Mongols in the Tarikh-i Rashidi

This chapter will continue to investigate Central Asia by showing how the Mongol prince Mirza Haydar Dughlat (d. 1551) ruminated wistfully about his Mongol origins nostalgically as a time of aristocratic order that had vanished by his day. Yet Mirza Haydar also had to confront negative aspects of that past such as paganism and violence. In short the author perceived Turco-Mongol origins as a biological problem which was however not ethnic. Here too, as in the case of Transoxania in the previous chapter, Turkestani origins were always problematic and were deferred to another time and place beyond the author’s present context and circumstances.