Page:The Tarikh-i-Rashidi - Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlát - tr. Edward D. Ross (1895).djvu/10

Rh document alone seems to have needed nearly a year of labour, while the Tarikh-i-Rashidi is only one among many Oriental authorities whom Mr. Erskine studied, in the original, and made use of—a fact to which the footnotes of his History clearly testify.

Besides serving the purpose of its own author, the précis translation has also been made to contribute much that is valuable to the works of Sir H. Howorth, whom little escapes that is authentic and original, however difficult of access. In his History of the Mongols more especially, Sir H. Howorth gathered much information regarding the tribes of Central Asia and the genealogy of Moghul Khans, and was able to throw light on some of the most obscure chapters of Asiatic history, from Mirza Haidar's data, as found in this document. Had it only been more complete, and had the geography and ethnography of Central Asia been known in Mr. Erskine's day as well as they are known now, the History of the Mongols would no doubt have contained all the essential parts of the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, and little would have been left to occupy the editor of the present translation. But it is precisely during the last fifty years that much has been learned on these subjects, so that a great deal of what was unintelligible to Mr. Erskine, and consequently left untranslated or in obscurity, is now easily filled in, by the light of more modern knowledge.

The only English writer besides Mr. Erskine who has made any extensive use of the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, in the original Persian, is the late Surg.-Gen. W. H. Bellew. In 1873 Dr. Bellew accompanied Sir D. Forsyth's mission to Kashgar, and compiled, as a contribution to the official report of the mission, a history of Eastern Turkistan, which is largely drawn from Mirza Haidar's data, for the period covered by the latter's narrative. Dr. Bellew had not set himself the task of translating the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, nor was he concerned with any part of it that did not bear directly on the country to which the mission report had reference. His history, therefore, is a compilation, only, from certain portions of Mirza Haidar's work, and though in some places it contains much detail, it cannot be compared, even as a précis of the book, with Mr. Erskine's MS. at the British Museum. In some respects—as for instance, the names of places and geographical notices—it is, perhaps, more valuable than that document, for the writer's local knowledge, and opportunities for deriving information from the