Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/766

700 added them to his empire. After his death, in 1227, his successors, dividing his kingdom among them, continued their advance to the west. They swept away the remains of the Arab khalifs of Baghdad in 1258, and overthrew the Seljuks in Asia Minor in 1300; several of their expe ditions for plunder reached India; and they spread them selves over South-eastern Europe, into Russia, Hungary, and Poland, and entered Siberia. During this interval, as they became settled, they abandoned the simple deistical faith of their fathers, and adopted the religion of the races they had conquered.

138. In the year 1370 there rose, above the ordinary level of the successors of Chenghiz, another chief, who claimed descent from the great khan, but was more indebted for his position to his own force of character. From an obscure position in Samarkhand, Timúr, commonly spoken of as Tamerlane by European writers, had acquired in the course of twenty years the sovereignty of Afghanistan, Transoxiana, of Persia as far as the Euphrates, and of Eastern Turkistan to Kashgar. His armies reached to Siberia, and he carried his devastations into the heart of Russia, almost to the walls of Moscow. In the years 1398-99, excited by fanaticism and the love of rapine, he made his celebrated march into India, an account of which, with his other exploits, exists, written by himself. He plundered and burnt Delhi, which city was surrendered under a solemn promise of protection ; he carried off in numerable captives, ravaged the neighbouring country, and massacred the Hindu inhabitants to wash out the stains of Mussulman blood spilt by his sword; and finally quitted India, leaving anarchy, famine, and pestilence behind him, having in four short months overwhelmed the provinces of Northern Hindustan by calamities which prostrated the kingdom of Delhi for nearly a century. From these ruins the ruthless barbarian turned to the extreme west of Asia, which he ravaged with greater ferocity, if possible, than India. After the overthrow of the Seljuk Turks in 1300, the descendants of Chenghiz ruled in Asia Minor for some years. Amid the dis orders that accompanied the successions of this dynasty, there started up another adventurer, Osman or Othman, who established himself in the north-western region of Asia Minor, overlooking the Euxine and Sea of Marmora. The descendants of Osman had already become important chiefs, in 1360, when they had driven the Byzantines out of Asia and, under Amurath, established themselves in Europe in the provinces adjoining Constantinople, and had also extended their sway eastward to the Euphrates. It was against Bajazet, the successor of Amurath, that Timiir turned his arms (1400). Aleppo and Damascus were utterly destroyed by him. From Syria, passing the plains of Mesopotamia, where it is said he erected a pyramid of 90,000 heads on the ruins of Babylon, he pursued the Osmanlis into Anatolia; there Bajazet was defeated and made prisoner. Timiir having established his supremacy throughout Western Asia and made the Greek emperor his tributary, turned back to Samarkhand, and died in 1405, on his way to attack China. The suc cessors of Bajazet soon recovered their hold on Asia Minor and Syria, and in 1453 took Constantinople, and put a final end to the Byzantine power, establishing in its place the Ottoraan empire, extending over Greece, the Danubian provinces, and Asia Minor.

139. Turning once more to India, we find the kings of Delhi still in a feeble condition in 1526, when Babar, the sixth descendant of Timúr, and on his mother's side of the family of Chenghiz Khan, who had established him self at Cabul, marched upon Delhi, defeated the king at Faniput, and made himself master of Northern Hindustan. On this occasion cannon were first used in war in India. On his death, Cabul with the Punjab were separated from the kingdom of Delhi, and after some years of disorder in the succession, the Indian sovereignty came into the hands of his grandson Akbar, 1556, who has been justly spoken of as taking a place among that rarest order of princes whose reigns have been a blessing to mankind. He died in 1605, having re-established the Mogul kingdom of Delhi over all Northern India, from Candahar to Bengal, and as far south as the Deccan. He was remarkable alike for his learning, his tolerance, his justice, the excellence of his personal character, and his administrative capacity; and it may truly be said that the foundations of the present system of government in Northern India were laid by this great man, who for the first time really consolidated the kingdom, and established an organised administration.

140. Akbar s successors, among whom may be named Shah Jehan as being but little less eminent than his grandfather, ruled in India till 1748, extending their power further south, over nearly the whole of the peninsula, but with various reverses and a gradual decay of strength. The Mogul dynasty dragged on a feeble existence, till it virtually fell before the Mahrattas; after this it maintained for a few years a sovereignty little more than nominal, and finally disappeared on the establishment of the British power in Northern India. Among the more notable incidents in this interval are the establishment of the Mahratta government in the Deccan under Sevaji in 1647, and that of the Sikhs at Lahore in 1708 (the founders of the religion having lived, Nanuk in 1419, and Guru Govind in 1675), and the third sacking of Delhi by Nadir Shah, the king of Persia, in 1739.

141. Nothing is more remarkable in the history of human societies than the manner in which the ancient civilisation of India has maintained itself through the centuries which have elapsed since the inroads from the West began, the records of which form so large a part of Indian history. Long before the time to which the annals of any part of Europe go back, India had made considerable material and intellectual progress, and the fundamental characteristics of the community at present are probably but little different from what they were 2000 or 3000 years ago. The natural wealth of the country, its open character, and the smaller energy and physical force of its inhabitants, have made it a continual prey to the more warlike nations without, and constant internal wars have completed its political disorganisation, so that the remains of any truly national governments have, with few fragmentary exceptions, long ceased to exist. But probably few countries that have been subjected to such vicissitudes have changed so little. The well-being of the indigenous population has been preserved in a remarkable degree by that inaptitude to change which appears to be inherent in their race, and which suggests the necessity of the efflux of a very long period of time for the growth of those customs, which have been so little modified since they became fixed in the form described in the ancient Sanskrit writings.

142. The early history of China offers little to call for remark in such a review as the present. The date of the writings of Confucius is fixed at 550 B.C. The great wall, constructed to oppose the inroads of Mongols from the north, was a work of the Han dynasty about 200 B.C. About 585 A.D., the whole of China was united into one empire, having previously been governed by many petty chiefs. The first successful invasion of the Mongols under Chenghiz Khan took place in 1234 A.D., and he retained possession of the northern half of the empire, handing it to his son, Kublai-Khan, in 1260, who completed the conquest of the whole country in 1279, and founded the Mongolian dynasty. In his reign Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller, visited 