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.[1] 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.[2] 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.
- ↑ Yarkand Report, pp. 81, 174.
- ↑ Dr. Bellew was of the same opinion. He mentions an early conquest of the Afridi country by "Turkish tribes;" and speaks of the Mangals as a "Mongol or Chaghatai-Turk clan," who became "settled about the Péivar, and the head waters of the Kurram river." (See Races of Afghanistan, pp. 78–9, and 102.
