Yarkand's new citadel and the old town dug up for treasure
Editorial contextMirza Haidar describes how Aba Bakr made Yarkand his capital: he dug out the old town, finding much treasure, brought in water channels, laid out gardens and built a citadel thirty gaz high with six gateways guarded by paired towers. It is a local ruler's building programme described by a man who knew the city well.
The old town was dug out by Mirza Aba Bakr ; it was among the excavations [kazihka] which we have spoken about, and much treasure was found [in it]. … Mirza Aba Bakr built a citadel which, in most places, is thirty statute gaz in height.
About Mirza Aba Bakr, Dughlat ruler of Kashgar
Keep in mind
Mirza Haidar himself doubts the report of 12,000 gardens.
No true Muslims until they settle in towns
Editorial contextAt the start of Yunus Khan's reign, the Moghuls still lived in the old way, shunning towns and farmland, and were Muslims in name only; neighbours even sold them as slaves like unbelievers. Yunus decided that they would never be good Muslims until they settled, and led them to Tashkent, though some rebelled and stayed on the steppe. Elsewhere (p. 58) Mirza Haidar records that an earlier khan had a horseshoe nail driven into the head of any Moghul who refused to wear a turban.
At the beginning of the reign of Yunus Khan, all the Moghuls dwelt, according to their old custom, in Moghulistan ; they avoided all towns and cultivated countries [and regarded them] with great repugnance. They were Musulmans in nothing but the name
About Moghuls under Yunus Khan
Better than a dog? A khan's conversion to Islam
Editorial contextThe young Moghul khan, feeding his dogs pork during a hunt, asks a captured Persian-speaking holy man whether he is better than the dog. The shaikh answers that with faith he is better, without it the dog is. Moved, the khan promises to become a Muslim when he rules, and years later the shaikh's son holds him to it. Mirza Haidar heard it from the holy man's descendants.
He was, at that time, feeding some dogs with swine's flesh, and he asked the Shaikh angrily : "Are you better than this dog, or is the dog better than you ?" The Shaikh replied : "If I have faith I am better than this dog ; but if I have no faith, this dog is better than I am."
About Tughluk Timur Khan of the Moghuls
Keep in mind
Family and religious tradition, told about two centuries after the event.
The first kumiss of spring, and a cup that fell
Editorial contextMirza Haidar's father told him of a spring feast held, by old Moghul custom, when the new kumiss (fermented mare's milk) came in. Just as the amir offered the khan a cup, news came of an envoy from Timur demanding tribute, and the cup fell from the khan's hands. The amir consoled him with verses about not grieving over tomorrow.
I have frequently heard my father (upon whom rest the mercy of God) relate that in the beginning of the spring the new kimiz had come in, and on that day, according to an ancient Moghul custom, a great feast had been prepared.
About Moghuls under Khizir Khwaja Khan
Why the Mongols are still called Tatars
Editorial contextNey Elias's introduction quotes the Persian historian Rashid al-Din (writing about 1300 to 1310). The Tatars were once so powerful that other Turkic peoples called themselves Tatars for the prestige, just as in Rashid's own day everyone wanted to be a 'Mongol'. That, he says, is why the Mongols are still called Tatars in China, India, the Kipchak steppe, Arabia, Syria and Egypt.
Previous to this period it was the same with the Tatars, on account of their power, and this is the reason why the Mongols are still called Tatars in China and in India, by the Kirghiz, the Bashgirds, in the Kapchak country, in the north of Asia, in Arabia, in Syria, in Egypt, and in Africa.
About Tatars and Mongols
Keep in mind
Editorial introduction quoting a fourteenth-century source at second hand.
A Moghul khan with a full beard and a Tajik face
Editorial contextA Muslim scholar expected Yunus Khan, as a 'Moghul', to be a beardless desert Turk, and was surprised to find an elegant man with a full beard and a Persian-looking (Tajik) face. The editor uses the story to show how far the ruling Moghul families had mixed with their Turkic and Persian neighbours.
I had heard that Yunus Khan was a Moghul, and I concluded that he was a beardless man, with the ways and manners of any other Turk of the desert. But when I saw him, I found he was a person of elegant deportment, with a full beard and a Tajik face
About Yunus Khan of the Moghuls
Keep in mind
The editor's racial reading ('Aryan') belongs to his time, not to the source.
The town of Katak, buried by a rain of sand
Editorial contextA holy man warns the town of Katak of God's wrath and leaves. The muezzin goes back for a last call to prayer, sees sand falling like dry snow, and finds the town buried up to the minaret, from which he jumps to escape. Mirza Haidar adds that winds sometimes uncover the minaret or a house where everything is in order but the owner is white bones. The editor notes that sand does not fall like snow but that dunes do bury towns.
So he again ascended and, looking round, discovered that it was raining sand, and to such a degree that the whole town was covered ; after a little while he noticed that the ground was rising, and at last only a part of the minaret was left free.
About Muslim townspeople of Katak in the Tarim basin
Keep in mind
A pious legend passed down in one family; the editor's note compares it with real sand-buried ruins seen by Forsyth, Bellew and Przhevalsky.
Eyes that could bore through brass: a captive poet's Tatars
Editorial contextElias quotes the Persian poet Amir Khusrau of Delhi, who had been a prisoner of Mongol raiders and describes them with hatred: narrow piercing eyes, faces set on necks, noses spreading from cheek to cheek. Elias warns that the poet was 'burning with dread and resentment' and omits 'offensive details'. On a later page Elias notes that Khusrau calls the same people Tatars, Turks and Moghuls.
There were more than a thousand Tatar infidels and warriors of other tribes, riding on camels, great commanders in battle, all with steel-like bodies clothed in cotton ; with faces like fire, with caps of sheepskin, with heads shorn. Their eyes were so narrow and piercing that they might have bored a hole in a brazen vessel
About Mongol ('Tatar') raiders of India
Keep in mind
Hostile caricature by a former captive, quoted in translation by the editor.