The Rashīdī History 3.1.2

3.1.2

Mirza Haidar foresaw, therefore, that there might soon be nobody left to tell the story of a people who, only a few generations earlier, had regarded themselves with pride as the 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.