Page:The Tarikh-i-Rashidi - Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlát - tr. Edward D. Ross (1895).djvu/84

 Rh the whole of the lowlands of the valley of the Sir, from a little above Khojand to about the Arys tributary, and included such towns as Sháhrukhia, Táshkand and Sairám. Immediately to the east of this level agricultural stretch, rise the hills which separate it from the valley of the Upper Tálás, and it was this line of hills, or uplands, which seems to have stood usually, and in a general way, for the boundary of the Moghuls. To the north of Shásh lay the province of Turkistan, with the Káratau hills between it and the Lower Tálás, and here again the hills appear to have been the western limit of the nomad tribes. Turning towards the north-west, a line drawn from the Káratau to the southern extremity of Lake Balkásh, and continued again from its other extremity to the Tárbágatai mountains, may be taken roughly to have been the frontier in that direction. We hear, at any rate, of no transactions of the Moghuls, as a tribe, anywhere to the north-west of the Balkásh; nor do we trace them anywhere to the north of the Imil river, which is fed from the Tárbágatai mountains, except when flying before Timur's avenging army in 1389 and 1390, they crossed the range into the valley of the Irtish. But this was an occasion when danger led them to seek refuge beyond the bounds of their own country. From the Tárbágatai range, the limiting line would probably bend south-eastward to some point at the northern foot of the Tian Shan, near the present Urumtsi; but this is somewhat uncertain. All that is clear is that the tract now known as "Zungaria" (or the land of the Zungár, or Jungár, Kalmaks) formed a part of the Moghul dominion, but how far precisely, "Zungária" extended towards the east, there is nothing to show. Probably it included Lakes Ebi Nor and Ayar Nor, and had for its central feature the upper course of the Ili river. On the south, the main range of the Tian Shan, as far west as about the head of the Nárin river, divided Moghulistan from Kuchar, Aksu, etc., while westward, again, the water-parting ranges between the Nárin and Lake Issigh-Kul, continued up to the heads of the Tálás, would seem,approximately, to have been the line of separation from Kashghar and Farghána.

The boundaries of Alti-Shahr were better defined by natural features than Moghulistan. It may be said, generally, to have embraced the whole of the system of the Tarim, together with some of the upper waters of the Sir. On the north it marched with the southern limit of Moghulistan, as described above. On