, have genuinely believed this, but we should be prepared to identify other motives behind his propaganda. One motive is not far to seek. In the Libellus the archbishop outlines an Armenian prophecy that had come to his attention, concerning an oriental ruler who would attack the Muslims and join forces with the victorious Franks advancing from the west.109 Suitably reworked to incorporate unmistakable allusions to Temür (‘a man named Iron’, from ‘Media’), this was, it seems, an older prophecy, attributed to the fourth- century St Nerses, which Rubruck had heard as he passed through Armenia in 1255;110 Armenian manuscript colophons testify to its resilience during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.111 From the Libellus it is clear that John accepted the prophecy as genuine and as already in part fulfilled. He may have hoped to promote a crusade against Muslim princes whose strength had been profoundly sapped by Temür’s campaigns. All this has to be seen in the light of his overriding concern, namely to revive the faltering Latin mission in the Near East, which he evidently felt had been neglected by the Roman popes.112
For all the sanguine expectations regarding Temür’s motives and ambitions, diplomatic contact with him bore no fruit. He was the last ‘Tartar’ potentate whose operations fostered the illusion that he might become an ally against the major powers of the Islamic Near East or – better still – convert to the Christian faith. When such hopes recurred later in the fifteenth century, they focused on Muslim princes who were not Mongols, such as Uzun ?asan (d. 1478), the leader of the Aq Qoyunlu Türkmens and ruler of Mesopotamia and western Persia. Uzun ?asan’s achievements included the destruction of the rival Türkmen confederation of the Qara Qoyunlu (1467) and – ironically – the overthrow of the Timurid sovereign of Khurasan and Transoxiana (1469), who had briefly appeared to be on the point of recreating Temür’s empire. But Uzun ?asan’s humiliation by the Ottomans at Bashkent in 1473 removed any chance he had of providing effective assistance to the Western powers.113 In the sixteenth century European publicists continued to flirt with the idea that particular Muslim rulers might act as a promising counterweight to Ottoman power but with equally disappointing results.114
Clavijo and John of Sul?aniyya both testify to their gracious treatment at Temür’s hands. In the Near East, the blow he dealt the Ottoman Turks appeared to offer the ailing Byzantine empire a reprieve for a further fifty years;115 in the Pontic steppe, his assault on Toqtamish effectively delivered the coup de grâce to the Golden Horde. Such exploits have helped to reinforce the notion that Temür was a potential ally of the Catholic world. It is true that this Muslim ruler does not, at first sight, appear an orthodox exponent of the Islamic jihad. His credentials as a holy warrior rested on nothing more than warfare with minor Hindu chieftains, with the Christians of Georgia and with the Knights Hospitallers. The great majority of his campaigns were directed, in fact, against fellow Muslims, who were called upon, moreover, to endure his most appalling acts of barbarity, leading John of Sul?aniyya to opine, in all seriousness, that Temür had destroyed three-quarters of the world’s Muslim population.116 All this served to obscure the fact that Temür’s interest in correspondence with rulers in Latin Europe extended only as far as they might prove valuable trading partners – and as their hostility towards the Ottomans and the Mamluks made them useful adjuncts to his efforts to extend his dominions. In this latter respect, at least, he was a true successor of the Ilkhans.
Notes
1I have transliterated the Turco-Mongol form of this name (Tu. temür, ‘iron’), in preference to the Persian and Arabic form, Timur, usually employed in secondary literature.
2Beatrice Forbes Manz, ‘Tamerlane and the symbolism of sovereignty’, Iranian Studies 21:1–2 (1988), pp. 105–22 (here pp. 113–14, n.33).
3Eadem, ‘Mongol history rewritten and relived’, Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée 89–90 (1999), pp. 129–49 (esp. pp. 137–41).
4David Morgan, ‘The empire of Tamerlane: an unsuccessful re-run of the Mongol state?’, in J. R. Maddicott and D. M. Palliser, eds., The Medieval State. Essays Presented to James Campbell (London, 2000), pp. 233–41; cf. Beatrice Forbes Manz, ‘The empire of Tamerlane as an adaptation of the Mongol empire: an answer to David Morgan, “The empire of Tamerlane: an unsuccessful re-run of the Mongol state?”?’, in May, Mongols and Post-Mongol Asia, pp. 281–91.
5For the origins of this designation, see Dai Matsui, ‘Dumdadu Mong?ol Ulus “The Middle Mongolian Empire”?’, in Rybatzki et al., Early Mongols, pp. 111–19.
6See Peter Jackson, ‘Chaghatayid dynasty’, Enc.Ir.; also idem, Mongols and the Islamic World, p. 199.
7The best survey of Temür’s rise is Beatrice Forbes Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane (Cambridge, 1989). For brief accounts, see eadem, ‘Timur Lang’, Enc.Isl.2; H.R. Roemer, ‘Timur in Iran’, in CHI, VI, pp. 43–6.
8Beatrice Forbes Manz, ‘The ulus Chaghatay before and after Temür’s rise to power: the transformation from tribal confederation to army of conquest’, CAJ 27 (1983), pp. 79–100.
9John E. Woods, ‘Timur’s genealogy’, in Michael M. Mazzaoui and Vera B. Moreen, eds., Intellectual Studies on Islam: Essays Written in Honor of Martin B. Dickson (Salt Lake City, UT, 1990), pp. 85–125. See further Jackson, Mongols and the Islamic World, pp. 384–7.
10Manz, ‘Tamerlane and the symbolism’, pp. 112–13. Morgan, ‘Empire of Tamerlane’, p. 237.
11See, e.g., Manz, Rise and Rule of Tamerlane, pp.37, 101–2; and for a different perspective, Roemer, ‘Timur in Iran’, p. 90. Beatrice Forbes Manz, ‘Tamerlane’s career and its uses’, JWH 13:1 (2002), pp. 1–25 (here pp. 2–5), discusses the contradictions in Temür’s career.
12Clavijo, p. 196 (tr. Le Strange, p. 272).
13Zeki Velidi Togan, ‘Timur’s Osteuropapolitik’, ZDMG 108 = n.F., 33 (1958), pp. 279–98. Roemer, ‘Timur in Iran’, p. 72.
14The standard work on the Anatolian expedition is M. M. Alexandrescu-Dersca, La campagne de Timur en Anatolie (1402) (Bucharest, 1942, repr. London, 1977). See further Donald M. Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261–1453, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 313–16.
15Anthony Luttrell, ‘The Hospitallers of Rhodes confront the Turks, 1306–1421’, in Philip F. Gallagher, ed., Christians, Jews and Other Worlds: Patterns of Conflict and Accommodation (Lanham, MD, 1988), pp. 80–116 (here p. 100), and repr. in Luttrell, The Hospitallers of Rhodes and Their Mediterranean World (Aldershot, 1992). Jürgen Sarnowsky, ‘Die Johanniter und Smyrna 1344–1402 (Teil 1)’, Römische Quartalschrift 86 (1991), pp. 215–51 (here pp. 232–3).
16On Phocaea, see Alexandrescu-Dersca, La campagne, p.90.
17Anthony Luttrell, ‘The crisis in the Bosphorus following the battle near Ankara in 1402’, in Rosario Villari, ed., Controllo degli stretti e insediamenti militari nel Mediterraneo (Rome and Bari, 2002), pp. 155–66 (here pp. 159–60).
18Clavijo, pp. 27–8 (tr. Le Strange, p. 52).
19For a brief discussion of Genoese attitudes, see Michel Balard, La Romanie génoise, 2 vols with continuous pagination (Genova, 1978 = ASL, n.s., 18:1–2), I, pp. 101–2.
20Venetian report of 10 Sept. 1401, in Iorga, ‘Notes’, p. 245, and Dennis, ‘Three reports’, p. 245 (tr. p. 253). Byzantine relations with Temür are discussed in John W. Barker, Manuel II Palaeologus 1391–1425. A Study in Late Byzantine Statesmanship (New Brunswick, NJ, 1969), pp. 504–8 (appendix XVIII).
21Temür to [John VII] the regent of Constantinople, 15 May 1402, in Alexandrescu- Dersca, La campagne, pp.123–4. Letter of Gerardo Sagredo, 12 Oct. 1402, ibid., p. 131. Clavijo, p. 93 (tr. Le Strange, p. 135). Nicol, Last Centuries of Byzantium, pp.314–15.
22Letter of Marco Grimani, Aug. 1402, in Alexandrescu-Dersca, La campagne, p.137.
23Iorga, ‘Notes’, pp. 81, 83, 84.
24Hippolyte Noiret, ed., Documents inédits pour servir à l’histoire de la domination vénitienne en Crète de 1380 à 1485 (Paris, 1892), pp. 129–30. Letter of Giovanni Cornaro, 4 Sept. 1402, in Alexandrescu-Dersca, La campagne, pp.125–6.
25Giorgio Stella, ‘Annales Genuenses’ (c.1405), RIS2, XVII:2, p. 260. Schmieder, Europa, p.185, n.588, relegates this to the realm of fantasy.
26Ni?am-i Shami, ?afar-nama (1404), ed. Felix Tauer, Histoire des conquêtes de Tamerlan, 2 vols, Monografie Archivu Orientálního 5 (Prague, 1937–56), I, p. 264; fuller version, suggesting a date in or soon after Rabi? I 805 H./Oct. 1402, in Sharaf al-Din ?Ali Yazdi, ?afar-nama (1424–5), ed. Mu?ammad ?Abbasi, 2 vols (Tehran, 1336 solar/1957), II, p. 331/facsimile edn by A. Urunbaev (Tashkent, 1972), p. 858, and tr. F. Pétis de la Croix, Histoire de Timur-Bec, connu sous le nom du Grand Tamerlan, 4 vols (Paris, 1722), IV, pp. 37, 38–9.
27Clavijo, p. 94 (tr. Le Strange, p. 136). Letter of Gerardo Sagredo, in Alexandrescu- Dersca, La campagne, pp.131–2; some of the Turks were robbed and murdered by the Italians (ibid., pp. 83–4). Luttrell, ‘Crisis’, p. 158.
28Freddy Thiriet, ed., Duca di Candia. Ducali e lettere ricevute (1358–1360; 1401–1405) (Venice, 1978), pp. 36–7 (no. 40). DAV, II, p. 95 (no. 1017, 25 March 1403). For Italian tergiversations, see Barker, Manuel II, pp.217–18 and nn.24–25.
29Donald M. Nicol, ‘A Byzantine emperor in England: Manuel II’s visit to London in 1400–1401’, University of Birmingham Historical Journal 12 (1970), pp. 204–25 (here pp. 219–21).
30P. Gautier, ‘Un récit inédit du siège de Constantinople par les Turcs (1394–1402)’, REB 23 (1965), pp. 100–17 (here pp. 108 ff., tr. pp. 109 ff.). For the complexity of the Byzantine reaction, see Klaus-Peter Matschke, Die Schlacht bei Ankara und das Schicksal von Byzanz. Studien zur spätbyzantinischen Geschichte zwischen 1402 und 1422 (Weimar, 1981), pp. 9–14; N. Nicoloudis, ‘Byzantine historians on the wars of Timur (Tamerlane) in Central Asia and the Middle East’, Journal of Oriental and African Studies 8 (Athens, 1996), pp. 83–94 (here pp. 83–4).
31Iorga, ‘Notes’, p. 264.
32CICO, XIII:1, pp. 278–82 (no. 139).
33MHSM, IV, p. 332; abstract in RDSV, I, p. 203 (no. 860).
34Andrea de Redusiis de Quero, ‘Chronicon Tarvisinum’ (down to 1428), RIS, XIX, cols. 802–4. More generally, W. Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant au moyen-âge, tr. Furcy Raynaud, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1885–6), II, pp. 374–6; Adam Knobler, Mythology and Diplomacy in the Age of Exploration (Leiden, 2017), pp. 23–4.
35See Benjamin Z. Kedar, Merchants in Crisis. Genoese and Venetian Men of Affairs and the Fourteenth-Century Depression (New Haven, CT, and London, 1976), p. 130, for references.
36RDSV, I, p. 217 (no. 927, 20 Feb. 1397).
37Noiret, p. 114. For Venetian reactions to rumours about Temür, see Eliyahu Ashtor, Levant Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ, 1983), pp. 112–13.
38Ibn Taghribirdi (d. 1470), al-Nujum al-zahira fi muluk Mi?r wa l-Qahira, 16 vols so far (1348 H./1929–1392 H./1972), XII, p. 234; tr. William Popper, History of Egypt 1382–1469 A.D., 8 vols, University of California Publications in Semitic Philology 13, 14, 17–19, 22–4 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1954–63), II, pp. 43–4. His source, al-Maqrizi (d. 1442), al-Suluk li-ma?rifat duwal al-muluk, ed. Mu??afa al-Ziyada and Sa?id al-Fat? ?Ashur, 4 vols in 10 (Cairo, 1934–72), III:3, p. 1039, omits to say that the offer was ignored.
39Ashtor, Levant Trade, p.113. Schmieder, Europa, pp.182–3.
40Adam of Usk, Polychronicon, ed. C. Given-Wilson, The Chronicle of Adam Usk 1377–1421 (Oxford, 1997), p. 130 (tr. p. 131).
41CICO, XIII:1, pp. 209–10 (no. 103, 7 Jan. 1401) = BBTS, V, pp. 331–3 = Sulkowska-Kuras and Kuras, Bullarium Poloniae, III, p. 121 (no. 724).
42Ashtor, Levant Trade, p.215.
43Adam Knobler, ‘The rise of Timur and Western diplomatic response, 1390–1405’, JRAS, 3rd series, 5 (1995), pp. 341–9 (here p. 345); idem, Mythology and Diplomacy, p. 26.
44Antoni Rubió y Lluch, ed., Diplomatari de l’Orient Català (1301–1409) (Barcelona, 1947), p. 695 (no. 672, 5 March 1403). For d’Alfaro, see J. Delaville le Roulx, Les Hospitaliers à Rhodes jusqu’à la mort de Philibert de Naillac (1310–1421) (Paris, 1913, repr. London, 1974), pp. 284–5.
45C. Marinesco, ‘Du nouveau sur les relations de Manuel II Paléologue (1391–1425) avec l’Espagne’, in Atti dello VIII Congresso internazionale di studi Bizantini, Palermo 3–10 aprile 1951, I (Rome, 1953), pp. 420–36 (here pp. 430–1).
46Rubió y Lluch, Diplomatari, p.699 (no. 677).
47Ibid., pp. 700–1 (no. 679). Schmieder, Europa, p.182.
48Luttrell, ‘Crisis’, pp. 161–4: at pp. 162–3, likens the choice to that facing the Franks of Syria in 1260.
49Clavijo, p. 94 (tr. Le Strange, p. 136).
50Andrea de Redusiis, ‘Chronicon Tarvisinum’, col. 801.
51Le livre des fais du bon messire Jehan le Maingre, dit Bouciquaut (1405/9), i, 37, ed. Denis Lalande (Geneva, 1985), p. 159.
52L. de Mas Latrie, ed., ‘Commerce et expéditions militaires de la France et de Venise au moyen-âge’, Mélanges Historiques. Choix de documents, III (Paris, 1880), pp. 172–7 (no. 21).
53George T. Dennis, ‘The Byzantine – Turkish treaty of 1403’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 33 (1967), pp. 72–88 (here pp. 78, §5, and 83, §3; abridged tr. pp. 81, 86), repr. in his Byzantium and the Franks. The treaty is also printed in Mas Latrie, ‘Commerce’, pp. 178–82 (no. 22), and Zeno’s report in Iorga, ‘Notes’, p. 259. Luttrell, ‘Crisis’, p. 162. See generally Elizabeth A. Zachariadou, ‘Süleyman Çelebi in Rumeli and the Ottoman chronicles’, Der Islam 60 (1983), pp. 268–96.
54Iorga, ‘Notes’, pp. 228, 239.
55See Dietrich von Nyem, ii, 30, p. 173.
56Beltramo da Mignanelli, ‘Vita Tamerlani’ (1416), in Ét. Baluze, ed., Miscellanea novo ordine digesta et non paucis ineditis monumentis opportunisque animadversionibus aucta, new edn by J. D. Mansi, IV (Lucca, 1764), p. 138; partial tr. Walter J. Fischel, ‘A new Latin source on Tamerlane’s conquest of Damascus (1400/1401)’, Oriens 9 (1956), pp. 201–32 (here p. 229). For the author, see Angelo Michele Piemontese, ‘Beltramo Mignanelli senese biografo di Tamerlano’, in Michele Bernardini, ed., La civiltà timuride come fenomeno internazionale, 2 vols (Rome, 1996 = Oriente Moderno 76 [n.s., 15]:2), I, pp. 213–26.
57Bourgeois du Chastenet, Nouvelle histoire du Concile de Constance (Paris, 1718), p. 499: this is the only edition that supplies the full text and the date (12 June 1404).
58Letter of Pasqualino Veniero, in Alexandrescu-Dersca, La campagne, p.135. Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys contenant le règne de Charles VI, de 1380 à 1422, xxiii, 10, ed. Louis François Bellaguet, 6 vols (Paris, 1839–52), III, p. 50.
59Clavijo, pp. 202–5 (tr. Le Strange, pp. 281–5); see ibid., pp. 4–6 (tr. Le Strange, pp. 24–6), for their departure from Spain.
60Knobler, ‘Rise of Timur’, p. 347.
61For doubts whether Clavijo was the author, see Lucien Kehren, ‘Témoignages d’Européens sur Tamerlan revisités Clavijo et Schiltberger’, in Bernardini, Civiltà timuride, I, pp. 325–39 (here pp. 325–30).
62For John’s career, see Anthony Luttrell, ‘Timur’s Dominican envoy’, in Colin Heywood and Colin Imber, eds., Studies in Ottoman History in Honour of Professor V.L. Ménage (Istanbul, 1994), pp. 209–29; ibid., pp. 213–15, for Francis. For John’s propaganda on Temür’s behalf, see also Schmieder, Europa, pp.181–2. He was not, as formerly believed, the Englishman John Greenlaw or John ‘de Galonifontibus’ (i.e. Gaillefontaine in Normandy): Luttrell, ‘Timur’s Dominican envoy’, p. 210, n.3; R. Loenertz, O. P., ‘Evêques dominicains des Deux Arménies’, AFP 10 (1940), pp. 258–81 (here pp. 258–68).
63Texts in Baron Silvestre de Sacy, ‘Mémoire sur une correspondance inédite de Tamerlan avec Charles VI’, MAIBL 6 (1822), pp. 470–523 (pp. 473–4, Persian text; pp. 478–9, Latin trans.; pp. 479–80, Miran Shah’s letter; pp. 521–2, Charles VI’s reply to Temür).
64Sir Henry Ellis, ed., Original Letters Illustrative of English History, 3rd series, I (London, 1846), p. 57 (no. 25): intelleximus etiam ex dictarum continentia litterarum qualiter ad partes Thurciae noviter accedentes.
65John of Sul?aniyya, Libellus de notitia orbis, extracts ed. Anton Kern, ‘Der “Libellus de notitia orbis” Iohannes’ III. (de Galonifontibus?) O. P. Erzbischofs von Sulthanyeh’, AFP 8 (1938), pp. 82–123 (here p. 102). See also Chronographia regum Francorum, ed. H. Moranvillé, 3 vols (Paris, 1891–7), III, pp. 238–9.
66H. Moranvillé, ‘Mémoire sur Tamerlan et sa cour par un Dominicain, en 1403’, BEC 55 (1894), pp. 441–64 (here p. 453).
67Ibid., p. 454. Chronographia regum Francorum, III, p. 220.
68Moranvillé, ‘Mémoire’, p. 462. Chronographia regum Francorum, III, p. 216.
69John of Sul?aniyya, Libellus, p. 104.
70Henry IV to Temür, in Ellis, Original Letters, p. 57, note f.
71Moranvillé, ‘Mémoire’, pp. 445–6: comme tout christien. Cf. Chronographia regum Francorum, III, p. 213: totus Christianus.
72Henry IV to Miran Shah, Feb. [1406], in F. C. Hingeston, ed., Royal and Historical Letters During the Reign of Henry the Fourth, RS, 2 vols (London, 1860–4), I, pp. 425–6 (no. 150). Martin I to Miran Shah, 1 April 1404, in Rubió y Lluch, Diplomatari, p. 701 (no. 680). Conrad von Jungingen, Master of the Teutonic Knights, to Miran Shah, 20 Jan. 1407, in Kurt Forstreuter, ‘Der Deutsche Orden und Südosteuropa’, Kyrios. Vierteljahresschrift für Kirchen- und Geistesgeschichte Osteuropas 1 (1936), pp. 245–72 (here p. 269).
73Clavijo, pp. 114–15 (tr. Le Strange, pp. 162–3). For his conduct, see Beatrice Forbes Manz, ‘Miranshah b. Timur’, Enc.Isl.2.
74Chronographia regum Francorum, III, p. 219. Cf. John of Sul?aniyya, as cited in n.66 above; for his other statements regarding Temür’s cruelty (Moranvillé, ‘Mémoire’, pp. 451, 456), see Chronographia, III, pp. 217, 221–3.
75Dietrich von Nyem, ii, 29, pp. 172–3; Luttrell, ‘Timur’s Dominican envoy’, p. 215. See also Dietrich von Nyem, iii, 42, p. 306, for Tëmur’s friendship with quendam episcopum catholicum, qui secum per XII annos moram traxit. This must be John of Sul?aniyya: Loenertz, ‘Evêques’, p. 264; Schmieder, Europa, p. 187, n.598; Luttrell, ‘Timur’s Dominican envoy’, p. 212.
76Knobler, ‘Rise of Timur’, p. 344, and Mythology and Diplomacy, p. 25; in addition to the works there cited, see Walsingham’s Ypodigma Neustriae, ed. H. T. Riley, RS (London, 1876), p. 392. See also Knobler, ‘Pseudo-conversions and patchwork pedigrees: the Christianization of Muslim princes and the diplomacy of Holy War’, JWH 7:2 (1996), pp. 181–97 (here p. 191).
77Giorgio Stella, ‘Annales Genuenses’, p. 260.
78Chronographia regum Francorum, III, p. 205 (ascribing the information to John). Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, xxiii, 10, ed. Bellaguet, III, p. 46. Conrad von Jungingen to Temür and to Miran Shah, 20 Jan. 1407, in Forstreuter, p. 270. Alexandrescu-Dersca, La campagne, p. 82, seems to accept the release of the Christian captives as genuine but cites no source. Schmieder, Europa, p. 186.
79Dietrich von Nyem, ii, 29, pp. 171–2. Cf. also Iorga, ‘Notes’, p. 96.
80Clavijo, p. 4 (tr. Le Strange, p. 25); our only source for the identity of the two women is the supplementary comments of the late sixteenth-century writer Gonzálo Argote de Molina, ibid., p. 255 (tr. Le Strange, p. 340, n.5).
81Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, xxiii, 10, ed. Bellaguet, III, p. 48.
82Henri-Joseph Costa de Beauregard, Souvenirs du règne d’Amédée VIII premier duc de Savoie (Chambéry, 1859), pp. 24–6. Ferdinando Gabotto, Gli ultimi principi d’Acaia e la politica subalpina dal 1383 al 1407 (Turin, 1898), pp. 350–1, 501. I owe these references to Dr Anthony Luttrell.
83Elemér Mályusz, Kaiser Sigismund in Ungarn 1387–1437, tr. Anikó Szmodits (Budapest, 1990), p. 134. For Eustache as a captive at Bursa in 1397, see J. Delaville le Roulx, La France en Orient au XIVe siècle. Expéditions du Maréchal Boucicaut, 2 vols (Paris, 1886), II, pp. 47–8; the participation of ‘the Great Count of Hungary’ at Nicopolis is mentioned in Livre des fais, i, 25, pp. 107, 110. Eustache called himself magnus comes de [H]ungaria: Elemér Mályusz, Iván Borsa et al., eds., Zsigmondkori oklevéltár, 12 vols so far (Budapest, 1951–present), I, no. 5793, and II, no. 71. His death was known in Hungary by 18 July 1405: MOL, DL 101957 (abstract in Mályusz, Borsa et al., II, no. 4056).
84Dennis, ‘Byzantine–Turkish treaty’, pp. 79–80 (tr. pp. 81–2).
85The Bondage and Travels of Johann Schiltberger, a Native of Bavaria, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, 1396–1427, tr. J. Buchan Telfer, HS1 58 (London, 1879), p. 21.
86Wolfgang Frhr. Stromer von Reichenbach, ‘König Siegmunds Gesandte in den Orient’, in Festschrift für Hermann Heimpel zum 70. Geburtstag am 19. September 1971, 3 vols (Göttingen, 1971–2), II, pp. 591–609 (here pp. 593–4).
87De Sacy, ‘Mémoire’, pp. 471, 519, 521.
88Clavijo, pp. 158, 159, 160 (tr. Le Strange, pp. 221, 222; at p. 223, Su fijo, quera Su amigo is rendered ambiguously as ‘the good friend of Timur and his son’); cf. also p. 200 (tr. p. 277).
89Andrea de Redusiis, ‘Chronicon Tarvisinum’, col. 801. Sarnowsky, ‘Die Johanniter’, pp. 215, 232.
90Roemer, ‘Timur in Iran’, pp. 87–90.
91Manz, ‘Tamerlane and the symbolism’, pp. 112, 118. For a survey of those shaykhs whose names are linked with Temür, see Jürgen Paul, ‘Scheiche und Herrscher im khanat Cagatay’, Der Islam 67 (1990), pp. 278–321 (here pp. 296–313).
92Clavijo, p. 96 (tr. Le Strange, p. 139). For Temür and Khwaja ?Ali, see H.R. Roemer, ‘The Safavid period’, in CHI, VI, pp. 205–6.
93Paul, ‘Scheiche und Herrscher’, pp. 313–18.
94Mignanelli, p. 135 (tr. Fischel, p. 214). Jean Aubin, ‘Comment Tamerlan prenait les villes’, SI 19 (1963), pp. 83–122 (here pp. 85–8). See further pp. 317–18.
95Moranvillé, ‘Mémoire’, pp. 462–3. Chronographia regum Francorum, III, pp. 216–17. See also Aubin, ‘Comment Tamerlan’, p. 88; Manz, ‘Tamerlane and the symbolism’, p. 118.
96Sari ?Abd-Allah Efendi, Munsha?at, text in Togan, ‘Timur’s Osteuropapolitik’, p. 294; see also ibid., pp. 280–1, 284.
97Ni?am-i Shami, I, pp. 218, 248; and see also the additions made to Shami’s account in the Zubdat al-tawarikh of ?afi?-i Abru (1433/4), ibid., II, p. 174. Sharaf al-Din ?Ali Yazdi, ed. ?Abbasi, II, pp. 188, 280 (with ’WNJ in error for ’FRNJ)/ed. Urunbaev, pp. 747, 819 (tr. Pétis de la Croix, III, pp. 260, 396).
98Ni?am-i Shami, I, p. 269. Sharaf al-Din ?Ali Yazdi, ed. ?Abbasi, II, p. 344/ed. Urunbaev, pp. 869–70 (tr. Pétis de la Croix, IV, pp. 58–9). For ‘Saqiz’ (described by Shami as a town and by Yazdi as an island) as Chios, see S. Soucek, ‘?aki°z’, Enc.Isl.2 Pétis de la Croix transliterated the name of its Latin lord (given as STH by Shami and as SBH or SYH by Yazdi) as ‘Chibo’, but the name garbled in Arabic–Persian script could conceivably be SNH = Zeno, i.e. Pietro Zeno, lord of Andros, who is known to have been in Chios in Sept. 1402 (letter of Gerardo Sagredo, in Alexandrescu-Dersca, La campagne, p.133).
99Allen, History of the Georgian People, pp.123–5. Roemer, ‘Timur in Iran’, pp. 59, 75, 79–80.
100Clavijo, p. 75 (tr. Le Strange, p. 111).
101Avedis K. Sanjian, Colophons of Armenian Manuscripts, 1301–1480. A Source for Middle Eastern History (Cambridge, MA, 1969), pp. 105–10, 113–15, 117–22, 124–5, 127–8.
102Niz?am-i Shami, I, p. 162. Sharaf al-Din ?Ali Yazdi, ed. ?Abbasi, I, p. 544/ed. Urunbaev, pp. 575–6 (tr. Pétis de la Croix, II, p. 365).
103Aubin, ‘Comment Tamerlan’, p. 99.
104Clavijo, pp. 89–90, 95 (tr. Le Strange, pp. 130, 138).
105Ibid., pp. 101–3 (tr. Le Strange, pp. 144–7).
106Ibid., p. 96 (tr. Le Strange, p. 139).
107Rubió y Lluch, Diplomatari, pp.713–14 (no. 691, 13 Jan. 1406).
108John of Sul?aniyya, Libellus, p.118.
109John of Sul?aniyya, Libellus, Graz Universitätsbibliothek ms. 1221, fo. 57v; the passage is reproduced (with omissions) in Kern’s edn, pp. 99–100. There is a vague echo of this prophecy – though attributed to St Gregory (the Illuminator) – in Dietrich von Nyem, ii, 30, p. 176.
110WR, xxxviii, 3, pp.304, 306 (tr. Jackson and Morgan, pp. 266–7). Von den Brincken, Die ‘Nationes Christianorum Orientalium’, p.193, n.84, and Schmieder, Europa, p.284, n.453, draw attention to the fact that the two travellers cite essentially the same prophecy, but this is contested by Möhring, Der Weltkaiser, p.200, n.154.
111Sanjian, Colophons, index s.v. ‘Nerses’ (esp. p. 94).
112Luttrell, ‘Timur’s Dominican envoy’, pp. 218–19, 227.
113See H. R. Roemer, ‘The Türkmen dynasties’, in CHI, VI, pp. 175–80.
114Knobler, ‘Pseudo-conversions’, pp. 191–6.
115But see Nicol, Last Centuries of Byzantium, p.316.
116Moranvillé, ‘Mémoire’, p. 451. Chronographia regum Francorum, III, p. 217.
Written by Peter Jackson in "The Mongols And The West (1221-1410)", Routledge, London, 2018, chapter 9. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
