dominion in Spain. Shah Rukh was a song-writer of no mean order; while Ulugh Beg won fame in the severer studies of the mathematician and astronomer. Bāber Mirzā, who afterwards sat on the throne of Delhi, was famous alike as statesman, philosopher, and writer; and, indeed, there was hardly one of Timur's descendants but manifested a taste for letters. The annals of this house are rendered illustrious by the names of poets, philosophers, and theologians which are still household words throughout the East. During this period of Central Asian history, Bokhārā, Samarkand, and Merv all gave birth to distinguished Mohammedan writers, as did many other less important towns of Transoxiana and Turkestan; but rarely did these authors employ in their compositions the principal vernacular of these countries, namely, Eastern Turkish. All theological and didactic works were written -as they still are-in Arabic: and thus it is that many of the masterpieces of Arabic literature owe their origin to Mohammedans of Central Asia. The alternative literary language was Persian, which probably came in vogue for poetical compositions about the time of the Tahirides. In the days of the Timurides, however, the dialect of Turkish, known as Chaghatay, became honoured by a definite position in literature, chiefly in the department of poetry. The Chaghatay dialect is the oldest form of Turkish which has come down to us in the Arabic character, and it is still spoken throughout Transoxiana, Turkestan, and Kashghar. As with the Aryan family of languages so with the Turkish, the farther east we go the nearer we approach its source. In Yarkand and Kāshghar this language is called Turki, while in Samarkand and Bokhārā it is known by the name of Uzbegi. Although Uzbegi is the language most commonly heard in the bazaars of Samarkand and Bokhārā, it does not hold the field alone, its rival being a corrupt form of Persian spoken by the Tajiks, and hence known as Tājiki. This dialect, while on the one hand preserving many old Persian words which in Persia itself have dropped out of the spoken tongue, has, on the other hand, with regard to its grammatical forms and its syntax, been greatly influenced by its Turkish neighbour.1 Under the Tīmūrides there flourished a poet named Mir 'Ali Shir, or Navay, who certainly did more than any other to enrich the Chaghatay literature, and who may justly be regarded the national poet par excellence of the Eastern Turks. In the case of possessive pronouns and verbal inflexions, for example, we find direct and obvious imitations of the Turkish grammar. CHAPTER XXVI THE SHAYBĀNIDES THE Mongol dynasty, established in China and known as the Yuen, founded by Kubilay Khān1 cir. 1260, began to decline very soon after his death (1294); and in 1353 a native of humble birth, named Chu Yuan Chang, succeeded in overthrowing the alien line, and, in 1368, originated the famous dynasty of Ming. The nomads' rule was again confined to the steppes of Mongolia. Eastern and Western Turkestan continued, in the Ming period, to constitute the dominions of the Chaghatays.2 This so-called Middle-Empire originally included Transoxiana, but in the first half of the fourteenth century Transoxiana came under the sway of a separate line of Chaghatay Khāns. North of the Middle-Empire was that of the Dashti-Kipchak, which included the vast steppes extending east and north of the Sea of Aral, a part of modern Siberia, the land north of the Caspian, and both sides of the Lower Volga. These broad realms had been given to Chingiz Khan's first son, Jūji, on whose death, in 1225, it was divided into two sections. The Eastern division, the habitat White Horde, fell to Jūji's eldest son, Orda; while the Western, that of the Golden Horde, 1 The "Great Caan" of Marco Polo. 2 Cf. Bretschneider, op. cit. ii. pp. 139, 140. |