The Rashīdī History 8.3.2

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.