The Mughals of India
Mughal. ― One of the four great
Muhammadan sub-divisions: know in Europe under the form Mongol. They are most numerous in the neighbourhood of Delhi, the
seat of their dynasty. The word has now in a great measure lost its original
sense of the Tartar invaders and conquerors of Persia and India. It now is
applied to the naturalized descendants of Persians as well as Turanians, and
they are generally considered to be divided into Irani and Turani1.
They say they take their name from their patriarch Mughal Khan. There are several clans in these provinces ― Chughatai, Qazal bash or Qizil bash
(gizil, red, bash, head), Uzbak, Turk, Kai, Chak, Tajik. In the Panjab the two main tribes
are Chughatai and Barla. Some of these, especially the Chughatai, are claimed by the Bhatti Jadons to have descended from
them when they were rulers of Ghazni and Zabalistan. The chief tribe is the Chughatai to which the last imperial
family belonged. The Jhojha (qv.) also call themselves Mughal; but they are supposed to be the
slaves of Mughals or low caste Hindus
converted to Islam by some Mughal
nobleman. They are not suffered to intermarry with the Rajput Musalmans or with
any of the pure Muhammadan tribes.
William Crooke — An Ethnographic Hand-book for the
N.-W. Provinces and Oudh (1890)
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