After Establishing
His Authority In Zagatai, And Conquering Kharism, And Candahar, He Turned
His Arms Against Persia Or Iran, Which Had Fallen Into Disorganization By
The Extinction Of The Descendants Of The Great Holacou, And Which Country
He Reduced Under Subjection.
He successively reduced Cashgar, or eastern
Turkestan, and Kipzak or western Tartary, and invaded Syria and Anatolia.
In this
Invasion, in 1402, was fought the great battle of Angora, in which
Bajazet, the great sultan of the Turks, was defeated and taken prisoner.
By this great victory, the progress of the Turkish arms was checked for a
time, and perhaps Europe was saved on that day from being subjected to the
law of Mahomet. Yet the vast empire which Timour established, fell into
fragments after his death, in 1405, and his descendants have sunk into
oblivion; while the race of Othman and Bajazet still rule over a large
empire in Europe and Asia, nearly commensurate with the eastern Roman
empire, still called Rumi in the east.
Having thus traced an outline of the revolutions of empire in Tartary, down
to what may be considered as modern history, it is only necessary farther
to mention, that all eastern Tartary and Mongalia is now subject to China,
and Kipzac and all the northern to Russia. Hardly any part of it now
remains independent, except Zagatai; or Transoxiana, Kharism, Candabar, and
the deserts of Western Tartary: the former of which is subject to the
Usbeks, and the latter to the Kirguses.
[1] Gibbon, Dec. and Fall, IV. 355.
[2] Decl. and Fall, XI. 402.
[3] Dashte Kipzak, or the plain of Kipzak, extended on both
sides of the Volga, towards the Jaik or Ural, and the Borysthenes or
Dnieper, and is supposed to have given name to the Cosacs. - Gibb.
[4] As reported by Gibbon, from Matthew Paris, p. 396, forty or
fifty herrings were sold for a shilling. This must be an error,
perhaps for 40 or 50 thousand; as a shilling of these days was worth
at least from fifteen to twenty modern shillings in effective value;
and within memory herrings have often sold, in a very plentiful
fishery, for a shilling the cart-load, when salt could not be had in
sufficient quantity. - E.
[5] Decl. and Fall. XII. I.
CHAP. VIII.
The Travels of John de Plano Carpini and other Friars, sent about the year
1246, as ambassadors from Pope Innocent IV, to the great Khan of the Moguls
or Tartars.[1]
INTRODUCTION.
In the collection of early Voyages, Travels, and Discoveries, by Hakluyt,
published originally in 1599, and reprinted at London in 1809 with
additions, there are two separate relations of these travels. The first,
in p. 24, is the journal of John de Plano Carpini, an Italian minorite,
who, accompanied by friar Benedict, a Polander, went in 1246 by the north
of the Caspian sea, to the residence of Batu-khan, and thence to Kajuk-
khan, whom he calls Cuyne, the chief or Emperor of all the Mongols.
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