The Rashīdī History 7.1.4

7.1.4

Its western boundary marched with the province of Shash, the modern Tashkand, which seems to have contained the whole of the lowlands of the valley of the Sir, from a little above Khojand to about the Arys tributary, and included such towns as Shahrukhia, Tashkand and Sairam. Immediately to the east of this level agricultural stretch, rise the hills which separate it from the valley of the Upper Talas, and it was this line of hills, or uplands, which seems to have stood usually, and in a general way, for the boundary of the Moghuls. To the north of Shash lay the province of Turkistan, with the Karatau hills between it and the Lower Talas, and here again the hills appear to have been the western limit of the nomad tribes. Turning towards the north-west, a line drawn from the Karatau to the southern extremity of Lake Balkash, and continued again from its other extremity to the Tarbagatai mountains, may be taken roughly to have been the frontier in that direction. We hear, at any rate, of no transactions of the Moghuls, as a tribe, anywhere to the north-west of the Balkash; nor do we trace them anywhere to the north of the Imil river, which is fed from the Tarbagatai mountains, except when flying before Timur's avenging army in 1389 and 1390, they crossed the range into the valley of the Irtish. But this was an occasion when danger led them to seek refuge beyond the bounds of their own country.