Page:The Tarikh-i-Rashidi - Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlát - tr. Edward D. Ross (1895).djvu/88

 Rh to do with others in the low countries, enlisted under Shaibáni in large numbers, and assisted him against the more civilised forces of Baber and the Khorasáni Mirzas. They seem to have feared to measure themselves with those who could use their own tactics against them, or fight them, indeed, with their own weapons.

In many places in Mirza Haidar's history, as well as in the Zafar-Náma and other books, mention is made of the 'cities' or 'towns' of Moghulistan; but as the same words must necessarily be used when speaking of the settled countries of Mávará-un-Nahr, Turkistan, and Alti-Shahr, they are somewhat misleading terms to apply to the auls, or encampments, of a nomadic people. One native writer, whose book dates from the first half of the fourteenth century, presents, in a few words, a telling picture of Moghulistan in his day—or part of Turkistan as it was then still called. "Since the region has been devastated by the arms of the Tatars," he writes, "it is inhabited only by a scanty population. According to what I have been assured by a man who has travelled through the country, there is nothing to be seen in Turkistan but ruins, and more or less obliterated remains. From a distance one sees a well-built village, the environs of which are covered with beautiful verdure; but on approaching, in the hope of meeting with some inhabitants, there are found only houses completely deserted. The population is composed entirely of nomads—that is, of shepherds and graziers who never occupy themselves with cultivating the land or sowing crops. There is no other verdure but that of the steppes, which grows naturally." That towns, in the true sense of the word, had existed in the land is thus correct, but they had been built when others possessed and governed it, and before it had become the home of the Mongolian nomads. The Uighurs, a Turki tribe of considerable cultivation by comparison, had owned the greater part, if not the whole, of the country up to less than a century prior to the rise of the Mongols, and were probably the founders of several towns of more or less importance; while the whole of Moghulistan had, during the interval, been occupied by the Kara Khitai, whose people, although perhaps much mixed with nomad tribesmen, seem also to have been capable of building cities and carrying on cultivation. The advent of the Mon-