ABSTRACT
The rumour of Tamerlane's campaigns made all Asia quake. All Asia knew of Tamerlane's preference for learned and pious men, so the Sultan sent to him as envoy the most famous mufti and expounder of the Law in Western Asia, to lay Ahmed's submission before the conqueror. But Sultan Ahmed himself was already in Egypt, a country with which, as in the days of Hulagu, the decision of the fate of the new Mongolian storm seemed to depend—for Tamerlane, having laid Irak and Mesopotamia waste, was approaching the Syrian frontier. Tamerlane allowed his son Miran-Shah to plunder Ukraine, himself marching northward against the Russian principalities, but the unpeopled steppes, the dense forests, the expanses of marshland, and the poverty of the much-ravaged cities disappointed the conqueror. The other city was traversed by canals, adorned with lovely ponds; the houses had water-conduits, mosaic floors, walls with variously glazed tiles.
