SECTION II.
THE LINE OF CHAGHATAI,
Think, in this batter'd Caravanserai
Whose Doorways are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultán after Sultán with his Pomp
Abode his Hour or two, and went his way.
—Omar Khayyám.
The story of the conquests of Chingiz Khan, and the partition of nearly the whole of Northern Asia among his descendants, has been so often told, that no useful purpose would be served by recounting it again in this Introduction. Only those phases need be briefly sketched, which form the basis of Mirza Haidar's history, or which help to elucidate the course of events immediately preceding it. Though the Tarikh-i-Rashidi embraces many wide regions and deals with many tribes and nations, its chief scenes are laid within the appanage of Chingiz's second son Chaghatai, and it is, before all things, a history of part of the Chaghatai branch of the Mongol dynasty. This is the branch, moreover, which hitherto has remained the most obscure of all those of the family of Chingiz Khan. The othe divisions of the empire founded by the great conqueror, have all found abundant historians, not only in China and Mongolia, but among the Musulman writers of Western Asia and among Europeans. The great works of Deguignes, D'Ohsson, and Howorth, though designed to tell the story of all the Chingizi branches, have failed, as yet, to complete that of the house of Chaghatai. The two older authors frankly avow the want of materials, as their reason for leaving this section of their field almost untouched, while Sir H. Howorth, though he is understood to have completed his researches in it, has been prevented by other circumstances, from giving to the world his much desired volume on the Chaghatais.
Perhaps the nearest approaches to histories of the Chaghatais are to be found, (1) in an excellent paper entitled The Chaghatai Mughals, by Mr. E. E. Oliver, in the Journal of the Royal
