The Rashīdī History 8.3
The Tarikh-i-Rashidi (Elias, Ross) 8.3
- Language
- English
8.3.1
Amir Khusru, the poet of mediaeval India, draws—or perhaps overdraws—a picture of the Moghuls who invaded Northern India towards the end of the thirteenth century, in a manner which leaves no doubt that he is attempting to describe a Mongoloid race. He had previously fallen into their hands as a prisoner, and, according to his own account, had been badly treated by them; as he was no doubt burning with dread and resentment, his description must be taken to be somewhat tinged by his feelings. However, omitting some offensive details, he writes thus: "There were more than a thousand Tatar infidels and warriors of other tribes, riding on camels, great commanders in battle, all with steel-like bodies clothed in cotton; with faces like fire, with caps of sheepskin, with heads shorn. Their eyes were so narrow and piercing that they might have bored a hole in a brazen vessel . . . Their faces were set on their bodies as if they had no neck. Their cheeks resembled soft leathern bottles, full of wrinkles and knots. Their noses extended from cheek to cheek, and their mouths from cheek bone to cheek bone. . . . Their moustaches were of extravagant length. They had but scanty beards about their chins. . . .
8.3.2
They looked like so many white demons, and the people fled from them everywhere in affright." Is it possible that a race which would call forth such a description as this, from even a terrified poet, could have become, in the mass, men like Yunus or Baber between the end of the thirteenth century and the latter half of the fifteenth? Thus, although it might appear at first sight that, with the change taking place in the families of the Khans, with the advance of the Musulman religion and the growing use of the Turki language, it would be impossible to distinguish a true Moghul people, still evidence is not wanting to show that even up to the first half of the sixteenth century, the Moghuls of Moghulistan—the Moghul Ulus of Mirza Haidar—were in fact a separate people from the Turks. During the period 1514 to 1533, the Mirza constantly alludes to a distinct tribe or community of Moghuls—however reduced in numbers—in exactly the same terms as he refers to them at a period dating two hundred years before. They were neither Kirghiz, nor Uzbegs, nor Kalmaks, but were the natural enemies of all three; they were of the Káuma (or clan) of the Khans descended from Chaghatai; they preserved Mongol customs and, from occasional incidental references which he makes to Mongol terms and phrases, must have retained something, at least, of the original language of their nation, though they had no literature in which it could become fixed.
8.3.3
This being the case, the bulk of them must have preserved their Mongol type to the last, and it may perhaps be fairly conjectured that whatever change they had undergone, was due less to the fusion of blood than to the conversion of the people to Islam. The spread of the Musulman religion tends always to the modification of manners and customs, and to the use of the Arabic, Turki or Persian language; but in spite of all, racial characteristics remain, until very gradually expunged by a course of inter-breeding, that must extend over many centuries. Several parallel cases (besides that of the Hazáras) might be cited among Asiatic nations; but one, having no relation to the Mongol tribes, will suffice. The Baltis of Baltistan, or Little Tibet, formed originally a section of the ordinary population of Tibet, were of the same religion, and used the same language. Some three centuries or more ago, they were converted to the Musulman faith, and began gradually to change their manners. At present the written language of Tibet is unknown among them, Persian having replaced it; their chiefs, through intermarriage with neighbouring Musulman peoples, have changed so greatly, even in type, that usually no trace of the Tibetan is left; but the mass of the nation, though practising Musulman social customs and wearing a Musulman costume, have not lost the Tibetan spoken language, and are, in feature and other personal attributes, as thoroughly Tibetan as ever they were.
8.3.4
Had the Baltis occupied an open country, and been constantly engaged in wars and invasions, there might have been a greater and more rapid change. Their secluded mountainous home (like that of the Hazaras) has mitigated this, and has helped to preserve them as a race: but the principle is the same as with the Moghuls. With regard to the misleading employment of the word Turk, alluded to above, it must be explained that, among Asiatic authors, it is constantly met with as the definition of a race or people distinguished from the Tartars and the Moghuls, on the one hand, and from Tajiks, or Taziks, on the other. But in the same writings, and often on the same page, it is used to denote all nomads and inhabitants of the steppes, irrespective of race or origin, and merely to distinguish such people from those who dwelt in towns, and who cultivated the settled districts—or from the Tajiks generally. The first may be regarded as its ethnological sense: the second as sociological only, and as about synonymous with the adopted English word nomad. In this second sense it included, as we shall see, all Mongoloid and Tartar races. In dictionaries we find among its many meanings those of barbarian, robber, vagabond, wanderer, etc. It is also, in poetry, applied to the planet Mars as "a Wanderer of the sky," and to the sun as "the Turk of China," that is of the East; or "the Turk of midday"—viz., the South;
8.3.5
or "the Turk of the Spheres." All who lived in the steppes and ranges, outside the pale of what was regarded as civilisation, and led a pastoral or unsettled life, but who were not distinctively mountaineers, were deemed a separate class (irrespective of race) and required a separate name to denote them. To this class the name of Turk attached itself throughout Central Asia. In Europe and in India the word Turk was not used in this sense. By Europeans, and perhaps Western Asiatics also, the word Tatar, or Tartar, was usually in vogue, down to quite modern times, to indicate the nomadic nations of the interior of Asia, without reference to any racial considerations ; while in India the name Moghul came to be applied (in times subsequent to the rise of the Mongols, at any rate) in a very similar way, to these same races. Abul Ghazi, the historian Khan of Khiva, himself a Turk by nationality, though of remote Mongol descent, constantly uses the word Turk in its sociological sense, and applies it indiscriminately to all the nomad and steppe-dwelling tribes, when he requires a name for the whole of them ; but, when referring to their descent or language, or when in any way particularising between them, I do not know of a single instance of his alluding to the Moghuls as connected by blood with the Turki tribes.
8.3.6
In other words, although he employs the name Turk to describe certain nations—among them the Moghuls—for whom he knows no other general designation, he never applies it in the particular instances where a racial consideration is involved, except to those among them whom he regards as, in reality, Turks by race. He writes, for instance: "Of all the Turk tribes who inhabited those countries at that period, the Tatars were the most numerous ...."; and again : "We have .... recounted what we know of the other branches of the race of Turks. Now, we will speak of the branches of Mongol race." It is in the same non-racial sense that Mirza Haidar uses the word Turk, when putting the remark (alluded to above) about Yunus Khan, into the mouth of Maulana Muhammad Kazi : "I had heard that Yunus Khan was a Moghul," says the Maulana, "and I concluded that he was a beardless man, with the ways and manners of any other Turk of the desert ; but when I saw him, I found that he was a person of elegant deportment, with a full beard and a Tajik face." That is, the speaker knew that Yunus was a Moghul by descent, and expected to see a man with Mongolian features, but he classed him with other Turks of the steppes.
8.3.7
D'Ohsson became conscious, from the extensive use he had made of Asiatic historians, that these writers constantly employed the word Turk to signify the nomad and pastoral tribes, known in Europe as 'Tatars.' In one passage he writes: "The Mongols gave the name of Tajik, or Tazik, to the Muhammadans, and in the historical works of this period it will be found that they employed this word in opposition to that of 'Turk.' The first served to designate the Muhammadan inhabitants of towns and cultivated lands, whether they were of Turki, Persian, or Arab origin mattered not; while under the name of 'Turk' were comprised the nomad nations of Turki and Tatar race. It was in this general acceptation that Chingiz Khan and the Mongols styled themselves 'Turks'; they rejected, on the other hand, the name of 'Tatar.'" In another passage, when speaking of the Tatars proper, previous to the rise of the Mongols, D'Ohsson quotes Rashid-ud-Din as follows: "They made themselves so powerful and formidable, that other nations of Turks passed themselves off as Tatars, and regarded the name as an honour."