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 FATE OF BAJAZED 145 fined in a room with grilled windows. When he was conveyed from one place to another, he travelled much as Indian ladies now do, in a palanquin with curtained windows. Out of a misinterpretation of the Turkish word which designated at once a cage and a grilled room, grew the error into which Gibbon and historians of less repute have fallen that the great Ilderim was carried about in an iron cage. 1 Until his death, in 1403, he was an unwilling follower of his captor. After the battle of Angora, Suliman (the eldest son of Bajazed), who had fled towards Brousa, was pursued by a detachment of Timour's army. He managed to cross into Europe and thus escaped. But Brousa, the Turkish capital, fell before Timour's attack, and its inhabitants suffered the same brutal horrors as almost invariably marked either Tartar or Turkish captures. The city, after a carefully organised pillage, was burned. The wives and the daughters of Bajazed and his treasure became the property of Tim our. Nicaea and Ghemlik were also sacked and their inhabitants taken as slaves. From the Marmora to Caramania, many towns which had been captured by the Turks were taken from them. Asia Minor was in confusion. Bajazed's empire appeared to be dropping away in every part east of the Aegean. Suliman, however, established himself on the Bosporus at Anatolia-Hissar, and about the same time both he and the emperor at Constantinople received a summons 1 Von Hammer has shown conclusively that the story of an iron cage is a mistake. It arises from the misinterpretation of the Turkish word Kafes, which has the two significations given above. Two contemporary authors made the blunder, Phrantzes and Arab Schah. A Bavarian, who was made prisoner at the battle of Nicopolis, named Schildberger, and who was present at the battle of Angora, has given a detailed account of the massacre of the Christians, but he does not mention the cage. (His travels between 1394 and 1427 have been translated and published by the Hakluyt Society, 1879.) Neither do Ducas, Chalcondylas, or Boueicaut, though they state that Bajazed died in irons, which he had to wear every night after his attempt at escape. Six Persian authors who wrote the history of Timour are silent about the cage. The oldest Turkish historian recounts, upon the evidence of an eye-witness, that Bajazed was carried about in a palanquin ' like a Kafes,' or in the usual kind of grilled palanquin in which ladies of the harem travelled. Sad-ud-din, one of the most exact of Turkish historians, states that the story of the iron cage given by many Turkish writers is a pure invention. L