The Rashīdī History 9.3
The Tarikh-i-Rashidi (Elias, Ross) 9.3
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9.3.1
Unfortunately, it is not the only puzzle connected with this eastern Khanate. In his Mémoires concernant les . . . . Chinois, Père Amyot has published several Chinese documents relating to Turfan, one of which is a rescript by the Emperor Shun-Chi (the first of the present dynasty), dated 1647, where notice is taken of the fact that Turfan had not sent to tender homage to China for more than 280 years—i.e., since some date previous to the year 1367, or the commencement of the Ming epoch! So direct a contradiction is this of all that the Ming history has recorded, that it would appear almost hopeless to attempt to reconcile the two statements. It would be tempting to put the Tsing Emperor's direct assertion into the same side of the scales with Mirza Haidar's silence on the subject, and to suspect the veracity of the Ming chronicles; but my impression is that these records contain too much internal evidence of truth, and are too circumstantial in their facts, to admit of the matter being disposed of in so summary a manner. The Emperor Shun-Chi, it must be remembered, had only come to the throne in 1644. He was a mere child of nine years of age in 1647, while his elder relations, who were presumably his advisers, were Manchus, who had been deeply engaged in the wars which had won for him the Empire of China. They probably knew little of the affairs of the country, or of the history of the dynasty that had just been crushed by them and their people.
9.3.2
The dynastic history of the Mings, moreover, was not written till many years later, while events connected with an insignificant Khanate in Central Asia would scarcely have been in the minds of the courtiers and secretaries, when the Emperor was made to pen, or to approve, the rescript in question; or if it was known to them that Turfan had sent tribute regularly—rather effusively—they probably sought to please him by concealing the fact from his knowledge. The rescript is obviously intended to convey the idea that Shun-Chi is flattered by the homage paid him by the Sultan of Turfan, whose predecessors had never rendered so great an honour to the Emperors of the late dynasty; indeed, the whole document appears to be, more than anything else, a display of exultation on the part of the Emperor, intended to reflect on his Chinese predecessors. The occasion which brought about its promulgation, was the arrival of an envoy from the Turfan Sultan of the time, who is therein called "Ablun-Mouhan"—a corruption not easy to identify with any Musulman name. "Le Sultan," runs the French translation, "qui regne aujourd'hui sur le Tourfan, descend en droit ligne de Tchahatai, un des fils de Tsinkiskan, fondateur de la dynastie des Yuen ou Mongoux. Ces prédécesseurs, depuis plus de deux cens quatre-vingts ans n'avaient point envoyé d'ambassade solemnelle pour rendre hommage a la Chine, et lui apporter le tribut.
9.3.3
Le Sultan Ablun-Mouhan, ayant appris que j'étais sur le trone de l'Empire Chinois, m'envoie des ambassadeurs. . . . Une telle conduite mérite quelque attention de ma part. . . ." And the venerable Amyot adds significantly:—"Ten years afterwards, that is to say in the year 1657, the King of Tourfan again despatched ambassadors carrying tribute, which means in plain French, that he sent people to trade and to receive presents from the Emperor. Yet His Imperial Majesty was greatly flattered by this new mission." A still more inexplicable statement is contained in a letter written by Amyot from Peking some time subsequently. Referring to Turfan, he says the country was so broken up in the early part of the sixteenth century, that in the year 1533 there were seventy-five small independent States, all the chiefs of which called themselves king. Here, all that can be said is that Amyot must have fallen into some error. He was living at Peking as far back as the middle of the eighteenth century, and may be assumed to have had good sources of information on historical as well as other subjects, but on this occasion he does not mention the authority for the statement he makes.
9.3.4
The Ming-Shi, as we have just seen, refers to the two towns of Kara-Khoja and Lu-ko-tsin, as having been thought, by the Chinese, to be independent of Turfan, about a century before the date spoken of by Amyot, but during this interval the tendency of events in Uighuristan was towards consolidation of the kingdom, and centralisation of the power of the Khan. The date 1533 falls within the reign of Mansur Khan, who, we see from the histories of Mirza Haidar and that of the Ming dynasty, was the most powerful and prosperous ruler that the Khanate had had, and it cannot be regarded as likely that, during his reign, the country should have been split up into more independent divisions than there were towns in it, or perhaps into almost as many as there were villages. Had any disintegration been going on, Mirza Haidar could hardly have failed to notice it, and moreover. Sultan Said, then Khan of Moghulistan and Alti-Shahr (Mansur's brother) would scarcely have submitted (as Mirza Haidar reports him to have done in 1516) to a ruler whose kingdom had broken up into small States. In this instance it is far more likely that Père Amyot made use of some imperfect information, than that both the official history of the Ming dynasty and the independent one of our author, should be wrong. What we find from the latter to have been the case is, that after the death of Ahmad, and with the succession of Mansur, Uighuristan obtained a great increase of strength.
9.3.5
Mansur had been chief of Aksu, which province had been invaded and conquered by Mirza Aba Bakr of Kashghar, and the chief had migrated to Turfan with the whole of his tribe and family. The number of the tribe is not stated, but the advent of a large body of Moghuls, together with the Khan, can hardly have failed to prove a source of increased strength to the Khanate, and would point rather to unification than the reverse. Perhaps if any explanation of so curious a discrepancy may be hazarded, it might be found in the abuse of the tribute missions. As the Ming dynasty declined and approached its fall, the practice of encouraging counterfeit missions seems to have become common; and towards the end of the sixteenth century, and at the beginning of the seventeenth, they came much into vogue among the States bordering on the west of China. This fact stands out with special clearness in the narrative of Benedict Goes, who travelled from Lahore to China in the years 1603-1604, and who died at the frontier town of Suchou, in Kansu, after passing through Yarkand, Aksu, Turfan and Enmul. The account of his journey is, indeed, a meagre one, for the greater part of his journal was lost at the time of his death. Some fragments, however, were recovered and passed into the hands of one of the ablest of the Jesuit missionaries then at Peking — Father Matthew Ricci — who compiled from them the story of Goes' adventures.
9.3.6
In this way much of the narrative that has come down to us, is from the pen of a man specially well informed and qualified to expose the real state of affairs, on such a subject as the missions of homage from the west. He tells us that the tribute brought to the capital was merely nominal in value, but that the Emperor, considering it beneath his dignity to receive presents from foreigners without making a return, not only entertained the tribute-bearers on a handsome scale, but paid highly for the objects presented to him in the shape of return gifts, so that every man pocketed "a piece of gold daily, over and above his necessary expenses." For this reason, the privilege of carrying offerings to China was keenly competed for among merchants and others, who paid highly for a nomination to the post of tribute-bearer. When the time came for setting out, these so-called ambassadors, says Ricci, forged letters in the name of the kings they professed to represent, in which the Emperor of China was addressed in obsequious terms. "The Chinese," he continues, "receive embassies of a similar character from various other kingdoms, such as Cochin-China, Siam, Leu-Chieu, Corea, and some of the petty Tatar kings, the whole causing incredible charges on the public treasury. The Chinese themselves are quite aware of the imposture, but they allow their Emperor to be befooled in this manner, as if to persuade him that the whole world is tributary to the Chinese;
9.3.7
the fact being, rather, that China pays tribute to those kingdoms." This account may be somewhat overdrawn in respect of the comparisons made with such States as Cochin-China, Siam, Korea, etc., for in these cases it is well known that there was no question of the Chinese winking at an imposture, and allowing themselves to be befooled. Tribute from these States meant political subjection; the exaction of it at regular periods was a serious affair, and one of the cardinal points of Chinese foreign policy. But where the small States of Central Asia were concerned, it was apparently not regarded as so important a matter, and there can be no doubt of the fact that, at the period in question, the custom of sending tribute-bearing missions to China had degenerated, in the Khanates of Eastern Turkistan, to mere trading adventures, and that the Chinese must have been aware of the abuse the custom had undergone. Even one of the circumstances that gave rise to Goes' mission, hinged upon a fraudulent embassy of this kind. A Musulman merchant, on his return to Lahore from China, gave the Jesuits there, information regarding the road to 'Cathay,' which appears to have had much influence in deciding them to send forward Benedict Goes. The man, on appearing at Akbar's court, and on being asked by the Emperor how he obtained admission to the Chinese capital, replied with frankness, that he had gone in the character of an ambassador from the King of Kashghar.