The Rashīdī History 7.2.5

7.2.5

According to what I have been assured by a man who has travelled through the country, there is nothing to be seen in Turkistan but ruins, and more or less obliterated remains. From a distance one sees a well-built village, the environs of which are covered with beautiful verdure; but on approaching, in the hope of meeting with some inhabitants, there are found only houses completely deserted. The population is composed entirely of nomads—that is, of shepherds and graziers who never occupy themselves with cultivating the land or sowing crops. There is no other verdure but that of the steppes, which grows naturally." That towns, in the true sense of the word, had existed in the land is thus correct, but they had been built when others possessed and governed it, and before it had become the home of the Mongolian nomads. The Uighurs, a Turki tribe of considerable cultivation by comparison, had owned the greater part, if not the whole, of the country up to less than a century prior to the rise of the Mongols, and were probably the founders of several towns of more or less importance; while the whole of Moghulistan had, during the interval, been occupied by the Kara Khitai, whose people, although perhaps much mixed with nomad tribesmen, seem also to have been capable of building cities and carrying on cultivation.