Page:The Tarikh-i-Rashidi - Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlát - tr. Edward D. Ross (1895).djvu/64

 Rh installed in 1309, and was at once attacked by Chapár, in alliance with several members of the house of Oktai. The allies were beaten in a number of fights, and eventually fled for refuge to the territory of the Khakán (now Kuluk, a nephew of Uljaitu), while their dominions were appropriated by the house of Chaghatai, the clans who inhabited them becoming in part its subjects and in part those of the Kipcháks. "With Chapár," says Mr. Oliver, "the house of Oktai disappears, though representatives came to the front for a brief period again in the persons of Ali and of Dánishmanjah, while Timur (Tamerlane), after displacing the family of Chaghatai, selected his puppet khans from the Oktai stock." Within a year of his installation, Kabak made way for an elder brother, who ascended the throne of the Chaghatai under the name of Isán Bugha, though his historical identity (in connection with this name at least) is somewhat uncertain. He provoked the Khakán into war, and was beaten almost at the outset of his rule; afterwards he invaded Khorasán with a like result, and was finally forced to fly from the country, before the combined forces of one of his brothers and of the seventh Il-Khán, or King of Persia. This occurred in 1321, when Kabak seems to have resumed the throne which he had abdicated twelve years previously.

It was about this time that a permanent division occurred in the realm of Chaghatai, the two parts being known by the general names of Mávará-un-Nahr (or Transoxiana) and Moghulistan (or Jatah), though there were other provinces attached to each section. The story of the Khans of the former branch, roughly sketched above need not be followed further, as the history of Mirza Haidar, which chiefly concerns us, belongs to the other or eastern division, and is told by him, a descendant of its princes, in full. It is only necessary to remark with regard to Mávará-un-Nahr, that from the time of this division forward, the fifty years that remained till the great Amir, Timur, made himself master of the land, confusion and discord prevailed. During those few years the names of fifteen Khans appear in the lists—some of them not even of the Chaghatai line—together with some periods of anarchy when no name occurs. The rise of Timur was the turning-point from decadence to power in Maávará-un-Nahr, but at the same time, the death-blow to the original line of Chaghatai. He reduced the country to order,