Tughlugh Timur became khan of Moghulistan, the eastern half of the Chagatai realm after its split. He accepted Islam and urged his tribesmen to do the same; tradition claims 160,000 converted with him in a single day. Adopting Islam while keeping the nomadic life became the standard pattern across the Central Asian steppe after him.
In 1360 and again in 1361 he crossed the Amu Darya into western Transoxiana. The amirs there were too busy quarrelling to unite, so he took the region with little resistance and left his son Ilyas Khoja to govern it.
On that campaign he met the young Timur and handed him control of his home district — which means the conqueror who would later shake the world received his first position of power from this khan's hand. Timur soon turned against him, and when Tughlugh Timur died in 1363 Moghulistan's grip on the west died with him.