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 Kalmá'ks as, all alike, Turks![1]
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.[2] 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,[3] 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.[4] 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
- ↑ Jaubert's Idrisi, pp. 494 and 498.
- ↑ His editor, Professor Dowson, in a foot-note, marvels that his author should "sometimes confound Turks and Mughals," while "in some passages he discriminates very accurately between them." Herein lies precisely the difficulty that has occurred to other translators and commentators. The solution, I venture to think, is as now pointed out.
- ↑ According to some authorities it might be said that Turk was used in opposition to Sart; but the application of the word Sart is subject to some variations. Mr. Shaw gives as a definition of Sart:—"A term applied by the nomads (Kirghiz, Kazzáks, etc.), to dwellers in settled habitations, whether Turks or Tájiks, i.e., whether Turanians or Iranians." But, in some cases, the name Sart is used to denote only the settled Turks, and to differentiate them from the Tájiks. Moreover, in the works of Musulman authors referring to the period of the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, it is seldom found as an ordinary appellation, though Baber, it is true, employs it in describing Marghinán. In our own times it is not often heard in the eastern parts of Central Asia; though, to judge by Russian writings, it is perhaps more frequently used in Khiva and the adjoining regions of Russian Turkistan, etc. It is, however, an imperfect term to make comparisons with. (See Shaw, Sketch of Turki Language, Asiat. Socy., Bengal, pt. ii., 1880, pp. 61 and 116; Baber, p. 3; and Lerch in Russische Revue, 1872, Heft. i., p. 33. Also Shaw's High Tartary, p. 26, where he defines the Sarts as "a settled people, who include the Aryan Tajiks as well as the Tartar Oosbeks and others.")
- ↑ The Hiung Nu of Chinese historians have often been described as a Turki race, yet it is significant that Professor de Lacouperie, on investigating the point, came to the conclusion that the Hiung Nu "seem to have been a political, not a racial, unity." (See Western Origin of Chinese Civilisation, p. 223.)
