A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

The last Timurids and the first Uzbeks 147
time the territory was annexed to their empire, the conquerors changed
the name of its inhabitants to Kirghiz (Kirgizy) in order to distinguish it
from that of the Cossacks.The real Kyrgyz (to use the latest official –
and indeed correct – spelling) themselves were then called Karakirgizy
(”Black Kyrgyz”) or Dikokamennye Kirgizy (a somewhat unflattering
appellation, approximately meaning “Wild rock Kyrgyz,” possibly a reference
to their mountainous habitat), in distinction from the “Kirghiz,”
that is, Kazakhs.This curious reshuffling of ethnonyms caused endless
confusion in Western travel and even scholarly literature.The restoration
of correct terminology based on the native ethnonyms was one of
the better measures taken by the Soviets at the conclusion of National
Delimitation in 1925.
Luckily for the Timurids, the Kalmyk khan made no serious attempt
to push south of the Syr Darya, and the new threat further diminished
with Amasanji’s death in 1470.Abulkhayr predeceased Abu Said by one
year, in 1468, and for the rest of the century the Uzbeks, Kazakhs,
Moghuls, and Kalmyks were too busy elsewhere, as we have said, to
bother the Timurids.Of Abu Said’s other sons, one, the aforementioned
Umar Shaykh, received as soyurghal Fergana, where he ruled until his
death in 1494.The fiefdom was not the only lot that fell to him; for like
his brother Ahmad, he married a daughter of Yunus Khan (the aforementioned
Qutlugh Nigar Khanim) and thus secured a distaff (cognatic)
Genghisid ancestry for his progeny.As a result, his son Zahir al-Din
Babur, born in 1483, was a Timurid on the sword (agnatic) side and a
Genghisid on the distaff (cognatic) side.By the time Babur died in 1530,
the world had changed beyond recognition, but it is doubtful whether
this ruler himself was aware of these transformations, except for those
upheavals of which he was the unfortunate victim, the reluctant catalyst,
or the inspired creator.His early dream was the Timurid throne in
Samarkand, but both he and the dynasty succumbed in that contest to
the khan of the Uzbeks, Muhammad Shaybani.It was almost as a
refugee that Babur crossed the Hindukush to Kabul with his troops, and
his epic conquest of India, which was consummated with the battle of
Panipat in 1526, never became more than a consolation for him.Babur
defeated the sultan of Delhi, Ibrahim Lodi, and the Great Moghul
Empire of Hindustan was born.He died a mere four years later in Agra,
probably unaware or unconcerned that in the course of his relatively
short life the Europeans had crossed the oceans and had reached India
by rounding Africa, had discovered America, and had circumnavigated
the globe.Nor would he have known that in Europe itself a new world