There was a long silence. The ambassadors in their fine silks did their best not to fidget nervously. This was no declaration of war they brought, nor any calculated insult to Temur, but still the role of messenger was not without its dangers, and who knew how the emperor would react? At last, long after the silence had become unbearable, he fixed them with his imperious gaze and made his reply.
When your master Tokhtamish was wounded and fled from the enemy, I received him like a son. I took up his cause and made war on Urus Khan on his behalf. I sacrificed my cavalry and equipment, which were lost that hard winter. However, I continued to support him, and placed this country in his hands. I made him so strong that he became khan of the Kipchaks, and he mounted the throne of Jochi. But when fortune had begun to smile on him, he forgot his obligations to me: and without thinking how a son ought to behave towards a father, he took the opportunity, while I was occupied with the conquest of the kingdom of the Persians and the Medes, to betray me, sending troops to ruin the borders of my empire. I pretended to take no notice, hoping that he might be ashamed of his action, and in future abstain from such extravagances. But he was so drunk with ambition, that he could not distinguish good from evil. He sent another army into my country against me. It is true that as soon as we marched against him, his advance guard fled at the very dust of our approach. Now, when Tokhtamish has heard of our march, he begs pardon, because he knows no other way to save himself from the punishment he deserves. But since we have seen him break his word and violate his treaties so often, it would be imprudent to trust his word. With the aid of God we shall carry out the resolve we have made. If, however, he speaks the truth and wants peace with all his heart, let him send to us Ali-Beg, his minister, who can then negotiate with our chief amirs.
Temur recognised the khan’s overture for what it was, merely a ruse to forestall him. He knew this because these were his very own tactics. Later, he would try something similar on Tokhtamish himself. The conflict between the two men, marked by constant manoeuvring and deception, crushing force and honeyed diplomacy, was among the most fascinating of Temur’s career, because they were so well matched.
The ambassadors were left in no doubt as to Temur’s intentions. He saw no reason to turn back. It was up to Tokhtamish how he chose to proceed. The march north, meanwhile, would continue.
By the first week of March, Temur’s army passed Yasi and Sabran in what is today Kazakhstan. Yasi, renamed Turkestan in the sixteenth century, was a thriving town on the caravan route, its markets home to merchants trading tiger skins, gold and silver from Persia, porcelain from China, astrakhan, glassware, Siberian deer, lynx and the ubiquitous silks. In the latter half of the 1390s, with the campaigns against Tokhtamish behind him and another wedding to look forward to – his latest wife was Tukal-khanum, a beautiful princess and daughter of the Moghul khan Khizr Khoja – Temur revisited Yasi and rebuilt a memorial complex there in honour of the holy Sufi dervish Khoja Ahmed Yasevi. To this day it remains one of the great examples of medieval architecture in Central Asia, a blaze of blue domes, ribbed and smooth, intricate tiled portals decorated with ivory and a riot of Islamic calligraphy, designed and constructed on a monumental scale. The main dome has a diameter of almost sixty feet. The saint’s reputation was such that three pilgrimages to the mausoleum were considered equivalent to a pilgrimage to Mecca. It still attracts large numbers of pilgrims each year.
Onto the Hungry Steppe Temur’s army now advanced like a falling shadow. Bristling with tension, the mounted archers pressed on in forced marches, still hoping to surprise and fall upon Tokhtamish’s forces. But around them the horizon was limitless, and instead of the massed ranks of Kipchaks they stared instead at dry ground with only the meanest grazing for the horses. It was a dispiriting sight. After three weeks in these vast plains, wrote Yazdi, ‘the horses were so fatigued with the great way they had gone, and the scarcity of water, that they were reduced to extremity’.
By April, after crossing the Sari Su river, they were among the Ulugh Tagh mountains. Here Temur ordered an obelisk to be erected as ‘a lasting monument to posterity’. It recorded the size of the army he was leading against Tokhtamish Khan, king of the Bulgars, and the date of its arrival in these mountains. It was indeed a gift to posterity – the obelisk was discovered in Kazakhstan in the 1930s – but it was also a distraction, perhaps deliberate, from the increasingly dire situation in which the army now found itself.
After almost four months’ march from Tashkent, Temur’s scouts scanned the horizon in vain for their enemy. Tokhtamish’s men had melted away into the farthest recesses of the steppes and, just as the amirs had worried all along, the army was now fast running out of supplies. The price of a sheep from the travelling market that accompanied the expedition had soared to a hundred dinars. Soon there were none left. Officers of all ranks were given orders ‘that no one on pain of death should bake in the camp either bread, pastry-work, mutton, pies, tarts or anything proper for boiling’. Struggling across difficult territory, shattered by the forced marches, the soldiers had to subsist on the most meagre rations. First it was a thin meat stew. Then, as the meat ran out, the stew became a broth. When the supplies of flour were practically exhausted, the broth became even thinner and the men were sipping miserably at a mixture of water and herbs, one bowl a day, if they were lucky. Fanning out across the plains, they fell on anything remotely edible. Herbs, roots, wild grasses, occasional eggs and rats were all seized greedily, supplemented by horsemeat whenever an animal succumbed to the desperate conditions. It was no way to provision an army about to fight its most testing battle deep behind enemy lines. The grumbling grew louder.
The men were at their weakest. Although in the course of their campaigns they had grown used to adversity, they were not accustomed to these levels of privation. Fears started to grow that Tokhtamish’s Kipchaks, well provisioned, well rested and entirely familiar with the terrain, would choose this moment to rise from the shadows and cut them to pieces.
It was a desperate time for Temur, and a critical test of his leadership. He faced either a rebellion from his starving soldiers or, as they beat a frantic retreat towards Mawarannahr, certain defeat by the Golden Horde, whose spies had already been joined by a number of deserters from Temur’s camp and who were well aware of his parlous position. Retreat or rebellion. Neither were words in Temur’s vocabulary. Since defeating Husayn in 1370, he had known only triumph. One by one his opponents had crumpled before him. Now he stood on the brink of catastrophe.
The first priority was to feed his men. Tokhtamish, as he had already proved so cleverly, could wait. Summoning his senior officers, Temur gave commands for a Tatar hunt. Riders galloped off to the amirs of the left and right wings, instructing them to lead their men forward steadily in a half-circle. Those soldiers in the centre remained where they were. The distance between the wings in this army of two hundred thousand was so great that it took two days just to complete the circle. When the men of the left wing joined with those from the right, encompassing an area of many square miles, orders were given to close in. The men marched inwards, each dreaming of the next meal of meat. Before them ran startled deer, hares, wild boars, wolves and antelopes, probably elk too, since the chronicle mentions a type of gazelle the Tatars had not seen before, as large as a buffalo.
When the circle had shrunk to the required size, the order was given to halt. Temur rode in first, as was customary. Despite the lameness on his right side, he was a superb shot and an excellent horseman. Riding full tilt at one moment, almost stationary the next, he unleashed his arrows at his quarry. To loud cheers from his men, he brought down a number of deer. Once the emperor had had his sport, it was their turn. For hours the hunt continued. The slaughter was immense that day, the dinner sumptuous. For days to come, the camp was wreathed in smoke as the heavy smell of game rose into the night sky from bubbling cauldrons. All the worries were quickly forgotten. The grumbling subsided.
With his army well f
ed and approaching the borders of Siberia, Temur chose this moment to order a general review of his troops, a move calculated to instil discipline and confidence. When the army of two hundred thousand had been brought into formation, the splendidly dressed emperor appeared before them on horseback, wearing a gold crown encrusted with rubies and carrying an ivory baton tipped with the carved golden head of a bull. Starting his review with the left wing, he made sure the soldiers were all properly equipped with a sabre on their left side, a half sabre on their right, as well as a lance, a mace, a dagger and a leather shield, each man carrying a bow with thirty arrows in his quiver. The horses were decorated with tiger skins.
There was a carefully arranged choreography and score to accompany the review. When Temur arrived in front of each tuman of ten thousand, the amir, be he senior officer, son or grandson of the emperor, dismounted, threw himself to the ground, kissed the earth, told his ruler what excellent condition the troops were in, and sang his praises with elaborate compliments. ‘Let all the world be obedient to Temur: from faithfulness and duty, we will always be ready to sacrifice our heads and our lives at the feet of his majesty’s horse,’ said Birdi Beg, leader of a tuman in the left wing. Prince Omar Shaykh pleased his father with the good order of his men and the congratulations he lavished on Temur’s conquests from the frontiers of China to the Caspian. Temur, said Yazdi, was also impressed by the Hazaras of Sulduz, battle-hardened warriors with their bows, arrows, nets, clubs, lassoes, maces and scimitars. Next he passed on to the right wing, commanded by his son Miranshah. For two days the review lasted, at the end of which Temur pronounced himself content with the state of his army.
After all the recent hardships, the successful hunting expedition had galvanised the men. From the emperor’s great kettle-drum came a roar of thunder across the plain, picked up and echoed by the drums of the divisions. Banners and standards fluttered over this immense fighting force. Fists were clenched and arms were raised. Over the drumbeats came another deafening roar, this time the cry of war, ‘Surun! Surun!’, running from the tip of the left wing to the end of the right. A bristling half-silence fell once more over the army, and in the cold grey of dawn it moved north in battle formation.
Unknown Siberia lay ahead. It was an empty place, whatever the time of year. Ibn Battutah named it the Land of Shadows. ‘No one sees the people who live in this place,’ he wrote. ‘Here the days are long in summer and the nights are long in winter.’ Would this be where Temur happened upon his enemy, or was Tokhtamish, always several marches ahead, luring the Tatars onwards to their destruction? The alien landscape, dense with fog and sodden underfoot, offered no clues to these men of the south.
Only scouting parties, sent ever deeper into enemy territory, would resolve the issue. Mohammed Sultan, the emperor’s grandson and favourite, pleaded to be sent on such a mission. Temur consented and, once the astrologers had determined the most suitable time and date at which the young man should begin, he set out in the last week of April.
Traces of human life started to reveal themselves. First of all a track, which led to the still-warm embers of half a dozen fires. The news was sent back to Temur who despatched a detachment of expert scouts to join the party. North they galloped, scouring the plains for telltale signs, until they reached the Tobol river, a tributary of the Irtish which flows into the Arctic. On the far bank they saw more fires, seventy of them, and another set of horse tracks, but no other indications of life.
Shaykh Daoud, a Turkmen with a reputation for great bravery, was sent to bring back more definite news. After riding for two days he came upon some thatched huts and hid himself away during the night. The next morning a man rode out, and was instantly seized by the Turkmen and taken to Temur. Although he knew nothing of Tokhtamish or his army, ten days before he had seen a group of ten armed horsemen camping nearby. The scent was becoming stronger. Temur sent an advance party of soldiers to find and capture the horsemen. When surrounded, they resisted fiercely but prisoners were taken and new intelligence extracted. The first skirmish had been fought.
The great Tatar army now wheeled west towards the enemy. On 11 May it reached the Ural river. Ever suspicious that the guides could be leading his men into an ambush or other misadventure, Temur disregarded the crossing places they suggested and instead swam his men and horses over at less obvious locations. The situation was not yet hopeless, but with each day that passed it was becoming increasingly dire. More than four months out of Tashkent, and still the Tatars had not engaged the Horde. Time, as the historian Harold Lamb understood, was now of the essence. ‘Temur’s long march to the north would puzzle a modern strategist, but this was warfare without rules and without palliation,’ he wrote. ‘To display weakness or to leave himself open to a surprise attack by the Horde would have been fatal. He knew that unseen eyes had watched his advance and that the Khan was well informed of his movements. Time meant everything to Temur, who must force the Horde to battle, or bring his own army into cultivated land before the end of the summer; delay was Tokhtamish’s finest weapon and he made full use of it.’
Another week of hard marching saw Temur’s weary men at the Samara river. Here a party of scouts rejoined the main body of the army with news that they had heard the enemy. At last, battle was getting closer. Prisoners started to be brought in, each of them carrying intelligence of some value. One was delivered by Temur’s zealous grandson Mohammed Sultan. Another captive reported how, until deserters from Temur’s army joined the Kipchaks, the khan of the Golden Horde was not even aware of his enemy’s approach. They had enraged him with their warning that the Lord of the Fortunate Conjunction was marching north at the head of ‘an army more numerous than the sands of the desert or the leaves of the trees’.
As the two armies manoeuvred in search of advantage and the Tatars braced themselves for the long-awaited encounter, the order went out not to light any fires at night. At each camp, the soldiers were instructed to dig defensive positions and mounted guards were assigned to patrol the perimeter. The separate divisions were to remain in battle formation. Warlike music on the drums and trumpets now accompanied the daily marches. ‘When this vast multitude began to move, it resembled the troubled ocean,’ said Yazdi.
Still there was no sight of the Horde. Moving north, it had devastated the countryside before it, trampling the ground into a quagmire to the misery of the Tatar horses who followed, and systematically stripping the land of what little sustenance it offered. Mists descended on the chilly marshes, lowering the mood in Temur’s camp. It was another moment for the emperor to take charge, regain the initiative and inspire his disconsolate forces. First there had been the hunt, then the fabulous review. Now he called his senior officers together once again, gave them words of encouragement and fine robes of honour, and had new weapons distributed among the troops, including armour for man and beast alike, shields and fresh bows and arrows.
Both sides mounted ambushes against one another. Prisoners flowed this way and that, each with reports of the enemy’s whereabouts. In one particularly brutal clash, a number of Temur’s officers were killed. A retaliatory raid was launched by the emperor himself, and all those who had fought valiantly were generously rewarded, the bravest receiving the highest honour of tarkhan.
Although it was now summer, the conditions were still grim. ‘The air was so dark, the clouds so thick, and the rains so great, that one could not see three paces,’ the chronicle reported. Then, after a week of pea-soup fog, the skies cleared abruptly. It was the middle of June and the men had been marching for almost five months over a distance of eighteen hundred miles. These sons of the desert had ventured so far north that the long summer days seemed endless. The priests were thrown into confusion by the constant daylight, which completely upset the daily routine of five prayers. With Temur’s permission the evening prayer was quietly dispensed with.
Reports were streaming in now of enemy sightings. Temur made final preparations for war. The Tatar divisions moved fo
rward in precise battle formation, based on the traditional plan of a centre and two wings, but with the additions of a vanguard to each wing and a vanguard and reserve for the centre. Mohammed Sultan, apple of his grandfather’s eye, was given command of the centre. Sultan Mahmud, son of the puppet Chaghatay khan, led the vanguard of ten thousand before it. Omar Shaykh, who was proving an exemplary officer, commanded the left wing with his troops from Andijan. His brother Miranshah led the right. Sayf ad-din, the aged but most loyal of amirs, commanded the vanguard of the left wing. Temur himself took charge of the rearguard.
Forward they marched, the sunlight shimmering on their armour so that they resembled ‘the waves of the tempestuous sea’. And then, as the horizon unfurled before them, out of the dancing light rose the horned standards of the Golden Horde, half a mile away. The enemy, at last, was ready to do battle. Death was in the air, but after all these months of anticipation, hunger, exhaustion, frustration and impatience, the Tatar army felt not fear, but relief. The rhythm of feint and counter-feint, pursuit and calculated retreat, looked as if it had finally run its course. One way or another the fight for supremacy between Temur and Tokhtamish would be settled.
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