The Rashīdī History 4.3
The Tarikh-i-Rashidi (Elias, Ross) 4.3
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4.3.1
Abaka, the Il-Khan of Persia, who had always acknowledged Kublai as the rightful Khakan in opposition to Kaidu, and who had never forgiven Borak's invasion of Khorasan, was only watching his opportunity, and his Wazir, Shams-ud-Din Juvaini, had only to draw his attention to a favourable omen, to start him for Bokhara, which he entered about 1274 (672 H.), plundering, burning, and murdering right and left." Dava reigned for some thirty-two years and was almost constantly at war. He possessed himself of Ghazni, and from that stronghold, as a base, made several expeditions into India, ravaging the Punjab and Sind, and sacking at different times between 1296 and 1301 Peshawar, Multan, Lahore, and Delhi. In the meantime, Kaidu had involved himself in wars of long duration with the Khakan Kublai, and as these took place shortly before the time of Marco Polo's travels through Central Asia and China, detailed accounts of some of them have been handed down to us in his narrative. These wars extended, from first to last, over a period of some thirty years, and were not even concluded in 1294, when Kublai died and was succeeded as Khakan by his grandson Uljaitu. The credit indeed of finally overthrowing Kaidu is due rather to this prince, and moreover it was not Kaidu alone whom he subdued, but Dava also, for this last, on his return from a campaign in India in 1301, seems to have allied himself with Kaidu and to have assisted in the wars against the Khakan.
4.3.2
Kaidu's death followed quickly on his final reverse, and must have occurred in 1302, about. His son Chapar, backed by the influence of Dava, obtained the recognition of his succession to the Khanate of the eastern division of the country, and both having sent envoys to Uljaitu bearing professions of submission, a period of peace should, it might appear, have been established. But this was not the case. Within a year of Kaidu's death, Dava and Chapar fell out, and the latter was defeated in a battle fought between Samarkand and Khojand. This engagement was followed by several others, victory falling sometimes to one side and sometimes to the other, until at length the Khakan Uljaitu routed Chapar and obliged him to submit to Dava. The death of Dava occurred in 1306, and he was succeeded by his son Kuyuk, who lived only two years, and was in his turn followed by a descendant of Chaghatai named Taliku. This prince is said to have adopted the Musulman religion, and in consequence to have been put to death by his own officers, who raised in his place, one Kabak, a son of Dava. Kabak was installed in 1309, and was at once attacked by Chapár, in alliance with several members of the house of Oktai.
4.3.3
The allies were beaten in a number of fights, and eventually fled for refuge to the territory of the Khakán (now Kúluk, a nephew of Uljaitu), while their dominions were appropriated by the house of Chaghatai, the clans who inhabited them becoming in part its subjects and in part those of the Kipchaks. "With Chapár," says Mr. Oliver, "the house of Oktai disappears, though representatives came to the front for a brief period again in the persons of Ali and of Dánishmanjah, while Timur (Tamerlane), after displacing the family of Chaghatai, selected his puppet khans from the Oktai stock." Within a year of his installation, Kabak made way for an elder brother, who ascended the throne of the Chaghatai under the name of Isan Bugha, though his historical identity (in connection with this name at least) is somewhat uncertain. He provoked the Khakan into war, and was beaten almost at the outset of his rule; afterwards he invaded Khorasan with a like result, and was finally forced to fly from the country, before the combined forces of one of his brothers and of the seventh Il-Khán, or King of Persia. This occurred in 1321, when Kabak seems to have resumed the throne which he had abdicated twelve years previously.
4.3.4
It was about this time that a permanent division occurred in the realm of Chaghatai, the two parts being known by the general names of Mavara-un-Nahr (or Transoxiana) and Moghulistan (or Jatah), though there were other provinces attached to each section. The story of the Khans of the former branch, roughly sketched above, need not be followed further, as the history of Mirza Haidar, which chiefly concerns us, belongs to the other or eastern division, and is told by him, a descendant of its princes, in full. It is only necessary to remark with regard to Mavara-un-Nahr, that from the time of this division forward, the fifty years that remained till the great Amir, Timur, made himself master of the land, confusion and discord prevailed. During those few years the names of fifteen Khans appear in the lists — some of them not even of the Chaghatai line — together with some periods of anarchy when no name occurs. The rise of Timur was the turning-point from decadence to power in Mavara-un-Nahr, but at the same time, the death-blow to the original line of Chaghatai. He reduced the country to order, and ruled with uncontrolled power, though he left to the Khans, whom he set up or pulled down at pleasure, certain dignities and privileges which were nothing more than nominal. We have seen already, how near the empire of Chaghatai came to being divided during the wars of Kaidu.
4.3.5
This Prince was, as far as can be gleaned, one of the ablest of the Oktai line, and an active and determined soldier. During his struggles for supremacy, he held a large tract of country carved chiefly out of the Chaghatai appanage, though taken partly from that of Oktai. It is not clear what were the limits of the territory he held thus temporarily, and indeed it is probable that no actual limits were ever acknowledged. In all likelihood his power extended chiefly over certain tribes who were nomads, or dwellers in tents, and thus in the habit of moving their abodes when expedient; such movements, too, may have been more frequent than usual about Kaidu's period, for the tribesmen must have been constantly entangled in the prevailing wars, and subject therefore, to the changes of fortune of those with or against whom they had to serve. His dominion, consequently, would have been more tribal than territorial in its extent. At any rate it would seem that during Kaidu's last days — the period when he was allied with Borak — his power reached from the Talas River and Lake Balkash on the west, to Kara-Khoja (between Turfan and Hami) on the east, and that it thus included nearly the whole length of the Tian Shan mountains, together with the Zungar country on the north, and Kashghar, Yarkand, Aksu, etc., on the south of them.
4.3.6
Although this wide tract never fell permanently to him or his race, his temporary hold over it seems to have assisted in marking it out as a self-contained eastern division of the Chaghatai realm, and the greater portion of it — all that lay to the north of the Tian Shan — acquired, about this time, the name of Moghulistan, or vulgarly "Jatah." It was, above all parts of that realm, the land of the purely nomad Moghul (or Mongol) tribes, as distinguished from the settled populations of Turkistan, Farghana, and Mavara-un-Nahr on the one hand, and the mountaineers of Hisar, Karatigin, Badakhshan, etc., on the other. It was the land to or from which the tent-dwelling population could migrate, and carry with them their only wealth — their flocks and herds — when safety or other interests demanded a move; and it became, moreover, as Mirza Haidar's history will show, a sort of refuge for the defeated and discontented among those tribes and the neighbouring nations, and the country that the true Moghul loved to call his own.
4.3.7
Thus, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, when the Khans of Chaghatai were rapidly declining in power, and could scarcely maintain themselves in their central kingdom of Mavara-un-Nahr, this eastern division, or Moghulistan, appears scarcely to have felt their sway. The hereditary Dughlat Amirs who, as we have seen, had been set up by Chaghatai, governed in detail, with more or less power, in the different cities and districts of the region south of the Tian Shan (or Eastern Turkistan), and left scarcely a trace behind them in any history but that of one of their own clan—Mirza Haidar. They acted in the name of the Chaghatai Khan of the time, and though nominally hereditary, they seem in practice to have held office very much at the pleasure of the tribesmen whose affairs they administered; while the popularity of each one probably depended more on the degree of independence he was able to secure for the small section that regarded him as its chief, than on his hereditary rights. Still in the early days, the power of some of them must have been considerable, and it seems to have risen in degree, as that of the Chaghatai Khans declined. They fought among themselves as a matter of course, and the people suffered, no doubt, from the consequent disorder. It would be quite natural therefore that Isan Bugha, a Moghul by descent, when forced to retire from Mavara-un-Nahr, should turn his steps towards Moghulistan, and its companion province south of the mountains.