However, the theory of them descending from Genghis Khan's hordes is denied by many Hazaras. Even the current Turkic speaking population of Central Asia who are almost entirely Mongoloid by race are wrongly perceived by many to be derived from the twelfth century Mongols.
This perception is wrong. The Turkic speaking populations actually descend from Proto-Turko-Mongol nomads who migrated out of the Altai mountain region in present-day Northern China, Mongolia and South Eastern Siberia between the sixth and eleventh centuries AD.
This is where I believe the Hazaras descend from.
The Turkic people of Central Asia do share a common ancestry with modern Mongolians and the Turkic languages/dialects they speak also together belong with Mongolian inside the Altaic language family.
And as mentioned these people migrated out of the Altai mountain region as far back as the fifth and sixth centuries into modern Central Asia which is partially how the Turkic languages split away from the Mongolic languages of which Mongolian is one of.
Genghis Khan's army simply incorporated much of Central Asia into his empire during the twelfth century AD. So the common ancestry between Central Asia's Turkic population as well as their languages' distant relation to Mongolian is the source of their similarity to modern Mongolians, not Genghis Khan's military colonizations.
The main difference between Hazaras and Turkic peoples of Central Asia is that the Hazaras speak Dari, an Iranic language almost identical to Farsi.
Another but less noticeable difference is that the Hazaras are found mainly in Afghanistan as well as some in Pakistan and even fewer in Iran. The Turkic Uzbeks and Turkmens are also found in Afghanistan, but are only small minorities there and found mostly in Central Asia.
My main reasons for them descending from ancient Turkic tribes is that the Turko-Mongols were in Central Asia and modern Afghanistan for over a thousand years.
Also the Persian dialects spoken in Afghanistan were brought through conquest because since ancient times various parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan were under Persian rule starting with the Achmemenid Empire in ancient times and was reinforced during the Sassanid period in the third century AD.
The Persian language spread much throughout western Afghanistan all the way up till the Pamir Valley.
It is spoken in these areas till this day though in different dialects such as Tajik or Dari. As the ethnic map of Afghanistan pictures below, these are the areas the Hazaras inhabit in modern which would be my best explanation as to why the Hazaras speak an Iranic language today:
If the Tajiks living as far away as the remote Pamir Valley and beyond into Tajikistan are speaking Persian today, then the strongest probability of the Hazaras speaking it is due to direct contact with the Persian armies who occupied the region that they live in as the above map also shows.
But various Persian occupations of modern Afghanistan predate Genghis Khan's conquests by centuries. So there could not have been such a strong contact between Persians and Hazaras if the Hazaras came as late as the twelfth century AD.
This makes the case stronger for them being in Afghanistan at a much earlier period dating as far back as the sixth century.
Additionally, most portions of Afghanistan came under Turkic rule in the eighth century and again by Persian-Turkic Ghazvanids in the ninth century. All this happened centuries before Genghis Khan was even born.
I also want to touch more on the racial component. Though I am unable to find an accurate haplogroup map of Afghanistan or Central Asia, the appearance of Hazaras also show a closer affinity with Afghanistan and Central Asia's Turkic populations.
The Altaic peoples east of the Caspian Sea basin might be mostly or almost entirely Mongoloid, however they show significant European features in them.
It is well known that before the Altaic migrations started in the fifth and sixth centuries AD, much of Central Asia was inhabited by scattered white populations mainly of Indo-European (IE) descent though there is also the possibility of extinct peoples from the Caucasus. By white I mean white skin, light hair/eyes and Caucasian skull.
The best known Indo-European sub-races in Central Asia were the Scythians. Many tombs found in China, Mongolia and Central Asia contained these extinct IE peoples' bodies. The IE peoples migrated as far as the Tarim desert and the Altai mountain region where their graves and racially mixed descendants are still found.
These descendants are hybrids of the migrating Turko-Mongols mixing with the ancient white populations of Central Asia and that is why many of them have light hair and eyes.
This trait is commonly found in the Hazaras. The Hazara child pictured below is just another example of this:
I believe that this influence in the Hazaras are a direct result of ancient contact and mixing between IE tribes and Turko-Mongols. These IE sub-races were extinct far before the twelfth century, so the possibility of Mongols picking up this gene at that time would be close to impossible. I would not believe that these traits were a result of Hazaras mixing with whiter populations of Afghanistan such as the Nuristanis. Not on a large scale anyway. Otherwise we'd see plenty of or even most Nuristanis today with Mongoloid features.
Many Mongols also have this feature too since the IE Scythians had a strong presence in Mongolia as seen in this Mongolian girl pictured below:
This is most likely an isolated area in Mongolia. Most of the Mongolian population even today remains mostly isolated so it's likely those Mongolians with traces of IE genes did not mix with other Mongol tribes.
But such a trait save for the blond hair is quite common amongst the Hazara population as well as Central Asian Turkic peoples. Massive race mixing should have occurred in Central Asia to have these significant white traits till present day amongst mainly Mongoloid populations.
By the twelfth century, there was absolutely nothing left of Central Asia's white populations as far as I can tell save for their living descendants who are mostly Mongoloid.
So for Hazaras to be of twelfth century Mongolian descent and living in a multi-ethnic country like Afghanistan while still showing signs of white features, the Mongolian hordes would had to have been mixing with white populations. But the problem is the whites of Central Asia were extinct by then so where did they pick up these white genes?
My most reasonable explanation is that they did not descend from Genghis Khan's army. They may share a common origin with the Mongolians going back more than a thousand years- like Central Asian Turks, but definitely did not descend from them.
The word Hazir means a thousand in Persian similar to Hazar in Urdu. This is also referred to Genghis Khan's army of one thousand. If this was root for the name for Hazara, it is most likely that they served in Genghis Khan's army. Most of Central Asia was under Mongol rule in the twelfth century and had Turkic populations serving their armed forces, so the probability of the Hazaras serving in Genghis Khan's army is most likely.
Central Asia was the heartland of more pure breed IE racial types as opposed to the Iranian plateau or the Indus Valley in Pakistan where Iranics and Indo-Aryans were already mixing with native Elamites, Dravidians and others; thus altering their gene pools.
Only isolated areas of Iran, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan show more pure breed IE sub-races.
Even this haplogroup map shows the IE haplogroup R and it's subclades at close to zero levels in the Mongolian population whereas Central Asian populations still have much larger traces of it.
Again, where did Hazaras suddenly pick up such a significant trace of IE genes in their gene pool if they descend from Genghis Khan's army?
Though there might have been a Mongolic language found in a few Hazara tribes towards Herat, this particular tribe may have picked it up as opposed to the rest of the Hazara population.
Mongolian influence may have occurred on the Hazaras but it also occurred on other populations such as the Pakhtuns as pointed out in this article. There are also Pakhtuns who exhibit Mongoloid influence in their physical appearance, though not that very many.
Even the light skinned and light haired Mongolians probably have these genes due to being isolated from the rest of the Mongolian population. Mongolia is a very sparsely populated country of nomads even today and has an extremely low birthrate, another sign of less race mixing.
In this post I want to conclude my belief that the most likely origins of the Hazaras are in the earlier waves of Turkic nomads who spread throughout much of Central Asia and dispersed much of it's white population and assimilating the remainders into their own race. They do not descend from Mongolian armies that came later in the twelfth century, much after the first Altaic migrations started and probably even ended. Due to Persian influence over Afghanistan prior to the Mongol invasions, the Hazara adopted the Persian language and eventually developed their own dialect.
If Uzbeks, Turkmens, Kazakhs can live in Central Asia for over a thousand years and show more European influence in their gene pool than the Mongolians do, then why can't Hazaras who live on the other side of the Mongolians with the Turkic people separating them by thousands of miles.
There are also theories that the Hazara descend from Chagatai Turks who lived more towards China. The Chagatai Turks were partially derived from the Tocharians, the lost IE people who settled in the Tarim desert in China and who's descendants amongst the Turkic Uighurs are very much visible today. I do not find that a very much credible theory either, though I do not rule it out.
Still, that theory is much more probable than Hazaras descending from Genghis Khan's army.
