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TIMOUB'S PKOGEESS 139 challenged, or rather ordered, Bajazed to return to the Greeks all the cities and territories he had captured. The order was categorical and, given to a ferocious barbarian like Bajazed, drove him to fury. The man who gave it was, however, accustomed to be obeyed. Timour 1 or Tamarlane was a Mahometan and a Turk, though he claimed to be of the same race as Genghis, who was a Mongol. Under him the warrior shepherds of the south plains of Asia came westward in even greater numbers than they had done under his famous predecessor. They advanced in well-organised armies, under generals who seem to have had intelligence everywhere of the enemy's country and great military skill. After having annexed Kharizon and Persia to Transoxiana and reduced Turkestan to obedience, Timour turned westward. In 1386, he appeared at Tiflis, which he subsequently captured at the head of an enormous host estimated at eight hundred thousand men. At Erzingan he put all the Turks sent there by the sultan to the sword. Bajazed seems from the first to have been alarmed and went himself to Erzingan in 1394, but returned to Europe without making any attempt to resist the invader, probably believing that Timour had no intention of coming further west. 2 He soon learned his mistake. Timour was not merely as great and cruel a barbarian but as ambitious as Bajazed himself. In 1395, while the emperor was in the Balkan peninsula, Timour summoned the large and popu- lous city of Sivas to surrender. The inhabitants twice refused. Meantime, he had undermined the wall. On their second refusal, his host stormed and captured the city. A hundred and twenty thousand captives were massacred. Bajazed's son was made prisoner and put to death. A large number of the prisoners were buried alive, being covered over in a pit with planks instead of earth so as to pro- long their torture. Bajazed was relieved when he learned that from Sivas, which had been the strongest place 1 The word timour is the same as the ordinary Turkish word for iron, demir. - Leunclavius, 250.