[(3.)] “the lord Tämerlin is come.” The correct rendering of this passage is “Amir Timour gheldy.”—The Amir Timour is come.—Ed.
[(4.)] “and of the elephants many were killed.”—This incident is corroborated by Clavijo (Hakluyt Soc. Publ., 153), who places at fifty the number of armed elephants opposed to Timour in the battle near Delhi. The contest being renewed on the second day, “Timour took many camels, and loaded them with dry grass, placing them in front of the elephants. When the battle began, he caused the grass to be set on fire, and when the elephants saw the burning straw upon the camels, they fled. They say that the elephants are much afraid of fire because they have small eyes.”—Ed.
CHAPTER XVII.
[(1.)] “Soltania.”—Or Soultanyà—Royal city—so named by Oljaïtou, son of Arghoun Khan, the founder (1305), once the metropolis and largest city in the kingdom. Chardin (Langlès edition, ii, 377) tells us that there were not many cities in the world where vaster ruins were to be seen; and in Kinnear’s time (Geog. Mem. of the Persian Emp., 123) the place was reduced to a few wretched hovels. Colonel Yule (Marco Polo, ii, 478) reproduces from Fergusson an illustration of the tomb built for himself by Oljaïtu, or as his Moslem name ran, Mahomed Khodabandah, at Soultaniah, “the finest work of architecture that the ‘Tartars of the Levant’ have left behind them.” Kinnear describes it as being a large and beautiful structure ninety feet in height, built of brick, and covered with a cupola—an edifice that would do honour to the most scientific architect in Europe.
This tomb of Oljaïtou was still magnificent, and especially noted for its colossal gates of damasked steel, even so late as the seventeenth century. “The city was reoccupied by some of the Persian kings in the sixteenth century, till Shah Abbas transferred the seat of government to Ispahan. John XXII set up an archbishopric at Sultaniah in 1318, in favour of Francis of Perugia, a Dominican, and the series of archbishops is traced down to 1425.” (Cathay, and the Way Thither, Hakluyt Soc. Publ., 49, note 3.)—Ed.
CHAPTER XVIII.
[(1.)] “and they were all trampled upon.”—This atrocious conduct on the part of Timour, is not the creation of Schiltberger’s brain, but it cannot have reference to the capture of Ispahan in 1387, although it is possible that the evolutions of Timour’s horsemen against children, was repeated after the fall of Ephesus in 1403; this act of cruelty being imputed to him by several Oriental authors. His return to Samarkand from Ephesus, actually took place after an absence of at least seven, if not twelve years (Rehm, Gesch. d. Mittelalt., iv, 3, 78); and he went there immediately after taking Ispahan in 1387. Schiltberger’s details on the revolt of that city under the farrier, Aly Koutchava, and on the construction of the tower of human heads by order of Timour, agree with similar accounts from other sources.—Bruun.