Clavijo's Embassy to the Court of Timur (1403-1406)

After the Battle of Ankara in 1402 Timur began to seek contact with European rulers and sent his own envoy to Castile. In return King Henry III of Castile dispatched a second embassy to Timur, led by the royal chamberlain Ruy González de Clavijo.

The embassy sailed from Cádiz in May 1403 and travelled via Constantinople, Trebizond, Erzincan, Tabriz, Soltaniyeh and Tehran, reaching Samarkand in September 1404. Timur received the envoys in one of his gardens on 8 September. Clavijo stayed in Samarkand for over two months and described Timur's feasts, his great city of tents, the Bibi-Khanym Mosque then under construction and the city's markets.

The embassy left Samarkand in November, heard of Timur's death (February 1405) on the way back and returned to Spain in March 1406. Clavijo's diary was printed in 1582 as Embajada a Tamorlán.