The Rashīdī History 8.6.6

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.