[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Indian literature](https://indike.org/pramana/in) › [Dark Ages](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages) › [Kashmir](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir) › [Tārīkh-i Rashīdī](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi) › [The Tarikh-i-Rashidi (Elias, Ross)](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross) › 8.5 # The Rashīdī History 8.5 The Tarikh-i-Rashidi (Elias, Ross) 8.5 - **Language:** English ### [8.5.1](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross.8.5.1) But though Oriental writers make use of the tribal name of Turk to denote a nomadic people, similar inconsistencies are not wanting in European languages. The way in which the French apply the word Bohémien to the gipsies is a parallel instance. The gipsies, though in no way belonging to the same race as the natives of Bohemia, acquired their name in France, on account of certain social habits and customs which they were believed to have brought with them from Bohemia, and because they were known to wander into France from that country. An almost similar instance, though not precisely parallel, was the use in English of the word Indian, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to define the aborigines of North America, the Caribbean, and many other islands. In this case it was not the social condition and proclivities of the inhabitants that caused the misapplication of name, but their colour, the climate and products of their countries, and other circumstances, which reminded those who came into contact with them, of the India of the East. The process and result, however, are much the same. But if we leave out of consideration the fact that Turk happened also to be a race-name, its employment to designate the pastoral tribes of unsettled abodes becomes no more anomalous than such appellations as Kohistani, Badawy, etc., in Asia, or the familiar Mountaineer, Islander, etc., in Europe. ### [8.5.2](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross.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; ### [8.5.3](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross.8.5.3) but we need hardly go far from home to find a telling example of the same thing. From Earle's Philology of the English Tongue, we learn, with regard to the Cymraeg, or British language now spoken in Wales, that "the Anglo-Saxons called it Wylsc, and the people who spoke it they called Wealas, which we have modernised into Wales and Welsh. So the Germans of the Continent called the Italians and their language Wälsch. The word simply means foreign or strange. At various points on the frontiers of our race we find them affixing the name on the conterminous Romance-speaking people .... The French .... in the reign of Edward the Confessor, are called, by the contemporary \[Anglo-Saxon\] annalist, tha Waelisce men, by which was meant 'the foreigners.'" Thus, the evidence on this subject (apart from that of nicknames or terms of contempt) points to three distinct conclusions. The first is that, in reading the histories of Musulman authors, the tribal names they use must not always be taken to have a racial significance; or, in other words, it is necessary in every case where either the term Turk or Tatar occurs, to see whether the writer is applying it in its general and sociological acceptation, or in a specific and discriminating ethnic sense. ### [8.5.4](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross.8.5.4) The second conclusion is that the word Moghul, even where it is used in an ethnic sense, is frequently misapplied, and so extended, at certain periods in history, as to comprise many tribes of real Turki race (among others), until large numbers of people who were not of Moghul race came to be called Moghuls. This habit appears to have been prevalent first in the time of Chingiz and his immediate successors, and subsequently during the ascendency of the Chaghatai (or so-called Moghul) dynasty in India. The third conclusion is that the application and significance of all three names — Turk, Tatar, and Moghul — varied at different times and in different countries. It appears to me that a due appreciation of these three points will help to clear up much that has been regarded hitherto as inconsistent, and even contradictory, in the Musulman histories, and has occasioned no little controversy among European writers. That the ethnographic nomenclature of Persian, Turki, and Arabic writers is anomalous, cannot but be granted; but in Asiatic nomenclature what is there that is not anomalous? They had no knowledge of the scientific ethnology that guides the modern European commentator on their works, but merely followed the common speech of the time, and employed the terms that had grown into use among the people around them. In reading their books, therefore, it is futile to look for systematic nomenclature; ### [8.5.5](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross.8.5.5) but if they are read with a due regard to date, locality, and other circumstances, they will seldom be found, I think, to contain actual contradictions; for loose and inaccurate though Asiatics are in some respects — such as in figures, measurements, geographical details, etc. — they are usually remarkably clear on such subjects as blood relationship, family lineage, and racial descent. But here we must leave the Moghuls, and glance briefly at those original Turks, or Uighurs, who may be regarded as the immediate ancestors of the population of Alti-Shahr (and indeed all Eastern Turkistan) and the main stock of their race. Who the Uighurs were in remote times, and what was their origin, are speculative questions which need not be investigated here. The best notices of them during early historic times point to their home-land as lying in north-western Mongolia; but in the ninth century they are recorded, in the Chinese annals, to have been displaced from that region and to have been driven southward by the Kirghiz, who were themselves, at that time, beginning to rise to power, and tending, like other Turki tribes, to press towards the south and west. ### [8.5.6](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross.8.5.6) In early times there seem to have been at least two confederacies of Uighurs in the further east: one living in the region now known as Zungaria, and called the Naiman Uighur, or "Eight Uighurs," while the other inhabited the country watered by the Orkhon and the Tula, and were known as the Toghuz Uighur, or "Nine Uighurs." When the latter were driven to the south and west, the former remained in their old country, where they are found at the time of Chingiz Khan. The Toghuz Uighur settled in the eastern ranges of the Tian Shan, and gradually built up a new kingdom, extending over all the eastern portion of that chain. Here one of their states seems to have been established on the south of the mountains, and subsequently another on the north. The first had for its chief town the representative of the modern Kara-Khoja (called at different periods Si-Chao, Ho-Chao, and Kao-Chang), and embraced, at some periods at least, the modern district of Kuchar, then known as Kui-tze; while the capital of the second was Bishbalik (the Five Towns), which stood on, or near, the site of the present Urumtsi. Very little is known of even these later Uighur kingdoms, although the date when they flourished is not a very remote one. ### [8.5.7](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross.8.5.7) It is chiefly from the Chinese chronicles that any knowledge of their history is to be gathered, but even these do not appear to have been compiled with completeness, nor to have embraced the entire Uighur nation, which must have been a large and influential one for a long period. In addition to these Uighurs, always so named, and living in the Eastern Tian Shan, there was a third section of the race dwelling farther west. They are called sometimes the 'Karlughi,' and their seat of power was originally at Ili-balik and on the head waters of the Chu. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, they appear to have dominated Western Turkistan and perhaps the whole of Alti-Shahr, while one of their chief towns was Kashghar, then known as Urdu-Kand. Their rulers were the so-called 'Ilak-Khans,' or 'Kara-Khans,' whose history is more or less known through the works of Arab and Persian authors, since the conversion of one of the line—a certain Satuk Kara Khan—to Islam, in the first half of the tenth century. That the state and dynasty of the Ilak Khans were in reality Uighur, there seems to be sufficient evidence to prove, although the name of Uighur was not used by Musulman authors till a much later date. They seem to have been known by the name of Ta-gaz-gaz until the thirteenth century, when they begin to appear under that of Uighur in Western annals, though the Ilak Khans were then no more. ### [8.5.8](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross.8.5.8) From these same Musulman historians we learn that, during parts of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the kingdom of the Ilak Khans extended from Khorasan to China, which is perhaps scarcely to be taken literally, but is only another way of saying that it extended a long way to the east; for the Chinese, in their chronicles of the same period, speak of transactions between their Emperors and the Khans of Kao-Chang and Bishbalik, as if these were independent chiefs. --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross.8.5](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.kashmir.tarikh-i-rashidi~en-ross.8.5) · Pramāṇa