The Rashīdī History 10.1.8

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.