Timur’s orgies of destruction hit Christian populations in Central Asia which had already been terribly reduced by the advance of the plague which western Europe would come to know in 1348–9 as the Black Death. From now on, outside the comparative safety of India, the story of the Church of the East recedes to the efforts by disparate enclaves to cling on to existence in the face of Islamic dominance, usually in remote upland areas out of sight of the authorities.
