In the impression of most Chinese, the world's first power in the fifteenth century was the Ming Dynasty. Because Europe had just entered the Renaissance at that time, North America was still the domain of Indians. But if we focus on Central Asia, we will find that there is a country similar to the size of the Ming Dynasty, which is the famous Timurid Empire.
The Timurid Empire was founded in 1370, about the same time as the Ming Dynasty. Its founder was the Western Chagatai nobleman Timur. From the 1660s onwards, Timur began to expand outward from his stronghold of Samarkand. In the decades that followed, Timur led his army to conquer the north and south, defeating many central Asian forces and establishing a vast empire stretching from northern India in the east, to the Plain of Mesopotamia in the west, to the Caucasus in the north, and to the Arabian Sea in the south. To the peoples of the Middle East and Central Asia at that time, Timur was like another Genghis Khan.
It is reasonable to say that the Timurid Empire was located in Central Asia, the Ming Dynasty was located in East Asia, and the two empires were separated by the western states such as Bali and Turfan. In the case of inconvenient transportation conditions in ancient times, the two countries should develop separately. But a group of scammers from Central Asia has upset this delicate balance between the two sides.
After the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, the surrounding small states were subordinated to the Ming Dynasty and became their vassal states. The reason for this situation, in addition to these small countries fearing the power of the Ming Dynasty, is also an important reason that they can join the Tributary System of the Ming Dynasty by becoming vassal states. Although they nominally had to pay tribute to the Ming Dynasty, in fact the value of the gift items given by the Ming Dynasty was often several times the value of their tribute items. Therefore, driven by profits, the surrounding small countries are willing to lose some face and get some benefits. Some gangs of crooks also used the conditions of information asymmetry to forge mission documents to participate in the tributary trade in the Ming Dynasty.
At the end of the fourteenth century, a group of tributary missions claiming to be from the Timurid Empire came to Nanjing, the capital of the Ming Dynasty, and the mission brought rich tribute gifts and a handwritten letter claiming to be Timur himself. The letter recognized the prominent position of the Ming Dynasty and expressed its willingness to join the Ming Dynasty's tributary system and become one of the vassal states. The Ming Emperor zhu Yuanzhang at that time was very satisfied with Timur's subordination, so he led a 1,500-man delegation to Samarkand to thank Timur for his loyalty.
In 1397, after the Ming mission arrived in Samarkand, Fu An presented Timur with the Ming Dynasty's state letter. The Book of Kingdom calls Timur a vassal, which makes Timur furious at this time. It turned out that the so-called Timurid Empire tribute mission was just a gang of liars, and their purpose of paying tribute to the Ming Dynasty was only to obtain rich returns, and Timur actually did not send a mission to the Ming Dynasty at all.
Although this incident was only an oolong incident, Timur was very angry with the condescending attitude of the Ming Dynasty, so the plan of the Eastern Expedition to the Ming Dynasty began to brew in his mind.
In 1402, Timur led an army to defeat the Ottoman Empire in the "Battle of Angola", and the Timurid Empire reached its peak strength and was no longer invincible from Central Asia to the Middle East. In November 1404, after making sufficient preparations, Timur personally led an army of 200,000 to begin the crusade. His plan was to prepare for an invasion of the Ming Dynasty through Betsugu Bali, eventually conquering the Ming Empire and converting it to Islam.
News of Timur's Crusade did not reach Nanjing until March 1405, when the Ming Emperor thought it was nothing more than a plunder by nomadic tribes, so he only ordered the Northwest Frontier Army to prepare for the battle, and the imperial court had no plans to send a large army to meet the battle. For the Ming Dynasty's northwestern border defense army, if there was a battle between the two sides, it would obviously be disastrous, after all, the border defense army was too small to withstand the offensive of the elite main force of the Timurid Empire. This time, however, the Ming Dynasty's northwestern frontier army was very fortunate, because Timur himself died on February 18 in Wuda, and his descendants were busy competing for the throne and led their armies back to Samarkand. The fierce collision between the Ming Empire and the Timurid Empire came to an abrupt end immediately before the imminent contact.
The suspension of Timur's crusades saved countless people from Central Asia to China from the ravages of war, and from this point of view, Timur's death was just in time.