As, in the time of the early successors of Chingiz Khan, the name of Tartar was erroneously transferred from one, and applied to the whole Moghul tribes; so, in latter times, and at the present day, it is, with still greater impropriety, applied by European writers to designate exclusively the tribes of Tūrki extraction, who are in reality a very different race. The French, as well as the German and Russian writers, regard the name of Tartar as properly applicable only to the western Tartars. D’Herbelot, Petis de la Croix, Pallas, Gmelin, as well as the Editor of Astley’s Collection of Voyages, all agree in the propriety of this limitation. Tooke, who follows the best-informed Russian travellers, after dividing the country called Great Tartary among the Mongols, Tartars, and Mandshūrs, adds that the appella­tive Tartars ‘is so much misapplied, that, with some inquirers into history, a doubt has even arisen whether there ever was a peculiar people of that name. Under this denomination have been implied all tribes beyond Persia and India, as far as the Eastern Ocean, however differing from each other in regard to their origin, language, manners, religion, and customs. Now’, he continues, ‘that we are better acquainted with these nations, we know that the Tartars in reality compose a distinct nation, which originally belonged to the great Turkish stock.’* This opinion seems to be that at present universally received. The general name of Tartar, however, is not recognized by any of the tribes on whom it is thus bestowed. These tribes, who have the best right to fix their own appellation, know them­selves only by the particular name of their tribe, or by the general name of Tūrk: their language they call the Tūrki, and if the name of Tartar is to be admitted as at all applicable peculiarly to any one of the three races,* it belongs to the Moghuls, one of whose tribes the ancient Tatārs were, with much greater propriety than to either of the others.

It is curious that, in like manner as in modern Europe, the name of Tatār, taken from a Moghul tribe, was bestowed on all the inhabitants of these vast regions; so, among the Arab conquerors of Asia, and the Arab and Persian geographers, they were all of them, Moghuls as well as Tūrks, known as Tūrks, by a name taken from a different race; while the country as far as China received the name of Tūrkestān. This singularity arose from a very obvious cause, the relative position of the Arabs and Tūrks. The country of Tūrkestān enclosed the Arab conquests in Māweralnaher on three sides. Being in immediate contact with Tūrki tribes, and unacquainted with the varieties of race or language among the more distant wanderers of the desert, whose manners, from similarity of situation, probably were, or at least to a stranger appeared to be, nearly the same, they applied the name of Tūrki to all the more distant nations in these quarters, though differing from each other in many important respects. It has already been remarked that the Indians use the term Moghul with still greater latitude.

But the difference between the Tūrks and Moghuls, if we may believe the best-informed travellers, is more marked than any that language can furnish. The Mongols, says Gmelin, have nothing in common with the Tartars (meaning the Tūrks) but their pastoral life, and a very remote resemblance in language. The Mongols differ, on the contrary, from all the races purely Tartar (Tūrki), and even from all the western nations, in their customs, in their political constitution, and, above all, in their features, as much as in Africa the Negro differs from the Moor. The description of their features, indeed, marks a race extremely different from the Tūrki. ‘Les traits caracteristiques de tous les visages Kalmucs et Mongoles sont des yeux dont le grand angle, placé obliquement en descendant vers le nez, est peu ouvert et charnu: des sourcils noirs peu garnis et formant un arc fort rabaissé; une conformation toute particuliere du nez, qui est generalement camus et ecrasé vers le front: les os de la joue saillans; la tête et le visage fort ronds. Ils ont ordinairement la prunelle fort brune, les levres grosses et charnues, le menton court, et les dents tres blanches, qu’ils conservent belles et saines jusques dans la vieillesse. Enfin leurs oreilles sont generalement toutes enormement grandes et detachées de la tête.’* Gmelin observes, that indeed ‘they have not the shadow of a tradition which could justify a suspicion that they ever composed one nation with the Tartars. The name of Tartar, or rather Tatār, is even a term of reproach among them; they derive it in their language from tatanoi, to draw together, to collect: which, to them, means little better than a robber.’* It is singular that a name thus rejected among the nations to whom it is applied should have had so much currency. The resemblance between Tartar and the infernal Tartarus, joined with the dread and horror in which the Tartar invaders were held, while they scattered dismay over Europe, probably, as has been well conjectured, preserved the name in the west.

While all accounts of the Moghuls concur in giving them something hideous in their appearance, the Tūrks, on the other hand, appear to have been rather distinguished as a comely race of men. The Persians, themselves very hand­some, considered them as such. Hāfiz and the other Persian poets celebrate their beauty. They seem to have very much of the European features, but with more contracted eyes; a peculiarity which they probably owe to intermarriages with the Moghuls, or perhaps to something in their local situation in the deserts whence they issued. But, whatever may have been the difference between these two nations, certain it is that a marked distinction did exist between them from very early times.

The manners of these roving and pastoral tribes, as described by the ancient Greek and Roman writers, agree precisely with those of their descendants at the present day; but they have been painted with so much liveliness and truth by Gibbon, in a work which is in every one’s hands, that nothing need be added to what he has sketched. The first historical period, a knowledge of which is of con­sequence to the understanding of the following Memoirs, is that marked by the conquests of Chingiz Khan. In the earlier days of that Prince, the Kara Khitan was the most powerful Tartarian dynasty. Within the extensive range which their empire embraced, from the Chinese wall to the Ala Tāgh mountains, though the population was chiefly Tūrki, were included several tribes of different races, Tūrks, Uighurs, and Moghuls. Their power was broken in the year 1207 by the Naimans, another Tūrki race; and soon after, the Moghul tribes, impatient of a foreign yoke, rose under Chingiz Khan, shook off the authority of the Kara Khitans, and, under his conduct, rapidly subdued them in their turn. The name of Kara Khita indicates their connexion with Khita* or northern China, on which their chiefs acknowledged a dependence. It was, however, a dependence that originated in a previous conquest of that very country made by their predecessors the Khitans, or Leao, to whom the Chinese had paid tribute; and the dependence, in the first instance, was on the emperor rather than the empire. The title of Ung-Khan given to the chief prince of the Kara Khitans, and assumed by him, shows that they were not ashamed of their dependence on China; the title Ung being one purely Chinese, and bestowed on mandarins of the highest class. The Tūrki population at that time probably extended farther east than it does at the present day, and tradition informs us that the Kirghiz and some other tribes, now far to the west, then occupied ground close to the Chinese wall. They migrated westward, flying from the vengeance of their enemies when the Moghuls proved victorious. On the other hand we have heard of Kalmuks on the borders of Poland, and several Moghul tribes may now be found as far west as the Volga, and pushed in between Tūrki tribes, who still differ from them in aspect, language, and religion. These last appear to have been chiefly the tribes that were induced to settle in the west, after the conquests of Chingiz Khan. They accompanied that conqueror, and remained with his sons for their protection, or to overawe the conquered. One of the most remarkable of these was the grand tribe of Moghuls, who, in the age of Bābur, were settled, one branch on the territory of Tāshkend and the plains in its vicinity, in a country by Bābur called Moghulistān, and the other probably in the present Sungaria,* the Jetteh of the Institutes of Taimūr, or on the river Illi. They seem to have been part of the royal horde of Chaghatāi Khan, the son of Chingiz, who fixed his capital at Bishbāligh on the Illi; and many particulars of their manners, which con­tinued extremely rude, are detailed in a very picturesque manner by Bābur in his Memoirs.

In the division of the empire of Chingiz Khan among his sons, one of them had the provinces to the east of the Tūrki frontier; Chaghatāi had the country westward as far as the Sea of Aral, and perhaps nearly to the river Jaik; while a third had all the other regions to the west, along the Caspian, and far into modern Russia. The country occu­pied by Chaghatāi Khan was long afterwards held by his descendants, and the inhabitants acquired the name of Jaghatāi or Chaghatāi Tūrks, and the country itself that of Jaghatāi. The connexion subsisting between the different tribes, in consequence of their having a point of union by being under the same government, seems to have favoured an approximation in language; and their dialect, which became highly cultivated, has continued down to the present day, and is still spoken, especially in towns and by the stationary Tūrks, over nearly the whole extent of the ancient Chaghatāi territories. The power of the Khans of Chaghatāi was nearly* lost before the age of Taimūr, who founded a new dynasty, the capital of which he fixed at Samarkand. He, in common with Chingiz Khan,* traced up his descent to Toumeneh Khan, a Moghul prince, so that both were of the royal race of the Moghuls; but the family and dependent tribe of Taimūr had been settled for nearly two centuries at Késh, to the south of Samarkand, and, being in the midst of a country inhabited by Tūrks, spoke the language, and had adopted the manners and feelings, of those among whom they dwelt. The families descended from Taimūr, therefore, though strictly Moghul, always regarded themselves as Tūrki.