Page:The Tarikh-i-Rashidi - Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlát - tr. Edward D. Ross (1895).djvu/109

 78 religion, they seem to have tended gradually to lose their national characteristics and to merge more and more into the tribes or nations—for the most part of Turki descent—by whom they were surrounded. From the time of the Mongol conquests down to the first half of the sixteenth century, nearly three hundred years had elapsed. In so long a period, it is only reasonable to conclude that some changes may have taken place in a politically weak and unstable people like the Mongols, and who, in addition, were pressed upon from the west and south by alien nations much superior to themselves in numbers. It is not, however, necessary to assume, as some writers have done, that the mass of the Moghuls, even in the latest years of this period, were of Turki blood, or that they used the Turki language as their own. The circumstances that appear rather to have given rise to this view are: (1) the glimpses that are occasionally obtained in history of the Moghul Khans and chiefs (almost the only persons ever noticed individually by historians) who had become to all intents and purposes Turks, at a period following pretty closely on that of the Mongol ascendency—a matter that affects only the Moghuls of Moghulistan; and (2) the use made by Musulman authors of the word Turk, when designating, sometimes all nomad and steppe-dwelling, or pastoral, tribes, and sometimes a specific race. This dual use of the word Turk underlies the whole of the ethnography of Central Asia, as it has come down to us through the writings of Oriental authors. It has been my object to avoid, if possible, all discussion of this much-debated question, but in order that some of our author's statements may not be wrongly interpreted, it is necessary to make some brief remarks upon it.

One instance which touches phase (1) is that of the racial characteristics of the family of Baber, which gave to India the