The Rashīdī History 7.2
The Tarikh-i-Rashidi (Elias, Ross) 7.2
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7.2.1
However this may be, it was a land in every way suited to the habits and customs of a sparse population of nomadic graziers and shepherds, and it accordingly evolved, or at least attracted, a race whose requirements it fulfilled. But the peaceable pursuits of raising flocks and attending herds were not the only avocations of a people with the traditions of the Moghuls. Perhaps their chief requirement was a land whence they might raid on their settled and more wealthy neighbours, and whither, if beaten, they could retire and find a refuge — a land, in short, so inaccessible and unproductive to all but themselves, that it formed, at once, a base for their own description of warfare, a secure retreat, and an inhospitable waste for the pursuing enemy ; for where they moved, the whole resources of the country — the food supplies, the transport, the shelter — moved with them, and were used to meet their wants alone. There could have been no forts or towns or immovable property, worthy of the name, for an invader to destroy, and no stationary population, left undefended, upon whom he might wreak his vengeance ; for the women and children and the aged all formed part of the expedition, and were doubtless employed or disposed of, in much the same way while the tribe was on the march, as while at home in their own encampment.
7.2.2
In times of peace — or rather of inactivity — they probably bred, besides the camels and sheep, which were their principal food-producers, large numbers of ponies, for it was on these that all depended, when wars or forays were on hand. Mobility must have been the quality they relied on more than any other, both in attack and retreat, and we find them baffling their enemies more by their movements than by their fighting power. Indeed, fighting in its proper sense must have been with them, as with most of their neighbours, a pursuit very sparingly indulged in. We read, it is true, of armies counted by hundreds of thousands, and of pitched battles when thousands were killed on either side, but apart from the facts that populations such as those in question could not have put such masses of fighting men in the field, and that numbers among Orientals are at all times used as mere figures of speech, it is remarkable that where a particular battle or other special incident is described in detail, there are usually indications that the numbers engaged were very small indeed. This must have been more especially the case with the tribe of Moghuls and the other nomads who allied themselves with them, after the first quarter of the sixteenth century.
7.2.3
During Amir Timur's reign, the Moghuls under Kamar-ud-Din, one of their best leaders, seem to have been always beaten when met by the Amir's troops, yet they were never thoroughly repressed until the great conqueror had put forth all his strength and resources in following them up, in separate bodies, to the farthest confines of their territory. His problem was not how to beat the Moghuls in battle or to invade their country, but how to catch their mobile forces in sufficient numbers, to make an impression on the nation at large; while, on their part, the Moghuls never seem to have attempted an incursion into Timur's dominions, except when he and his troops were engaged in prosecuting a war elsewhere. Later, the same difficulty occurred to Ulugh Beg Mirza, who only succeeded in dealing them a heavy blow, through the accident of a piece of treachery on the part of one of their own people, by which he was afforded an unlooked-for opportunity. And later again—within the sixteenth century—when the Kirghiz and Kazaks had to a great extent supplanted the Moghuls in what had been the latter's own land, and the nominal Khans of the country (Sultan Said and his successor) had their headquarters at Kashghar, it seems evident, though Mirza Haidar says little about it, that the tactics of the nomads left them practically masters of the situation. Yet even in those days, when brought to battle, they are said usually to have been beaten.
7.2.4
Perhaps the only power which the Moghuls stood in fear of, after the days of Timur, was that of the Uzbegs, when these were first rising to power. Under Shaibani Khan the confederated tribes of Uzbegs still possessed the characteristics and qualities of nomadic nations, and it is not a little remarkable that the Moghuls, so far from dealing with them as they were accustomed to do with others in the low countries, enlisted under Shaibáni in large numbers, and assisted him against the more civilised forces of Baber and the Khorasani Mirzas. They seem to have feared to measure themselves with those who could use their own tactics against them, or fight them, indeed, with their own weapons. In many places in Mirza Haidar's history, as well as in the Zafar-Náma and other books, mention is made of the 'cities' or 'towns' of Moghulistan; but as the same words must necessarily be used when speaking of the settled countries of Mavara-un-Nahr, Turkistan, and Alti-Shahr, they are somewhat misleading terms to apply to the aúl, or encampments, of a nomadic people. One native writer, whose book dates from the first half of the fourteenth century, presents, in a few words, a telling picture of Moghulistan in his day—or part of Turkistan as it was then still called. "Since the region has been devastated by the arms of the Tatars," he writes, "it is inhabited only by a scanty population.
7.2.5
According to what I have been assured by a man who has travelled through the country, there is nothing to be seen in Turkistan but ruins, and more or less obliterated remains. From a distance one sees a well-built village, the environs of which are covered with beautiful verdure; but on approaching, in the hope of meeting with some inhabitants, there are found only houses completely deserted. The population is composed entirely of nomads—that is, of shepherds and graziers who never occupy themselves with cultivating the land or sowing crops. There is no other verdure but that of the steppes, which grows naturally." That towns, in the true sense of the word, had existed in the land is thus correct, but they had been built when others possessed and governed it, and before it had become the home of the Mongolian nomads. The Uighurs, a Turki tribe of considerable cultivation by comparison, had owned the greater part, if not the whole, of the country up to less than a century prior to the rise of the Mongols, and were probably the founders of several towns of more or less importance; while the whole of Moghulistan had, during the interval, been occupied by the Kara Khitai, whose people, although perhaps much mixed with nomad tribesmen, seem also to have been capable of building cities and carrying on cultivation.
7.2.6
The advent of the Mongolian hordes, however, under Chingiz and his successors, put an end to all such practices, and from that time till the date when Mirza Haidar's history closes (and probably for long after also), the country reverted to a purely pastoral condition. When, therefore, we read of the cities of Taraz, Balasaghun, Aimal, Bishbalik, Almaligh, etc., within the Moghul period, it can hardly be that Moghul cities are intended, but rather encampments — some of them, perhaps, central in situation and well inhabited — standing on or near the sites of the remains of these places. In the more advanced of the countries conquered by the Mongolian armies — in Persia, Mavara-un-Nahr, Turkistan, etc. — no obliteration or even systematic destruction of towns (except in the course of the wars), and no reversion to a nomadic level, seems to have taken place; but the difference in the case of Moghulistan was that, in that country, the nomadic tribesmen of the steppes immediately to the eastward — the true Mongolia — pressed in, and appropriating the land for their own habitation, took root, while in the lower countries they settled as rulers only. Those of the Mongols who, after the first invasion, stayed in the conquered countries with their governing Khans or chiefs, probably intermarried, after a time, with the settled population, and were soon absorbed ;
7.2.7
while in what became known — and partly for this very reason — as 'Moghulistan,' or the 'land of the Mongols,' the invaders found a suitable home, and establishing themselves as one of the nations of the soil, became, for a time at least, the dominant one. As generations passed, they tended, no doubt, to lose their identity by intermarrying with other races already sparsely inhabiting the region, but in this instance their absorption would be a slow process, as compared with the few left among the overwhelming populations of the lower countries in the west. The aul was probably a tribal community, and the number of the Moghuls was perhaps greater than that of their neighbours, while the life of the steppes rendered a certain degree of isolation inevitable. All these circumstances would combine to retard a fusion of races, though it may not, as far as the evidence goes, have obviated it in the end.