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Tīmūr bin Taraghay Barlas, known in the West as Tamerlane or "Timur the lame", was a 14th-century warlord of Turco-Mongol descent.[93] He had conquered much of western and central Asia and founded the Timurid Empire (1370–1507) in Central Asia which survived until 1857 as the Mughal dynasty of India. Informed about the civil war in South Asia, Timur began a trek starting in 1398 to invade the reigning Sultan Nasir-u Din Mehmud of the Tughlaq Dynasty in the north Indian city of Delhi. His campaign was politically pretexted that the Muslim Delhi Sultanate was too tolerant toward its "Hindu" subjects, but that could not mask the real reason being to amass the wealth of the Delhi Sultanate.

Timur crossed the Indus River at Attock (now Pakistan) on 24 September. In Haryana, his soldiers killed about 50 to 100 Hindu civilians each. Timur's invasion did not go unopposed, however, and he did meet some resistance during his march to Delhi, most notably from the Sarv Khap coalition in northern India, as well as the Governor of Meerut. Although impressed and momentarily stalled by the valour of Ilyaas Awan, Timur was able to continue his relentless approach _____ Delhi, arriving in 1398 to combat the armies of Sultan Mehmud, already weakened by an internal battle for ascension within the royal family.

The Sultan's army was easily defeated on 17 December 1398. Timur entered Delhi and the city was sacked, destroyed, and left in ruins. Before the battle for Delhi, Timur executed more than 100,000 "Hindu" captives. Timur himself recorded the invasions in his memoirs, which were collectively known as Tuzk-i-Timuri. Timur's purported autobiography, the Tuzk-e-Taimuri ("Memoirs of Temur") is a later fabrication, although most of the historical facts are accurate.

When Timur entered Delhi after defeating Mahmud Toghloq's forces, he granted an amnesty in return for protection money (mâl-e amâni). But on the fourth day, he ordered that all the people of the city be enslaved, and so they were. Thus reports Yahya, who here inserts a pious prayer in Arabic for the victims' consolation ("To God, we return, and everything happens by His will"). Yazdi, on the other hand, does not have any sympathy to waste on these wretches. He records that Timur had granted protection to the people of Delhi on 18 December 1398, and the collectors had begun collecting the protection money. But large groups of Timur's soldiers began to enter the city and, like birds of prey, attacked its citizens. The "pagan Hindus" (Henduân-e gabr) having had the temerity to begin immolating their women and themselves, the three cities of Delhi were put to sack by Timur's soldiers. "Faithless Hindus", he adds, had gathered in the Congregation Mosque of Old Delhi and Timur's officers put them ruthlessly to slaughter there on 29 December. Clearly, Yazdi's "Hindus" included Muslims as well.

However, Timur purportedly stating in his own autobiography that, during the 15-day massacre of Delhi, "Excepting the quarters of the sayyids, the 'ulama and the other Musalmans (Muslims), the whole city was sacked", thereby implying that Timur differentiated between the Muslims and non-Muslims during his sack of the city.