have been stayed had he not learnt that some remnants of Sultan Mohammad's garrison were still in hiding. In order to compass their death he ordered the city, which was mainly built of wood, to be given to the flames. His behests were obeyed, and Bokhārā for a time ceased to exist. Chingiz, however, caused it to be rebuilt.1

Meanwhile success had attended all his other army corps; and Otrar, Jand, and Khojend, together with many other towns, submitted to the Mongols. The sons and generals of Chingiz now joined the main body, and their united forces together marched on Samarkand. Before the end of the year A.H. 616 (1219) this great city, after a three days' siege, fell. The garrison was put to the sword, and Samarkand was given over to reckless pillage.

It is not necessary here to record the story of the Mongol's progress of conquest. Khwārazm soon succumbed, and Khorasan was overrun by his hordes. The Sultan himself took no active part in the hopeless effort to stay the advance of Chingiz, but fled across Khorasan 2 to an island in the Caspian named Ābasgūn, not far from the modern Astarābād, where in A.H. 617 (1220) he died in utter destitution. A manful struggle to revive the glory of his house was made by Sultan Mohammad's heroic son Jalāl ud-Din, whose career forms one of the most exciting narratives in history.* This last representative of the Khwārazm Shāhs, after having boldly faced death on a hundred battlefields, was brutally murdered in A.H. 628 (1231) by a low-born Kurd.

1 Abū-l-Ghāzi, pp. 101-103.of Desmaison's text.

2 The route he took was Kazwin, Gilān, and Mäzenderän (Tarikh-iMukim Khānī).

3 He is said to have died a lunatic. The island in question has long since been swallowed up by the sea. Cf. Tabakāt-i-Nāsiri, Major Raverty's trans., vol. i. p. 278, note.

We refer the reader especially to Müller's Geschichte des Islams, pp. 213-225.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE LINE OF CHAGHATAY

"THE Mongol armies," writes Mr. S. Lane-Poole, " divided into several immense brigades, swept over Khwārazm, Khorasan, and Afghanistan, on the one hand; and on the other, over Azerbayjān, Georgia, and Southern Russia; whilst a third division continued the reduction of China. In the midst of these diverging streams of conquest Chingiz Khan died in A.H. 624 (1227), at the age of sixty-four. The territory he and his sons had conquered stretched from the Yellow Sea to the Euxine, and included lands or tribes wrung from the rule of Chinese, Tanguts, Afghans, Persians, and Turks.

"It was the habit of a Mongol chief to distribute the clans over which he had ruled as appanages among his sons, and this tribal rather than territorial distribution obtained in the division of the empire among the sons of Chingiz. The founder appointed a special appanage of tribes in certain loosely defined camping-grounds to each son, and also nominated a successor to himself in the Khānate." 1

In this division of the newly founded Mongol Empire, -ie. Transoxiana, with part of Kāshghar,-Badakhshān, Balkh, and Ghazna fell to the lot of Chingiz Khan's second son, Chaghatay, the founder of the Khanate of that name, which existed for 146 years, till its overthrow by Timur in A.H. 771 (1370).

1 Mohammedan Dynasties, p. 204.

The annals of his branch of his dynasty have hitherto been obscurer than those of the other descendants of Chingiz.1 He appears to have profited by the lessons of the Naiman chancellor, and to have developed into a just and energetic ruler, capable of preserving order among the heterogeneous population under his charge.

He scrupulously observed the Yasak, or Civil Code, established by his father, and, like him, was tolerant towards all religions and creeds. He fixed his capital at Almāligh, in the extreme east of his dominions. His Mongol ministers, loving the life of the steppes, probably induced him to choose this locality rather than Samarkand or Bokhārā.* They would serve no Khān who did not lead a life worthy of free-born men; and Chaghatay and his immediate successors saw, as did his later descendants, that the one way of retaining the allegiance of his people was to humour their desires in this respect and live with them a nomad's life.5

1 The best account of this offshoot is to be found in an excellent paper entitled "The Chaghatai Mughals," by W. E. E. Oliver, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xx. New Series, p. 72, sec. 9. It will be found in a condensed form in Ney Elias and Ross's Introduction to the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, or "History of the Mughals of Central Asia."

2 Vide ante on p. 155.

3 In the valley of the Upper Ili, near the site of the present Kulja.

During the reign of Chaghatay Khan a curious rising occurred in the province of Bokhārā. A half-witted sieve-maker, from a village near Bokhārā, managed by various impostures to gather round him a number of disciples from among the common people, and so numerous and powerful did they become that in 630 (1232) they drove the Chaghatay government out of the country, and, assuming the government of Bokhārā, proceeded to put to death many of its most distinguished citizens. They at first successfully repulsed the Mongol forces sent against them, but were finally vanquished, and order was again restored in Bokhārā. For this episode consult Vambéry, op. cit. p. 143 et seq.; Major Price's Mohammedan History, iii. 2.

• Tarikh-i-Rashidi, Introduction, p. 32.

In the year A.H. 639 (1241) both Ogday and Chaghatay,1 the great Khāns of the Mongolian Empire, died, and the successors of Chingiz fell to disputing the succession.

We do not propose to enlarge on the struggles and disorders which existed almost without cessation in Turkestan during the whole period of the Chaghatay Khan's rule, and will confine ourselves to a consideration of the social conditions of that country under his successors.2 The Mongols in contact with communities possessed of a comparatively high standard of civilisation lost none of their passion for their boundless steppe. In their eyes the town, the settled abode, were abominations, indicating deep-seated effeminacy and corruption: the only life worth living was that of the herdsman, roving free as air, with his tent of white felt.

Their subjects who preferred a sedentary existence, so long as they were obedient and orderly, were left in tranquil occupation of their homes, and were even encouraged by their nomad lords to repair the damage suffered by their cities in war. Ruin doubtless fell on many great centres of population, such as Herāt; but in Persia and Transoxiana there was no systematic obliteration of organised society, no reversion to the nomadic level. The case in Mongolia and Kashgharia was different. Less than a century prior to the rise of the Mongols

1 Chaghatay is said to have died from grief at his brother's death (Habibus, Siyar).

2 For historical data we have already referred the reader to Mr. Oliver's paper and Vambéry's Bokhara. S. Lane-Poole, in his Mohammedan Dynasties, gives a list of twenty-six Khans of this house who ruled in Central Asia from A.H. 624 to 771 (A.D. 1227 to 1358), i.c. 140 years. The ZafarName of Nizam Shāmī (see note below, p. 168) gives a list of thirty-one

Khans of this line.

3 Cf. Müller's Geschichte des Islams, ii. p. 217.

♦ In A.H. 671 (1273) Bokhārā was sacked by the Mongols of Persia (Müller, op. cit. ii. p. 260).

these countries had been occupied by the Urghūrs, who were a race which had attained a certain degree of development, and evinced it by preferring a settled existence in towns. Their successors, the Kara-Khitay, though less civilised, seem also to have affected urban life. In these countries, however, during the Chaghatay period, no new towns sprang up, while those already in being fell into a state of ruin.

"Amidst the terrible ravages committed by the Mongolians," writes Vambéry,1 "the science of theology and its votaries alone continued to flourish. In the days of the earlier Chaghatay Khāns the mullas of Turkestan had enjoyed a certain amount of protection, thanks partly to the principle of religious toleration, and partly to the superstitious awe in which every class of the priesthood was held; and in almost every town there was some one or other holy man to whom the Moslems had recourse in the day of peril. The spiritual teachers thus became at the same time secular protectors, and from this time forward we find the Sadr-i-shariat (heads of the religious bodies) and chief magistrates, and in general all men of remarkable piety, attaining an influence in the towns of Transoxiana unknown in the rest of Islām; an influence which maintains itself to this day, though the land has been for centuries governed by Musulman princes. The seats of spiritual authority were filled by regular dynasties of learned men of certain families, as though they had been thrones."

It appears that about the year A.H. 721 (1321) a final division of the Chaghatay Khānate took place. The two branches established were the Khans of Transoxiana and those of Jatah, or Moghulistan; but each had other

1 Bokhara, pp. 159-60.

This Khanate embraced the present Zungaria and the greater part of Eastern and Western Turkestan; but the exact meaning of this geographical