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 the desire to strengthen himself against the khans of the Golden Horde, formed a close alliance with the grand-prince Ivan of Russia. One result of this friendship was that the Mongols were enabled, and encouraged, to indulge their predatory habits at the expense of the enemies of Russia, and in this way both Lithuania and Poland suffered terribly from their incursions. It was destined, however, that in their turn the Russians should not escape from the marauding tendencies of their allies, for, on pretext of a quarrel with reference to the succession to the Kazan throne, Mahommed Girai Khan in 1521 marched an army northwards until, after having devastated the country, massacred the people, and desecrated the churches on his route, he arrived at the heights of Vorobiev overlooking Moscow. The terror of the unfortunate inhabitants at the sight once again of the dreaded Mongols was extreme; but the horrors which had accompanied similar past visitations were happily averted by a treaty, by which the grand-prince Basil undertook to pay a perpetual tribute to the Krim khans. This, however, proved but a truce. It was impossible that an aggressive state like Russia should live in friendship with a marauding power like that of the Krim Tatars. The primary cause of contention was the khanate of Kazan, which was recovered by the Mongols, and lost again to Russia with that of Astrakhan in 1555. The sultan, however, declined to accept this condition of things as final, and instigated Devlet Girai, the Krim khan, to attempt their recovery. With this object the latter marched an army northwards, where, finding the road to Moscow unprotected, he pushed on in the direction of that ill-starred city. On arriving before its walls he found a large Russian force occupying the suburbs. With these, however, he was saved from an encounter, for just as his foremost men approached the town a fire broke out, which, in consequence of the high wind blowing at the time, spread with frightful rapidity, and in the space of six hours destroyed all the churches, palaces and houses, with the exception of the Kremlin, within a compass of 30 miles. Thousands of the inhabitants perished in the flames. “The river and ditches about Moscow,” says Horsey, “were stopped and filled with the multitudes of people, laden with gold, silver, jewels, chains, ear-rings and treasures. So many thousands were there burned and drowned that the river could not be cleaned for twelve months afterwards.” Satisfied with the destruction he had indirectly caused, and unwilling to attack the Kremlin, the khan withdrew to the Crimea, ravaging the country as he went. Another invasion of Russia, a few years later (1572), was not so fortunate for the Mongols, who suffered a severe defeat near Molodi, 50 versts from Moscow. A campaign against Persia made a diversion in the wars which were constantly waged between the Krim khan and the Russians, Cossacks and Poles. So hardly were these last pressed by their pertinacious enemies in 1649 that they bound themselves by treaty to pay an annual subsidy to the khan. But the fortunes of war were not always on the side of the Tatars, and with the advent of Peter the Great to the Russian throne the power of the Krim Mongols began to decline. In 1696 the tsar, supported by a large Cossack force under Mazeppa, took the field against Selim Girai Khan, and gained such successes that the latter was compelled to cede Azov to him. By a turn of the wheel of fortune the khan had the satisfaction in 1711 of having it restored to him by treaty; but this was the last real success that attended the Tatar arms. In 1735 the Russians in their turn invaded the Crimea, captured the celebrated lines of Perekop, and ravaged Bakhchi-sarai, the capital. The inevitable fate which was hanging over the Krim Tatars was now being rapidly accomplished. In 1783 the Krim, together with the eastern portion of the land of the Nogais, became absorbed into the Russian province of Taurida.

It will now only be necessary to refer briefly to the Uzbegs, who, on the destruction of the Golden Horde, assumed an important position on the east of the Caspian Sea. The founder of their greatness was the khan Abulkhair, who reigned in the 15th century, and who, like another Jenghiz Khan, consolidated a power out of a number

of small clans, and added lustre to it by his successful wars. Shaibani Khan, his grandson, proved himself a worthy successor, and by him (q.v.), the Timurid khan of Ferghana, who afterwards founded the Mogul Empire in India, was driven from his ancestral dominions. In 1500 he inflicted a severe defeat on Baber’s forces, and captured Samarkand, Herat and Kandahar. By these and other conquests he became possessed of all the country between the Oxus and the Jaxartes, of Ferghana, Khwarizm and Hissar, as well as of the territory of Tashkent from Kashgar to the frontiers of China. In the following year, by a dashing exploit, Baber recovered Samarkand, but only to lose it again a few months later. During several succeeding years Shaibani’s arms proved victorious in many fields of battle, and but for an indiscreet outrage on the territories of the shah of Persia he might have left behind him a powerful empire. The anger, however, of Shah Ismail roused against him a force before which he was destined to fall. The two armies met in the neighbourhood of Merv, where, after a desperate encounter, the Uzbegs were completely defeated. Shaibani, with a few followers, sought refuge in a cattle-pound. But finding no exit on the farther side, the refugees tried to leap their horses over the wall. In this attempt Shaibani was killed (1510). When his body was recognized by his exultant enemies they cut off the head and presented it to the shah, who caused the skull to be mounted in gold and to be converted into a. drinking-cup. After this defeat the Uzbegs withdrew across the Oxus and abandoned Khorasan. Farther east the news aroused Baber to renewed activity, and before long he reoccupied Samarkand and the province “Beyond the River,” which had been dominated by the Uzbegs for nine years. But though the Uzbegs were defeated they were by no means crushed, and ere long we find their khans reigning, now at Samarkand, and now at Bokhara. As time advanced and European powers began to encroach more and more into Asia, the history of the khanates ceases to be confined to the internecine struggles of rival khans. Even Bokhara was not beyond the reach of Russian ambition and English diplomacy. Several European envoys found their way thither during the first half of the 19th century, and the murder of Stoddart and Conolly in 1842 forms a melancholy episode in British relations with that fanatical capital. With the absorption of the khanate of Bokhara and the capture of Khiva by the Russians the individual history of the Mongol tribes in Central Asia comes to an end, and their name has left its imprint only on the dreary stretch of Chinese-owned country from Manchuria to the Altai Mountains, and to the equally unattractive country in the neighbourhood of the Koko-nōr.

.—Sir H. Howorth, History of the Mongols (1876, 1878); D’Ohsson, Histoire des Mongols (1834); Cahun, Introduction à l’histoire d’Asie; Köhler, Die Entwicklung des Kriegswesens; Strakosch-Grossmann, Der Einfall der Mongolen in Mittel-Europa; (for the general reader) Jeremiah Curtin, The Mongols, a history (1908).

Language.—The Mongol tongue is one of the members of the great stock which recent scholars designate as Ural-Altaic, which also includes the Finno-Ugric, Turkish, Manchu and Samoyede. The members of this group are not so closely related to one another as those of the Indo-European stock; but they are all bound together by the common principle of agglutinative formation especially the so-called harmony of vowels, by their grammatical structure, and also by certain common elements in the stock of roots which run through them all, or through particular more closely-connected families within the group. The fatherland proper of the Mongols is (q.v.). The sum total of the Mongol population under Chinese government is calculated at between two and three millions.

Generally the whole Mongol tribe may be divided into three branches: East Mongols, West Mongols and Buriats.

1. The East Mongols are divided into the Kalkas in the borders just mentioned, the Shara Mongols south of the Gobi along the Great Wall north-eastward to Manchuria, and lastly the Shiraigol or Sharaigol in Tangut and in northern Tibet.