The Rashīdī History 8.6.1

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.