The Rashīdī History 8.6.4

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.