The Rashīdī History 7.3
The Tarikh-i-Rashidi (Elias, Ross) 7.3
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7.3.1
Here, then, no cities sprang up, while those already in existence soon fell to ruin. But the Musulman writers, who constantly confuse the words for 'city' and 'country,' and even 'nation,' would be unlikely to draw any distinction between a built and permanent town, and an encampment of felt tents — an urdu or an aul, as the Turki words are. In several cases Mirza Haidar mentions towns of Moghulistan as existing in the form of ruins only, and he is explicit on this point. But he nowhere describes one as an inhabited centre at his own time, though it is only reasonable to suppose that he would, at least, have made some mention of them had they existed, in the same way that he speaks of, and even describes, those of Alti-Shahr. The aul, or collection of felt tents, pitched without order or any view to permanency, near the banks of a stream, and in the centre of some district where pasture was near at hand, was probably the nearest approach to a town at the period our history belongs to. Here, possibly, a square or oblong shed of brown mud bricks, ornamented with yaks' tails, antelopes' heads, and rows of small, coloured flags, may have stood to represent the urdu, proper, or reception-room and court-house of the chief;
7.3.2
while round it were scattered the dome-shaped tents of willow laths, covered with sheets of felt — all grimy and greasy — and ready at any moment to be taken down by the women of the tribe, and packed, with the rest of their domestic belongings, on the backs of the camels. Of forts, walls, or streets there could have been no sign. In the daytime, the ground on which the encampment stood would have been black with the dried droppings of sheep, a foot in depth, which, whirled into the air by the west wind, would pervade, with its pungent smell, the valley for a mile round, and cover everything, even the surface of the river, with a film of black. By the evening, this unsavoury carpet would be overlaid by thousands of sheep, driven in from the neighbouring glens and packed close, in scarcely separated flocks, for the night, while outside these, long rows of camels would kneel at their tethering-ropes, and groups of shaggy ponies stand fastened to the doors of their masters' tents. Near at hand, it may be, some ruined walls or weather-worn mounds pointed to the remains of an Uighur town, or fort, destroyed hundreds of years ago, and having no more connection with the life of the people of the aul than have the ruins of an Elizabethan castle, or a Norman keep, with the inhabitants of a neighbouring county town in England at the present day.
7.3.3
Encampments such as these would not only leave no trace of where they stood, but even their names would be unlikely to endure in history. Such were, no doubt, At-Bashi, Kuchkar, Jumghál, Jud Kuzi, and others, so often spoken of in the Second Part of the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, and several more that are mentioned in the Zafar-Náma and the Tarikh-i-Jahán Kushai, now impossible to identify. They were typical of the Moghuls as a race — of a nation devoid of constructive instincts, destined only to fallow the land and then make place for others. The period subsequent to the conquest of Chingiz's successors was one when disorder and intolerance prevented European travellers, who might have left a description behind them, from traversing the country of the Moghuls; but a side-light is shed on the subject by a brief mention in Rubruk's narrative of his visit to Mangu Kaan (Chingiz's grandson) at Karakorum in the year 1253, and consequently only just at the outset of the establishment of the Mongols in the region in question. Karakorum was then the Mongol capital: it numbered among its inhabitants many Chinese, Uighurs, and other comparatively cultivated people, and was, presumably, if not the only permanent Mongolian town, at any rate by far the best of them. Yet the walls only measured about a mile in circumference, and Rubruk relates of it: "You must understand that if you set aside the Kaan's own palace, it is not as good as the borough of St. Dennis;
7.3.4
and as for the palace, the abbey of St. Dennis is worth ten of it! There are two streets in the town, one of which is occupied by the Saracens, and in that is the market-place. The other street is occupied by the Cathayans, who are all craftsmen.... There are also twelve idol temples belonging to different nations, two Mahummeries, in which the law of Mahomet is preached, and one Church of the Christians at the extremity of the town. The town is enclosed by a mud wall and has four gates." The Chinese travellers of the thirteenth century give no description of the inhabited centres of Moghulistan which they passed through, though one of them, Chang Te (who seems to have had an eye for irrigation) mentions briefly that at Almaligh there were reservoirs in the market-places, "connected by running water." Farther westward also, in the valley of the Chu, he remarks that the country was intersected in all directions by canals which irrigated the fields, while numerous ancient walls and other ruins were seen which he attributed to the days of the Kitan or the Kara Khitai. But all these marks of civilisation had been swept away in Mirza Haidar's time, as he himself implies in his description of the antiquities of that part of the Khanate which, he says, was formerly known as 'Kora Khitai.'
7.3.5
In attempting to make clear the condition of Mogholistan and the neighbouring regions of Central Asia, perhaps the chief perplexity is experienced in unravelling the nomenclature of places and people. The names of countries and towns not only changed with time, but different nations applied, frequently, a different designation to one and the same place. Thus, names often arose at a certain period, were employed by writers for a time, and again fell out of use. The Mongols, for instance, during their ascendency, gave names of their own to many places which, after the decline of their power, became obsolete. In the same way, the conquests of Timur seem to have given birth to names that are peculiar to that period alone, and were perhaps only in vogue among those connected with the conqueror's court or his armies. This circumstance, in addition to the habit of applying nicknames to tribes and nations, may account for many of the difficulties that surround the identification of names mentioned by various authors, and should act as a warning, in the case of the tribes, not to attach too readily a racial significance to every name that is met with. To the Chaghatais of Mavarâ-un-Nahr and the west, Moghulistan was known, in the 13th and 14th centuries, by the name of Jatah;
7.3.6
and though this was only a term of depreciation, or a nickname (as will be explained below), it is employed in the gravest way by several Persian authors of the Timuri period, whose works have become standards of historical reference. What is perhaps more curious to remark is, that the name of Bishbálik, which so often occurs in mediæval histories and travels, and in the Chinese historical annals, is that by which the Chinese knew the Khanate of Moghulistan, during the earlier part of the period over which Mirza Haidar's history extends. This name had originally no connection with the Moghuls or their dominion, but was a survival from the days when the region had belonged to the Uighurs. Properly it was the name of a city only, which had been built by the Uighurs, and, having become their capital, had lent its name to the whole kingdom. The meaning, in Turki, is 'Five Cities,' and seems, possibly, to have indicated the capital of the five divisions, or provinces, into which the country of the Uighurs, at that time, (about the middle of the ninth century) was divided; or otherwise, it may have meant that the tribe was divided into five sections, or the town (as one authority has it) into five quarters. However this may be, the Chinese knew the country by its Turki name (which they sometimes translated into its Chinese equivalent—Wu-ch'eng), while they gave the city itself the Chinese style of Pei-ting, or 'Northern Court';
7.3.7
and subsequently (early in the fifteenth century) changed that of the whole country from 'Bishbálik' into 'Ili-balik.' The town of Bishbalik was situated on, or near, the site of the modern Urumtsi, and the country of which it was the chief place, extended to the westward and north-westward, as well as beyond the southern slopes of the Tian Shan. Like the rest of this part of Asia, it fell into the empire of Chingiz Khan, and, after his death, passed to his son Chaghatai. Later again, in the time of the Chinese Mings, the official historians of that dynasty described the limits of the region in such a way, as to leave no doubt that the country they termed Bishbalik was, indeed, Moghulistan. "Bie-shi-ba-li," says the Ming Shi, "is a great empire in the Si Yu [countries of the west]. It is bordered on the south by Yu-tien [Khotan], on the north by the country of the Wa-la [the Oirat Kalmaks], on the west by Sa-ma-rh-han [Samarkand], and to the east it is contiguous with Huo-chou [Kara Khoja]. It is distant [probably the ordu of the Khan is meant] from Kia-Yu-Kuan in the southeast, 3700 li. It is believed that Bie-shi-ba-li occupies the same tracts as, in ancient times, Yenki or Kui-tsz." As a description of the land and people, the Ming history adds:—"The country of Ili-ba-li is surrounded by deserts. It extends 8000 li from east to west and 2000 li from north to south. There are no cities or palace buildings.
7.3.8
The people are nomads living in felt tents, and exchanging their abode, together with their herds, in accordance with the existence of water and pasture land. They are of a fierce appearance. Their common food is flesh and kumiss. They are dressed in the same fashion as the Wa-la."