Page:The Tarikh-i-Rashidi - Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlát - tr. Edward D. Ross (1895).djvu/32

Rh reigning families wandered and married in every direction, and their houses dovetailed into one another in a manner almost, calculated to set at defiance any method of narration, however systematic: the limits of countries were nowhere fixed, while, unlike in any other part of the world, many of the nations dealt with were nomads, who sometimes migrated en masse from one region to another, or sometimes were found divided in their political subordination, as well as in their abodes. Even the names of the countries were not defined; and in some cases the tribe and the region it occupied, were confused under one name. In others, the country and the chief town were not distinguished; while in some, again, a place or a people might be known by different names to different neighbouring nations. The author who could construct from these confused materials an intelligible and fairly consecutive narrative, can scarcely be blamed if his reader should occasionally be perplexed in linking the various incidents together, or in distinguishing between some of the actors who took part in them. More especially should he be treated with leniency, when it is considered that what was clear to him at the time, and on the spot, must necessarily bear an entirely different complexion when viewed by the Western reader, after a lapse of more than three hundred years, and after all the changes that have taken place in the interval. It may be said that the art of the historian consists in overcoming these difficulties, and in leaving behind him a narrative that will be clear for all time; but this would be too much to expect from an Asiatic author, even though he might be an experienced writer, and not, as in Mirza Haidar's case, a roving adventurer or soldier of fortune, exposed to all the vicissitudes of the times. To the most practised among them, systematic arrangement and clearness of statement, as we understand the terms, are unknown, and even if they thought it worth while to consider the convenience of the readers they knew of, they could hardly have contemplated their works being studied by foreigners, from countries of which they had scarcely heard even the names.

Still, after making every allowance, it must be admitted that Mirza Haidar's book has its shortcomings, when viewed as a practical history. His flights of unmeaning rhetoric are, unfortunately, frequent, if scarcely so extravagant as those of most Persian writers. He constantly breaks out into verse, also, though he usually indulges in this form of ornament