Note 11 — Chapter VIII

Herbelot mentions (under the article Giogathai Khan, p. 363) a Mahmud, surnamed Tarabi, from his native place Tarab, near Bokhara, as an impostor, who by tricks and false miracles gained so many followers as to be able to seize upon the town of Bokhara, and to make war upon the Moghuls, in the year of the Hejira 630 (A. D. 1232). This date makes him a contemporary with the Mahmúd of our text, in which, however, nothing more is to be found for enabling us to identify the one with the other. Such was the terror which the name of Mahmùd Tarabi inspired, that the Tartars, being led against his camp, were seized by a panic, and took to flight, in which many thousands of them were slaughtered by the pursuing soldiers of Mahmúd, whilst he himself had been killed in his camp, by a random shot of an arrow from the Tartarian army. But his death remained concealed, and his friends spread the rumor of his voluntary but temporary disappearance. His brothers, Muhammed and Ali, were put at the head of the party, which was soon after overthrown by the Moghuls.