Page:The Tarikh-i-Rashidi - Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlát - tr. Edward D. Ross (1895).djvu/65

 38 and ruled with uncontrolled power, though he left to the Khans, whom he set up or pulled down at pleasure, certain dignities and privileges which were nothing more than nominal.

We have seen already, how near the empire of Chaghatai came to being divided during the wars of Kaidu. This Prince was, as far as can be gleaned, one of the ablest of the Oktai line, and an active and determined soldier. During his struggles for supremacy, he held a large tract of country carved chiefly out of the Chaghatai appanage, though taken partly from that of Oktai. It is not clear what were the limits of the territory he held thus temporarily, and indeed it is probable that no actual limits were ever acknowledged. In all likelihood his power extended chiefly over certain tribes who were nomads, or dwellers in tents, and thus in the habit of moving their abodes when expedient; such movements, too, may have been more frequent than usual about Kaidu's period, for the tribesmen must have been constantly entangled in the prevailing wars, and subject therefore, to the changes of fortune of those with or against whom they had to serve. His dominion, consequently, would have been more tribal than territorial in its extent. At any rate it would seem that during Kaidu's last days—the period when he was allied with Borák—his power reached from the Talis River and Lake Bálkásh on the west, to Kara-Khoja (between Turfán and Hami) on the east, and that it thus included nearly the whole length of the Tian Shan mountains, together with the Zungar country on the north, and Kashghar, Yarkand, Aksu, etc., on the south of them. Although this wide tract never fell permanently to him or his race, his temporary hold over it seems to have assisted in marking it out as a self-contained eastern division of the Chaghatai realm, and the greater portion of it—all that lay to the north of the Tian Shan—acquired, about this time, the name of Moghulistan, or vulgarly "Jatah." It was, above all parts of that realm, the land of the purely nomad Moghul (or Mongol) tribes, as distinguished from the settled populations of Turkistan, Farghána, and Mávará-un-Nahr on the one hand, and the mountaineers of Hisar, Karatigin, Badakhshán, etc., on the other. It was the land to or from which the tent-dwelling population could migrate, and carry with them their only wealth—their flocks and herds—when safety or other interests demanded a move; and it became, moreover, as Mirza Haidar's history will show, a sort of refuge for the defeated and discontented among those tribes and the