*

Men from the regions near the Volga's mouth,
Mixed with the rude, black archers of the South;
… Chiefs of the Uzbek race,
Waving their heron crests with martial grace;
Turkomans, countless as their flocks, led forth
From th' aromatic pastures of the North;
Wild warriors of the turquoise hills,—and those
Who dwell beyond the everlasting snows
Of Hindoo Kosh, in stormy freedom bred, …

—Veiled Prophet of Khorasan.

IN the foregoing Section, it has been found convenient to use the word Moghulistan for the region occupied by the descend­ants of the Mongols, subsequent to the time of Chaghatai Khan, though it has been necessary, when speaking of the people or their language from a racial point of view, to employ, occasion­ally, the terms Mongol and Mongolian rather than Moghul. The distinction may not be a very satisfactory one, and need not be carried farther than is absolutely needed to differentiate between the earlier racial attributes, and the later national, or political, aspects of the land and people. It is not easy, how­ever, to distinguish, nominally, between the Mongols of Mon­golia proper, before they spread to the westward under Chingiz Khan, and the same people when, at a later date, having separated from the land of their ancestors, they had come to close quarters with the Musulman inhabitants of the western states of Central Asia. These neighbours mispronounced the name of the new-comers' original nation and, afterwards becoming their historians, handed it down to posterity under what appears to be an altered form. Fortunately it was not greatly changed by either Persian or Turki writers, yet the slight modification they made has led, in modern times, to doubts whether the terms Mongol and Moghul were intended for the same word, and whether they denoted one people or two. We may be satisfied that the two forms, as also the Mo-al of some of the earlier transliterators from the Chinese, are intended for one and the same.*

With the name of the land it was somewhat different. The Mongols themselves have perhaps never had a general name for the whole of the countries inhabited by their tribes—that is, for the region known to Europeans as ‘Mongolia’ in its most extended sense. At the time of Chingiz Khan, probably what­ever country was vaguely regarded by Turki and Persian writers as being in the original occupation of the Mongols, or Moghuls, was called simply Moghulistan; but later, when a specific region, bordering on some of the most advanced and thickly peopled countries of the Turks and Tájiks, became the home of Mongol tribesmen, who made their presence felt in a manner none too agreeable, they absorbed the attention of their neighbours and came to be spoken of as the Moghuls in a special sense, and their land as Moghulistan. The rest of the race fell out of sight: their territory was far away and probably seldom heard of, while taking into consideration the loose ideas prevalent among Asiatics on such subjects, it is not in the least unlikely that the smaller, but better known, region, should have acquired for itself the name which, by strict right, should have been applied to the whole.

That the original population of this smaller region was composed of various nations, previous to its becoming the home of Mongol tribesmen, we have seen already. Abul Gházi tells us that it was inhabited by many tribes—some that were of Mongol race and others that were not—and D'Ohsson and Howorth amply demonstrate the same thing. It contained Uighurs, who were a tribe of Turki descent; Kara Khitai, whose origin was chiefly Manchu (and therefore of a Tungusic root), though probably much mixed with Mongol blood; also Naimans and Karluks, and perhaps some original Kirghiz, all of Turki ancestry; and, moreover, there were Kalmáks, who must be regarded as a branch of the Mongol race.* But when, during the time of the Mongol ascendency, large numbers of that people settled in the country and became, from a military point of view, the dominant race, it is scarcely surprising that the western foreigners should have given the whole of the region the name of Moghulistan,* just as they had previously, when the Kara Khitai were supreme there, called the same territory Kara Khitai. It was the name that the Mongols themselves affected and were (at that time, at any rate) proud of, while it was also that with which their fame and their most cherished traditions were associated. Their mode of procedure, and the result they unconsciously attained, are paralleled in European history by the instance of the Franks in Gaul. During the third century, the Franks were still a loose confederacy of Germanic tribes living beyond the right bank of the Rhine. By degrees, under the Merovingians, they began to invade the country on the left bank. As the Roman power declined, their own increased till, in the fifth century, they had extended it over the whole of northern Gaul. Here they adapted them­selves to the conditions of their new territory, and gradually spread over the entire surface of what is now France. Their numbers were so small that they were overlaid by the large Gallic population, yet the new-comers succeeded eventually in imposing their name on the larger nation, and originated the names of France and French, which entirely displaced those of the ancient inhabitants.

But Moghulistan was not the only name the new land of the Mongols acquired, for in many books of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we find both country and people alluded to under the name of Jatah—a name that, in translating, has been made to assume several unnecessary forms. Thus Pétis de la Croix, who put the Zafar-Náma into French, as far back as the end of the seventeenth century, transliterated the word Geta, and many subsequent authors followed his example. From the name mis-spelled in this way, much speculation arose among European writers, some of whom were able to derive from it the designation of the Jats of India, and others to recognise the Getæ, or Masagetæ, of classical authors. It is fair to say that most modern Orientalists have hesitated to accept these speculative conjectures, though the meaning and origin of the name have been hidden from them. Mirza Haidar now (and he is the first to do so) clears the matter up by informing his readers, parenthe­tically, in a number of places, that Moghulistan and Jatah were one and the same country. In the passages from the Zafar-Náma , which he cites in the First Part of his history, he inter­polates this definition repeatedly, while in the closing chapter of that Part, he adds the further explanation that the Chaghatais called the Moghuls Jatah, on account of their enmity towards them, and by way of depreciation. Thus it was merely a nick­name—a term of contempt or reproach—and when, with this clue, the word is sought in a Mongol dictionary, it is found to mean a ‘worthless person,’ a ‘ne'er-do-well,’ or ‘rascal.’* It has therefore no racial significance, but like such names as Kazák, Kalmák, etc., was probably applied to the Moghuls by their more cultivated neighbours, on account of their barbarous manners, lawless character, and unsettled habits generally.* This being the sense, it need not be used except in translating from the texts; explained once for all, the Jatahs who have haunted the works of historians and commentators for two hundred years, fall into their right place and need be heard of no more.

But the anomalies of nomenclature did not stop here, for our author further implies that the Moghuls retorted on the Chag-hatais with the reproachful name of Karáwánás. Unfortunately he does not, in this instance, give any clue to the meaning of the word, and neither Turki dictionaries nor the transliterated Mongol dictionaries (as far as I am able to use them) throw any light upon it. Indeed, I know of nothing to point to the word being a term of depreciation, except the inference to be drawn from this one statement of Mirza Haidar's; but, taking into consideration the connection in which he introduces it, and the common practice over the greater part of Asia, of one nation calling another by a reproachful nickname, this single instance is probably sufficient. The name, under one variant or another, has been found by translators in several Oriental works, and appears in many cases to be applied to a tribe or community: thus Quatremère cites the Tarikh-i-Wassáf to the effect that the army of the “Karavenas” resembled monkeys rather than men, but that they were the bravest “among the Mongols”; also Mirkhwánd, who is represented as describing them in precisely the same way; Rashid-ud-Din, who also speaks of their bravery; and several others who, however, only make mention of the name. Not one of these authors assists us in assigning a meaning to the word, or in tracing the origin of its application to the Chaghatais as a people. None of them do more than represent the Karáwánás to have been a sub-tribe of Mongols who entered Khorasán and Persia under Hulaku, or very shortly after him.

It appears from Wassáf that there was, indeed, a tribe among the Mongols named Kuránas* towards the end of the twelfth century, though the name is not traceable in Rashid-ud-Din's lists, unless we are prepared to recognise it in that which Dr. Erdmann transliterates “Ckaranut” (where the final t is only the Mongol plural) or “Ckurulás.”* In any case, the form Kuránas is said to have afterwards become modified in Persia, into Karáwanás, which, but for the absence of an accent on the third a, is the same spelling as Mirza Haidar's. But the fact that a tribe, or sub-tribe, bearing this name existed in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, in no way accounts for its having been applied, as a general term of contempt, to the Chaghatais as a people: there must have been some other reason and origin. The name itself was found, by Quatremère, never to appear previous to the Mongol invasions of the west, or subse­quent to the date of the Zafar-Náma—viz., 1424.* Marco Polo was one of the earliest to mention it, and he gives it the form Caraonas. He relates that he met with the Caraonas at Kirmán and, apparently also, at other places in Persia farther north, and describes them as a robber tribe who were “the sons of Indian mothers by Tartar fathers.” Probably the word “Indian” may have been employed by him in a very broad sense, or it may, as Sir H. Yule has suggested, perhaps stand for Biluchi; but in any case, Marco Polo refers to them as a race of half-breeds, and states that the name of Caraonas had been given them on account of their mixed parentage.* Dr. Erdmann, again, alludes to the Karawinah, or Karawinas, stationed in Khorasán about the same period, and explains, on the authority of Wassáf, that they were the artillerists (Feuerwerker) of the Chaghatai army.* These are the only two instances known to me, where meanings for the term are suggested by original contemporary authors; but there seems no reason to suppose that the name was specially given to any such classes as half-caste robbers or artillerymen. It was imposed, Mirza Haidar tells us, on the Chaghatais generally, and therefore is far more likely to have had its origin in something quite unconnected with either the banditti of Kirmán or the gunners of the army in Khorasán, for both these classes may have inherited a right to the distinc­tion with their Chaghatai relationship:* the lesser would be contained in the greater.

But under whatever name the Moghuls were known to their neighbours, one of the most noteworthy circumstances connected with them, during the period to which Mirza Haidar's history refers, was that they were rapidly declining in power and in numbers. With the introduction among them of the Musulman religion, they seem to have tended gradually to lose their national characteristics and to merge more and more into the tribes or nations—for the most part of Turki descent—by whom they were surrounded. From the time of the Mongol conquests down to the first half of the sixteenth century, nearly three hundred years had elapsed. In so long a period, it is only reason­able to conclude that some changes may have taken place in a politically weak and unstable people like the Mongols, and who, in addition, were pressed upon from the west and south by alien nations much superior to themselves in numbers. It is not, however, necessary to assume, as some writers have done, that the mass of the Moghuls, even in the latest years of this period, were of Turki blood, or that they used the Turki language as their own.* The circumstances that appear rather to have given rise to this view are: (1) the glimpses that are occasion­ally obtained in history of the Moghul Khans and chiefs (almost the only persons ever noticed individually by historians) who had become to all intents and purposes Turks, at a period following pretty closely on that of the Mongol ascendency—a matter that affects only the Moghuls of Moghulistan; and (2) the use made by Musulmán authors of the word Turk, when designating, sometimes all nomad and steppe-dwelling, or pastoral, tribes, and sometimes a specific race. This dual use of the word Turk underlies the whole of the ethnography of Central Asia, as it has come down to us through the writings of Oriental authors. It has been my object to avoid, if possible, all discussion of this much-debated question, but in order that some of our author's statements may not be wrongly interpreted, it is necessary to make some brief remarks upon it.

One instance which touches phase (1) is that of the racial characteristics of the family of Baber, which gave to India the so-called ‘Moghul’ line of kings. It will hardly be disputed that not alone Baber himself, but some of his more immediate ances­tors, were to all intents and purposes Turks; and this was the case not only in the acquisition of language and manners, but by inter­mixture of blood; while his successors, whose portraits, painted in India, are extant at the present day, show no trace in their features of descent from a Mongoloid race. It is said that Baber's grandfather (Sultan Abu Said of Khorasan, 1452-67) was described by a Khivan contemporary, who visited him, as a very handsome man with a full beard and unlike a Moghul. Another, and perhaps more perfect, instance of the same thing is the description given in the Tárikh-i-Rashidi of the personal appearance of Yunus, Khan of Moghulistan, in 1456, or some two centuries only after the death of Chaghatai Khan—who was certainly a pure Mongol. Yunus is reported, by one who says that he expected to see a beardless man, “like any other Turk of the desert,” to have had a full beard and Tájik (i.e., Aryan) features;* and brief though this description is, it tells so signifi­cant a tale of a changed race, that it is probably as trustworthy a record, as a portrait painted by even a superior artist to those of Hindustan. In the case of the few families of the chiefs, there would be a tendency to change much more rapidly than in that of the bulk of the people. Their custom was to give their relations in marriage to the friendly rulers of foreign countries, and, in exchange, to take to wife a member of those rulers' families; if one Khan subjugated another, he usually demanded a daughter or a sister in marriage; while it was no doubt possible, and perhaps fashionable, for the governing classes to add foreign wives to their harems, in the same way that Musul-máns of means and position have loved to do at all periods and in most countries.

In these circumstances, the physical characteristics of the original race would soon pass away among the families of the chiefs, and with them would go the language and the customs. But with the mass of the tribes-people it would be otherwise. There appears to be no description of them indicating a resem­blance to the Turks; on the contrary, the description of Yunus implies a difference between him and the mass of his people. Moreover, we may assume that the rank and file of the Moghuls would not have the same opportunities for rapidly connecting themselves in blood relationship with their neighbours; conse­quently the distinctive features of their race would take longer to undermine. As already observed, the life of the steppes and the comparative isolation of the aul, would tend rather to pre­serve the purity of the race. It may not be possible to form an estimate of the length of time that would be needed to bring about a change of type by gradual intermarriage, but we know, at any rate, of one instance where this same Mongol people, from living in more or less isolated positions, and mixing with neigh­bouring races only to a very slight extent, have preserved all the physical characteristics of their original type, as well as the language, down to our own day—or some six and a half centuries from the date of their transplantation, during the era of the Mongol conquests. I refer to the Hazáras of Afghanistan, most of whom are still as unmistakably Mongol in feature and build as the inhabitants of Mongolia itself. According to the most trustworthy accounts of them, they descend from the remnants of the army of Nikudar Oghlán, a son of Hulaku,* who invaded the region in which they dwell now, about the latter half of the thirteenth century; while Professor von der Gabelentz has shown that, in spite of a slight mixture of Persian words, their language is still strictly Mongolian, or more particularly, West Mongolian—i.e., Kalmák.*

On the general question of the rise and decay of languages, enough is known of the process which a nation has to go through before it can completely change its tongue, to justify the belief that a very long period is needed for the transfer to become finally accomplished. The first step is that the people should become bi-lingual—that the mass of them (not a few of the chiefs) should come to use both the old and the new language with equal facility—and this alone is a process re­quiring many generations. The next step is that the old language should fall into disuse and be forgotten. The second stage may, perhaps, take less time to work itself out than the first; but it must, nevertheless, require a period measured in generations. Thus, when we consider that a century (accord­ing to the usual computation) embraces only about three generations, it must be regarded as improbable that the tribes which were pure Mongols at the end of the thirteenth century should have become the pure Turks they are sometimes repre­sented, at the period dealt with by our author. The Russian savant Gmelin, who travelled in Central Asia in the last cen­tury, is emphatic in stating his belief in the permanency of the Mongol race in general, as far as physical attributes are con­cerned. He affirms that, in spite of all mixtures of blood by their wars in distant countries, the Mongol tribes have not only preserved their characteristic type of features, but have even impressed it on other races with whom they have come in contact—such as the Kirghiz and others.* This statement perhaps hardly affords a proof on the subject in question, but it goes towards showing that the eradication of the Mongol type is not a simple matter, or one that is likely to have been accomplished in a space of barely two hundred years.

Amir Khusru, the poet of mediæval India, draws—or perhaps overdraws—a picture of the Moghuls who invaded Northern India towards the end of the thirteenth century, in a manner which leaves no doubt that he is attempting to describe a Mongoloid race. He had previously fallen into their hands as a prisoner, and, according to his own account, had been badly treated by them; as he was no doubt burning with dread and resentment, his description must be taken to be somewhat tinged by his feelings. However, omitting some offensive details, he writes thus: “There were more than a thousand Tatar infidels and warriors of other tribes, riding on camels, great commanders in battle, all with steel-like bodies clothed in cotton; with faces like fire, with caps of sheepskin, with heads shorn. Their eyes were so narrow and piercing that they might have bored a hole in a brazen vessel… Their faces were set on their bodies as if they had no neck. Their cheeks resembled soft leathern bottles, full of wrinkles and knots. Their noses extended from cheek to cheek, and their mouths from cheek bone to cheek bone… Their moustaches were of extravagant length. They had but scanty beards about their chins… They looked like so many white demons, and the people fled from them everywhere in affright.”* Is it possible that a race which would call forth such a description as this, from even a terrified poet, could have become, in the mass, men like Yunus or Baber between the end of the thirteenth century and the latter half of the fifteenth?

Thus, although it might appear at first sight that, with the change taking place in the families of the Khans, with the advance of the Musulman religion and the growing use of the Turki language, it would be impossible to distinguish a true Mo­ghul people, still evidence is not wanting to show that even up to the first half of the sixteenth century, the Moghuls of Moghul-istan—the Moghul Ulus of Mirza Haidar—were in fact a separate people from the Turks. During the period 1514 to 1533, the Mirza constantly alludes to a distinct tribe or community of Moghuls—however reduced in numbers—in exactly the same terms as he refers to them at a period dating two hundred years before. They were neither Kirghiz, nor Uzbegs, nor Kalmáks, but were the natural enemies of all three; they were of the Ulus (or clan) of the Khans descended from Chaghatai; they preserved Mongol customs and, from occasional incidental references which he makes to Mongol terms and phrases, must have re­tained something, at least, of the original language of their nation, though they had no literature in which it could become fixed. This being the case, the bulk of them must have pre­served their Mongol type to the last, and it may perhaps be fairly conjectured that whatever change they had undergone, was due less to the fusion of blood than to the conversion of the people to Islam. The spread of the Musulman religion tends always to the modification of manners and customs, and to the use of the Arabic, Turki or Persian language; but in spite of all, racial characteristics remain, until very gradually expunged by a course of inter-breeding, that must extend over many centuries. Several parallel cases (besides that of the Hazáras) might be cited among Asiatic nations; but one, having no relation to the Mongol tribes, will suffice. The Baltis of Baltistan, or Little Tibet, formed originally a section of the ordinary population of Tibet, were of the same religion, and used the same language. Some three centuries or more ago, they were converted to the Musulman faith, and began gradually to change their manners. At present the written language of Tibet is unknown among them, Persian having replaced it; their chiefs, through intermarriage with neigh­bouring Musulman peoples, have changed so greatly, even in type, that usually no trace of the Tibetan is left; but the mass of the nation, though practising Musulman social customs and wearing a Musulman costume, have not lost the Tibetan spoken language, and are, in feature and other personal attributes, as thoroughly Tibetan as ever they were. Had the Baltis occu­pied an open country, and been constantly engaged in wars and invasions, there might have been a greater and more rapid change. Their secluded mountainous home (like that of the Hazáras) has mitigated this, and has helped to pre­serve them as a race: but the principle is the same as with the Moghuls.

With regard to the misleading employment of the word Turk, alluded to above, it must be explained that, among Asiatic authors, it is constantly met with as the definition of a race or people distinguished from the Tartars and the Moghuls, on the one hand, and from Tájiks, or Táziks, on the other. But in the same writings, and often on the same page, it is used to denote all nomads and inhabitants of the steppes, irrespective of race or origin, and merely to distinguish such people from those who dwelt in towns, and who cultivated the settled districts —or from the Tájiks generally. The first may be regarded as its ethnological sense: the second as sociological only, and as about synonymous with the adopted English word nomad. In this second sense it included, as we shall see, all Mongoloid and Tartar races. In dictionaries we find among its many mean­ings those of barbarian, robber, vagabond, wanderer, etc. It is also, in poetry, applied to the planet Mars as “a Wanderer of the sky,” and to the sun as “the Turk of China,” that is of the East; or “the Turk of midday”—viz., the South; or “the Turk of the Spheres.” All who lived in the steppes and ranges, outside the pale of what was regarded as civilisation, and led a pastoral or unsettled life, but who were not distinctively mountaineers, were deemed a separate class (irrespective of race) and required a separate name to denote them. To this class the name of Turk attached itself throughout Central Asia. In Europe and in India the word Turk was not used in this sense. By Europeans, and perhaps Western Asiatics also, the word Tatar, or Tartar, was usually in vogue, down to quite modern times, to indicate the nomadic nations of the interior of Asia, without reference to any racial con­siderations; * while in India the name Moghul came to be applied (in times subsequent to the rise of the Mongols, at any rate) in a very similar way, to these same races.

Abul Gházi, the historian Khan of Khiva, himself a Turk by nationality, though of remote Mongol descent, constantly uses the word Turk in its sociological sense, and applies it indis­criminately to all the nomad and steppe-dwelling tribes, when he requires a name for the whole of them; but, when referring to their descent or language, or when in any way particularising between them, I do not know of a single instance of his alluding to the Moghuls as connected by blood with the Turki tribes. In other words, although he employs the name Turk to describe certain nations—among them the Moghuls—for whom he knows no other general designation, he never applies it in the par­ticular instances where a racial consideration is involved, except to those among them whom he regards as, in reality, Turks by race. He writes, for instance: “Of all the Turk tribes who inhabited those countries at that period, the Tatars were the most numerous …”; and again: “We have … recounted what we know of the other branches of the race of Turks. Now, we will speak of the branches of Mongol race.”* It is in the same non-racial sense that Mirza Haidar uses the word Turk, when putting the remark (alluded to above) about Yunus Khan, into the mouth of Maulana Muhammad Kázi: “I had heard that Yunus Khan was a Moghul,” says the Maulana, “and I concluded that he was a beardless man, with the ways and manners of any other Turk of the desert; but when I saw him, I found that he was a person of elegant deportment, with a full beard and a Tájik face.”* That is, the speaker knew that Yunus was a Moghul by descent, and expected to see a man with Mongolian features, but he classed him with other Turks of the steppes.

D'Ohsson became conscious, from the extensive use he had made of Asiatic historians, that these writers constantly em­ployed the word Turk to signify the nomad and pastoral tribes, known in Europe as ‘Tatars.’ In one passage he writes: “The Mongols gave the name of Tájik, or Tázik, to the Muham-madans, and in the historical works of this period it will be found that they employed this word in opposition to that of ‘Turk.’ The first served to designate the Muhammadan inhabitants of towns and cultivated lands, whether they were of Turki, Persian, or Arab origin mattered not; while under the name of ‘Turk’ were comprised the nomad nations of Turki and Tatar race. It was in this general acceptation that Chingiz Khan and the Mongols styled themselves ‘Turks’; they re­jected, on the other hand, the name of ‘Tatar.’”* In another passage, when speaking of the Tatars proper, previous to the rise of the Mongols, D'Ohsson quotes Rashid-ud-Din as follows: “They made themselves so powerful and formidable, that other nations of Turks passed themselves off as Tatars, and regarded the name as an honour.”*

Again, Major Raverty, in his translation of the Tabákát-i-Násiri , notes the headings of the first four sections of Rashid-ud-Din's history, the second, third, and fourth of which contain the following:—“2nd Section. Account of the Turk tribes whom they designate by the name of Mughals, but every one of which, in ancient times, bore distinct and particular sur­names… 3rd Section. Account of the Turk tribes, every one of which have had Badshahs and chiefs, but who bore no relationship to the tribes mentioned in the preceding sections. 4th Section. Account of the tribes of Turks, whose surname, from time immemorial, was Mughal…”* These brief extracts are sufficient to show the sense in which Rashid-ud-Din, one of the best of the Musulman authors of the Mongol period, used the work Turk, and how, though he was able to distinguish specifically between real Turks and other tribes, when ethnological considerations were in question, still used the word in a non-ethnic sense, to denote a group of tribes who had to be distinguished from the Tájiks.

Other Asiatic authors wrote on these subjects in the same way. Thus, Minháj-ud-Din, the author of the Tabákát-i-Násiri, frequently uses the word Turk to designate the nomadic group generally, and, like Rashid-ud-Din, even brings the name Tatar into the same category. The following is an instance taken from three consecutive paragraphs:—“In this same year the Chingiz Khan, the Mughal, rose up in the Kingdom of Chin and Tamghaj, and commenced to rebel; in all books it is written that the first signs of the end of time are the outbreak of the Turks… The name of the father of this Chingiz Khan, the accursed, was the Tatar, Timurchi, and he was the mihtar [chief] of the Mughal tribes, and ruler over his people … Among the tribes of the Mughal was another Turk of importance, a ruler and leader, and greatly venerated; and the whole of the tribes of the Mughals were under the rule of these two persons… All the tracts of the Turk tribes, at the hand of their iniquity and sedition were reduced to misery…”*

Juvaini, the author of the Jahán Kushai, applies to the Mongols the passage from the Koran: “Beware of provoking the Turks, for they are formidable.”* Abul-feda quotes an Arab author to the effect that the Russians are a people of Turkish race,* when pointing to them as belonging to the group of non-Musulman and non-Tájik inhabitants of what were regarded as civilised countries. Ibn Haukal, touching on the question from a geographical point of view, writes: “Tiráz [Táráz] is on the extreme frontier between the country of the Turks and that of the Musulmans”;* yet the Musulmans, in this case, were, to a great degree, of Turki race. And, again, Minháj-ud-Din mentions an invasion of Tibet (from Upper Bengal apparently) and says: “All the people [of Tibet] were Turks, archers, and [furnished with] long bows.”* Idrisi, also, in speaking of Tibet, says: “This is the country of the Tibetan Turks”; and afterwards: “This intervening space is covered with pastures, forests, and strong castles belonging to the Tibetan Turks.” Further on again, he tells us: “There are Turks of very diverse races” (de races très diverses); and he proceeds to detail, among others, the Tibetans and the Kalmáks. The names of the remaining tribes he mentions in this passage, are spelled in so unintelligible a manner, that I can recognise none but the Kirghiz and Kipcháks, with whom he thus classes the Tibetans and the Kalmáks as, all alike, Turks!*

The poet Khusru, in the passage cited above, calls the people he describes, by the name of Tatar, though a little lower down (on the same page) he says they were “Turks of Kai;” while elsewhere, he frequently speaks of the same people as Moghuls.* Further, the late Mr. R. B. Shaw has explained, with regard to the word Tájik, that it stands in opposition to Turk, just as Arab stands to Ajam,* and thus is not necessarily a race name.

Many other instances might be given of this non-ethnic use of the word Turk, and with them might be included also some relating to a similar employment of the term Tatar.* But the above will suffice to make it clear that, though the Moghuls of Moghulistan were often called Turks, during the period including the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, it need not be assumed that they were actually of Turkish race, either by origin or by subsequent fusion of blood. There was, however, another and very important circumstance that complicated this question of nomenclature still further. It was, it seems, the desire of all the tribes and nations of Central Asia, to identify themselves with the race which happened to be in the ascendant at any particular time. They endeavoured to adopt its name, and to pass themselves off as members of the nation in supremacy, regardless of racial affinities. Rashid-ud-Din has laid special stress on this point in his great work on the Mongols, and has explained the matter in one place as follows: “They [the Tatars] made themselves so powerful and formidable, that the other nations of Turks passed themselves off as Tatars, and re­garded as an honour this name, under which they had become famous; just as at the present day* the Jalair, Tatar, Uirát, Ungut, Karait, Naimán, Tangut, and others, find glory in the name of Mongol, made illustrious by that of Chingiz Khán and his descendants—a name which, at an earlier date, they would have disdained. The young people of all these nations believe, even now, that their ancestors have always borne the style of Mongol; but it was not so, for formerly the Mongols were only one of the nations of Turks… This name has been extended to such a degree, that nowadays the people of Khitai (Northern China) and of Nan-gyass (Southern China), as well as the Churchi, the Uighur, the Kipchák, the Turkoman, and the Karluk; also the Captives and the Táziks (Muham-madans), who have been brought up among the Mongols are [all of them] called Mongols; and they are all interested in passing for Mongols, in order that they may gain consideration. Previous to this period it was the same with the Tatars, on account of their power, and this is the reason why the Mongols are still called Tatars in China and in India, by the Kirghiz, the Báshgirds, in the Kipchák country, in the north of Asia, in Arabia, in Syria, in Egypt, and in Africa.”*

It has been observed above, that in India the word Moghul was employed, subsequent to the days of Chingiz, in the same way as the word Turk in Central Asia, and Tatar in Europe, and on this subject Mr. H. G. Keene has come to conclusions which coincide with the teachings of Rashid-ud-Din. It denoted, in the first place, the group of tribes or nations who composed the armies of the northern invaders, with little or no reference to their racial origin; and secondly, at the time of Baber, it was regarded as something scarcely better than a term of contempt. But later, when the so-called Moghul dynasty came to be looked up to as the supreme power, the name assumed a different and more respectful significance. Mr. Keene writes: “Under Akbar, when the empire had become a firm result of successful war, the word [Moghul] recovered its prestige and—like the name of ‘Goth’ in Spain—came to indicate ‘a noble conqueror,’ or the descendant of one”;* and in support of this view he cites a valuable passage from Kháfi Khan (for which he acknowledges his indebtedness to the late Professor Blochmann, who may be inferred to have translated it), which runs as follows: “The flourishing condition of Mugholistan commenced with Mughol Khan, who was a great king. Although from the time of Akbar the word Mughol has been applied to the Turks and Tajiks of Irán (Persia) to such an extent that even the Sayyids of Khorasán were called Mughols, yet in reality the word is the proper term for those Turks who belong to the descendants and house of Mughol Khan; and it was used in this sense in the time of the earlier (Moslem) kings of Delhi …” Here Kháfi Khan uses Turk in the same sociological sense as Rashid-ud-Din, Minháj-ud-Din, Mirza Haidar, and the rest.*

Mr. Denzil Ibbetson, too, furnishes some instructive remarks, in his Report on the Punjab census, on the way the words Turk and Moghul have come to be used in modern times in the north of India. A Turk is there regarded as a native of Turkistan and a man of Mongolian race. “In the Delhi territory, indeed,” writes Mr. Ibbetson, “the villagers, accustomed to describe the Mughals of the Empire as Turks, use the word as synonymous with ‘official’; and I have heard my Hindu clerks, of Kayath caste, described as Turks merely because they were in Government employ. On the Biloch frontier, also, the word Turk is commonly used as synonymous with Mughal.”*

But though Oriental writers make use of the tribal name of Turk to denote a nomadic people, similar inconsistencies are not wanting in European languages. The way in which the French apply the word Bohémien to the gipsies is a parallel instance. The gipsies, though in no way belonging to the same race as the natives of Bohemia, acquired their name in France, on account of certain social habits and customs which they were believed to have brought with them from Bohemia, and because they were known to wander into France from that country.* An almost similar instance, though not precisely parallel, was the use in English of the word Indian, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to define the aborigines of North America, the Caribbean, and many other islands. In this case it was not the social condition and proclivities of the inhabi­tants that caused the misapplication of name, but their colour, the climate and products of their countries, and other circum­stances, which reminded those who came into contact with them, of the India of the East. The process and result, how­ever, are much the same. But if we leave out of consideration the fact that Turk happened also to be a race-name, its employment to designate the pastoral tribes of unsettled abodes becomes no more anomalous than such appellations as Kohi-stani, Baduin, etc., in Asia, or the familiar Mountaineer, Islander, etc., in Europe.

Misapplication, or change in the application, of race-names is a practice so commonly met with, that it is almost super­fluous to mention it here. It may, however, be briefly pointed out, in regard to the names we are dealing with, that the term Tájik has been made, in one instance, to take exactly the opposite meaning to that which it usually bears. Mr. A. G. Ellis, of the British Museum, informs me that while early Armenian writers applied it to the Arabs,* modern Armenians have imposed it on the Turks and the Turkish Empire, and even on Musulmans in general. In this case it seems that the word is used to imply a ‘stranger,’ or ‘barbarian’;* but it is a curious example of the length to which misapplication can go, for it constitutes an absolute reversal of the usual and original sense of the word. In the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, among other books, we find Hazára used for ‘hill-men,’ or ‘moun­taineers,’ without reference to its original meaning or to any racial consideration, while in modern times the term has become the name of a specific race or people. Hazára meant simply “a thousand,” and was the name, it appears, which was given to a particular section of cavalry or other troops, who were perhaps the original settlers in the hill districts in question.* What Mr. Ibbetson has told us above, of the employment of the words Turk and Moghul in the Punjab, is another instance of mere misapplication or irrelevent nomenclature; but we need hardly go far from home to find a telling example of the same thing. From Earle's Philology of the English Tongue* we learn, with regard to the Cymraeg, or British language now spoken in Wales, that “the Anglo-Saxons called it Wylse, and the people who spoke it they called Walas, which we have modernised into Wales and Welsh. So the Germans of the Continent called the Italians and their language Welsch. The word simply means foreign or strange. At various points on the frontiers of our race we find them affixing the name on the conterminous Romance speaking people … The French … in the reign of Edward the Confessor, are called, by the contemporary [Anglo-Saxon] annalist, tha Welisce men, by which was meant ‘the foreigners.’”*

Thus, the evidence on this subject (apart from that of nick­names or terms of contempt) points to three distinct con­clusions. The first is that, in reading the histories of Musul-man authors, the tribal names they use must not always be taken to have a racial significance; or, in other words, it is necessary in every case where either the term Turk or Tatar occurs, to see whether the writer is applying it in its general and sociological acceptation, or in a specific and discriminating ethnic sense. The second conclusion is that the word Moghul, even where it is used in an ethnic sense, is frequently mis­applied, and so extended, at certain periods in history, as to comprise many tribes of real Turki race (among others), until large numbers of people who were not of Moghul race came to be called Moghuls. This habit appears to have been prevalent first in the time of Chingiz and his immediate successors, and subsequently during the ascendency of the Chaghatai (or so-called Moghul) dynasty in India. The third conclusion is that the application and significance of all three names—Turk, Tatar, and Moghul—varied at different times and in different countries. It appears to me that a due appreciation of these three points will help to clear up much that has been regarded hitherto as inconsistent, and even contradictory, in the Musul-man histories, and has occasioned no little controversy among European writers. That the ethnographic nomenclature of Persian, Turki, and Arabic writers is anomalous, cannot but be granted; but in Asiatic nomenclature what is there that is not anomalous? They had no knowledge of the scientific ethnology that guides the modern European commentator on their works, but merely followed the common speech of the time, and employed the terms that had grown into use among the people around them. In reading their books, therefore, it is futile to look for systematic nomenclature; but if they are read with a due regard to date, locality, and other circum­stances, they will seldom be found, I think, to contain actual contradictions; for loose and inaccurate though Asiatics are in some respects—such as in figures, measurements, geographical details, etc.—they are usually remarkably clear on such subjects as blood relationship, family lineage, and racial descent.

But here we must leave the Moghuls, and glance briefly at those original Turks, or Uighurs, who may be regarded as the immediate ancestors of the population of Alti-Shahr (and indeed all Eastern Turkistan) and the main stock of their race. Who the Uighurs were in remote times, and what was their origin, are speculative questions which need not be investigated here. The best notices of them during early historic times point to their home-land as lying in north-western Mongolia; but in the ninth century they are recorded, in the Chinese annals,* to have been displaced from that region and to have been driven southward by the Kirghiz,* who were themselves, at that time, beginning to rise to power, and tending, like other Turki tribes, to press towards the south and west. In early times there seem to have been at least two confederacies of Uighurs in the further east: one living in the region now known as Zungaria, and called the Naimán Uighur, or “Eight Uighurs,” while the other inhabited the country watered by the Orkhon and the Tula, and were known as the Toghuz Uighur, or “Nine Uighurs.”* When the latter were driven to the south and west, the former remained in their old country, where they are found at the time of Chingiz Khan. The Toghuz Uighur settled in the eastern ranges of the Tian Shan, and gradually built up a new kingdom, extending over all the eastern portion of that chain. Here one of their states seems to have been established on the south of the mountains, and subsequently another on the north. The first had for its chief town the representative of the modern Kara-Khoja (called at different periods Si-Chao, Ho-Chao, and Kao-Chang), and embraced, at some periods at least, the modern district of Kuchar, then known as Kui-tze; while the capital of the second was Bishbálik (the Five Towns), which stood on, or near, the site of the present Urumtsi. Very little is known of even these later Uighur kingdoms, although the date when they flourished is not a very remote one. It is chiefly from the Chinese chronicles that any knowledge of their history is to be gathered, but even these do not appear to have been compiled with completeness, nor to have embraced the entire Uighur nation, which must have been a large and influential one for a long period.

In addition to these Uighurs, always so named, and living in the Eastern Tian Shan, there was a third section of the race dwelling farther west. They are called sometimes the ‘Kar-lughi,’ and their seat of power was originally at Ili-bálik and on the head waters of the Chu. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, they appear to have dominated Western Turkistan and perhaps the whole of Alti-Shahr, while one of their chief towns was Kashghar, then known as Urdu-Kand. Their rulers were the so-called ‘Ilak-Khans,’ or ‘Kara-Khans,’ whose history is more or less known through the works of Arab and Persian authors, since the conversion of one of the line—a certain Sátuk Kara Khan—to Islám, in the first half of the tenth century. That the state and dynasty of the Ilak Khans were in reality Uighur, there seems to be sufficient evidence to prove, although the name of Uighur was not used by Musulmán authors till a much later date. They seem to have been known by the name of Ta-gaz-gaz* until the thirteenth century, when they begin to appear under that of Uighur in Western annals, though the Ilak Khans were then no more. From these same Musulman historians we learn that, during parts of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the kingdom of the Ilak Khans extended from Khorasán to China, which is perhaps scarcely to be taken literally, but is only another way of saying that it extended a long way to the east; for the Chinese, in their chronicles of the same period, speak of trans­actions between their Emperors and the Khans of Kao-Chang and Bishbálik, as if these were independent chiefs.*

We come to surer ground about the year 1124, when Yeliu Taishi, the Gurkhán of the Kara Khitai, overran the whole of Eastern Turkistan and captured Balasághun, together with much of the country to the northward, which was then under the sway of the Ilak Khans. This invasion put an end to the kingdom of the Western Uighurs—the Kárluks, or Karakháni— while the Eastern Uighurs became tributary to the conquerors. But it was a conquest that probably had little influence on the people by whom the land was inhabited. It is uncertain what tribes the army of the Gurkhán was composed of; in all proba­bility it was much mixed in race, while in any case, it was a mere army of invasion and by no means constituted the migra­tion of a people. The dominion of the Kara Khitai, moreover, lasted for less than a hundred years, so that the Uighurs, as a nation, must have formed too solid a mass to have been in any degree changed in race by this conquest.

Thus, it may be said generally, that for several centuries previous to the rise of the Mongols, certain Turki-Uighur peoples (they may, in future, be called simply Uighurs), under whatever line of kings, had overspread the whole of the pro­vince of Alti-Shahr and the districts to the east of it, while at some periods they held sway in Zungaria and extended their dominion westward into Transoxiana. While exercising inde­pendent rule, and even subsequently, when allied with Chingiz Khan against the Kara Khitai and other enemies,* they appear to have shown warlike qualities, but at later dates the impression we receive of them is that of a peace-loving, cultivated race, of settled habits, and forming as great a contrast as possible to their Moghul neighbours. Their taste for literature must have been a strong one; in fact, they were the only literate people at that time in existence between China in the east, and Trans-oxiana in the west. They are credited with having been the first to reduce the Turki language to writing, by borrowing the Syriac written character from the Nestorian missions which, in the Middle Ages, were spread over Central Asia; while the writing, thus founded by the Uighurs, became, at a later period, the origin of the systems still in use among the Mongols and the Manchus.* Many books were written by them, and both Rashid-ud-Din and Abul Gházi point to their services being in request as administrators, accountants and writers of the Turki language. The latter author especially bears witness to their capabilities in these pursuits. He says: “During the reign of the grandsons of Chingiz Khan the accountants and chief officers of government in Mávará-un-Nahr, in Khorasán and in Irák, were all Uighurs. Similarly, it was the Uighurs who filled these posts in Khitai during the reign of the sons of Chingiz Khan. Oktai Kaán, son and successor of Chingiz Khan, entrusted Khorasán, Mazandarán and Gilán to a Uighur named Kurguz, who was well versed in keeping accounts and knew thoroughly how to levy, in these provinces, the taxes, which he remitted regularly, each year, to Oktai Kaán.”* They occupied, indeed, a very similar position to that of the Bengali and Marathi Hindus in the administrations of the Chaghatai Emperors of India.

Though the Arabs, during their invasions of Eastern Tur-kistan in the eighth century, had done their best to impose the Musulman religion on the old Uighur population, it seems that they met only with very partial success, as far as the bulk of the people was concerned. They no doubt converted the Kara-Khani, as is shown by the coinage, and it is probable that from the eleventh century onwards, the population in the western districts was largely Muhammadan. In the central and eastern parts, however, the Uighurs continued to be Buddhists and belonged to the red sect of that religion; but Nestorian Christi­anity must also have been fairly prevalent among them. They are spoken of very generally as Tarsi, and according to some authorities, this should be taken to indicate that they were Christians; but as regards the exact meaning of the word Tarsi, there are differences of opinion. In many cases it was, no doubt, applied to the Nestorians in various parts of Asia, but it was also applied to the Buddhists, the Zoroastrians, and was even used to denote idolators.*

Strangely enough, the only two European accounts we have of the Uighurs in the Middle Ages (the thirteenth century) differ on this subject: Plano Carpini stating positively that they were Nestorian Christians, while William Rubruk, only eight years later, pronounces them, with equal certainty, to have been idolators, and he adds that they dwelt in towns together with Nestorians and others. It is possible that Rubruk may have regarded most of those he saw as Buddhists, and that he classed all Buddhists with idolators; if so, he would only have been following the practice of many of the Musulmán writers, who drew no very clear distinction between religions that were foreign to their own. But however uncertain this may be, the name of Tarsi frequently included the Nestorians, though it was ordinarily used, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, to indicate the Uighurs as a nation—or more particularly the Uighurs of the eastern Tian Shan. It is in this latter sense that Friar John of Montecorvino, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, speaks of the Tarsi tongue, for he could not have meant a Buddhist tongue. About the same period, too, the Armenian author Hayton, Prince of Gorigos, in his account of the kingdoms of Asia, expressly applies the name of Tarsi to the country of the “Yogurs” or Uighurs.* Mirza Haidar, writing in the sixteenth century, makes no mention of Tarsi, or even of Uighurs generally, as being the inhabitants of Eastern Turkistan,* and it may be inferred that, by his time, the bulk of the people having become Musulmans, had ceased to be distinguished by their race-name of Uighur. He speaks only of the ‘Sárigh,’ or ‘Yellow,’ Uighurs, who appear to have been a small community occupying a territory to the east, or north-east, of Khotan, and to have been, according to his view, idolators.* These may quite possibly have been merely a section of the original inhabitants who had retained their old religion—Christianity or Buddhism—and had found a refuge from the converting Musulmans in the secluded region border­ing on the eastern desert. In this case they would have been Turks, like the rest of the population, in race and language.

Besides the Uighurs, the only people that are heard of in Alti-Shahr, at the period of the Tárikh-i-Rashidi, are the Kal-máks, as they had begun then to be called by Musulman writers.* To the Mongols and the Chinese they were known as Oirat, and this was probably their real name.* They must have been few in number, and were, of course, Mongolian, and not Turki, in race. Their home was among the eastern ranges of the Tian Shan, and therefore only partially within the limits of Alti-Shahr: thus they were more properly borderers of the “Eastern Khanate,” or Uighuristán, and indeed occupied very much the same localities in which they are found at the present day. In this region, like in Moghul-istan, there were no towns or cultivated districts: the people were tent-dwellers, and owners of flocks, and their religion was, no doubt, Buddhism then, as it is now. During the period of the Moghul Khans, they appear to have played but a small part in the history of the country, and to have exercised little influence over the course of its affairs; though after the dis­appearance of the Moghuls, and with the opening of the eighteenth century, they began to rise to very considerable power, and, in connection with the Tibetans of Lassa, entered into intrigues and wars that resulted in their own country, together with all Eastern Turkistan and the Ili region, falling into the possession of China.

In Alti-Shahr there could not have been many Moghuls, for with the exception of some few valleys among the southern slopes of the western Tian Shan, the country could, in no way, have been suited to their mode of life. When Sultan Said Khan conquered Kashghar in 1514, perhaps a certain propor­tion of them may have followed him, but at that date their numbers, even in Moghulistan, must have become much reduced from what they had previously been. Therefore, when a few years later (1525-6), he withdrew the remnant of them from their own country to the hills near Kashghar, in order to rescue them from the hostility of the Kirghiz, they would have formed too small a body to have been accounted part of the population of Alti-Shahr. By that date the Moghul Ulus had become a mere band of refugees; and though afterwards, for a short time, at fitful intervals, their Khans sallied forth from Kashghar and gained some successes over the Kirghiz, the middle of the sixteenth century may be said, approximately, to have seen their practical extinction as a nation.*