SECTION VI.
THE "TÁRIKH-I-RASHIDI" AND AFTER.
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
