His forces famously attacked the Dali Sultanate, not hoping to conquer India, but to take its spoils. In 1398, he was able to successfully defeat the sultan who had battle elephants, and he was able to defeat them by sending camels that had flames on their backs to scare the elephants. And famously, when his forces took Dali, they killed 100,000 to 200,000 people and took the spoils of the city. There are some estimates that Timur's forces killed as many as 17 million people as the empire expanded. To put this into perspective, this is roughly 5% of the world's population at that time. Now once Timur dies in 1405, you can see from this timeline that the empire does not last long. As we get to the second half of the 15th century, it is in decline.