The Rashīdī History 8.6
The Tarikh-i-Rashidi (Elias, Ross) 8.6
- Language
- English
8.6.1
We come to surer ground about the year 1124, when Teliu Taishi, the Gurkhan of the Kara Khitai, overran the whole of Eastern Turkistan and captured Balasaghun, together with much of the country to the northward, which was then under the sway of the Ilak Khans. This invasion put an end to the kingdom of the Western Uighurs—the Karluks, or Karakhani—while the Eastern Uighurs became tributary to the conquerors. But it was a conquest that probably had little influence on the people by whom the land was inhabited. It is uncertain what tribes the army of the Gurkhan was composed of; in all probability it was much mixed in race, while in any case, it was a mere army of invasion and by no means constituted the migration of a people. The dominion of the Kara Khitai, moreover, lasted for less than a hundred years, so that the Uighurs, as a nation, must have formed too solid a mass to have been in any degree changed in race by this conquest. Thus, it may be said generally, that for several centuries previous to the rise of the Mongols, certain Turki-Uighur peoples (they may, in future, be called simply Uighurs), under whatever line of kings, had overspread the whole of the province of Alti-Shahr and the districts to the east of it, while at some periods they held sway in Zungaria and extended their dominion westward into Transoxiana.
8.6.2
While exercising independent rule, and even subsequently, when allied with Chingiz Khan against the Kara Khitai and other enemies, they appear to have shown warlike qualities, but at later dates the impression we receive of them is that of a peace-loving, cultivated race, of settled habits, and forming as great a contrast as possible to their Moghul neighbours. Their taste for literature must have been a strong one; in fact, they were the only literate people at that time in existence between China in the east, and Transoxiana in the west. They are credited with having been the first to reduce the Turki language to writing, by borrowing the Syriac written character from the Nestorian missions which, in the Middle Ages, were spread over Central Asia; while the writing, thus founded by the Uighurs, became, at a later period, the origin of the systems still in use among the Mongols and the Manchus. Many books were written by them, and both Rashid-ud-Din and Abul Ghazi point to their services being in request as administrators, accountants and writers of the Turki language. The latter author especially bears witness to their capabilities in these pursuits. He says: "During the reign of the grandsons of Chingiz Khan the accountants and chief officers of government in Mavara-un-Nahr, in Khorasan and in Irak, were all Uighurs. Similarly, it was the Uighurs who filled these posts in Khitai during the reign of the sons of Chingiz Khan.
8.6.3
Oktai Kaan, son and successor of Chingiz Khan, entrusted Khorasan, Mazandaran and Gilan to a Uighur named Kurguz, who was well versed in keeping accounts and knew thoroughly how to levy, in these provinces, the taxes, which he remitted regularly, each year, to Oktai Kaan." They occupied, indeed, a very similar position to that of the Bengali and Marathi Hindus in the administrations of the Chaghatai Emperors of India. Though the Arabs, during their invasions of Eastern Turkistan in the eighth century, had done their best to impose the Mosulman religion on the old Uighur population, it seems that they met only with very partial success, as far as the bulk of the people was concerned. They no doubt converted the Kara-Khani, as is shown by the coinage, and it is probable that from the eleventh century onwards, the population in the western districts was largely Muhammadan. In the central and eastern parts, however, the Uighurs continued to be Buddhists and belonged to the red sect of that religion; but Nestorian Christianity must also have been fairly prevalent among them. They are spoken of very generally as Tarsa, and according to some authorities, this should be taken to indicate that they were Christians; but as regards the exact meaning of the word Tarsa there are differences of opinion. In many cases it was, no doubt, applied to the Nestorians in various parts of Asia, but it was also applied to the Buddhists, the Zoroastrians, and was even used to denote idolaters.
8.6.4
Strangely enough, the only two European accounts we have of the Uighurs in the Middle Ages (the thirteenth century) differ on this subject: Piano Carpini stating positively that they were Nestorian Christians, while William Rubruk, only eight years later, pronounces them, with equal certainty, to have been idolaters, and he adds that they dwelt in towns together with Nestorians and others. It is possible that Rubruk may have regarded most of those he saw as Buddhists, and that he classed all Buddhists with idolators; if so, he would only have been following the practice of many of the Musulman writers, who drew no very clear distinction between religions that were foreign to their own. But however uncertain this may be, the name of Tarsa frequently included the Nestorians, though it was ordinarily used, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, to indicate the Uighurs as a nation — or more particularly the Uighurs of the eastern Tian Shan. It is in this latter sense that Friar John of Montecorvino, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, speaks of the Tarsa tongue, for he could not have meant a Buddhist tongue. About the same period, too, the Armenian author Hayton, Prince of Gorigos, in his account of the kingdoms of Asia, expressly applies the name of Tarsa to the country of the "Togurs" or Uighurs.
8.6.5
Mirza Haidar, writing in the sixteenth century, makes no mention of Tarsa, or even of Uighurs generally, as being the inhabitants of Eastern Turkistan, and it may be inferred that, by his time, the bulk of the people having become Musulmans, had ceased to be distinguished by their race-name of Uighur. He speaks only of the 'Sarigh,' or 'Yellow,' Uighurs, who appear to have been a small community occupying a territory to the east, or north-east, of Khotan, and to have been, according to his view, idolaters. These may quite possibly have been merely a section of the original inhabitants who had retained their old religion—Christianity or Buddhism—and had found a refuge from the converting Musulmans in the secluded region bordering on the eastern desert. In this case they would have been Turks, like the rest of the population, in race and language.
8.6.6
Besides the Uighurs, the only people that are heard of in Alti-Shahr, at the period of the Tárikh-i-Rashidi, are the Kalmaks, as they had begun then to be called by Musulman writers. To the Mongols and the Chinese they were known as Oirat, and this was probably their real name. They must have been few in number, and were, of course, Mongolian, and not Turki, in race. Their home was among the eastern ranges of the Tian Shan, and therefore only partially within the limits of Alti-Shahr: thus they were more properly borderers of the "Eastern Khanate," or Uighuristan, and indeed occupied very much the same localities in which they are found at the present day. In this region, like in Moghulistan, there were no towns or cultivated districts: the people were tent-dwellers, and owners of flocks, and their religion was, no doubt, Buddhism then, as it is now. During the period of the Moghul Khans, they appear to have played but a small part in the history of the country, and to have exercised little influence over the course of its affairs; though after the disappearance of the Moghuls, and with the opening of the eighteenth century, they began to rise to very considerable power, and, in connection with the Tibetans of Lassa, entered into intrigues and wars that resulted in their own country, together with all Eastern Turkistan and the Ili region, falling into the possession of China.
8.6.7
In Alti-Shahr there could not have been many Moghuls, for with the exception of some few valleys among the southern slopes of the western Tian Shan, the country could, in no way, have been suited to their mode of life. When Sultan Said Khan conquered Kashghar in 1514, perhaps a certain proportion of them may have followed him, but at that date their numbers, even in Moghulistan, must have become much reduced from what they had previously been. Therefore, when a few years later (1525-6), he withdrew the remnant of them from their own country to the hills near Kashghar, in order to rescue them from the hostility of the Kirghiz, they would have formed too small a body to have been accounted part of the population of Alti-Shahr. By that date the Moghul Ulus had become a mere band of refugees; and though afterwards, for a short time, at fitful intervals, their Khans sallied forth from Kashghar and gained some successes over the Kirghiz, the middle of the sixteenth century may be said, approximately, to have seen their practical extinction as a nation.