The fearsome Turkic conqueror Amir Timur

Compiled By: Syed Ali Shahbaz
On December 17, 1398 AD, Sultan Naseer ud-Din Mahmoud's armies were defeated near Delhi by the fearsome Turkic conqueror Amir Timur, who ended the Tughlaq sultanate of northern India. Timur's campaigns were marked by systematic slaughter and other atrocities on a massive scale as was the case in the other parts of the lands he conquered, including Iran.
He crossed the Indus River at Attock (now Pakistan) on 24 September 1398, and after defeating the Jats, the Ahirs, and the governor of Meerut, resolved to capture Delhi. Sultan Mahmoud's army had war elephants, armoured with chain mail and poison on their tusks. Timur loaded his camels with as much wood and hay as they could carry.
When the war elephants charged, he set the hay on fire and prodded the camels with iron sticks, causing them to charge at the elephants howling in pain. The elephants faced with the strange spectacle of camels flying straight at them with flames leaping from their backs, panicked, turned around and stampeded back toward their own lines. Timur capitalized on the disruption in the Indian Muslim army and secured an easy victory. Delhi, one of the richest cities at the time, was sacked and left in ruins, while artisans were carried off to Samarqand.

Khalil Sultan, the Timurid ruler of Transoxiana
On November 4, 1411 AD, Khalil Sultan, the Timurid ruler of Transoxiana from 1405 to 1409, died in Rayy near modern Tehran. He was a son of Miran Shah and a grandson of the fearsome Turkic conqueror Amir Timur, who in 1402 gave him rule of the Ferghana Valley – spread across in what is now Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrghizistan – on being impressed by his military prowess during the conquest of North India.
Upon Timur's death in 1405 Khalil viewed himself as successor, and quickly casting aside his cousin, Pir Mohammad, the official appointee, took control of the capital, Samarqand, including Timur's vast treasury. Meanwhile, his uncle Shah Rukh, the youngest son of Timur and governor of Khorasan, pressed his own claim and advanced against him from Herat in what is now Afghanisan, but turned back when Khalil's father Miran Shah, the governor of Azerbaijan marched in support.
Khalil's position, however, began to weaken. He was unpopular in Samarqand, because of his wife Shad Mulk's undue influence on state affairs. A famine caused him to be even more despised, and he left Samarqand for his base Ferghana. Khalil's rule in Samarqand finally ended on May 13, 1409 when Shah Rukh entered the city unopposed and placed his own son, the famous astronomer-mathematician, Ulugh Beg, as the ruler of Transoxiana. Shah Rukh showing clemency towards his nephew Khalil, appointed him governor of Rayy where he died this day.