34 
[No. 1, 
W. Irvine— The Later Muahals. 
numbers were increased still further during the twenty-five years or 
more, from 1680 to 1707, during which ‘Alamgir waged incessant war 
in the Dakhin, first with the local Mahomedan states and then with the 
Mahrattahs. 
These foreigners, at least the greater number of them, were either 
Afghans or Mughals; if the latter, they were known as either Turani or 
Irani Mu gh als. In using this term Mughal, I vouch in no way for its 
accurate application, ethnographically or otherwise. It must be under¬ 
stood to be an unquestioning acceptance of the term as employed by 
Indian Writers of the period. Every man from beyond the Oxus or 
from any of the provinces of the Persian kingdom was to them a 
Mughal. If his home was in Turan, north of the Oxus, he was a Turani; 
if south of it, in the region of Iran, he was an Irani Mughhal. The 
Turanis were of the Sunni sect, the prevalent belief of Mahomedan 
India, and came from the old home of the reigning dynasty. For these 
reasons, they were highly favoured by the Indian emperors, and owing 
to their great numbers and the ability, military and civil, of 'their 
leaders, formed a very powerful body both in the army and the state 
generally. The Iranis were Shi‘as and were not so numerous as the Tura¬ 
nis ; yet they included among them men of good birth and great ability ? 
who attained to the highest positions, many of the chief posts in the 
State having been filled by them. Shiraz, in the Persian province of 
Fars, furnished much the largest-number of these Persians; most of 
the best physicians, poets, and men learned in the law came from that 
town. Owing to the difference of religion, principally, there was a 
strong' feeling of animosity, ever ready to spring into active operation? 
between the Turanis and the Iranis; but as against the Hindustanis 
the two sections were always ready to combine. 
Men from the region between the Indus on the east, and Kabul and 
Qandahar on the west, were called Af gh ans. Those from the nearer 
hills, south-west of Peshawar, are sometimes distinguished by the epithet 
Rohelah, or Hill-man. But Indian writers of the eighteenth century 
never use the word Pathan, nor in their writings is there anything to 
bear out the theory that the Afghan and the Pathan are two different 
races. 1 The part of the Af gh an country lying nearest the Indus f ur- 
nisheddhe majority of the Af gh an soldiers who resorted to India; and, 
as might be expected from their comparative nearness to India, they 
probably outnumbered the Mu gh als. In any case, they seem to have 
had a talent for forming permanent settlements in India, which neither 
the Mughal nor the Persian has displayed. All over Northern India, 
Pathan villages are numerous to this day. As instances, Qasur near 
- - - l H. W. Bellew, Inquiry (1891), p. 206. ■> 
