Tārīḫ-i Rashīdī - The History of the Moghuls, Editor's Introduction

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.^73a

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.^73b 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,^74a 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.’^75a 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.^75b 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^76a 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.”^76b 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.^77a 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.^77b 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.^77c 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:^77d 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.^78a 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;^79a 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,^80a 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.^80b

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.^81a 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.”^82a 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; ^84a 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.”^84b 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.”^85a 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.’”^85b 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.”^85c

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…”^85d 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…”^86a

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.”^86b Abul-feda quotes an Arab author to the effect that the Russians are a people of Turkish race,^86c 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”;^86d 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.”^86e 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!^87a

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.^87b 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,^87c 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.^87d 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^88a 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.”^88b

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”;^89a 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.^89b

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.”^90a

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.^90b 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,^90c 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’;^91a 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.^91b 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^91c 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.’”^91d

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,^93a to have been displaced from that region and to have been driven southward by the Kirghiz,^93b 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.”^93c 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^94a 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.^94b

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,^95a 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.^95b 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.”^95c 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.^96a

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.^97a Mirza Haidar, writing in the sixteenth century, makes no mention of Tarsi, or even of Uighurs generally, as being the inhabitants of Eastern Turkistan,^97b 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.^97c 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.^97d To the Mongols and the Chinese they were known as Oirat, and this was probably their real name.^97e 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.^98a

Their inward thought is that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling places to all generations; they call their lands after their own names. Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not; …—Ps. xlix., 11-12.

THE province called by Mirza Haidar, ‘Mangalai Suyah,’ extended, as we have seen, from the western limit of Farghána as far east as the modern Kara Shahr, a town and district that, in his day, bore the name of Chálish, and more anciently that of ‘Yanki’ or ‘Yen-Ki.’ This district, and the larger one of Turfán, that lay beyond it to the eastward, formed, during the two centuries (or the greater part of them) that the Tárikh-i-Rashidi embraces, a Moghul principality which had an entirely separate government from that of the chief Moghul Khanate. During the latter half of the fourteenth century and the first quarter of the fifteenth, while the Dughlát Amirs were in power in the provinces of Kashghar, Aksu, Khotan, etc.—that is, in the whole of Alti-Shahr—there is nothing in the Tárikh-i-Rashidi, or in the work of any Musulman author that I am acquainted with, to indicate who were the rulers of these eastern districts, except Mirza Haidar's mention of their temporary conquest by Khizir Khwája. It seems probable, from what may be learned from the side of China, that the region was regarded as more or less under the power of the Moghul Khans, and the author of the Zafar-Náma, in narrating the wars between Timur and the Moghuls, seems also to imply that this was the case, as has been seen above. Later, again, towards the middle of the fifteenth century, when a division in the Moghul Ulus had taken place, Isán Bugha II., with the support of one section, set himself up in Chálish and Turfán, and there established a separate principality, or Khanate, which lasted down to, and even beyond, the date when Mirza Haidar's history closes.

Our author is found, as will be found in the course of his narrative, of using copulate names, and therefore generally applies to this eastern Khanate, the form Chálish-Turfán, or ‘Chálish and Turfán,’ from its two central and principal districts. There were times, however, as he relates, when the province of Aksu also fell under the rule of the eastern Khan, though it belonged properly to Alti-Shahr. But on two occasions he mentions a country or province of Uighuristán, and in one passage, when describing the boundaries of ‘Mangalai Suyah,’ says that it marched, on the east, with the province of Uighuristán. It would appear, therefore, that the small eastern Khanate really bore that name down to the sixteenth century; and if this is the case, the survival is an interesting one.

Within the district of Turfán, and only some twenty-seven miles to the south-east of it, stands the little known, but ancient, town of Kara-Khoja, which has borne also, in the course of its history, several other names, the chief of them having come to us, through the Chinese, in the forms of Kao-Chang and Ho-Chao. The Chinese annals of the Sung and Yuan dynasties^100a mention this place frequently, and make it clear that from the ninth century to within the twelfth, Kao-Chang was the capital of a Uighur kingdom which bordered on the north with another Uighur state, called Bishbálik (the modern Urumtsi), and on the west with a third known, anciently, as Kui-tze, Kus, etc., and now as Kuchar.^100b These States, collectively, appear to have been the home and centre of the Uighur race, until a much later date than when, in the twelfth century, they lost their political independence and became subject to the Kara-Khitai. It would not be improbable, therefore, that the region having become known to neighbouring nations on the west as Uighur-istán , when independent, should have retained that name long afterwards, though subject to foreign rulers.

On the partition of the empire of Chingiz Khan among his sons, we read of Uighuristán falling to the appanage of Chag-hatai Khan, and we also learn, from Mirza Haidar, of Chaghatai having entrusted the province called ‘Mangalai Suyah,’ as far east as Chálish, to the care of the Dughláts, but not a word is said regarding the disposal of the districts to the eastward of Chálish. Referring to a later date—about 1320—Abul Gházi mentions Uighuristán as one of the countries, the inhabitants of which, being without a Khan at that time, summoned Isán Bugha I. from Mávará-un-Nahr to reign over them. But although a region is often mentioned by this name subsequent to the time of Chingiz, no indication, as far as I am aware, is given of its situation, until we come to Mirza Haidar's incidental statement that it constituted the eastern neighbour of ‘Mangalai Suyah,’ and was, consequently, identical with the Khanate of ‘Chálish and Turfán.’ On the other hand, though the Khanate is mentioned by Erskine, he does not connect it with the Uighuristán of Asiatic authors, but speaks of it always as “the Eastern districts”—presumably of the Moghul Khanate in general.

Mirza Haidar, unfortunately, omits to apprise his readers of the extent of the Khanate of Uighuristán. At periods when Aksu was not comprised within its limits, it could not have been large. On the east it did not include Kumul (Hami) till as late as 1513, when Mansur Khan annexed that State and joined it on to Turfán,^101a as we learn from Chinese sources of information. On the south it may have stretched to a considerable distance, but if so it could have enclosed, in that direction, only the sands of the desert. Northward, among the ranges of the Tian Shan, and along the valley of the Yulduz river, the inhabitants in the sixteenth century, at all events, and probably long before, appear to have been the Oirát or Kalmáks, but whether the Khans of Uighuristán counted these people among their subjects is, from the Tárikh-i-Rashidi, not clear. It is possible that they may have done so at some periods, if not always, and in this case their State may have extended to the upper waters of the Yulduz and to the northern slopes of the Tian Shan. In the days of Khizir Khwája of Moghulistan (about 1383 to 1399), the country of the Kalmáks would appear to have formed part of that Khan's possessions, and, for this reason evidently, was invaded by Timur in his expedition of 1388.^101b According to Klaproth (who does not name his authorities in this instance) the region, thus limited, is almost exactly that which was occupied by the Uighurs at the latest period of their existence as a people, though this was long past the time when they had ceased to constitute self-contained or independent states. Indeed, he assigns to them this position until beyond the date of Timur, or within the fifteenth century, and speaks of them as a group of small but not independent principalities.^102a In all probability the independence, or otherwise, of these Uighur communities, had no influence on the name which their country went by among neighbouring nations; it seems merely to have acquired the race-name of the inhabitants, as is often the case elsewhere, and (what chiefly concerns us here) to have preserved that name for some two hundred years, after a new and foreign principality had sprung up on its soil.

The only consecutive account of the history of Turfán, from the days of Chingiz and the Uighur chiefs onwards, would seem to be that contained in the Chinese chronicles of the Ming dynasty, and we are indebted to Dr. Bretschneider for an epitomised translation of them.^102b The companion province of Chálish is not mentioned in the epitome, and for this reason, we may assume that no notice of it is contained in the Ming-Shi . Possibly the Chinese annalists may have regarded it as part of Turfán, and if this was the case, their account of that province may be taken to embrace the whole of the eastern Khanate of Uighuristán. The Ming record begins very shortly after the opening dates of the Tárikh-i-Rashidi, by relating how the prince of Tu-lu-fan (or Turfán), having repeatedly plundered foreign embassies proceeding through his dominion towards China, the Emperor, in 1377, despatched an army to punish him and ravage his territory—a task that seems to have been accomplished with success. No name is mentioned for this prince. The date would correspond with the reign, in Moghulistan, of Kamar-ud-Din, but I know of nothing that points to Uighuristán forming a part of Kamar-ud-Din's territory, unless perhaps the fact that Timur, shortly after the date in question, when overruning Moghulistan in the course of a punitive expedition, sent one of his columns as far east as Kara-Khoja, which lay well within Uighuristán. On the other hand, a few years later, on the death of Khizir Khwája, Timur's army, under Mirza Iskandar, laid waste the country only as far east as Kuchar, and then (for what reason is not stated) drew off towards Khotan.^103a Yet Khizir Khwája is known, from Mirza Haidar's narrative, to have made at least a temporary conquest of Turfán and Kara-Khoja.

These events occurred during the best days of the Moghul power, when raiding and general lawlessness flourished, and it is to be inferred from what little we know of the history of those times, that even if Kamar-ud-Din sometimes held sway in Uighuristán, he was not necessarily the recognised chief of the State. But, whoever was the chief, he seems to have been subdued by the Ming army, for we read of Turfán, in 1406, sending a mission of homage to Peking, while two years after that date another is recorded to have been despatched by the ruling Khan, this time under the leadership of a Buddhist priest. In 1422 a chief of Turfán, whose name is given as In-ghi-rh-cha, is reported to have been expelled from his government by Vais Khan of Bishbálik (i.e., Moghulistan), and to have personally carried his appeal for redress before the Emperor, who caused Vais Khan to restore In-ghi-rh-cha to his possessions. What means the Chinese Emperor took to compel the Moghul to perform this act of restitution is not stated, but the Ming-Shi goes on to relate that in 1425 and 1426 In-ghi-rh-cha appeared a second and third time at Peking, “at the head of his tribe,” to present tribute. In 1428, shortly after his return home, he died.

The next reigning chief mentioned is one Ba-la-ma-rh, on whom the Ming Emperor bestowed presents in 1441, on the occasion of the Egyptian envoy passing through Turfán on his way homeward from Peking. It was about this time—the middle of the fifteenth century—that the Turfán chief, one Ye-mi-li Huo-jo (Imil Khwája?) took possession of Kara-Khoja and Lu-ko-tsin and assumed the title of Wang, or ‘Prince.’ Previous to this, says the Ming historian, Turfán was of little account, but it now became powerful, and appears to have extended its territory, for he incidentally mentions that it was bordered on one side by Moghulistan, and on another by Khotan. The rise in power of the Turfán chiefs did not prevent them from continuing to send tribute to China, and it was shortly afterwards (in 1465) settled that a mission should be despatched regularly once every five years.

The particulars of these missions, the demands they made at the Ming court, and the concessions granted from time to time by the Emperor, need not be followed here. One of them which appeared at Peking in 1469 reported that the Turfán chief had taken the title of ‘Sultan,’ and the name of this personage is recorded to have been Ali.^104a In the Tárikh-i-Rashidi no mention is made of the name of Ali, in connection with Uighuristán. The date points to Kabak Sultan, as well as the title; but as Ali is represented further on in the Chinese history to have been the father of Ahmad, we can hardly assume Kabak to be the Sultan indicated. The father of Ahmad was Yunus, who nowhere appears under the name of Ali, while Kabak was grand-nephew of Yunus. That Sultan Ahmad (or Aláchá Khan)—and no other Ahmad—is the personage pointed to by the Chinese annals, seems more than probable, seeing that the dates of his succession and death agree very nearly with those given in the Tárikh-i-Rashidi, and that he is said to be the father of Mansur. But this is not the only reason to suspect inaccuracy in this matter, on the part of the Chinese chroniclers. Even if Ahmad were to be regarded as chief of Turfán, in the sense of being suzerain over the local prince, he could scarcely have played the part they attribute to him, without Mirza Haidar making some mention of his deeds. They represent him, for example, as having proceeded in person against Hami in 1488, as having captured the town, and put to death the local chief^104b —a series of important events about which the Tárikh-i-Rashidi is silent. We find there only a brief statement that his son, Mansur, carried on several wars against Khitai, or China.

To proceed, however. In 1473 this Sultan Ali is said to have attacked and captured Hami, together with some tracts to the eastward, proceedings which called forth an expedition from China to recover these places from him. The Chinese had to retire unsuccessful; the Sultan retained Hami, but the tribute missions went on as before. About the same year that he annexed Hami, it appears that Sultan Ali also captured more than 10,000 of the tribe of Oirát, or Kalmáks, and in general he seems to have been a chief of warlike tendencies. He had in his hands the road by which all the tribute missions from the western countries were in the habit of coming and going, and he made the Emperor feel that it was well to be on good terms with him.

In 1478 Ali died, and his son A-hei-ma (Ahmad) succeeded him as Sultan of Turfán. He also was generally successful in holding Hami against the Chinese; if he lost it at one time, he regained it shortly afterwards, and he made the governor nominated by the Chinese, a prisoner. During the period 1478 to 1493 he was nearly always at war with the Chinese, yet he seems to have been ever ready with his tribute, and several missions, carrying lions and other presents, are recorded to have been despatched during these years. At length, however (in 1493) his mission, consisting of 172 men, was stopped and imprisoned near the Chinese border. This event, occurring at a time when the Kalmáks on his northern frontier were assuming a threatening attitude towards him,^105a decided Ahmad to abandon Hami and finally peace was established with the Chinese in 1499. Five years later (1504) Ahmad died, and a struggle for the succession to the Khanate took place among his sons. The eldest, by name Man-su-rh (Mansur), got the upper hand, declared himself Sultan, and began at once to despatch tribute to Peking. In 1513 the subordinate Prince of Hami, Bai-ya-dsi by name, made over his province to Mansur, who soon afterwards began to make incursions on Chinese territory proper, by invading Su-chou and Kan-chou. Whether he obtained any but a mere temporary hold on these districts is not apparent, but he is related to have had dissensions with the Chinese, on subjects connected with Hami, till his death in 1545. He was succeeded by his son, Sha—i.e., Shah Khan.

This is a brief outline of Dr. Bretschneider's epitome of the chapters in the Ming history which relate to Turfán, or Uighur-istán. It shows, briefly, the course of the history of the province according to the Chinese view; but when we come to compare the names and dates with the same story as gathered from the Tárikh-i-Rashidi, the two accounts are found not to agree. In the summary, or discursive table, given in Section II. of this Introduction, some of the Khans of Uighuristán have been mentioned, with the dates of their reigns (as far as obtainable), from Mirza Haidar's statements. They may be placed here in juxtaposition with those of the Ming-Shi, for purposes of comparison, as follows:—

From this, it appears that none of the rulers mentioned by the Chinese are the same as those given in the Tárikh-i-Rashidi, till the name of Ahmad Khan is reached, while the date of the death of his successor, Mansur Khan, differs by two years in the two accounts. The allusion to Vais Khan accords fairly satisfactorily as to date; but here all accordance ends. The first and third names on the Chinese list would appear to be of Mongol origin; the second is certainly Mongol, while the fourth and fifth, though Musulman, are in no way to be traced among the Moghul Khans whom we know of. It is, perhaps, possible that the earlier Moghul chiefs, while Islam had only partially spread among them, bore Mongol as well as Musulman names, and that the Chinese found it more convenient to use the former, in reducing them to their own phonetics; but against this conjecture for solving the difficulty, it must be considered that the number of Khans, previous to Ahmad, is too great, and that the dates do not correspond sufficiently to admit of the assumption that the Mongol names point to Khans of Moghulistan. A more probable explanation, perhaps, may be that during the reigns of Isán Bugha II. and Dust Muhammad, there were also Moghul Amirs who (like the Dughlát Amirs in Alti Shahr), if they did not reign, at all events held some kind of hereditary position as local chiefs, and that it was they who sent the tribute missions, and carried on intercourse, with the Chinese court. Thus, though not supreme in the Khanate, they might have been the chiefs best known to the Chinese. The possibility of this suggestion derives some support, I think, from the accounts the Chinese furnish of the towns of Kara-Khoja and Lu-ko-tsin (more anciently Liu-Chêng). During the first half of the fifteenth century, both these towns, though situated close to Turfán, were reckoned independent, and sent their own tribute, separately, to Peking; and it was only when Turfán became powerful, after the middle of the century, that they were annexed to their more important neighbour.^107a This would have been only very shortly before the commencement of the reign of Sultan Ahmad, or when we come to corresponding names and dates in the two lists. At this time, it may be, the custom was changed, and the reigning Khan may have begun to send the tribute missions in his own name; while the names—especially the non-Musulman ones—of the subordinate chiefs, would have tended soon to fall into oblivion and remain unnoticed by Muhammadan writers. This, however, is only a suggestion—a possible explanation of the discrepancies.

Unfortunately, it is not the only puzzle connected with this eastern Khanate. In his Mémoires concernant les … Chinois ,^107b Père Amyot has published several Chinese documents relating to Turfán, one of which is a rescript by the Emperor Shun-Chi (the first of the present dynasty), dated 1647, where notice is taken of the fact that Turfán had not sent to tender homage to China for more than 280 years—i.e., since some date previous to the year 1367, or the commencement of the Ming epoch! So direct a contradiction is this of all that the Ming history has recorded, that it would appear almost hopeless to attempt to reconcile the two statements. It would be tempting to put the Tsing Emperor's direct assertion into the same side of the scales with Mirza Haidar's silence on the subject, and to suspect the veracity of the Ming chronicles; but my impression is that these records contain too much internal evidence of truth, and are too circumstantial in their facts, to admit of the matter being disposed of in so summary a manner. The Emperor Shun-Chi, it must be remembered, had only come to the throne in 1644. He was a mere child of nine years of age in 1647, while his elder relations, who were presumably his advisers, were Manchus, who had been deeply engaged in the wars which had won for him the Empire of China. They probably knew little of the affairs of the country, or of the history of the dynasty that had just been crushed by them and their people. The dynastic history of the Mings, moreover, was not written till many years later,^107c while events connected with an insignificant Khanate in Central Asia would scarcely have been in the minds of the courtiers and secretaries, when the Emperor was made to pen, or to approve, the rescript in question; or if it was known to them that Turfán had sent tribute regularly— rather effusively—they probably sought to please him by concealing the fact from his knowledge. The rescript is obviously intended to convey the idea that Shun-Chi is flattered by the homage paid him by the Sultan of Turfán, whose predecessors had never rendered so great an honour to the Emperors of the late dynasty; indeed, the whole document appears to be, more than anything else, a display of exultation on the part of the Emperor, intended to reflect on his Chinese predecessors. The occasion which brought about its promulgation, was the arrival of an envoy from the Turfán Sultan of the time, who is therein called “Ablun-Mouhan”—a corruption not easy to identify with any Musulman name. “Le Sultan,” runs the French translation, “qui règne aujourd'hui sur le Tourfan, descend en droit ligne de Tchahatai, un des fils de Tsinkiskan, fondateur de la dynastie des Yuen ou Mongoux. Ces prédécesseurs, depuis plus de deux cens quatre-vingts ans n'avaient point envoyé d'ambassade solemnelle pour rendre hommage à la Chine, et lui apporter le tribut. Le Sultan Ablun-Mouhan, ayant appris que j'étais sur le trône de l'Empire Chinois, m'envoie des ambassadeurs… Une telle conduite mérite quelque attention de ma part…” And the venerable Amyot adds significantly:—“Ten years afterwards, that is to say in the year 1657, the King of Tourfan again despatched ambassadors carrying tribute, which means in plain French, that he sent people to trade and to receive presents from the Emperor. Yet His Imperial Majesty was greatly flattered by this new mission.”

A still more inexplicable statement is contained in a letter written by Amyot from Peking some time subsequently.^108a Referring to Turfán, he says the country was so broken up in the early part of the sixteenth century, that in the year 1533 there were seventy-five small independent States, all the chiefs of which called themselves king. Here, all that can be said is that Amyot must have fallen into some error. He was living at Peking as far back as the middle of the eighteenth century, and may be assumed to have had good sources of information on historical as well as other subjects, but on this occasion he does not mention the authority for the statement he makes. The Ming-Shi, as we have just seen, refers to the two towns of Kara-Khoja and Lu-ko-tsin, as having been thought, by the Chinese, to be independent of Turfán, about a century before the date spoken of by Amyot, but during this interval the tendency of events in Uighuristán was towards consolidation of the kingdom, and centralisation of the power of the Khan. The date 1533 falls within the reign of Mansur Khan, who, we see from the histories of Mirza Haidar and that of the Ming dynasty, was the most powerful and prosperous ruler that the Khanate had had, and it cannot be regarded as likely that, during his reign, the country should have been split up into more independent divisions than there were towns in it, or perhaps into almost as many as there were villages. Had any disintegration been going on, Mirza Haidar could hardly have failed to notice it, and moreover, Sultan Said, then Khan of Moghulistan and Alti-Shahr (Mansur's brother) would scarcely have submitted (as Mirza Haidar reports him to have done in 1516) to a ruler whose kingdom had broken up into small States. In this instance it is far more likely that Père Amyot made use of some imperfect information, than that both the official history of the Ming dynasty and the independent one of our author, should be wrong. What we find from the latter to have been the case is, that after the death of Ahmad, and with the succession of Mansur, Uighur-istán obtained a great increase of strength. Mansur had been chief of Aksu, which province had been invaded and conquered by Mirza Abá Bakr of Kashghar, and the chief had migrated to Turfán with the whole of his tribe and family. The number of the tribe is not stated, but the advent of a large body of Moghuls, together with the Khan, can hardly have failed to prove a source of increased strength to the Khanate, and would point rather to unification than the reverse.

Perhaps if any explanation of so curious a discrepancy may be hazarded, it might be found in the abuse of the tribute missions. As the Ming dynasty declined and approached its fall, the practice of encouraging counterfeit missions seems to have become common; and towards the end of the sixteenth century, and at the beginning of the seventeenth, they came much into vogue among the States bordering on the west of China. This fact stands out with special clearness in the narrative of Benedict Goës, who travelled from Lahore to China in the years 1603-1604, and who died at the frontier town of Suchou, in Kansu, after passing through Yarkand, Aksu, Turfán and Kumul. The account of his journey is, indeed, a meagre one, for the greater part of his journal was lost at the time of his death. Some fragments, however, were recovered and passed into the hands of one of the ablest of the Jesuit missionaries then at Peking—Father Matthew Ricci—who compiled from them the story of Goës' adventures. In this way much of the narrative that has come down to us, is from the pen of a man specially well informed and qualified to expose the real state of affairs, on such a subject as the missions of homage from the west. He tell us that the tribute brought to the capital was merely nominal in value, but that the Emperor, considering it beneath his dignity to receive presents from foreigners without making a return, not only entertained the tribute-bearers on a handsome scale, but paid highly for the objects presented to him in the shape of return gifts, so that every man pocketed “a piece of gold daily, over and above his necessary expenses.” For this reason, the privilege of carrying offerings to China was keenly competed for among merchants and others, who paid highly for a nomination to the post of tribute-bearer. When the time came for setting out, these so-called ambassadors, says Ricci, forged letters in the name of the kings they professed to represent, in which the Emperor of China was addressed in obsequious terms. “The Chinese,” he continues, “receive embassies of a similar character from various other kingdoms, such as Cochin-China, Siam, Leu-Chieu, Corea, and some of the petty Tatar kings, the whole causing incredible charges on the public treasury. The Chinese themselves are quite aware of the imposture, but they allow their Emperor to be befooled in this manner, as if to persuade him that the whole world is tributary to the Chinese; the fact being, rather, that China pays tribute to those kingdoms.”^110a

This account may be somewhat overdrawn in respect of the comparisons made with such States as Cochin-China, Siam, Korea, etc., for in these cases it is well known that there was no question of the Chinese winking at an imposture, and allowing themselves to be befooled. Tribute from these States meant political subjection; the exaction of it at regular periods was a serious affair, and one of the cardinal points of Chinese foreign policy. But where the small States of Central Asia were concerned, it was apparently not regarded as so important a matter, and there can be no doubt of the fact that, at the period in question, the custom of sending tribute-bearing missions to China had degenerated, in the Khanates of Eastern Turkistan, to mere trading adventures, and that the Chinese must have been aware of the abuse the custom had undergone.^111a Even one of the circumstances that gave rise to Goës' mission, hinged upon a fraudulent embassy of this kind. A Musulman merchant, on his return to Lahore from China, gave the Jesuits there, information regarding the road to ‘Cathay,’ which appears to have had much influence in deciding them to send forward Benedict Goës. The man, on appearing at Akbar's court, and on being asked by the Emperor how he obtained admission to the Chinese capital, replied with frankness, that he had gone in the character of an ambassador from the King of Kashghar.

It may, therefore, be possible that spurious tribute-missions arrived at Peking from so many petty chiefs, or governors of towns, that the Chinese had actually recorded as large a number as seventy-five for the Turfán region, at the time Père Amyot speaks of; though this would in no way demonstrate that the State of Turfán, or Uighuristán, had, in reality, been split up into small divisions.

Though a separate and self-contained State, the Khanate of Uighuristán was in no way disconnected, physically, from the rest of Eastern Turkistan, or Alti-Shahr. No range of mountains or great river divided the two States, and even their people, in race and language, must have been practically one. No doubt there were slight variations in type and dialect, as is the case at the present day, between the natives of Turfán and those of Kashghar and Khotan; but all were of the Uighur stock, and those of the eastern Khanate, occupying, as they did, one of the ancient seats of the nation, perhaps retained the characteristics of the race in greater purity than the communities of the more western provinces. They lived, as it were, on the ruins of ancient Uighuria, and were less accessible than the communities further west to foreign influences, except perhaps, to those emanating from China—which must, however, have been slight. Their land, placed as it is, in the very centre of Asia, is less known, even nowadays, than almost any other part of the continent; the few modern travellers who have visited it having furnished only a meagre description of it. A Chinese author of the last century says that the whole population of the province, in his time, could be estimated at no more than 3000 families, and these were, for the greater part, so poor that they were scarcely able to provide for themselves. In the summer the heat was excessive, and the blaze of the sun on the barren ridges in the neighbourhood of the town, insupportable—wherefore the people had named them “the fire mountains.”^112a

One of its distinctive features is the depression, to some 150 or 200 feet below the level of the sea, of the central districts of Turfán and Kara-Khoja. This is one of the driest as well as one of the hottest portions of Eastern Turkistan, and the one where the greatest ingenuity of the inhabitants, both ancient and modern, has been displayed in irrigating the land so as to render it habitable. Mirza Haidar relates the personal exertions of Vais Khan (though these were not particularly ingenious) to provide water for the cultivation of the land; but possibly the tradition regarding Vais Khan's manual labour is not intended to be taken literally. The attention of modern travellers has been attracted by the remains of aqueducts and systems of wells, showing how dependent the population was, and is, on artificial irrigation. Thus Dr. Regel mentions the reservoirs where water from the mountains is stored, and the underground canals that lead it to the town, and serve also as dwelling-places for the inhabitants, during the fierce heat of summer.^112b Captain F. E. Younghusband found the modern city of Turfán surrounded by lines of pits upwards of a hundred feet in depth—the lines extending for several miles into the desert.^112c

In contrast to the low-lying group of oases in the burning desert, and among the “fire hills,” there rise immediately to the north, the eastern ranges of the Tian Shan, with summits reaching to 12,000 or 14,000 feet above the sea, and capped with eternal snow. One of these is the famous Bogdo-Ula of the Mongols and Kalmáks, or the Tengri-Tágh of the Kirghiz; a mountain that, for ages past, has been held sacred by the pastoral tribes that have inhabited the regions around, and whose people have venerated it, no doubt, because it is the central and most commanding feature of their landscape, and the parent of many of the streams that bring them life.

Yet, in spite of its natural drawbacks of heat and drought, the country appears to have supported, at times during its history, a fairly large population, and to have been one of the chief centres of the Buddhists in the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages; for these communities have left many relics behind them, not only in the shape of buildings, but also of inscriptions and objects of art. The Russian traveller Grijmailo speaks of a place called Singim, lying to the south of Lu-ko-tsin (the old Liu-Chêng),^113a where “leaflets enclosed in horn and wooden boxes,” and bearing ancient writings in a language now unknown, are still, from time to time, unearthed;^113b while Dr. Regel, again, tells us of vast ruins at a short distance to the south-east of modern Kara-Khoja (the Ho-Chao of the Chinese), to which he gives the name of ‘Old Turfán,’ but which are more likely to be those of ancient Kara-Khoja. These remains are described as covering a large tract of ground, with massive walls, gates and bastions, besides underground passages, vaulted and arched; the whole bearing witness to a high development of architectural knowledge. He mentions also other ruins of a similar kind, lying to the south of the town of Turfán.^113c From the Ming history too, we learn that to the east of Ho-Chao there stand the ruins of a city of the past, which are regarded as remains of the ancient Uighur capital, Kao-Chang, and with regard to the aspect of the place in the days of the Mings, the author adds that there were in Ho-Chao more Buddhist temples than dwelling-houses of the people.^113d

With the gradual break up of the power of the Moghuls towards the end of the sixteenth century, and the rise of the Manchu dynasty in China in the first half of the seventeenth, the Khanate of Uighuristán fell more and more under the influence of China. For a time, during the eighteenth century, the Kalmáks, with the help of the Tibetans, obtained a hold over it, but this was of short duration, and on their final subjugation by the Manchus, about 1755, the whole country became Chinese territory. In the intervals, however, several petty principalities arose within its limits, and some of these appear to have had for their chiefs, Musulman Khans who claimed descent from the Moghuls. It was probably to one of these that the Manchu emperor Shun-Chi alluded, when in his rescript of 1644 (mentioned above) he spoke of his tributary as a descendant of ‘Cha-ha-tai.’

Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains
Clank over sceptred cities; nations melt
From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt
The sunshine for a while, and downward go,
Like lauwine loosened from the mountain's belt.

—Childe Harold iv., 12.

WHAT is chiefly wanting to throw light on Mirza Haidar's history, is the narrative of some judicious European traveller— a contemporary, or nearly so—who might have afforded an outside view of the state of Central Asia at the period in question, and thus have brought some of our author's statements into touch with Western aspects of history. The Tárikh-i-Rashidi refers, for the most part, to the darkest times in the annals of the inner Asiatic States: when strife and disorder prevailed, and no commanding personality or stable dynasty existed in any quarter, to check confusion and form a centre of security. In the days of Chingiz and his immediate successors, Mongol rule was supreme over the greater part of Central Asia and China. The Khans were in most respects uncouth and uncivilised, but their government was a vigorous and consistent one while it lasted. They had confidence in their strength, and were, for that reason probably, liberal and tolerant in their general policy, when dealing with the many foreign nations with whom they came in contact. They knew, also, how to ensure order in their own possessions, and thus attracted envoys, merchants, and missionaries, who have been the means (whatever it may be worth) of handing them down in history with perhaps their best side foremost.

The decay of Mongol authority and the rise of Musulman influence, changed all this in the more westerly regions, while, on the side of China, the accession of an unwarlike dynasty tended to weakness at the extremities of the empire, and laid open large tracts of the interior of the continent to the misrule of unstable and lawless tribes, whose chiefs, while unable to gain permanency for themselves, repelled all intercourse with civilised nations, and were the means only of intensifying the barbarism of their people. For a time, towards the end of the fourteenth century and the early part of the fifteenth, the ascendency of Timur and his immediate descendants proved, to some extent, an agency for the preservation of order, and perhaps prevented the tide of nomad misrule from overwhelming the whole of the best parts of Central Asia. Except for this check, it is probable that the relapse into barbarism would have been even more lasting than it was, and would have had more far-reaching results. But the times of Timur and Ulugh Beg were stormy ones, and had little of the steadying influences of those of the Mongols. Being Musulman rulers, the advance of Islam, and the intolerance that always goes hand in hand with that system of religion and government, was encouraged, so that as soon as the secular authority of the Timuri began to weaken, the religious element grew stronger and came to the front. Saints and religious pretenders increased in numbers, and nothing is more clear in Mirza Haidar's history than the influence they gained in all political affairs. Each Khan and Chief, besides many of the leading Amirs, he tells us, retained at their headquarters one or more of these advisers; and he shows how in his own case, and in that of his master, Said Khan, they gained an altogether inordinate degree of control over their patrons. Even such barbarous tyrants as Abá Bakr of Kashghar, and the most blood-thirsty of the Uzbeg chiefs, seem to have honoured them with superstitious reverence, and to have accepted their guidance. It was in deference, apparently, to the teachings of this class, and under the pretence of religious zeal, that all the worst deeds of these potentates were done—that plundering expeditions assumed the name of holy wars, that murders, prompted in reality by fear or revenge, were committed under priestly sanction, and that wholesale slavery was carried on as a meritorious measure of conversion from infidelity.

Under such conditions as these Central Asia must have been impenetrable to European travellers, whether missionaries or merchants, while it is impossible to imagine that any European monarch would depute envoys to such rulers as Shaibani Khan or Mirza Abá Bakr, as they had done to the Mongol Khákáns and to Timur. Even when these personages had disappeared, Uzbegs, Uzbeg-Kazáks, and Kirghiz, acting under chiefs whose names are scarcely known in history (but who were to the full as rude and lawless), were always at war with each other or with their neighbours. They kept the whole of the country north of the Sir and the Tian Shan in a state of tumult, and consequently closed to all foreign intercourse; whilst they were, besides, the means of weakening the governments—such as they were—of Khorasán, Transoxiana, and Alti-Shahr, and assisted in cutting them off from the West. In the days of the grandsons and early successors of Chingiz Khan, we find envoys like Plano Carpini and Rubruk traversing Asia with safety from the Ural to the northern confines of Mongolia, and there finding Europeans in the service of the Khákáns; the Polos could march backwards and forwards from the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, to China, and carry with them their wares in security; while preaching friars and missionaries, such as Odoric of Pordenone, John of Marignolli, William of Modena, and their companions, were tolerated not only as travellers, but as propagandists.

These are only a few among those whose names happen to have been preserved in documents which they, or their friends, left behind them, and which have survived till modern times. But for one who committed his experiences to writing, there must have been many of the same class who attempted nothing in the shape of a record, and as many more whose journals, letters, or what not, have been lost during the intervening ages, or which have not yet come to light. In short, all that we know of the early part of the Mongol period, or from the middle of the thirteenth century to nearly the middle of the fourteenth, points to order and security, and thus to a constant intercourse with the West and Europe. But for the whole of what may be called the authentic period of Mirza Haidar's history—i.e., from the second half of the fourteenth century until it closes in the middle of the sixteenth—not a single instance can be mentioned of a European having visited any of the regions of Central Asia, east of Samarkand.

If any there were, no vestige of them has survived; indeed, the party of missionaries, twenty in number, with six lay companions, who had been sent forth from Avignon in 1333 under Friar Nicholas, as Bishop of Cambulu (Khan Báligh), can only be traced as far as Almáligh, and seems never to have been heard of later than 1338.^117a The latter date would fall within the reign of the Chaghatai Khan, Buzun, and at a time when no Khan was reigning in Moghulistan. As far as can be gathered from the imperfect chronology of those times, as furnished by Mirza Haidar's history, Isán Bugha, the first Moghul Khan, was already dead, and the second, Tughluk Timur, had not yet succeeded him. Probably Amir Bulaji, the Dughlát, was the Ulusbegi, or chief of the tribe, and he, as we are told, was a Musulman of very recent date. Whether the disappearance of the friars had any connection with the rise of Islam in the country at that time, or with the general disorder that prevailed, can only be a matter of conjecture. All that is certain is that no other European is heard of in Central Asia till the embassy of Ruy Gonzalez Clavijo from Henry III. of Spain to the Court of Timur, which reached Samarkand in 1404, or about a year before Timur's death. The narrative of this embassy, however, does not relate to the part of Central Asia now alluded to, but to the centre of the kingdoms, mentioned above, as forming a barrier against the misrule of the barbarous nomads farther east. Don Ruy's narrative therefore cannot be utilised to throw light on the obscurities of Mirza Haidar's history, for all that the Tárikh-i-Rashidi relates concerning Transoxiana is amply elucidated by other Musulman chronicles, and among them some of the best. More properly it should be said that from the middle of the fourteenth century no European is heard of in eastern Central Asia till some fifty and odd years after the death of Mirza Haidar, and when the kingdom of the Moghul Khans, having split up into a number of small States, was, to all intents and purposes, at the end of its existence.

And if there were no European spectators to review what was passing in eastern Central Asia, neither does there appear to have been any Musulman annalist contemporary, or even nearly so, with our author, who devoted attention to the Moghul Khanates during this dark period. At any rate, I have met with no writer who has done more than allude to them casually. Perhaps the book which casts the most light on the country and the times, is the Zafar-Náma of Sharaf-ud-Din Ali, Yazdi. As one of the historians of Timur's reign, and the chronicler of his campaigns in Moghulistan, Sharaf-ud-Din has necessarily become an authority on the period ending with the date of Timur's death, although he had never set himself the special task of writing a history of Moghulistan and its Khans. He merely speaks of those against whom his hero, Timur, carried on campaigns or had other direct dealings with, but he in no way professes to write the story of the Moghuls for any period. Thus, his narrative ends about a hundred and twenty years before Mirza Haidar was of an age to begin collecting the traditions, which constitute the groundwork of much of the early part of his own book; and for this interval, as well as for the subsequent quarter of a century (about) over which his life extended, it may be said, I think, that he is the sole Musulman authority for the history of the Moghuls. What the Chinese have recorded is brief and incidental only, as we have seen. Where, however, Sharaf-ud-Din occupied himself with Moghulistan and events connected with it in the neighbouring regions, Mirza Haidar has given no account of his own—he trusted entirely to the Yazdi author, and has simply copied his work. The brief period that falls between the opening date of the Tárikh-i-Rashidi, and the point where the Zafar-Náma takes up the narrative, is dealt with to some slight extent by other Musulman authors, though Mirza Haidar gives his own version of it as founded on the traditions of his ancestors.

It may be regarded, therefore, that his history is the only work we have, which deals with the period subsequent to the accounts furnished by the Zafar-Náma—or from the early years of the fifteenth century to the middle of the sixteenth; while for this epoch Mirza Haidar's evidence is unsupported by any European witness, and only very partially attested to by the Chinese annalists. This solitary, individual character of the book may perhaps enhance its value as a history, and render it indispensable as a reference, for the interval where it stands alone; but it must be admitted that it would have had a still higher value had it been illustrated by outside commentary, and had it been connected with Western countries and events by a link of foreign testimony. If, in other words, some European spectator, regarding matters from a different point of view from that of Mirza Haidar, had done for him what Plano Carpini and Rubruk chanced to do for the Jahán Kushai of Juvaini, or Marco Polo for the field covered by authors who treat of the various countries of Asia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the history of the times might have been worked out to better purpose than is the case now, and fewer doubtful points left unelucidated.

The sequel to the Tárikh-i-Rashidi is, perhaps, scarcely a subject which should encumber this Introduction, yet it may be worth while to sketch very briefly an outline of what took place in Moghulistan and Eastern Turkistan after the last pages of the book were written. At that time the author had been some six years regent of Kashmir, and had already been absent from the kingdom of the Moghuls for about fourteen years, but he continued, it would seem, to keep up communication with his friends in Kashghar till the end, and evidently took a deep interest in all that was happening there. So much was this the case, that in the last recorded chapters of his book,^120a though he omits much that might have been worthy of notice regarding the events that were passing around him in Kashmir, he gives some particulars of the course of affairs in what may be called his own country.

At the time when he left it, to conduct Said Khan's expedition into Ladak, Tibet and Kashmir, the Kirghiz and the Shaibán Uzbegs, who were the most inveterate enemies of his people, had been so far checked as to admit of the Khan turning his attention to other quarters. Still they were only checked and by no means subdued: in fact, their power was increasing as that of the Moghuls declined, and very shortly after Said Khan's eldest son, Rashid Sultan, came into possession of his father's kingdom, wars broke out afresh with the Kirghiz, and this time also with the Kazák Uzbegs. Again the Khan is said to have been victorious, and is described as defeating the Uzbegs in more than one great battle; but these victories, like the earlier ones, were mere checks to the enemy, and it seems evident that during Rashid's reign they gained in strength and became practically masters of the greater part, if not the whole, of Moghulistan; while the territory of the Khanate became almost entirely confined to the districts of Alti-Shahr.

This Rashid Sultan (otherwise Abdur Rashid Khan) succeeded his father in 1533, and long outlasted our author, for the length of his reign is given by Amin Ahmad Rázi, in the Haft Iklim,^120b as thirty-three hajra years, which would bring the date of his death to 973 H., or 1565-6 A.D. As Ahmad Rázi's account of the dynasty, though exceedingly brief, is the only one that approaches a consecutive story, it may be followed here. He tells us that Rashid had thirteen sons, the eldest of whom was named Abdul Latif. This prince is extolled for his bravery, and is said to have been sent several times, by his father, into Moghulistan, to oppose the Kirghiz and the Kazáks, and that, though he was always victorious over his enemies, he lost his life during the wars.^121a His brother Abdul Karim, who was reigning in 1593, when Ahmad Rázi wrote, is also praised for his courage and accomplishments, after the manner of Asiatic writers. Abdul Rahim, the third son, is stated to have left the country without his father's consent and to have led an expedition into Tibet, where he was killed; while the fourth, named Abdul Aziz, died a natural death at the age of sixteen. The fifth son's name was Adham Sultan, but he was known as Sufi Sultan. He had been made governor of Kashghar, by his father, and retained the post for sixteen years, but he survived the latter only for a short time. He appears to have been succeeded at Kashghar by his brother, Muhammad Sultan, the sixth son of Rashid, who was governor of that place at the date of the completion of the Haft Iklim.^121b The seventh was called Muhammad Báki, but nothing is recorded of him. The eighth was Koraish Sultan, who had dissensions with his brother Abdul Karim, and retired to India, where he was received with every honour, presumably by the Chaghatais. He left two children, who were still alive when Ahmad Rázi wrote his history. Of the five remaining sons of Rashid Sultan nothing is related; the names of three only are mentioned, as Ulus Sultan, Arif Sultan, and Adul Rahim Sultan.

From this meagre account, little can be gathered regarding the course of events during the forty-four years that followed on the close of Mirza Haidar's work.^122a The only two points that seem clear are, that there was much contention with the Kirghiz and a tendency towards subdivision of the Khanate. At length, however, we come to a ray of light (though, alas, too late to be of great value) shed by a European traveller; for the next glimpse we get of the Moghuls and their State is from the narrative of the Portuguese missionary Benedict Goës, which was mentioned, in the last chapter, as having been partially rescued from oblivion by Father Matthew Ricci of the Jesuit mission at Peking.

Goës, in seeking a road to China, from Agra and Lahore, passed through Afghanistan and over the Pamirs, and reached Yarkand towards the end of 1603. Here he remained for about a year, paying, during that interval, a brief visit to Khotan. After this he proceeded, with many delays, eastward, through Aksu, Chálish (the modern Karashahr) Turfán and Kamul, to Suchou on the western frontier of China, where he died in April 1607. He speaks of Yarkand as the capital of the kingdom of Kashghar, and it was there that resided “the king” whose name was Muhammad Khan. How far this Khan's authority extended is nowhere stated, but the pass with which he furnished Goës' party, for their journey eastward, seems to have been respected, at any rate, as far as Kuchar. Aksu is particularly mentioned as “a town of the kingdom of Cascar” (Kashghar), and the chief there is described as a nephew of the king's, and only twelve years of age; but he is not named. The territory of “Cialis” (Chálish) was governed by an illegitimate son of the king of Kashghar; but here again the traveller furnishes no name, and gives no indication of whether the territory was a dependency, or not, of Muhammad Khan's. Similarly, when mentioning Khotan, he merely alludes to “the prince of Quotan,” but gives no name or other information regarding him. Thus the only personage whose name can be identified from Goës' narrative, is Muhammad Khan, who appears to be the ‘Muhammad Sultan’ of Ahmad Rázi's list, and the sixth son of Rashid Sultan. This, at any rate, seems possible as far as dates are concerned, though Ahmad Rázi states that Abdul Karim (the second son of Rashid) was the reigning Khan in 1593, and Muhammad Sultan only governor of Kashghar—meaning, presumably, the town and district of that name, but not the entire Khanate. Ten years, however, had passed between the date when Ahmad Rázi wrote and that of Goës' visit to the country. It is just possible, therefore, that Muhammad Sultan may have succeeded his elder brother during the interval, and in that case he would, according to the ordinary custom, have added the title of “Khan” to his name.

The only other name that occurs in the history of Eastern Turkistan as that of a ruler of Kashghar, is one Ismail Khan, who was apparently the last of all the Moghuls to fill that position, if indeed, he was a ruler, or ‘Khan,’ in the proper sense of the word. It would seem from Mr. Shaw's fragmentary papers, mentioned in note 2, p. 121, above, that he was a great-grandson of Rashid Sultan, and he is shown in this degree, in the genealogical table at the end of Section II. of this Introduction. He must have lived in the third quarter of the seventeenth century when the Khwájas held the real and practical authority in the State; while at a somewhat earlier date we hear of one Muhammad Khan as governor at Yarkand, Abdulla at Khotan, Khudabanda at Aksu, and a certain Abdur Rashid in the districts of Kuchar and Turfán.^123a But how these personages were descended we are not told. It is probable that all were grandsons or great-grandsons of Rashid Sultan, but it cannot be so said for certain.

Of the Eastern Khanate, or Uighuristán, nothing is to be gleaned from any Musulman author accessible to me, subsequent to the date of Mirza Haidar's history. A short fragment regarding the succession of the Khans, however, is to be found in Dr. Bretschneider's extracts from the Chinese history of the Mings. It is related there that on Mansur Khan's death, in 1545, he designated his eldest son, Sha (Shah Khan), to be his successor; but Sha's brother Ma-hei-ma (Muhammad) laid claim to the throne, and though he did not succeed in obtaining it, took possession of a part of Hami—a province which was included in his brother's dominions.^124a Afterwards he allied himself with the “Wa-la” (the Oirát or Kalmáks), and with their assistance attacked Shah Khan.

No date for this last event is given, nor is the result of the attack mentioned; it is not clear, therefore, whether he gained the throne by force, or by what means. All that is vouchsafed is that Shah Khan died in 1570, and was succeeded on “the throne of Tulufan” (Turfán) by Ma-hei-ma, when three other brothers revolted against him. One of these was named So-fei (Sufi), of whom it is recorded that he “aspired to the crown,” called himself Su-tan (Sultan), and that he sent an embassy to China.^124b

As the Khans and their descendants tottered to their fall, the Kirghiz began to descend into the lowlands of Alti-Shahr and interfere, directly, in the affairs of their old opponents. They were, in some cases, the supporters of influential priests, or Khwájas, who were rapidly acquiring an influence that was to gain for them the sovereign power in the country; but without attempting here to follow all the gradual changes that brought about the establishment of these new rulers, it may be said generally, that before the middle of the seventeenth century, the priests and saintly teachers, spoken of above, had acquired so great an authority, that the governing power of the country was rapidly passing into their hands. Their ascendency was the direct result of the encouragement they had received, for some generations past, from the superstitious Khans and Amirs of all the surrounding countries, and it is hardly a matter for surprise that their power, as a class, should develop, or if, when the authority of the dynastic chiefs in Eastern Turkistan was decaying, they should take advantage of the situation to build up a government of their own. As Khwájas, or reputed descendants of the Prophet, their lineage was undeniable, and ranked, in the estimation of Musulman zealots, far in advance of that of any of the Khans or Sultans who held the secular power. They had no special nationality, but formed a class or brotherhood of devotees, banded together in aim and design, though wandering or dwelling, separately, in all the countries of Central Asia. They became expounders of the Musulman law, and the executive authority (such as it was) dare not oppose them; they were also workers of miracles and healers of the sick, and in these capacities obtained a hold over the minds of the mass of the people. “Their tombs,” Dr. Bellew tells us, “were converted into sacred shrines endowed with all sorts of munificent virtues. Rich grants of land were apportioned by successive Khans for the support of their establishments, whose presiding elders in return dispensed, in the name of their patron saint, endless favours and bounties to an illiterate and superstitious peasantry.”^125a

The Khwájas, in short, were a class that had been evolved by all that had gone before, during the rule of the Moghul Khans —a rule that had begun with the raiding and lawlessness of irresponsible nomads, and had ended with the hypocrisy and fanaticism that usually mark a people incapable of attaining to any degree of civilisation. In the Khwájas they unconsciously raised up rivals who were to displace their house, while these, within little over a century, had, for much the same reasons as their predecessors, to quit the stage and make room for others. They had scarcely begun to wield the power that had fallen into their hands when, as is the case with most governments and dynasties of Asia, discord began to spring up among them, and their brotherhood was divided into two opposing camps. One of these was known as the party of the “White Mountain,” and the other as that of the “Black Mountain”—the Ak-tághlik and the Kara-tághlik. Their feuds were at first based on religious dissensions, but this rendered them none the less bitter: they soon developed into political strife, which would speedily have brought about the end of their rule, but for the support that both parties obtained from the Kirghiz. The White mountaineers summoned the nomad clans from Moghulistan, while the Black mountaineers called in those from the Pamir region; and though the White party, under the leadership of the celebrated saint, Khwája Hidáyat Ullah (better known as Hazrat Afák) obtained the upper hand for a time towards the end of the seventeenth century, their perpetual contentions resulted in the entire country falling first into the hands of the Kalmáks, and finally passing to the rule of the Manchu Emperors of China.

Thus the Kirghiz were amply avenged on their ancient enemies, and began to form the great confederacies that have endured to the present day.

They and their kinsmen, the Kazáks, not only prospered in their own way, but multiplied, so that at the present time they represent a large section of the population in the Russian Asiatic dominions. Both families are found spread over the whole of the provinces of Central Asia, north of the Sir and the western Tian Shan, in large, if somewhat scattered, communities. Thus, of the Kirghiz proper (the ‘Black,’ or ‘Hill,’ Kirghiz of the Russians), the estimates compiled by Mr. P. Lerch in 1873, from various sources, show a total of about 176,000 persons,^126a while a good many more, for whom no numerical estimate is forthcoming, are known to exist in the Chinese provinces to the east of the Russian possessions, and in the hill tracts of Southern Farghána and the Pamirs. The Kazáks—the Uzbeg-Kazák of Mirza Haidar—are even more numerous. For those who are still nomadic in their mode of life, sufficiently ample statistics were available, about twenty years ago, to enable Mr. Lerch to sum up their total numbers, in Russian territory, as some 867,000 souls. But to this section also, some addition would have to be made for communities living in Chinese territory. Moreover, the figures furnished refer only to the nomads among both the Kazák and the so-called Kirghiz proper. There are, however, sections of settled Kazáks who are fairly numerous in the Zaráfshán valley, Kuráma, etc., but they are so much intermingled with the Uzbegs and Tájiks of those regions, that their strength was not (at the time Mr. Lerch wrote) to be ascertained with any degree of certainty.^126b

At the same time the other tribal enemies of the Moghuls— the Uzbegs proper—who had become established in Trans-oxiana since the early part of the sixteenth century, continued their sway under the dynasty then founded, down to a date about coeval with the break up of the Moghul kingdom; while, indirectly and after many vicissitudes, they gave rise to the line of bokhara Khans now reigning. Mirza Haidar's own successors in Kashmir are, for some thirty-five years subsequent to his time, to be found among the members of the families, to whose weakness and incapacity he owed his own successful regency of nearly eleven years—a term not often reached, about that period, by any of the native chiefs. After his death, the same internal strife and disorder prevailed, that had been habitual for many years before his government began, so that no less than eight kings are recorded to have reigned between the years 1551 and 1587, when Akbar stepped in and finally annexed the country to the dominions of the Chaghatais in India.

A small residue of the Moghuls still exists among the Turki inhabitants of Eastern Turkistan. The number is trifling indeed, and they are scattered chiefly among the northern towns, where, however, they form no separate communities; on the contrary, they are so much mixed in blood that no one but their immediate neighbours and associates are aware of any difference in their origin to that of the people around them. Still, a difference is so far acknowledged that they are called, and call themselves, Moghuls. In this capacity it must be said, according to the testimony of Dr. Bellew, that they enjoy very little respect: rather they are given over to the meanest modes of life, and are looked down upon as an inferior people.^127a It is possible that some may also exist in Western Turkistan, Farghána or Transoxiana, but I know of no mention of them in these countries. In the northern Hazára country, and on the Indian frontier of Afghanistan (among the divisions of the Afridis) we find sub-tribes still flourishing under the name of Mongol or Mangal, who, Sir H. Howorth believes, may very possibly be remnants of the Mongols, and may thus represent the Moghuls of a later date.^127b Just as the Hazáras still form a people apart, having descended from Mongol invaders of the country they now inhabit, it may also be that the Mangals are a relic of some other Mongolian army which overran Afghanistan in the days of Chingiz or one of his successors. But whether the features and language of the Mangals show any trace of such an origin, I have no information.

Perhaps it may be in India that Moghuls, of one variety or another, are more numerously represented than elsewhere at the present day. In the course of the operations connected with the compilation of the census of the Punjab, in 1881, Mr. Denzil Ibbetson found large numbers of people claiming the name of Moghul, many of whom, though perhaps descended from the tribesmen who entered India at the time of Baber or Humayun, can scarcely owe their origin to the Moghuls of Moghulistan—the true Moghul Ulus of Mirza Haidar. Such as they are, however, they are chiefly to be found in the neighbourhood of Delhi, in the Rawal Pindi division, and on the routes that cross the northern frontiers of the province. In these localities they are divided into numerous sub-tribes, but of real Moghuls among them, only those calling themselves Chaghatai and Barlás seem to be numerously represented. For the former, Mr. Ibbetson gives 23,593 as the total number, and of the latter 12,137.^128a But how far they have retained the characteristics of their race, or whether, in their changed condition, they would be recognised as the blood relations of the present Mongols of Mongolia, or even of the Hazáras of Afghanistan, there is nothing to show. Sill, something of the Mongoloid type must remain, it would seem, to support their individuality as a tribe.

On the frontiers of India, apparently, as in Eastern Turkistan, the descendants of the Moghuls do not bear a good name; but with the people of a tribe that has fallen from a position of supremacy, and one that at no time has had any very high qualities to recommend it, this is perhaps not surprising. The national character of a community would naturally degenerate with the loss of political and military power, and in the absence of a consciousness among its members, that they belonged to a ruling caste. The more remarkable circumstance is that the race, when transplanted to a foreign country as populous as India, should have endured at all, and that it should still show any signs of individuality. The fact that Moghuls of any variety should yet remain as a people, is one more piece of evidence which may be added to those mentioned in Section IV. above, that many hundreds of years are needed to eradicate the Mongol type, or to blot out its racial affinities, even when overlaid by the superior numbers of an alien nation.