Shaybani Khan Killed at Merv

1510

The Uzbek warlord Muhammad Shaybani, conqueror of Transoxiana and tormentor of Babur, rode out of Merv to face Shah Ismail's Qizilbash. The Persians crushed him. Ismail had Shaybani's skull lined with gold and sent to his Ottoman rival as a drinking cup, a gesture nobody in Istanbul forgot. The skull-cup became a diplomatic provocation poisoning Ottoman-Safavid relations for decades afterward.