Be content with the heritage of your fathers, and, however small that heritage may be, beware how you attempt, in the slightest degree, to extend its limits, lest death be the penalty of your temerity." To this insolent letter, Bajazet responded in terms equally defiant.
"For a long time," he wrote, "Bajazet has burned with the desire to measure himself with Tamerlane, and he returns thanks to the All-powerful that Tamerlane now comes himself, to present his head to the cimeter of Bajazet." The two conquerors gathered all their resources for the great and decisive battle.

Tamerlane speedily reached Aleppo, which city, after a bloody conflict, he entered in triumph.

The Tartar chieftain was an impostor and a hypocrite, as well as a merciless butcher of his fellow-men.

He assembled the learned men of Aleppo, and assured them in most eloquent terms that he was the devoted friend of God, and that the enemies who resisted his will were responsible to God for all the evils their obstinacy rendered it necessary for him to inflict.

Before every conflict he fell upon his knees in the presence of the army in prayer.