Before accompanying the good old Spanish knight from his native land, through the regions of the far east, to the court of Timour, it will be well to refresh the memory with a brief sketch of the life of that mighty conqueror.

At his birth, the enormous empire of his predecessor in universal conquest was rapidly falling to pieces; and the numerous kingdoms formed by the energetic sons and grandsons of Zengis Khan, were for the most part in a state of helpless anarchy, under the nominal sway of their degenerate descendants. The last great wave of those devastating floods of conquest which, for centuries, had periodically burst forth from the wilds of central Asia, to spread terror and desolation over the eastern world, was rapidly subsiding. The most contemptible puppet descendants of the mighty Zengis sat on the thrones of Persia, Samarcand, and China; while their former vassals were beginning to assert their independence in every direction.

The country between the rivers Oxus and Jaxartes, known to the Arabs as Mawur-ul-naher, had fallen to the share of Zagatai, on the death of his father Zengis Khan in 1227, and the land had been ruled by his descendants for more than a century, when Timour was born in 1337 ; but each succeeding Sultan of Mawur-ul-naher had become more degenerate, and more contemptible than his predecessor, while the insolent independence of powerful vassals, at the head of large bodies of cavalry, kept the country in a state bordering on anarchy.

The most famous of Timour's ancestors was Karachar Nevian, the minister of Zagatai, and the first convert to Islamism amongst the wild conquerors.