Nothing happens in this world save as Allah wills it. When we were born in the spring of the Year of the Mouse sparks had flown out of our royal mother’s womb and our hands were found to be full of blood. Men of wisdom foretold that the flash of our scimitars would be like sparks of an ironsmith’s anvil and we would wade through rivers of blood. We were taken by our parents to be blessed by Shaikh Shamsuddin. He was reading the sixty-seventh chapter of the Holy Book and intoned, ‘Are you sure that He who dwelleth in heaven, will not cause the earth to swallow you up . . . and behold it shake (Taimura)?’ And so we came to be given the name Taimur. Our horoscope had promised that we would be superior to all monarchs of the age, we would protect religion, destroy idols and be the father of our people. At twenty-seven an injury caused a deformity in our foot compelling us thereafter to be more in the saddle than on foot. We knew that behind our backs, common people called us Taimurlang (Taimur the lame) but in our persence they addressed us as the Uncompared Lord of Seven Climes and the Lord of Fortunate Conjunction.

We summoned the kuriltay of the nobles who had attached their destinies to our aporn. We told them of our dream and the interpretations made by wise and saintly men. We told them that our object in undertaking the invasion of Hindustan was to bring infidels to the path of true religion and to purify the country from the filth of polytheism and idolatry. We exhorted them to place helmets of courage on their heads, don the armour of determination, gird on the swords of resolution and like alligators dive into the river of blood: if victorious they would gain renown as warriors who had carried the flag of Islam to the farthest horizons of the earth; if subdued they would gain admittance to paradise as martyrs. We told them of the enormous wealth of Hindustan; of the city the Tughlaks had built of gilded bricks that glistened in the sun and of the cistern in this citadel which was said to be filled with molten gold. We warned them of the rising power of infidels and said that if we did not destroy them by stuffing their mouths with lead they would swallow up everything that the line of sultans starting with Mahmud of Ghazna followed by the Ghors—Mohammed, Qutubuddin Aibak, Altamash and his daughter Sultana Razia—followed by the mighty Ghiasuddin Balban and the house of Khiljis—Jalaluddin, Alauddin—down to the dynasty of the Tughlaks—Ghiasuddin, Mohammed, Firoze and Nasiruddin—had amassed over two centuries.