Capture of Delhi (1398)

The battle took place on 17 December 1398. Sultan Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq and the army of
Mallu Iqbal[72] had war elephants armored with chain mail and poison on their tusks. [9]:267 As his Tatar forces
were afraid of the elephants, Timur ordered his men to dig a trench in front of their positions. Timur then
loaded his camels with as much wood and hay as they could carry. When the war elephants charged, Timur
set the hay on fire and prodded the camels with iron sticks, causing them to charge at the elephants, howling
in pain: Timur had understood that elephants were easily panicked. Faced with the strange spectacle of
camels flying straight at them with flames leaping from their backs, the elephants turned around and
stampeded back toward their own lines. Timur capitalized on the subsequent disruption in the forces of
Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq, securing an easy victory. Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq fled with
remnants of his forces. Delhi was sacked and left in ruins. Before the battle for Delhi, Timur executed 100,000
captives.[23]

The capture of the Delhi Sultanate was one of Timur's greatest victories, as at that time, Delhi was one of the
richest cities in the world. After Delhi fell to Timur's army, uprisings by its citizens against the Turkic-Mongols
began to occur, causing a retaliatory bloody massacre within the city walls. After three days of citizens
uprising within Delhi, it was said that the city reeked of the decomposing bodies of its citizens with their
heads being erected like structures and the bodies left as food for the birds by Timur's soldiers. Timur's
invasion and destruction of Delhi continued the chaos that was still consuming India, and the city would not
be able to recover from the great loss it suffered for almost a century. [9]:269–274

Campaigns in the Levant

Timur defeating the Mamluk Sultan Nasir-ad-Din Faraj of Egypt

19th century painting depicting Bayezid I being held captive by Timur.

Before the end of 1399, Timur started a war with Bayezid I, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and the Mamluk
sultan of Egypt Nasir-ad-Din Faraj. Bayezid began annexing the territory of Turkmen and Muslim rulers in
Anatolia. As Timur claimed sovereignty over the Turkoman rulers, they took refuge behind him.

In 1400, Timur invaded Armenia and Georgia. Of the surviving population, more than 60,000 of the local
people were captured as slaves, and many districts were depopulated. [73] He also sacked Sivas in Asia Minor.[74]

Then Timur turned his attention to Syria, sacking Aleppo,[75] and Damascus.[76] The city's inhabitants were
massacred, except for the artisans, who were deported to Samarkand. Timur cited the killing of Hasan ibn Ali
by the Umayyad caliph Muawiyah I and the killing of Husayn ibn Ali by Yazid I as the reason for his massacre
of the inhabitants of Damascus.

Timur invaded Baghdad in June 1401. After the capture of the city, 20,000 of its citizens were massacred.
Timur ordered that every soldier should return with at least two severed human heads to show him. When
they ran out of men to kill, many warriors killed prisoners captured earlier in the campaign, and when they
ran out of prisoners to kill, many resorted to beheading their own wives. [77]

Invasion of Anatolia
Main articles: Battle of Ankara and Ottoman Interregnum

In the meantime, years of insulting letters had passed between Timur and Bayezid. Both rulers insulted each
other in their own way while Timur preferred to undermine Bayezid's position as a ruler and play down the
significance of his military successes.

This is the excerpt from one of Timur's letters addressed to Ottoman sultan:

"Believe me, you are but pismire ant: don't seek to fight the elephants for they'll crush you under their feet.
Shall a petty prince such as you are contend with us? But your rodomontades (braggadocio) are not
extraordinary; for a Turcoman never spake with judgement. If you don't follow our counsels you will regret
it".[78]

Finally, Timur invaded Anatolia and defeated Bayezid in the Battle of Ankara on 20 July 1402. Bayezid was
captured in battle and subsequently died in captivity, initiating the twelve-year Ottoman Interregnum period.
Timur's stated motivation for attacking Bayezid and the Ottoman Empire was the restoration of Seljuq
authority. Timur saw the Seljuks as the rightful rulers of Anatolia as they had been granted rule by Mongol
conquerors, illustrating again Timur's interest with Genghizid legitimacy. [citation needed]

In December 1402, Timur besieged and took the city of Smyrna, a stronghold of the Christian Knights
Hospitalers, thus he referred to himself as ghazi or "Warrior of Islam". A mass beheading was carried out in
Smyrna by Timur's soldiers.[79][80][81][82]
With the Treaty of Gallipoli in February 1402, Timur was furious with the Genoese and Venetians, as their
ships ferried the Ottoman army to safety in Thrace. As Lord Kinross reported in The Ottoman Centuries, the
Italians preferred the enemy they could handle to the one they could not. [citation needed]

In c. 1402-1403, Bayezid I's son Mehmed Çelebi behaved as Timur's vassal. Beside the other princes, Mehmed
minted coin which Timur's name appeared as "Demur Han Gürgân", alongside his own as "Mehmed bin
Bayezid han".[83][84] This was probably an attempt on Mehmed's part to justify to Timur his conquest of Bursa
after the Battle of Ulubad. After Mehmed established himself in Rum, Timur had already begun preparations
for his return to Central Asia, and took no further steps to interfere with the status quo in Anatolia.[83]

While Timur was still in Anatolia, Qara Yusuf assaulted Baghdad and captured it in 1402. Timur returned to
Persia and sent his grandson Abu Bakr ibn Miran Shah to reconquer Baghdad, which he proceeded to do.
Timur then spent some time in Ardabil, where he gave Ali Safavi, leader of the Safaviyya, a number of
captives. Subsequently, he marched to Khorasan and then to Samarkhand, where he spent nine months
celebrating and preparing to invade Mongolia and China. [85]

Attempts to attack the Ming dynasty

Timur had aligned himself with the remnants of the Northern Yuan dynasty in his attempts to conquer Ming China.

The fortress at Jiayu Pass was strengthened due to fear of an invasion by Timur.[86]

Timurid Empire at Timur's death in 1405

By 1368, Han Chinese forces had driven the Mongols out of China. The first of the new Ming dynasty's
emperors, the Hongwu Emperor, and his son, the Yongle Emperor, produced tributary states of many Central
Asian countries. The suzerain-vassal relationship between Ming empire and Timurid existed for a long time.
In 1394, Hongwu's ambassadors eventually presented Timur with a letter addressing him as a subject. He had
the ambassadors Fu An, Guo Ji, and Liu Wei detained.[87] Neither Hongwu's next ambassador, Chen Dewen
(1397), nor the delegation announcing the accession of the Yongle Emperor fared any better. [87]

Timur eventually planned to invade China. To this end Timur made an alliance with surviving Mongol tribes
based in Mongolia and prepared all the way to Bukhara. Engke Khan sent his grandson Öljei Temür Khan, also
known as "Buyanshir Khan" after he converted to Islam while at the court of Timur in Samarkand. [88]