The Rashīdī History 8.5.6

8.5.6

In early times there seem to have been at least two confederacies of Uighurs in the further east: one living in the region now known as Zungaria, and called the Naiman Uighur, or "Eight Uighurs," while the other inhabited the country watered by the Orkhon and the Tula, and were known as the Toghuz Uighur, or "Nine Uighurs." When the latter were driven to the south and west, the former remained in their old country, where they are found at the time of Chingiz Khan. The Toghuz Uighur settled in the eastern ranges of the Tian Shan, and gradually built up a new kingdom, extending over all the eastern portion of that chain. Here one of their states seems to have been established on the south of the mountains, and subsequently another on the north. The first had for its chief town the representative of the modern Kara-Khoja (called at different periods Si-Chao, Ho-Chao, and Kao-Chang), and embraced, at some periods at least, the modern district of Kuchar, then known as Kui-tze; while the capital of the second was Bishbalik (the Five Towns), which stood on, or near, the site of the present Urumtsi. Very little is known of even these later Uighur kingdoms, although the date when they flourished is not a very remote one.