Page:The Tarikh-i-Rashidi - Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlát - tr. Edward D. Ross (1895).djvu/87

 56 indulged in. We read, it is true, of armies counted by hundreds of thousands, and of pitched battles when thousands were killed on either side, but apart from the facts that populations such as those in question could not have put such masses of fighting men in the field, and that numbers among Orientals are at all times used as mere figures of speech, it is remarkable that where a particular battle or other special incident is described in detail, there are usually indications that the numbers engaged were very small indeed.

This must have been more especially the case with the tribe of Moghuls and the other nomads who allied themselves with them, after the first quarter of the sixteenth century. During Amir Timur's reign, the Moghuls under Kamar-ud-Din, one of their best leaders, seem to have been always beaten when met by the Amir's troops, yet they were never thoroughly repressed until the great conqueror had put forth all his strength and resources in following them up, in separate bodies, to the farthest confines of their territory. His problem was not how to beat the Moghuls in battle or to invade their country, but how to catch their mobile forces in sufficient numbers, to make an impression on the nation at large; while, on their part, the Moghuls never seem to have attempted an incursion into Timur's dominions, except when he and his troops were engaged in prosecuting a war elsewhere. Later, the same difficulty occurred to Ulugh Beg Mirza, who only succeeded in dealing them a heavy blow, through the accident of a piece of treachery on the part of one of their own people, by which he was afforded an unlooked-for opportunity. And later again—within the sixteenth century—when the Kirghiz and Kazáks had to a great extent supplanted the Moghuls in what had been the latter's own land, and the nominal Khans of the country (Sultan Said and his successor) had their headquarters at Kashghar, it seems evident, though Mirza Haidar says little about it, that the tactics of the nomads left them practically masters of the situation. Yet even in those days, when brought to battle, they are said usually to have been beaten. Perhaps the only power which the Moghuls stood in fear of, after the days of Timur, was that of the Uzbegs, when these were first rising to power. Under Shaibáni Khan the confederated tribes of Uzbegs still possessed the characteristics and qualities of nomadic nations, and it is not a little remarkable that the Moghuls, so far from dealing with them as they were accustomed