Page:The Tarikh-i-Rashidi - Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlát - tr. Edward D. Ross (1895).djvu/131

 100 'Chálish and Turfán,' from its two central and principal districts. There were times, however, as he relates, when the province of Aksu also fell under the rule of the eastern Khan, though it belonged properly to Alti-Shahr. But on two occasions he mentions a country or province of Uighuristán, and in one passage, when describing the boundaries of 'Mangalai Suyah,' says that it marched, on the east, with the province of Uighuristán. It would appear, therefore, that the small eastern Khanate really bore that name down to the sixteenth century; and if this is the case, the survival is an interesting one.

Within the district of Turfán, and only some twenty-seven miles to the south-east of it, stands the little known, but ancient, town of Kara-Khoja, which has borne also, in the course of its history, several other names, the chief of them having come to us, through the Chinese, in the forms of Kao-Chang and Ho-Chao. The Chinese annals of the Sung and Yuan dynasties mention this place frequently, and make it clear that from the ninth century to within the twelfth, Kao-Chang was the capital of a Uighur kingdom which bordered on the north with another Uighur state, called Bishbálik (the modern Urumtsi), and on the west with a third known, anciently, as Kui-tze, Kus, etc., and now as Kuchar. These States, collectively, appear to have been the home and centre of the Uighur race, until a much later date than when, in the twelfth century, they lost their political independence and became subject to the Kara-Khitai. It would not be improbable, therefore, that the region having become known to neighbouring nations on the west as Uighuristán, when independent, should have retained that name long afterwards, though subject to foreign rulers.

On the partition of the empire of Chingiz Khan among his sons, we read of Uighuristán falling to the appanage of Chaghatai Khan, and we also learn, from Mirza Haidar, of Chaghatai having entrusted the province called 'Mangalai Suyah,' as far east as Chálish, to the care of the Dughláts, but not a word is said regarding the disposal of the districts to the eastward of Chálish. Referring to a later date—about 1320—Abul Gházi mentions Uighuristán as one of the countries, the inhabitants of