Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/125

113 SUCCESSES OF THE KERAITES. 113 The Karaite people kept for a long time the Christian faith which had been imparted to them ; their power went on meanwhile increasing prodigiously, and the important part which they played in the great revo- lutions by which Asia was convulsed, appears to justify, in some measure, the brilliant renown of the kingdom of Prester John. In 1046, that is, forty-five years after the conversion of the king of the Keraites, one of his successors subjugated several neighbouring tribes, and led his victorious armies to Khakhgar. The name of Tartar began then to be repeated among the Asiatic nations, and to carry with it a secret terror. The metropolitan Bishop of Samarkand, finding himself at a little distance from the theatre of war, forwarded a dispatch to the Nestorian Catholicos *, to inform him of the overwhelm- ing march of the Tartar Keraites, and his letter was read, even in the palace of the Kaliph of Bagdad, in the presence of the Arab chiefs. " A people," f said the metropolitan of Samarkand, " innumerable as grasshoppers, has opened for itself a passage across the mountains which separate Thibet from Choutan, where, according to ancient historians, are to be found the gates constructed by Alexander the Great. Thence they have penetrated to Kaschgar. There are seven kings, each of whom is at the head of seven hundred thousand horsemen. The first of these is named Nazarath ; that is to say, ' Chief, by order of God.' They have brown complexions, like Indians. f Aboulfarage, Chron. Syr. dans Assemani, vol. iii. partii. ch. ix. p. 488. VOL. I. I
 * This Catholicos had then his seat at Bagdad,