Chagatai

Chagatai (Jagatai), a cultivated Turki language current in Bokhara, Khiva, and Ferghana, mixed with Arabic and Persian elements; in this idiom are written the Emperor Baber's Memoirs (16th century). The name, which is also applied to the Turki (Tatar) peoples of Eastern Turkistan, is taken from Chagatai, Jenghis Khan's second son, who in the partition of the empire inherited this region, and whose successors held it till the Mongol dynasty was overthrown by Timur Beg. The Chagatai state was later divided into Moghulistan and Mawerannahr (Transoxiana). But most of the Nomad populations of E. Turkistan are of Turki stock; hence the so-called Chagatai tribes and Chagatai speech are Tatar, not Mongolian, although Chagatai himself was a pure Mongolian. Ignorance of this fact has caused immense confusion in most works on the ethnology of the Mongolo-Tatar peoples.