The Rashīdī History 7.3.3

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;