descendants of Chingiz's conquering hordes, who made themselves feared if not respected, by their neighbours, and who gloried in the independence of the wide steppe-land which was their home. All this had been changed when our author—himself an exile and serving a foreign monarch—had to constitute himself the historian of their fall. Whether he was able to appreciate the changes that were taking place around him, where they did more than affect his own people, is perhaps doubtful. It may be supposed that he was regarding events from too close a standpoint to be able to judge of their true proportions; but it has become evident to later observers that he had, for the period of his history, a time of gradual but extensive change, which brought results of the greatest importance to the future of a large section of Asia. Mr. Erskine, the historian of the rise of the Moghul dynasty in India, has pointed to this period, as that which gave Transoxiana to the Uzbegs, Moghulistan to the Kirghiz, and India to the Moghuls—but to the descendants of a branch of the Moghuls quite separate from that of Moghulistan.[1]
In Central Asia it was a period full of incident: wars were on foot on every side: states were being overrun and cities besieged, while rulers arose or went down, almost from day to day, according to their fortune in war or intrigue. The princes and the descendants of exiled ruling families, together with most of the Khans and Begs of the various tribes, found themselves forced to take a side, either in support of their house or their relations, or in self-defence; and in many cases they seem to have changed sides with as little consideration for the rights and wrongs of the cause, as when they first took a part in the quarrel. When they were strong they attacked a neighbour with or without reason; if successful, they enjoyed, usually, a short period of bloody revenge and debauchery, but soon had again to "mount"—as the phrase was—for a new campaign; if beaten, they fled to some other neighbour, and if not put to death by him, waited, in exile, till a turn of fortune's wheel should afford a fresh chance of aggrandizement or plunder. "In the space of about 120 years," writes Sir H. Yule, "no less than thirty descendants or kinsmen of Chaghatai are counted
- ↑ It will be seen, lower down, that Mirza Haidar invariably speaks of the ruling house which we know as "the Moghuls of India," by the name of Chaghatai, which is, of course, strictly correct. He reserves the name of Moghul to denote his own race—i.e., the descendants of the Moghuls (or Mongols) of Moghulistan. The subject will be explained farther on in this Introduction.
