Page:The Tarikh-i-Rashidi - Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlát - tr. Edward D. Ross (1895).djvu/85

 54 the east it included the town and district of Kuchar (which was usually a dependency of Aksu), and probably the region of Lake Lob; while it excluded Karashahr—then known as Chálish—and all to the east of it, which constituted, as we shall see, a province that bore the ancient name of 'Uighuristán.' On the south, along the whole length of the country, the mountains forming the scarp of the Tibetan highlands—the Kuen-lun and the Altyn Tágh—shut it off from all beyond. Towards the west the Pamirs, generally speaking, constituted its extreme limit, till these abut northward on the southern confines of the valley of the river Sir; for these uplands, then as now, seem to have divided the Kashghar district from Farghána. What the precise limits in the Pamir region were, there is nothing to indicate, but in speaking of Sárigh-Kul, Mirza Haidar implies that that district, at least, lay within the province of Alti-Shahr, and for a time also, we find Wakhán and Shighnan described as territory dependent on Kashghar, though this was not usually the case.

But if these were approximately and usually the limits, it does not follow that they were, on the one hand, never overstepped, or on the other, that the area they included was always held intact. As a matter of fact, they varied considerably from time to time. Before the rise of Timur, for instance, invasions, by the Moghuls, of Shásh, Turkistan and even Mávará-un-Nahr were of common occurrence, while at times in their later history, they extended their sway over districts in the east which did not properly belong to Alti-Shahr. In the same way, when the affairs of their neighbours were in the hands of strong rulers, portions of Moghulistan were cut off for a time, and numbers of the inhabitants seem to have had no scruple in joining the service of the successful conqueror of the time being.

The section known as Moghulistan differed widely, in most respects, from its companion province on the south. It was a land of mountains, streams and lakes, of upland pastures and steppes, of wooded valleys and even forests; for while it lay north of the regions which can only become productive if reached by the monsoon from the southern seas, or if irrigated by the art of its inhabitants, it was yet far enough from the blighting snows and sunless days of Siberia, to be in most parts clothed with natural verdure of some kind. Its altitudes were moderate, and its climate, therefore, as Mirza Haidar describes