The Rashīdī History 8.5.7

8.5.7

It is chiefly from the Chinese chronicles that any knowledge of their history is to be gathered, but even these do not appear to have been compiled with completeness, nor to have embraced the entire Uighur nation, which must have been a large and influential one for a long period. In addition to these Uighurs, always so named, and living in the Eastern Tian Shan, there was a third section of the race dwelling farther west. They are called sometimes the 'Karlughi,' and their seat of power was originally at Ili-balik and on the head waters of the Chu. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, they appear to have dominated Western Turkistan and perhaps the whole of Alti-Shahr, while one of their chief towns was Kashghar, then known as Urdu-Kand. Their rulers were the so-called 'Ilak-Khans,' or 'Kara-Khans,' whose history is more or less known through the works of Arab and Persian authors, since the conversion of one of the line—a certain Satuk Kara Khan—to Islam, in the first half of the tenth century. That the state and dynasty of the Ilak Khans were in reality Uighur, there seems to be sufficient evidence to prove, although the name of Uighur was not used by Musulman authors till a much later date. They seem to have been known by the name of Ta-gaz-gaz until the thirteenth century, when they begin to appear under that of Uighur in Western annals, though the Ilak Khans were then no more.