The Rashīdī History 8.5.2

8.5.2

Misapplication, or change in the application, of race-names is a practice so commonly met with, that it is almost superfluous to mention it here. It may, however, be briefly pointed out, in regard to the names we are dealing with, that the term Tajik has been made, in one instance, to take exactly the opposite meaning to that which it usually bears. Mr. A. G. Ellis, of the British Museum, informs me that while early Armenian writers applied it to the Arabs, modern Armenians have imposed it on the Turks and the Turkish Empire, and even on Musulmans in general. In this case it seems that the word is used to imply a 'stranger,' or 'barbarian'; but it is a curious example of the length to which misapplication can go, for it constitutes an absolute reversal of the usual and original sense of the word. In the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, among other books, we find Hazara used for 'hill-men,' or 'mountaineers,' without reference to its original meaning or to any racial consideration, while in modern times the term has become the name of a specific race or people. Hazara meant simply "a thousand," and was the name, it appears, which was given to a particular section of cavalry or other troops, who were perhaps the original settlers in the hill districts in question. What Mr. Ibbetson has told us above, of the employment of the words Turk and Moghul in the Panjab, is another instance of mere misapplication or irrelevent nomenclature;