Mirzá Haïdar writes (Tárikh-i-Rashidi, p. 148): “The learned Mirzá Ulugh Beg has written a history which he has called Ulus Arbaa. One of the ‘four hordes’ is that of the Moghul, who are divided into two branches, the Moghul and the Chaghatái. But these two branches, on account of their mutual enmity, used to call each other by a special name, by way of depreciation. Thus the Chaghatái called the Moghul Jatah, while the Moghul called the Chaghatái Karáwánás.”
Cf. Ney Elias, l.c., pp. 76–77, and App. B, pp. 491–2, containing an inquiry made in Khorasán by Mr. Maula Bakhsh, Attaché at the Meshed Consulate General, of the families of Kárnás, he has heard or seen; he says: “These people speak Turki now, and are considered part of the Goklán Turkomans. They, however, say they are Chingiz-Kháni Moghuls, and are no doubt the descendants of the same Kárnás, or Karávanás, who took such a prominent part in the victories in Persia.
“The word Kárnás, I was told by a learned Goklan Mullah, means Tirandáz, or Shikári (i.e. Archer or Hunter), and was applied to this tribe of Moghuls on account of their professional skill in shooting, which apparently secured them an important place in the army. In Turki the word Kárnás means Shikamparast—literally, ‘belly worshippers,’ which implies avarice. This term is in use at present, and I was told, by a Kázi of Bujnurd, that it is sometimes used by way of reproach.... The Kárnás people in Mána and Gurgán say it is the name of their tribe, and they can give no other explanation.”
XVIII., pp. 98, 102, 165. “The King of these scoundrels is called Nogodar.”
Sir Aurel Stein has the following regarding the route taken by this Chief in Serindia, I., pp. 11–12:—
“To revert to an earlier period it is noteworthy that the route in Marco Polo’s account, by which the Mongol partisan leader Nigūdar, ‘with a great body of horsemen, cruel unscrupulous fellows,’ made his way from Badakhshān ‘through another province called Pashai-Dir, and then through another called Ariora-Keshemur’ to India, must have led down the Bashgol Valley. The name of Pashai clearly refers to the Kāfirs among whom this tribal designation exists to this day, while the mention of Dīr indicates the direction which this remarkable inroad had taken. That its further progress must have lain through Swāt is made probable by the name which, in Marco Polo’s account, precedes that of ‘Keshemur’ or Kashmīr; for in the hitherto unexplained Ariora can be recognized, I believe, the present Agrōr, the name of the well-known hill-tract on the Hazāra border which faces Bunēr from the left bank of the Indus. It is easy to see from any accurate map of these regions, that for a mobile column of horsemen forcing its way from Badakhshān to Kashmīr, the route leading through the Bashgol Valley, Dīr, Talāsh, Swāt, Bunēr, Agrōr, and up the Jhelam Valley, would form at the present day, too, the most direct and practicable line of invasion.”
In a paper on Marco Polo’s Account of a Mongol inroad into Kashmir (Geog. Jour., August, 1919), Sir Aurel Stein reverts again to the same subject. “These [Mongol] inroads appear to have commenced from about 1260 A.D., and to have continued right through the reign of Ghiasuddin, Sultan of Delhi (1266–1286), whose identity with Marco’s Asedin Soldan is certain. It appears very probable that Marco’s story of Nogodar, the nephew of Chaghatái, relates to one of the earliest of these incursions which was recent history when the Poli passed through Persia about 1272–73 A.D.”
Stein thinks, with Marsden and Yule, that Dilivar (pp. 99, 105) is really a misunderstanding of “Città di Livar” for Lahawar or Lahore.
Dir has been dealt with by Yule and Pauthier, and we know that it is “the mountain tract at the head of the western branch of the Panjkora River, through which leads the most frequented route from Peshawar and the lower Swāt valley to Chītral” (Stein, l.c.). Now with regard to the situation of Pashai (p. 104):
“It is clear that a safe identification of the territory intended cannot be based upon such characteristics of its people as Marco Polo’s account here notes obviously from hearsay, but must reckon in the first place with the plainly stated bearing and distance. And Sir Henry Yule’s difficulty arose just from the fact that what the information accessible to him seemed to show about the location of the name Pashai could not be satisfactorily reconciled with those plain topographical data. Marco’s great commentator, thoroughly familiar as he was with whatever was known in his time about the geography of the western Hindukush and the regions between Oxus and Indus, could not fail to recognize the obvious connection between our Pashai and the tribal name Pashai borne by Muhammanized Kafirs who are repeatedly mentioned in mediæval and modern accounts of Kabul territory. But all these accounts seemed to place the Pashais in the vicinity of the great Panjshir valley, north-east of Kabul, through which passes one of the best-known routes from the Afghan capital to the Hindukush watershed and thence to the Middle Oxus. Panjshir, like Kabul itself, lies to the south-west of Badakshān, and it is just this discrepancy of bearing together with one in the distance reckoned to Kashmir which caused Sir Henry Yule to give expression to doubts when summing up his views about Nogodar’s route.”