their chief towns was Kashghar, then known as Urdu-Kand. Their rulers were the so-called 'Ilak-Khans,' or 'Kara-Khans,' whose history is more or less known through the works of Arab and Persian authors, since the conversion of one of the line—a certain Sátuk Kara Khan—to Islám, in the first half of the tenth century. That the state and dynasty of the Ilak Khans were in reality Uighur, there seems to be sufficient evidence to prove, although the name of Uighur was not used by Musulmán authors till a much later date. They seem to have been known by the name of Ta-gaz-gaz[1] until the thirteenth century, when they begin to appear under that of Uighur in Western annals, though the Ilak Khans were then no more. From these same Musulman historians we learn that, during parts of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the kingdom of the Ilak Khans extended from Khorasán to China, which is perhaps scarcely to be taken literally, but is only another way of saying that it extended a long way to the east; for the Chinese, in their chronicles of the same period, speak of transactions between their Emperors and the Khans of Kao-Chang and Bishbálik, as if these were independent chiefs.[2]
We come to surer ground about the year 1124, when Yeliu Taishi, the Gurkhán of the Kara Khitai, overran the whole of Eastern Turkistan and captured Balasághun, together with much of the country to the northward, which was then under the sway of the Ilak Khans. This invasion put an end to the kingdom of the Western Uighurs—the Kárluks, or Karakháni—while the Eastern Uighurs became tributary to the conquerors. But it was a conquest that probably had little influence on the people by whom the land was inhabited. It is uncertain what tribes the army of the Gurkhán was composed of; in all probability it was much mixed in race, while in any case, it was a mere army of invasion and by no means constituted the migration of a people. The dominion of the Kara Khitai, moreover,
- ↑ This word is, no doubt, an Arab corruption of some Turki term, or a mis-reading due to copyists. Ta-gar-gar, Ba-gaz-gaz, etc., are other variants of the same word; and all look as if they contained a corruption of Uighur, or possibly even of Toghuz-Uighur. In the geographical notices of the Arab, Yakuti (fifteenth century) the name occurs as Taghaz-ghaz—without any alif. He calls them a race of Turks. (Not. et Extr., ii., p. 531.)
- ↑ I have purposely omitted to mention the separate Uighur state which is said to have been established near Kan-chou and Su-chou, on the borders of China, as that lay beyond the range of the provinces in question in the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, and was probably a mere isolated state or community of very small importance.
