Embassy to Tamerlane, 1403-1406 / translated from the Spanish by Guy Le Strange with an introduction.

  • González de Clavijo, Ruy, -1412.
Date:
[1928]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Embassy to Tamerlane, 1403-1406 / translated from the Spanish by Guy Le Strange with an introduction. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    32/420 (page 12)
    to the eastward, where lies the settlement of Merv: and Serrakhs is separated from Merv by about iio miles of the waterless Qara Qum, the desert of the Black Sands. This long tract they passed in much distress of thirSt. From Merv eastwards the road is fairly supplied with wells, and coming to the Oxus bank they crossed the great river immediately to the north of ancient Balkh, and so entered Transoxiana the homeland of Timur. Coming to this dislribt Clavijo notes the fail of a change of language. Persian, which he had heard spoken up to now, gave place to what he names as Mongol, but which in faft was EaStern Turkish, the dialed! at the present day commonly called Chagatay Turki, and spoken through¬ out Central Asia. Travelling north from Tirmiz on the right bank of the Oxus, the Spaniards came to Kesh, the birth-place of Timur, and the burial-place of his father the Khán Teragay. Here Clavijo ex¬ patiates on the beauty of the newly built mosque and the palace adorned with tiles of the kind familiar to him in Spain, made by the Moors, known as Azulejos (Blue Tiles), as ¿lili to be admired on the walls of the Alhambra. In blue and gold with many other colours these formed the patterned panellings of the walls in the Kesh palace, and the workmanship of the Tartar artificers, as Clavijo notes, would indeed have done credit to the beSt workmen of Paris, a curiously early tribute to French superiority in the handicrafts. From Kesh, after some delay, the embassies from Egypt and Spain both finally came on to Samarqand, where after a suitable pause, they were received in audience by Timur. At the age of seventy he had juSt taken to himself his eighth wife, and he was so blind that the envoys had to be led close up to his seat, in order to be clearly distinguished to his failing sight. At Samarqand both embassies were entertained hos¬ pitably during the following three months, many