[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Indian literature](https://indike.org/pramana/in) › [Dark Ages](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages) › [Kashmir](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir) › [Tārīkh-i Rashīdī](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi) › [The Tarikh-i-Rashidi (Elias, Ross)](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross) › 4.1 # The Rashīdī History 4.1 The Tarikh-i-Rashidi (Elias, Ross) 4.1 - **Language:** English ### [4.1.1](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross.4.1.1) 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 Khayyam. ### [4.1.2](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross.4.1.2) 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 other 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. ### [4.1.3](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross.4.1.3) 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 Asiatic Society, where the writer has summarised, in a consecutive manner, most of that which can be gathered on the subject, from European sources and from translations of Asiatic authors; and (2) in Erskine's History of India under Baber and Humayun. The learned translator of Baber's Memoirs had read widely among the Musulman authors, and compiled, in his last work, a more complete epitome of Chaghatai history, from original sources, than is to be found in any other European writings — unless possibly in those of Russian Orientalists, whose books, indeed, are sealed to most European readers. The source from which Mr. Erskine chiefly drew his information was the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, which he not only studied, but, as we have seen in the Preface, partially translated in a summarised form. The Tarikh-i-Rashidi, however, does not begin at the beginning of the Chaghatai history, but at an arbitrary point, dating nearly a hundred years after the allotment of his empire by Chingiz Khan, and at the period when the Khans of Moghulistan, having separated themselves from those of Mavara-un-Nahr, a distinct history of their branch became possible. ### [4.1.4](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross.4.1.4) In order, then, to furnish a foundation for Mirza Haidar's chronicle, it is necessary to fill in, however briefly, this gap of a hundred years, and, in doing so, to take a rapid glance at the two allotments which bordered on that of Chaghatai Khan — the one on the west and the other on the east — for the affairs of all three are, to some extent, interwoven at certain periods. In assigning his dominions to his four sons, Chingiz Khan appears to have followed an ancient Mongol custom. The sons of a chief usually ruled, as their father's deputies, over certain nations or clans, and at his death each received, as an appanage, the section of the population which had been under his care. Thus the distribution was rather tribal than territorial, and the tribes, which were in most cases nomadic, sometimes shifted their abode, or were driven, by enemies, to migrate from one district to another. These movements, as a fact, do not seem to have occurred very frequently, nor to have altered the position of the main body of the people to any great extent. It will be more convenient, therefore, and far more intelligible, to state the distribution of Chingiz's dominions, as far as possible, in territorial terms. Juji, or Tushi, the eldest son of Chingiz, died some months before his father, and therefore, never became supreme Khakan in the regions he governed; but they descended intact to his own son and successor, Batu, as an appanage direct from Chingiz. ### [4.1.5](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross.4.1.5) The centre of this dominion may be taken to be the plains of Kipchak, but it comprised all the country lying north of the lower course of the Sir Daria (the Sihun or Jaxartes) and of the Aral and Caspian seas—"wherever the hoofs of Mongol horses had tramped"; it included also the valleys of the Volga and the Don, and some wide-spread regions on the north shore of the Black Sea; while towards the north it extended beyond the Upper Yaik (or Ural River) into Western Siberia. On its southern and south-eastern confines, this appanage of the Juji line marched with that of Chingiz's second son, Chaghatai, whose central kingdom, Mavara-un-Nahr, or Transoxiana, was situated chiefly between the rivers Sir and Amu (the Jihun or Oxus), but included, in its extension towards the north-east, the hill ranges and steppes lying beyond the right bank of the Sir, east of the Kipchak plains, and west of lakes Issigh-Kul and Ala-Nor. Towards the east, the Chaghatai domain took in the greater part of the region now known as Chinese (or Eastern) Turkistan, Farghana (or Khokand) and Badakhshan; while towards the south it embraced Kunduz, Balkh, and, at the outset, Khorasan—a country which, at that time, spread eastward to beyond Herat and Ghazni, and southward to Mekran. This was, perhaps, the most extensive appanage of all, and within its limits were to be found the greatest variety of races and tribes, and the greatest diversity of modes of life. ### [4.1.6](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross.4.1.6) It comprised, on the one hand, some of the richest agricultural districts, peopled by settled inhabitants, far advanced in Asiatic civilisation, and some of the most flourishing cities in Asia; while, on the other hand, some of the rudest hill tribes, or Hazaras as they were called then, had their homes in the southern highlands, and large tracts of barren steppe-land were occupied by almost equally primitive nomads, who drove their flocks from hill to valley and valley to hill, in search of pasture, according to season. ### [4.1.7](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross.4.1.7) Eastward, again, of this "middle dominion," as it was often termed, came that of Oktai (or Ogodai), the third son of Chingiz Khan. His allotment was the country of the original Mongols with that of the tribes immediately around it, while he was also heir to his father's capital, Karakorum, and to the supreme authority over the Mongol people. On its western confines his dominion bordered, at first, on that of Chaghatai, in the country since known as Jungar or Zungaria—a region that, for want of more exact boundaries, may be roughly described as lying north of the Tian-Shan, from about Urumtsi on the east, to the river Chu on the west, and having for its middle line the upper course of the Ili river. This region became the subject of much contention among the descendants of Oktai and Chaghatai, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, and as the house of the former declined, the greater part of it, if not the whole, appears to have gradually merged into the territories of the Chaghatai Khans; while the clans that inhabited it, were dispersed among the tribes of Transoxiana and Kipchak, and their chiefs lived in obscurity under the Khans, or conquerors, for the time being. Chaghatai himself appears to have been a just and energetic governor, though perhaps rough and uncouth, and addicted to the vice, common among the Mongols, of hard drinking. ### [4.1.8](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross.4.1.8) At any rate, he was animated by the soldier-like spirit of his father, and succeeded in keeping order among as heterogeneous a population, as a kingdom was ever composed of. In 1232, for instance, when sedition showed itself at Bokhara, he acted with promptitude, if with severity, and saved his country from a far-reaching calamity. He was, in all probability, an old-fashioned Mongol, for we read that he stood by the Yasak, or code of laws instituted by Chingiz Khan, and that he showed little favour to what was, at that time in his dominions, the comparatively new and rising religion of Islam. He must, however, have been fairly tolerant, for it is recorded that his minister for Transoxiana was a Musulman, called the Jumilat-ul-Mulk, and that mosques and colleges were founded during his reign. But if Chaghatai did not lean towards Islam, neither does it appear that he ever inclined towards Christianity, though that religion, as practised by the Nestorians, must have been familiar to him. It existed in his own dominions and in those of his brother Oktai, who seems to have been thoroughly tolerant, and to have encouraged at his capital, Karakorum, every form of worship, besides the enlistment in his service of men of all religions — a circumstance which had, as will be seen later, an important bearing on subsequent history. --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross.4.1](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross.4.1) · Pramāṇa