The Rashīdī History 10.1
The Tarikh-i-Rashidi (Elias, Ross) 10.1
- Language
- English
10.1.1
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.
10.1.2
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 Tarikh-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.
10.1.3
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 gain permanency for themselves, repelled all intercourse with civilised nations, and were the means only of intensifying the barbarism of their people. For a time, towards the end of the fourteenth century and the early part of the fifteenth, the ascendency of Timur and his immediate descendants proved, to some extent, an agency for the preservation of order, and perhaps prevented the tide of nomad misrule from overwhelming the whole of the best parts of Central Asia. Except for this check, it is probable that the relapse into barbarism would have been even more lasting than it was, and would have had more far-reaching results. But the times of Timur and Ulugh Beg were stormy ones, and had little of the steadying influences of those of the Mongols. Being Musulman rulers, the advance of Islam, and the intolerance that always goes hand in hand with that system of religion and government, was encouraged, so that as soon as the secular authority of the Timuri began to weaken, the religious element grew stronger and came to the front.
10.1.4
Saints and religious pretenders increased in numbers, and nothing is more clear in Mirza Haidar's history than the influence they gained in all political affairs. Each Khan and Chief, besides many of the leading Amirs, he tells us, retained at their headquarters one or more of these advisers; and he shows how in his own case, and in that of his master, Said Khan, they gained an altogether inordinate degree of control over their patrons. Even such barbarous tyrants as Aba Bakr of Kashghar, and the most blood-thirsty of the Uzbeg chiefs, seem to have honoured them with superstitious reverence, and to have accepted their guidance. It was in deference, apparently, to the teachings of this class, and under the pretence of religious zeal, that all the worst deeds of these potentates were done — that plundering expeditions assumed the name of holy wars, that murders, prompted in reality by fear or revenge, were committed under priestly sanction, and that wholesale slavery was carried on as a meritorious measure of conversion from infidelity.
10.1.5
Under such conditions as these Central Asia must have been impenetrable to European travellers, whether missionaries or merchants, while it is impossible to imagine that any European monarch would depute envoys to such rulers as Shaibani Khan or Mirza Aba Bakr, as they had done to the Mongol Khakans and to Timur. Even when these personages had disappeared, Uzbegs, Uzbeg-Kazaks, and Kirghiz, acting under chiefs whose names are scarcely known in history (but who were to the full as rude and lawless), were always at war with each other or with their neighbours. They kept the whole of the country north of the Sir and the Tian Shan in a state of tumult, and consequently closed to all foreign intercourse; whilst they were, besides, the means of weakening the governments — such as they were — of Khorasan, Transoxiana, and Alti-Shahr, and assisted in cutting them off from the West. In the days of the grandsons and early successors of Chingiz Khan, we find envoys like Piano Carpini and Rubruk traversing Asia with safety from the Ural to the northern confines of Mongolia, and there finding Europeans in the service of the Khakans; the Polos could march backwards and forwards from the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, to China, and carry with them their wares in security; while preaching friars and missionaries, such as Odoric of Pordenone, John of Marignolli, William of Modena, and their companions, were tolerated not only as travellers, but as propagandists.
10.1.6
These are only a few among those whose names happen to have been preserved in documents which they, or their friends, left behind them, and which have survived till modern times. But for one who committed his experiences to writing, there must have been many of the same class who attempted nothing in the shape of a record, and as many more whose journals, letters, or what not, have been lost during the intervening ages, or which have not yet come to light. In short, all that we know of the early part of the Mongol period, or from the middle of the thirteenth century to nearly the middle of the fourteenth, points to order and security, and thus to a constant intercourse with the West and Europe. But for the whole of what may be called the authentic period of Mirza Haidar's history — i.e., from the second half of the fourteenth century until it closes in the middle of the sixteenth — not a single instance can be mentioned of a European having visited any of the regions of Central Asia, east of Samarkand. If any there were, no vestige of them has survived; indeed, the party of missionaries, twenty in number, with six lay companions, who had been sent forth from Avignon in 1333 under Friar Nicholas, as Bishop of Cambulu (Khan Baligh), can only be traced as far as Almaligh, and seems never to have been heard of later than 1338. The latter date would fall within the reign of the Chaghatai Khan, Buzun, and at a time when no Khan was reigning in Mogholistan.
10.1.7
As far as can be gathered from the imperfect chronology of those times, as furnished by Mirza Haidar's history, Isan Bugha, the first Moghul Khan, was already dead, and the second, Tughluk Timur, had not yet succeeded him. Probably Amir Bulaji, the Dughlát, was the Ulusbegi, or chief of the tribe, and he, as we are told, was a Musulman of very recent date. Whether the disappearance of the friars had any connection with the rise of Islam in the country at that time, or with the general disorder that prevailed, can only be a matter of conjecture. All that is certain is that no other European is heard of in Central Asia till the embassy of Ruy Gonzalez Clavijo from Henry III. of Spain to the Court of Timur, which reached Samarkand in 1404, or about a year before Timur's death. The narrative of this embassy, however, does not relate to the part of Central Asia now alluded to, but to the centre of the kingdoms, mentioned above, as forming a barrier against the misrule of the barbarous nomads farther east. Don Ruy's narrative therefore cannot be utilised to throw light on the obscurities of Mirza Haidar's history, for all that the Tárikh-i-Rashidi relates concerning Transoxiana is amply elucidated by other Musulman chronicles, and among them some of the best.
10.1.8
More properly it should be said that from the middle of the fourteenth century no European is heard of in eastern Central Asia till some fifty and odd years after the death of Mirza Haidar, and when the kingdom of the Moghul Khans, having split up into a number of small States, was, to all intents and purposes, at the end of its existence. And if there were no European spectators to review what was passing in eastern Central Asia, neither does there appear to have been any Musulman annalist contemporary, or even nearly so, with our author, who devoted attention to the Moghul Khanates during this dark period. At any rate, I have met with no writer who has done more than allude to them casually. Perhaps the book which casts the most light on the country and the times, is the Zafar-Náma of Sharaf-ud-Din Ali, Yazdi. As one of the historians of Timur's reign, and the chronicler of his campaigns in Moghulistan, Sharaf-ud-Din has necessarily become an authority on the period ending with the date of Timur's death, although he had never set himself the special task of writing a history of Moghulistan and its Khans. He merely speaks of those against whom his hero, Timur, carried on campaigns or had other direct dealings with, but he in no way professes to write the story of the Moghuls for any period.
10.1.9
Thus, his narrative ends about a hundred and twenty years before Mirza Haidar was of an age to begin collecting the traditions, which constitute the groundwork of much of the early part of his own book; and for this interval, as well as for the subsequent quarter of a century (about) over which his life extended, it may be said, I think, that he is the sole Musulman authority for the history of the Moghuls. What the Chinese have recorded is brief and incidental only, as we have seen. Where, however, Sharaf-ud-Din occupied himself with Moghulistan and events connected with it in the neighbouring regions, Mirza Haidar has given no account of his own — he trusted entirely to the Yazdi author, and has simply copied his work. The brief period that falls between the opening date of the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, and the point where the Zafar-Nama takes up the narrative, is dealt with to some slight extent by other Musulman authors, though Mirza Haidar gives his own version of it as founded on the traditions of his ancestors.