Page:The Tarikh-i-Rashidi - Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlát - tr. Edward D. Ross (1895).djvu/126

 Rh 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. While exercising independent rule, and even subsequently, when allied with Chingiz Khan against the Kara Khitai and other enemies, they appear to have shown warlike qualities, but at later dates the impression we receive of them is that of a peace-loving, cultivated race, of settled habits, and forming as great a contrast as possible to their Moghul neighbours. Their taste for literature must have been a strong one; in fact, they were the only literate people at that time in existence between China in the east, and Transoxiana in the west. They are credited with having been the first to reduce the Turki language to writing, by borrowing the Syriac written character from the Nestorian missions which, in the Middle Ages, were spread over Central Asia; while the writing, thus founded by the Uighurs, became, at a later period, the origin of the systems still in use among the Mongols and the Manchus. Many books were written by them, and both Rashid-ud-Din and Abul Gházi point to their services being in request as administrators, accountants and writers of the Turki language. The latter author especially bears witness to their capabilities in these pursuits. He says: “"During the reign of the grandsons of Chingiz Khan the accountants and chief officers of government in Mávará-un-Nahr, in Khorasán and in Irák, were all Uighurs. Similarly, it was the Uighurs who filled these posts in Khitai during the reign of the sons of Chingiz Khan. Oktai Kaán, son and successor of Chingiz Khan, entrusted Khorasán, Mazandarán and Gilán to a Uighur named Kurguz, who was well versed in keeping accounts and knew thoroughly how to levy, in these provinces, the taxes, which he remitted regularly, each year, to Oktai Kaán." They occupied, indeed, a very similar position to that of the Bengali and