History of the Qaraunah Turks in India c6.19

c6.19

The Qaraunahs may have been originally connected with the Mughals in some way, but what has been said above is not enough to set at naught our Indian authorities who clearly state that Tughluq was a Qaraunah Turk. Maula Bakhsh's observations read together with Mirza Haider's remarks indicate the process of interfusion by which the Mongols rapidly became Turks. There may have been Mongol blood in the Qaraunahs as it was in the Chaghtai Turks, of whom Babar may be taken as a fair specimen, and Babar was a Mongol on his mother's side. Ibn Batūṭah's informant was Shaikh Rukn-al-Din Multani, who knew the Sultan intimately, and we have no reason to disbelieve what he says. Later writers like Firishta and Sujan Rai Khatri following their immediate predecessors distinctly state that the father of Ghazi Malik (the name by which Ghiyas-al-Din was known in his earlier days) was a Turk. Sir Wolseley Haig's view that Ghiyas-al-Din's father came of the tribe of Turks now dwelling near Khotan and called by Sir Aurel Stein, in his *Ruins of Desert Cathay*: "Taghlik" may be accepted because it is in agreement with Ibn Batūṭah. Ghazi Malik's hostility to the Mughals as is evidenced by his repeated attempts to drive them out of India, points to the predominance of Turkish blood in him. There is nothing in contemporary writers to indicate that there was anything of the Mongolian type in the features of the Tughluqs. Sultan Muhammad Tughluq is described as a handsome man and cultured scholar, whose urbanity struck all who came in contact with him, and in a rare portrait of Firuz which is available to us the features of that monarch seem to be more Turkish than Mongolian. All these facts go to prove that Ghiyas-al-Din Tughluq was a Turk. Indeed, a more effective argument may be put forward by saying that Indian Turks who were fanatically hostile to the Mongols would not have unanimously elected him to the imperial throne, if they had not been convinced of his Turkish descent.