The Mongol dominions in the thirteenth century were
increased by the addition of Korea, southern China, and Mesopotamia, as well as
the greater part of Asia Minor and Russia. Japan, indeed, repulsed the Mongol
hordes, but at the other extremity of Asia they captured Bagdad, sacked the
city, and brought the caliphate to an end. The Mongol realm was very
loosely organized, however, and during the fourteenth century it fell apart
into a number of independent states, or khanates.
TIMUR THE LAME, DIED 1405 A.D.
It was reserved for another renowned Oriental monarch,
Timur the Lame, [8] to restore the empire of Jenghiz Khan. His biographers
traced his descent from that famous Mongol, but Timur was a Turk and an
adherent of Islam. He has come down to us as perhaps the most terrible
personification in history of the evil spirit of conquest. Such distant regions
as India, Syria, Armenia, Asia Minor, and Russia were traversed by Timur's
soldiers, who left behind them only the smoking ruins of a thousand cities and
abominable trophies in the shape of columns or pyramids of human heads. Timur
died in his seventieth year, while leading his troops against China, and the
extensive empire which he had built up in Asia soon crumbled to pieces.
