The Rashīdī History 8.5.5

8.5.5

but if they are read with a due regard to date, locality, and other circumstances, they will seldom be found, I think, to contain actual contradictions; for loose and inaccurate though Asiatics are in some respects — such as in figures, measurements, geographical details, etc. — they are usually remarkably clear on such subjects as blood relationship, family lineage, and racial descent. But here we must leave the Moghuls, and glance briefly at those original Turks, or Uighurs, who may be regarded as the immediate ancestors of the population of Alti-Shahr (and indeed all Eastern Turkistan) and the main stock of their race. Who the Uighurs were in remote times, and what was their origin, are speculative questions which need not be investigated here. The best notices of them during early historic times point to their home-land as lying in north-western Mongolia; but in the ninth century they are recorded, in the Chinese annals, to have been displaced from that region and to have been driven southward by the Kirghiz, who were themselves, at that time, beginning to rise to power, and tending, like other Turki tribes, to press towards the south and west.