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 CHAPTER II

FARGHÁNA

1494

In 1494 Bábar inherited the kingdom of Farghána from his father, 'Omar Shaikh, a son of Abú-Sa'íd, the great-grandson of the Amír Tímúr or Tamerlane.

A hundred years had passed since the Barlás Turk, in a series of triumphant campaigns, had made himself master of the western half of Asia, from Káshghar on the edge of the terrible mid-Asian desert, to the cliffs of the Aegean sea. He had driven the Knights of Rhodes out of their castle at Smyrna, and had even marched into India and sacked Delhi. In 1405 he was on his way to subdue China and set all the continent of Asia beneath his feet, when death intervened. Tímúr's conquests were too recent, too hasty and imperfect, to permit the organization of a settled empire. They were like a vast conflagration driven before the wind, which destroys the herbage for a while; but when the flame has passed away, the earth grows green again. Many of the princes, who had fled before the blast of Timúr's hurricane, came back to their old seats when the destroyer was departed; and it was only over part of Persia and