Page:The Tarikh-i-Rashidi - Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlát - tr. Edward D. Ross (1895).djvu/59

 32 that he ever inclined towards Christianity, though that religion, as practised by the Nestorians, must have been familiar to him. It existed in his own dominions and in those of his brother Oktai, who seems to have been thoroughly tolerant, and to have encouraged at his capital, Karakorum, every form of worship, besides the enlistment in his service of men of all religions—a circumstance which had, as will be seen later, an important bearing on subsequent history.

Chaghatai's own capital was at Almáligh, in the valley of the Upper Ili, near the site of the present Kulja, and consequently in the extreme east of his dominion. His reason for fixing it in that remote position, instead of at Bokhara or Samarkand, was probably one of necessity. His Mongol tribesmen and followers—the mainstay of his power—were passionately fond of the life of the steppes: the only existence worthy of men and conquerors, was that passed in the felt tents of their ancestors, among the flocks and herds that they tended in time of peace, and led with them on their distant campaigns. The dwellers in houses and towns were, in their eyes, a degenerate and effeminate race;—the tillers of the soil, slaves who toiled like cattle, in order that their betters might pass their time in luxury. They would serve no Khan who did not pass a life worthy of free-born men and "gentlemen rovers"; and Chaghatai and his immediate successors probably saw, as his later descendants are described by Mirza Haidar to have seen, that the one way of retaining the allegiance of his own people, was to humour their desires in this respect, and live, with them, a nomad's life.

Chaghatai died in 1241, after a reign of about fourteen years, and within the same year the death of Oktai occurred at Karakorum. Thus two out of four of the chief divisions of the Mongol empire were suddenly deprived of their sovereigns, with the result that nearly the whole of the successors of Chingiz were set disputing for the succession. "Among the most violent as regards party spirit and warlike temper," writes Mr. Oliver in his summary of this period, "were some of the representatives of Chaghatai. For the time being, it ended in Turakina, Oktai's widow, being appointed regent; but there were set up lasting disputes among the rival claimants, and the seeds of much future mischief were sown. For long after, the disputes regarding the succession to the throne of the great Kaán became inextricably mixed up with the affairs, more