The Rashīdī History 7.5
The Tarikh-i-Rashidi (Elias, Ross) 7.5
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7.5.1
Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of this land of the Six Cities, and the one that has chiefly struck the imagination of both ancient and modern writers, is the central desert with its moving sands and buried towns. It is referred to in Chinese writings of more than 2000 years old, by travellers who gave the region the name of Liu Sha, or "Moving Sands," from its chief characteristic and most obvious peculiarity; and it was made known to Europeans through the graphic accounts of it which Marco Polo left on record. The phenomenon of the shifting sands could hardly have escaped Mirza Haidar, and the story he tells of the overwhelming of Katak, with its mosque and minaret, is one of the best pieces of description in his book. It is almost an exact counterpart of that told by Hiuen Tsang in the eighth century, of a town between Khotan and Pima (Pain?) which was said to have been overwhelmed by the same agency, some hundreds of years previously. In this case, neglect in the proper worship of a Buddhist idol was the cause, while in the later one the Musulmans detected the wrath of God. The earlier calamity too, is said to have been predicted by a pious Arhat seven days before it occurred. At first a great storm of wind arose, which carried sand and soil before it, while "on the seventh day," continues the narrative, "in the evening, just after the division of the night, it rained sand and earth and filled the city .... The town of Ho-lo-lo-kia is now a great sand mound.
7.5.2
The kings of neighbouring countries, and persons in power from distant spots, have, many times, wished to excavate the mound and take away the precious things buried there; but as soon as they have arrived at the borders of the place, a furious wind has sprung up, dark clouds have gathered together from the four quarters of heaven, and they have become lost." Similar stories are in the mouth of nearly every native of the country down to the present time, and several have been recorded by Dr. Bellew and Sir Douglas Forsyth. These travellers themselves visited some of the sand-buried ruins in the neighbourhood of Yangi Hisar. One of them was the fort of a Uighur chief called Tokhta Rashid, which had been destroyed about the eleventh century by Arsalan Khan, and afterwards overwhelmed by the sand. Another was the Mazar, or shrine, of one Hazrat Begum, which had been first swallowed up, and again, at a later date, left free by the receding dunes. The neighbourhood of the latter ruin is described as "a perfect sea of loose sand, advancing in regular wave lines from north-west to south-east. The sand dunes are mostly from ten to twenty feet high, but some are seen, like little hills, full a hundred feet high, and in some spots higher.
7.5.3
They cover the plain, of which the hard clay is seen between their rows, with numberless chains of two or three or more together in a line, and follow in successive rows one behind the other, just like the marks left by wave ripples on a sandy beach, only on a large scale. Towards the south-east these sand dunes all present a steep bank in the shape of a crescent, the horns of which slope forwards and downwards, in points, to the ground . . . . " The process of submergence, Dr. Bellew found to be usually a very gradual one, until the symmetry of the dune, becoming broken by an obstructing object, its loose materials subside, and thus overwhelm the obstruction. In the instance of one of the buildings inspected, it was found that "a chain of three crescentic dunes, side by side, had advanced in line across the plain, till one of the outer crescents had struck the walls of the court of the tenement, and growing up, had, in time, overtopped, and thus overflowed and filled its area by its downfall ; whilst the other two crescents at its side, continuing their unobstructed course, maintained their proper form uninjured." The rate of progression the writer was unable to determine, as it depends on the varying force of the propelling power, the slope of the land, and the obstructions on its surface. The operation, however, is the same as in the well-known instance of Eccles church, on the coast of Norfolk, only on a larger scale.
7.5.4
By 1839 the whole of the church, except a portion of the tower, had been buried ; by 1862 the tower had nearly emerged again, while in 1892 the whole building rose free from the level of the strand, the dunes having passed to its landward side.
7.5.5
The phenomenon thus seen in operation, explains how the town of Katak, and others mentioned by Mirza Haidar, became engulfed, and confirms the stories still current in Eastern Turkistan of ruined towns, or buildings, now and then appearing for a while and being again submerged. In the extreme east of the country, the sandy desert is found at its worst, and it is in connection with this quarter that most of the tales of weird horrors have their origin. How deeply the superstitious mind of the Asiatic may be impressed by these wastes of moving sands, and how little reason there is to wonder at the stories of ghosts, demons, and visions with which he has invested the region, may be judged by General Prejevalski's vivid description of it. "The effect of these bare yellow hillocks," he writes, "is most dreary and depressing when you are among them, and can see nothing but the sky and the sand; not a plant, not an animal is visible, with the single exception of the yellowish-grey lizards (Phrynocephalus sp.) which trail their bodies over the loose soil and mark it with the patterns of their tracks. A dull heaviness oppresses the senses in this inanimate sea of sand. No sounds are heard, not even the chirping of the grasshopper; the silence of the tomb surrounds you."
7.5.6
Hiuen Tsang's description scarcely varies from that of the Russian traveller. "These sands," he says, "extend like a drifting flood for a great distance, piled up or scattered before the wind. There is no trace left behind by travellers, and oftentimes the way is lost, and so they wander hither and thither quite bewildered, without any guide or direction. So travellers pile up the bones of animals as beacons. There is neither water nor herbage to be found, and hot winds frequently blow. When these winds rise, both man and beast become confused and forgetful, and then they remain perfectly disabled. At times, sad and plaintive notes are heard and piteous cries, so that between the sights and sounds of this desert, men get confused and know not whither they go. Hence there are so many who perish on the journey. But it is all the work of demons and evil spirits." And if the superstition of the Asiatic is moved by the mystic scenes of the desert, his cupidity is also stirred by the legends of buried riches which the submerged cities are supposed to contain. Traditions lose nothing from age or from being often repeated, and no doubt, the stories of hidden treasures are now — and, indeed, were in Mirza Haidar's time — ancient enough to acquire a very strong influence on numbers of the population.
7.5.7
From time to time ornaments, vessels, images, and coins of great curiosity are unearthed, but their value to the finders, whose only interest lies in the worth of the metal they are made of, can scarcely be great. Perhaps the only systematic exploitation of the ancient sites, ever undertaken, is that of Mirza Aba Bakr, Amir of Kashghar, so fully described by our author. It may be dated about the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century, and we may infer that nearly everything of intrinsic value was brought to light, while much that was of antiquarian interest was destroyed, so that when, at some future time, civilised explorers come to investigate the ruins, and find little to reward their labours, they may feel themselves indebted to the cupidity of Mirza Aba Bakr for their disappointment. The tales which the author tells of the riches accumulated by the Mirza, may safely be regarded as, in a great measure, fabulous; but it is precisely tales such as these that have given rise to the inflated estimates of buried wealth so common in the country, even at the present day.
7.5.8
Here and there valuable records of the past may still be forthcoming from the submerged towns, like those obtained in 1874, by Sir D. Forsyth, who enumerates a figure of Buddha of the tenth century, a clay figure of the Hindu monkey-god Hanuman, and Hindu women's ornaments, all pointing to that close intercourse with India which we know, from other sources, to have existed in times before Muhammadanism prevailed and crushed it. He also obtained several Greek coins of great antiquity and interest. Among these is mentioned especially one of Antimachus, dating about 140 B.C., and another, of Menander, from about the year 126 B.C., while a third, an iron one of Hermaeus, might, it was thought, prove even older than either of these. But it is not necessarily among the ruins buried by the shifting sands, that relics of remote ages will be found. Very ancient remains are known already to exist at various points along the southern spurs of the Tian Shan, though nothing has yet been ascertained as to the age they belong to. It was near the town of Kuchar — the ancient Kuitze of the Chinese — that Captain Bower found the famous birch-bark manuscript, written in Sanskrit and dating from the fifth century, while he also points to ruins of cities which, though buried beneath the present level of the country, have no connection with the shifting sands. But it is time to turn from the land of the man to the man of the land.