siderations;[1] 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."[2] 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 Kazi: "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
- ↑ The name of Tatar, we are told by D'Ohsson, was applied to the Mongols by their Western neighbours, and became propagated, from nation to nation, to the extremities of Europe; although the Mongols themselves rejected it with disdain, as belonging to a hostile people whom they had exterminated. (Hist. des Mongols, i., p. 94.)
- ↑ Hist. des Mongols, etc., Desmaisons' transl., pp. 34 and 523. Abul Gházi's evidence on this point is not particularly satisfactory, but it has some value, because he was one of the latest of the Musulman historians. His book was only completed about 1664; and he was therefore aware of all the changes that had taken place among the Moghuls down to that time. If they had become the pure Turks they are sometimes represented, we should probably find the fact noticed by him, though not by earlier authors. The history of Rashid-ud-Din is often spoken of as the best and fullest, and no doubt this is the case, but it is some 350 years earlier in date than that of Abul Gházi, and consequently previous to the decadence of the Moghuls. Moreover, the latter knew the contents of Rashid-ud-Din's book, for he tells his readers that he had it before him when compiling his own, together with seventeen other historical works.
