Page:The Tarikh-i-Rashidi - Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlát - tr. Edward D. Ross (1895).djvu/140

 Rh 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 Turfán, about a century before the date spoken of by Amyot, but during this interval the tendency of events in Uighuristán 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, Uighuristán obtained a great increase of strength. Mansur had been chief of Aksu, which province had been invaded and conquered by Mirza Abá Bakr of Kashghar, and the chief had migrated to Turfán 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 Goës, 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, Turfán and