of the Birbas,
a tribe of the purest Mughal origin, at Shehr-Sebz, thirty miles to
the north of Samarkand, a son, the eldest of his family. This boy,
who was called Taimur, and who was descended in the female line from
Chengiz Khan, was gifted by nature with the qualities which enable a
man to control his fellow men. Fortune gave him the chance to employ
those qualities to the best advantage. The successors of Chengiz Khan
in the male line had gradually sunk into feebleness and sloth, and,
in 1370, the family in that line had died out. Taimur, then
thirty-four, seized the vacated seat, gained, after many vicissitudes
of fortune, the complete upper hand, and established himself at
Samarkand the undisputed ruler of all the country between the Oxus
and the Jaxartes. Then he entered upon that career of conquest which
terminated only with his life. He established his authority in
Mughalistan, or the country between the Tibet mountains, the Indus
and Mekran, to the north, and Siberia to the north; in Kipchak, the
country lying north of the lower {13} course of the Jaxartes, the sea
of Aral, and the Caspian, including the rich lands on the Don and
Wolga, and part of those on the Euxine; he conquered India, and
forced the people of territories between the Dardanelles and Delhi to
acknowledge his supremacy. When he died, on the 18th February, 1405,
he left behind him one of the greatest empires the world has ever
seen.

After his death his empire rapidly broke up, and although it was
partly reconstituted by his great-grandson, Abusaid, the death of
this prince in 1469, when surprised in the defiles of the mountains
near Ardebil, and the defeat of his army, precipitated a fresh
division among his sons. To the third of these, Umershaikh Mirza, was
assigned the province of Ferghana, known also, from the name of its
capital, as Khokand.

Umershaikh was the father of Babar. He was an ambitious man, bent on
increasing his dominions. But the other members of his family were
actuated by a like ambition, and when he died from the effects of an
accident, in 1494, he was actually besieged in Akhsi, a
fortress-castle which he had made his capital.

His eldest son, Babar, then just twelve years old, was at the time at
Andijan, thirty-six miles from Akhsi. The enemy was advancing on
Andijan. Babar, the day following his father's death (June 9), seized
the citadel, and opened negotiations with the invader. His efforts
would have availed