Tarikh-i Rashidi
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| Tarikh-i Rashidi | |
|---|---|
| Name | Tarikh-i Rashidi |
| Author | Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat |
| Country | Chagatai Khanate; Mughal Empire; Timurid Empire |
| Language | Chagatai Turkic; Persian influences |
| Subject | History of the Moghuls (Mughal people); Chagatai Khanate; Timurid dynasty |
| Genre | Chronicle; historiography |
| Published | c. 1546–1547 (manuscripts later) |
| Pages | varies by edition |
Tarikh-i Rashidi. Tarikh-i Rashidi is a 16th-century chronicle by Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat that narrates the history of the Moghuls (Mughal people), the Chagatai Khanate, and the Timurid dynasty, with wide chronological coverage from the origins of the Mongols and Chagatai Khan lineage to contemporary events in Central and South Asia. The work blends biography, genealogy, military campaigns, and ethnography, intersecting with figures and polities such as Genghis Khan, Chagatai Khan, Tamerlane, Babur, Humayun, and the Ottoman sphere, situating Dughlat within networks linking the Shaybanids, Uzbeks, Safavids, and early Mughal Empire actors.
Background and Authorship
Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat, a member of the Dughlat tribe and a cousin of regional rulers, composed Tarikh-i Rashidi during a period shaped by contests among Shaybani Khan, Ubaydullah Khan, Abu'l-Khayr Khan, Sultan Said Khan, Mirza Abu Bakr Dughlat, and the exiled Babur. Haidar served as military commander and governor under patrons including Sultan Said Khan and interacted with envoys from Safavid Iran, Ottoman Empire, Mughal court, and Kara-Koyunlu remnants. His vantage combined tribal aristocracy, Timurid princely culture, and practical governance, linking him to personalities such as Khalil Sultan, Ulugh Beg, Ala-ud-Din Muhammad, Khusrau Mirza, and others recorded in contemporary chronicles like Baburnama and Zafarnama.
Content and Structure
The narrative organizes material into annals, biographies, genealogies, and digressions on customs and geography, covering episodes of Genghis Khan’s conquests, the division under Chagatai Khan, the rise of Chingizids and Timurid Empire consolidation by Tamerlane, the fragmentation into principalities under leaders such as Hulagu Khan allies, and the later revival efforts by Babur and Humayun. Tarikh-i Rashidi delineates campaigns against Kara-Khitai remnants, incursions involving Khwarezm, border interactions with Kashgar, Yarkand, Aksu, and strategic passes toward Kabul and Lahore. Haidar recounts sieges, skirmishes, treaties, and defections involving commanders like Mirza Abu Bakr Dughlat, Muhammad Shaybani, Yunus Khan, Esen Buqa II, and royal courts of Samarkand and Herat, while profiling poets, clerics, and sages connected to figures such as Ali-Shir Nava'i, Jami, Hafez, and Al-Beruni.
Historical Context and Sources
Composed amid the 16th-century geopolitical flux of Central and South Asia, the work draws on oral tradition, family archives, state correspondence, and earlier texts including Baburnama, the Timurid chronicles, and genealogical rolls of Chagatai elites. Haidar cites firsthand recollections of battles with Uzbeks, interactions with Safavid shahs such as Ismail I and Tahmasp I, and movements of Uzbek confederations under leaders like Abu'l-Khayr Khan and Muhammad Shaybani. His use of tribal genealogies connects to sources on the Mongol Empire and Turkic polities, referencing chroniclers and envoys linked to Rashid al-Din, Juvayni, Ibn Battuta, and regional annalists from Khwarezm and Transoxiana.
Language, Style, and Manuscripts
Written primarily in Chagatai Turkic with Persianate idioms, Haidar’s prose mixes courtly diction and vernacular narrative, employing genealogical lists, chronological headings, and rhetorical episodes found in Persian literature. Surviving copies exist in several manuscript traditions circulated through centers such as Kashgar, Yarkand Khanate, Samarkand, and Kabul, with extant codices housed historically in collections associated with British Library and regional archives influenced by collectors like Aurel Stein and Vasily Bartold. Manuscripts exhibit variant spellings and interpolations related to scribal networks that linked Herat ateliers, Bukhara libraries, and Mughal scriptoria.
Reception and Influence
Tarikh-i Rashidi influenced later historiography and ethnography concerning Central Asian Turkic and Mongol lineages, informing European Orientalists and scholars engaged with sources collected by figures such as James Prinsep, Edward G. Browne, Thomas Hyde, and later historians like Vasilii V. Bartold and Aleksei Ivanovich Vasiliev. Its accounts shaped modern reconstructions of Chagatai and Moghul histories used by historians of India and Central Asia including Annette Beveridge, R.C. Majumdar, Arthur Llewellyn Basham, and H.C. Raychaudhuri. The chronicle also bears on studies of the Silk Road, nomadic-sedentary relations, and genealogical claims exploited by dynasts in Kashgar and Yarkand polities.
Translations and Editions
Notable editions and translations include Persianized summaries and partial renderings by scholars working in London, St Petersburg, and Calcutta/ Kolkata during the 19th and 20th centuries, with critical editions prepared by editors influenced by manuscript collections in the British Museum and Russian imperial repositories. Modern translations and commentaries have been produced in English, Russian, and Urdu by academics associated with institutions such as University of Cambridge, St Petersburg State University, Aligarh Muslim University, and centers of Central Asian studies, facilitating comparative work alongside texts like Baburnama and Zafarnama.