Being cast off, the slaves from India
spread over those countries which were most likely to afford them the
means of subsistence as beggars; for they knew nothing of the
manners, the arts, or the language of those among whom they were
thrown; and as Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Anatolia, Georgia,
Circassia, and Russia, had been, or were being, desolated by the army
of this Tartar chief, they passed into Egypt and Bulgaria, whence
they spread over all other countries. Scattered over the face of
these countries, they found small parties of vagrants who were from
the same regions as themselves, who spoke the same language, and who
had in all probability been drawn away by the same means of armies
returning from the invasion of India. Chingiz Khan invaded India two
centuries before; his descendant, Tarmah Shirin, invaded India in
1303, and must have taken back with him multitudes of captives. The
unhappy prisoners of Timur the Lame gathered round these nuclei as
the only people who could understand or sympathize with them. From
his sixth expedition into India Mahmud is said to have carried back
with him to Ghazni two hundred thousand Hindoo captives in a state of
slavery, A.
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