Fugh, I can offer some educated guesses:
1. Cherkes means "eagle" in some version of osethian language. It is remotely possible that "cherkes" is taken directly from alanic.
I have not reade baburname, so I'll just fire it all away:
2. While circassian presence in India was probably non-existant since mamluk operations in India were mostly concluded before 1290, i.e. before massive use of circassians, circassian presence was extremely powerful in XVIth-XVIIth century Iran. There was a fight between Qizilbash - warriors whose both parents were turkoman and those whose mother was georgian or circassian. Tahmasp patronized to "caucasians", then Ismail patronized to Qizilbash, than Abbas I was the leader of georgian faction, with people like Allaverdi Khan installed. This is one of the reasons it is hard for georgians to make a patriotic story about those times - all those who rampaged the country and send the entire eastern kartli population into fedarin area of iran where at least 50% georgian, including the shah.
Circassian slave women were a little bit harder to get, but still available (famous story about first persian in england actually being a circassian from abbas' court).
3. When Timur rampaged through Circassia, he could have used his usual practise of sending "worthy" artisans to Samarkand, while killing the rest. It is quite possible that circassian sword makers were among the relocated.
|