Their inward thought is that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling places to all generations; they call their lands after their own names. Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not; …—Ps. xlix., 11-12.

THE province called by Mirza Haidar, ‘Mangalai Suyah,’ ex­tended, as we have seen, from the western limit of Farghána as far east as the modern Kara Shahr, a town and district that, in his day, bore the name of Chálish, and more anciently that of ‘Yanki’ or ‘Yen-Ki.’ This district, and the larger one of Turfán, that lay beyond it to the eastward, formed, during the two centuries (or the greater part of them) that the Tárikh-i-Rashidi embraces, a Moghul principality which had an entirely separate government from that of the chief Moghul Khanate. During the latter half of the fourteenth century and the first quarter of the fifteenth, while the Dughlát Amirs were in power in the provinces of Kashghar, Aksu, Khotan, etc.—that is, in the whole of Alti-Shahr—there is nothing in the Tárikh-i-Rashidi, or in the work of any Musulman author that I am acquainted with, to indicate who were the rulers of these eastern districts, except Mirza Haidar's mention of their temporary conquest by Khizir Khwája. It seems probable, from what may be learned from the side of China, that the region was regarded as more or less under the power of the Moghul Khans, and the author of the Zafar-Náma, in narrating the wars between Timur and the Moghuls, seems also to imply that this was the case, as has been seen above. Later, again, towards the middle of the fifteenth century, when a division in the Moghul Ulus had taken place, Isán Bugha II., with the support of one section, set him­self up in Chálish and Turfán, and there established a separate principality, or Khanate, which lasted down to, and even beyond, the date when Mirza Haidar's history closes.

Our author is found, as will be found in the course of his narrative, of using copulate names, and therefore generally applies to this eastern Khanate, the form Chálish-Turfán, or ‘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 Uighur-istán , 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 Chag-hatai 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 which, being without a Khan at that time, summoned Isán Bugha I. from Mávará-un-Nahr to reign over them. But although a region is often mentioned by this name subsequent to the time of Chingiz, no indication, as far as I am aware, is given of its situation, until we come to Mirza Haidar's incidental statement that it constituted the eastern neighbour of ‘Mangalai Suyah,’ and was, consequently, identical with the Khanate of ‘Chálish and Turfán.’ On the other hand, though the Khanate is men­tioned by Erskine, he does not connect it with the Uighuristán of Asiatic authors, but speaks of it always as “the Eastern districts”—presumably of the Moghul Khanate in general.

Mirza Haidar, unfortunately, omits to apprise his readers of the extent of the Khanate of Uighuristán. At periods when Aksu was not comprised within its limits, it could not have been large. On the east it did not include Kumul (Hami) till as late as 1513, when Mansur Khan annexed that State and joined it on to Turfán,* as we learn from Chinese sources of information. On the south it may have stretched to a con­siderable distance, but if so it could have enclosed, in that direction, only the sands of the desert. Northward, among the ranges of the Tian Shan, and along the valley of the Yulduz river, the inhabitants in the sixteenth century, at all events, and probably long before, appear to have been the Oirát or Kalmáks, but whether the Khans of Uighuristán counted these people among their subjects is, from the Tárikh-i-Rashidi, not clear. It is possible that they may have done so at some periods, if not always, and in this case their State may have extended to the upper waters of the Yulduz and to the northern slopes of the Tian Shan. In the days of Khizir Khwája of Moghulistan (about 1383 to 1399), the country of the Kalmáks would appear to have formed part of that Khan's possessions, and, for this reason evidently, was invaded by Timur in his expedition of 1388.* According to Klaproth (who does not name his authorities in this instance) the region, thus limited, is almost exactly that which was occupied by the Uighurs at the latest period of their existence as a people, though this was long past the time when they had ceased to constitute self-contained or independent states. Indeed, he assigns to them this position until beyond the date of Timur, or within the fifteenth century, and speaks of them as a group of small but not independent principalities.* In all probability the inde­pendence, or otherwise, of these Uighur communities, had no influence on the name which their country went by among neighbouring nations; it seems merely to have acquired the race-name of the inhabitants, as is often the case elsewhere, and (what chiefly concerns us here) to have preserved that name for some two hundred years, after a new and foreign principality had sprung up on its soil.

The only consecutive account of the history of Turfán, from the days of Chingiz and the Uighur chiefs onwards, would seem to be that contained in the Chinese chronicles of the Ming dynasty, and we are indebted to Dr. Bretschneider for an epitomised translation of them.* The companion province of Chálish is not mentioned in the epitome, and for this reason, we may assume that no notice of it is contained in the Ming-Shi . Possibly the Chinese annalists may have regarded it as part of Turfán, and if this was the case, their account of that province may be taken to embrace the whole of the eastern Khanate of Uighuristán. The Ming record begins very shortly after the opening dates of the Tárikh-i-Rashidi, by relating how the prince of Tu-lu-fan (or Turfán), having repeatedly plundered foreign embassies proceeding through his dominion towards China, the Emperor, in 1377, despatched an army to punish him and ravage his territory—a task that seems to have been accomplished with success. No name is mentioned for this prince. The date would correspond with the reign, in Moghulistan, of Kamar-ud-Din, but I know of nothing that points to Uighuristán forming a part of Kamar-ud-Din's terri­tory, unless perhaps the fact that Timur, shortly after the date in question, when overruning Moghulistan in the course of a punitive expedition, sent one of his columns as far east as Kara-Khoja, which lay well within Uighuristán. On the other hand, a few years later, on the death of Khizir Khwája, Timur's army, under Mirza Iskandar, laid waste the country only as far east as Kuchar, and then (for what reason is not stated) drew off towards Khotan.* Yet Khizir Khwája is known, from Mirza Haidar's narrative, to have made at least a temporary conquest of Turfán and Kara-Khoja.

These events occurred during the best days of the Moghul power, when raiding and general lawlessness flourished, and it is to be inferred from what little we know of the history of those times, that even if Kamar-ud-Din sometimes held sway in Uighuristán, he was not necessarily the recognised chief of the State. But, whoever was the chief, he seems to have been sub­dued by the Ming army, for we read of Turfán, in 1406, sending a mission of homage to Peking, while two years after that date another is recorded to have been despatched by the ruling Khan, this time under the leadership of a Buddhist priest. In 1422 a chief of Turfán, whose name is given as In-ghi-rh-cha, is reported to have been expelled from his government by Vais Khan of Bishbálik (i.e., Moghulistan), and to have personally carried his appeal for redress before the Emperor, who caused Vais Khan to restore In-ghi-rh-cha to his possessions. What means the Chinese Emperor took to compel the Moghul to perform this act of restitution is not stated, but the Ming-Shi goes on to relate that in 1425 and 1426 In-ghi-rh-cha appeared a second and third time at Peking, “at the head of his tribe,” to present tribute. In 1428, shortly after his return home, he died.

The next reigning chief mentioned is one Ba-la-ma-rh, on whom the Ming Emperor bestowed presents in 1441, on the occasion of the Egyptian envoy passing through Turfán on his way homeward from Peking. It was about this time—the middle of the fifteenth century—that the Turfán chief, one Ye-mi-li Huo-jo (Imil Khwája?) took possession of Kara-Khoja and Lu-ko-tsin and assumed the title of Wang, or ‘Prince.’ Previous to this, says the Ming historian, Turfán was of little account, but it now became powerful, and appears to have extended its territory, for he incidentally mentions that it was bordered on one side by Moghulistan, and on another by Khotan. The rise in power of the Turfán chiefs did not prevent them from continuing to send tribute to China, and it was shortly afterwards (in 1465) settled that a mission should be despatched regularly once every five years.

The particulars of these missions, the demands they made at the Ming court, and the concessions granted from time to time by the Emperor, need not be followed here. One of them which appeared at Peking in 1469 reported that the Turfán chief had taken the title of ‘Sultan,’ and the name of this personage is recorded to have been Ali.* In the Tárikh-i-Rashidi no mention is made of the name of Ali, in connection with Uighuristán. The date points to Kabak Sultan, as well as the title; but as Ali is represented further on in the Chinese history to have been the father of Ahmad, we can hardly assume Kabak to be the Sultan indicated. The father of Ahmad was Yunus, who nowhere appears under the name of Ali, while Kabak was grand-nephew of Yunus. That Sultan Ahmad (or Aláchá Khan)—and no other Ahmad—is the personage pointed to by the Chinese annals, seems more than probable, seeing that the dates of his succession and death agree very nearly with those given in the Tárikh-i-Rashidi, and that he is said to be the father of Mansur. But this is not the only reason to suspect inaccuracy in this matter, on the part of the Chinese chroniclers. Even if Ahmad were to be regarded as chief of Turfán, in the sense of being suzerain over the local prince, he could scarcely have played the part they attribute to him, without Mirza Haidar making some mention of his deeds. They represent him, for example, as having proceeded in person against Hami in 1488, as having captured the town, and put to death the local chief* —a series of important events about which the Tárikh-i-Rashidi is silent. We find there only a brief statement that his son, Mansur, carried on several wars against Khitai, or China.

To proceed, however. In 1473 this Sultan Ali is said to have attacked and captured Hami, together with some tracts to the eastward, proceedings which called forth an expedition from China to recover these places from him. The Chinese had to retire unsuccessful; the Sultan retained Hami, but the tribute missions went on as before. About the same year that he annexed Hami, it appears that Sultan Ali also captured more than 10,000 of the tribe of Oirát, or Kalmáks, and in general he seems to have been a chief of warlike tendencies. He had in his hands the road by which all the tribute missions from the western countries were in the habit of coming and going, and he made the Emperor feel that it was well to be on good terms with him.

In 1478 Ali died, and his son A-hei-ma (Ahmad) succeeded him as Sultan of Turfán. He also was generally successful in holding Hami against the Chinese; if he lost it at one time, he regained it shortly afterwards, and he made the governor nomi­nated by the Chinese, a prisoner. During the period 1478 to 1493 he was nearly always at war with the Chinese, yet he seems to have been ever ready with his tribute, and several missions, carrying lions and other presents, are recorded to have been despatched during these years. At length, however (in 1493) his mission, consisting of 172 men, was stopped and im­prisoned near the Chinese border. This event, occurring at a time when the Kalmáks on his northern frontier were assuming a threatening attitude towards him,* decided Ahmad to abandon Hami and finally peace was established with the Chinese in 1499. Five years later (1504) Ahmad died, and a struggle for the succession to the Khanate took place among his sons. The eldest, by name Man-su-rh (Mansur), got the upper hand, declared himself Sultan, and began at once to despatch tribute to Peking. In 1513 the subordinate Prince of Hami, Bai-ya-dsi by name, made over his province to Mansur, who soon after­wards began to make incursions on Chinese territory proper, by invading Su-chou and Kan-chou. Whether he obtained any but a mere temporary hold on these districts is not apparent, but he is related to have had dissensions with the Chinese, on subjects connected with Hami, till his death in 1545. He was succeeded by his son, Sha—i.e., Shah Khan.

This is a brief outline of Dr. Bretschneider's epitome of the chapters in the Ming history which relate to Turfán, or Uighur-istán. It shows, briefly, the course of the history of the province according to the Chinese view; but when we come to compare the names and dates with the same story as gathered from the Tárikh-i-Rashidi, the two accounts are found not to agree. In the summary, or discursive table, given in Section II. of this Introduction, some of the Khans of Uighuristán have been mentioned, with the dates of their reigns (as far as obtainable), from Mirza Haidar's statements. They may be placed here in juxtaposition with those of the Ming-Shi, for purposes of comparison, as follows:—

From this, it appears that none of the rulers mentioned by the Chinese are the same as those given in the Tárikh-i-Rashidi, till the name of Ahmad Khan is reached, while the date of the death of his successor, Mansur Khan, differs by two years in the two accounts. The allusion to Vais Khan accords fairly satisfactorily as to date; but here all accordance ends. The first and third names on the Chinese list would appear to be of Mongol origin; the second is certainly Mongol, while the fourth and fifth, though Musulman, are in no way to be traced among the Moghul Khans whom we know of. It is, perhaps, possible that the earlier Moghul chiefs, while Islam had only partially spread among them, bore Mongol as well as Musulman names, and that the Chinese found it more convenient to use the former, in reducing them to their own phonetics; but against this conjecture for solving the difficulty, it must be considered that the number of Khans, previous to Ahmad, is too great, and that the dates do not correspond sufficiently to admit of the assumption that the Mongol names point to Khans of Moghulistan. A more probable explanation, perhaps, may be that during the reigns of Isán Bugha II. and Dust Mu­hammad, there were also Moghul Amirs who (like the Dughlát Amirs in Alti Shahr), if they did not reign, at all events held some kind of hereditary position as local chiefs, and that it was they who sent the tribute missions, and carried on intercourse, with the Chinese court. Thus, though not supreme in the Khanate, they might have been the chiefs best known to the Chinese. The possibility of this suggestion derives some sup­port, I think, from the accounts the Chinese furnish of the towns of Kara-Khoja and Lu-ko-tsin (more anciently Liu-Chêng). During the first half of the fifteenth century, both these towns, though situated close to Turfán, were reckoned independent, and sent their own tribute, separately, to Peking; and it was only when Turfán became powerful, after the middle of the century, that they were annexed to their more important neighbour.* This would have been only very shortly before the commencement of the reign of Sultan Ahmad, or when we come to corresponding names and dates in the two lists. At this time, it may be, the custom was changed, and the reigning Khan may have begun to send the tribute missions in his own name; while the names—especially the non-Musulman ones—of the subordinate chiefs, would have tended soon to fall into oblivion and remain unnoticed by Muhammadan writers. This, however, is only a suggestion—a possible explanation of the discrepancies.

Unfortunately, it is not the only puzzle connected with this eastern Khanate. In his Mémoires concernant les … Chi­nois ,* Père Amyot has published several Chinese documents relating to Turfán, one of which is a rescript by the Emperor Shun-Chi (the first of the present dynasty), dated 1647, where notice is taken of the fact that Turfán had not sent to tender homage to China for more than 280 years—i.e., since some date previous to the year 1367, or the commencement of the Ming epoch! So direct a contradiction is this of all that the Ming history has recorded, that it would appear almost hopeless to attempt to reconcile the two statements. It would be tempting to put the Tsing Emperor's direct assertion into the same side of the scales with Mirza Haidar's silence on the subject, and to suspect the veracity of the Ming chronicles; but my impression is that these records contain too much internal evidence of truth, and are too circumstantial in their facts, to admit of the matter being disposed of in so summary a manner. The Em­peror Shun-Chi, it must be remembered, had only come to the throne in 1644. He was a mere child of nine years of age in 1647, while his elder relations, who were presumably his advisers, were Manchus, who had been deeply engaged in the wars which had won for him the Empire of China. They pro­bably knew little of the affairs of the country, or of the history of the dynasty that had just been crushed by them and their people. The dynastic history of the Mings, moreover, was not written till many years later,* while events connected with an insignificant Khanate in Central Asia would scarcely have been in the minds of the courtiers and secretaries, when the Emperor was made to pen, or to approve, the rescript in question; or if it was known to them that Turfán had sent tribute regularly— rather effusively—they probably sought to please him by conceal­ing the fact from his knowledge. The rescript is obviously intended to convey the idea that Shun-Chi is flattered by the homage paid him by the Sultan of Turfán, whose predecessors had never rendered so great an honour to the Emperors of the late dynasty; indeed, the whole document appears to be, more than anything else, a display of exultation on the part of the Emperor, intended to reflect on his Chinese predecessors. The occasion which brought about its promulgation, was the arrival of an envoy from the Turfán Sultan of the time, who is therein called “Ablun-Mouhan”—a corruption not easy to identify with any Musulman name. “Le Sultan,” runs the French translation, “qui règne aujourd'hui sur le Tourfan, descend en droit ligne de Tchahatai, un des fils de Tsinkiskan, fondateur de la dynastie des Yuen ou Mongoux. Ces prédécesseurs, depuis plus de deux cens quatre-vingts ans n'avaient point envoyé d'ambassade solemnelle pour rendre hommage à la Chine, et lui apporter le tribut. Le Sultan Ablun-Mouhan, ayant appris que j'étais sur le trône de l'Empire Chinois, m'envoie des ambassadeurs… Une telle conduite mérite quelque atten­tion de ma part…” And the venerable Amyot adds signifi­cantly:—“Ten years afterwards, that is to say in the year 1657, the King of Tourfan again despatched ambassadors carry­ing tribute, which means in plain French, that he sent people to trade and to receive presents from the Emperor. Yet His Imperial Majesty was greatly flattered by this new mission.”

A still more inexplicable statement is contained in a letter written by Amyot from Peking some time subsequently.* Re­ferring to Turfán, he says the country was so broken up in the early part of the sixteenth century, that in the year 1533 there were seventy-five small independent States, all the chiefs of which called themselves king. Here, all that can be said is that Amyot must have fallen into some error. He was living at Peking as far back as the middle of the eighteenth century, and may be assumed to have had good sources of information on historical as well as other subjects, but on this occasion he does not mention the authority for the statement he makes. The 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, Uighur-istán 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 Kumul. The account of his journey is, indeed, a meagre one, for the greater part of his journal was lost at the time of his death. Some fragments, however, were recovered and passed into the hands of one of the ablest of the Jesuit missionaries then at Peking—Father Matthew Ricci—who compiled from them the story of Goës' adventures. In this way much of the narrative that has come down to us, is from the pen of a man specially well informed and qualified to expose the real state of affairs, on such a subject as the missions of homage from the west. He tell us that the tribute brought to the capital was merely nominal in value, but that the Emperor, considering it beneath his dignity to receive presents from foreigners without making a return, not only entertained the tribute-bearers on a handsome scale, but paid highly for the objects presented to him in the shape of return gifts, so that every man pocketed “a piece of gold daily, over and above his necessary expenses.” For this reason, the privilege of carrying offerings to China was keenly competed for among merchants and others, who paid highly for a nomination to the post of tribute-bearer. When the time came for setting out, these so-called ambassadors, says Ricci, forged letters in the name of the kings they professed to represent, in which the Emperor of China was addressed in obsequious terms. “The Chinese,” he continues, “receive em­bassies of a similar character from various other kingdoms, such as Cochin-China, Siam, Leu-Chieu, Corea, and some of the petty Tatar kings, the whole causing incredible charges on the public treasury. The Chinese themselves are quite aware of the imposture, but they allow their Emperor to be befooled in this manner, as if to persuade him that the whole world is tributary to the Chinese; the fact being, rather, that China pays tribute to those kingdoms.”*

This account may be somewhat overdrawn in respect of the comparisons made with such States as Cochin-China, Siam, Korea, etc., for in these cases it is well known that there was no question of the Chinese winking at an imposture, and allow­ing themselves to be befooled. Tribute from these States meant political subjection; the exaction of it at regular periods was a serious affair, and one of the cardinal points of Chinese foreign policy. But where the small States of Central Asia were concerned, it was apparently not regarded as so im­portant a matter, and there can be no doubt of the fact that, at the period in question, the custom of sending tribute-bearing missions to China had degenerated, in the Khanates of Eastern Turkistan, to mere trading adventures, and that the Chinese must have been aware of the abuse the custom had undergone.* Even one of the circumstances that gave rise to Goës' mission, hinged upon a fraudulent embassy of this kind. A Musulman merchant, on his return to Lahore from China, gave the Jesuits there, information regarding the road to ‘Cathay,’ which appears to have had much influence in deciding them to send forward Benedict Goës. The man, on appearing at Akbar's court, and on being asked by the Emperor how he obtained admission to the Chinese capital, replied with frankness, that he had gone in the character of an ambassador from the King of Kashghar.

It may, therefore, be possible that spurious tribute-missions arrived at Peking from so many petty chiefs, or governors of towns, that the Chinese had actually recorded as large a number as seventy-five for the Turfán region, at the time Père Amyot speaks of; though this would in no way demonstrate that the State of Turfán, or Uighuristán, had, in reality, been split up into small divisions.

Though a separate and self-contained State, the Khanate of Uighuristán was in no way disconnected, physically, from the rest of Eastern Turkistan, or Alti-Shahr. No range of moun­tains or great river divided the two States, and even their people, in race and language, must have been practically one. No doubt there were slight variations in type and dialect, as is the case at the present day, between the natives of Turfán and those of Kashghar and Khotan; but all were of the Uighur stock, and those of the eastern Khanate, occupying, as they did, one of the ancient seats of the nation, perhaps retained the characteristics of the race in greater purity than the commu­nities of the more western provinces. They lived, as it were, on the ruins of ancient Uighuria, and were less accessible than the communities further west to foreign influences, except perhaps, to those emanating from China—which must, however, have been slight. Their land, placed as it is, in the very centre of Asia, is less known, even nowadays, than almost any other part of the continent; the few modern travellers who have visited it having furnished only a meagre description of it. A Chinese author of the last century says that the whole population of the province, in his time, could be estimated at no more than 3000 families, and these were, for the greater part, so poor that they were scarcely able to provide for themselves. In the summer the heat was excessive, and the blaze of the sun on the barren ridges in the neighbourhood of the town, in­supportable—wherefore the people had named them “the fire mountains.”*

One of its distinctive features is the depression, to some 150 or 200 feet below the level of the sea, of the central districts of Turfán and Kara-Khoja. This is one of the driest as well as one of the hottest portions of Eastern Turkistan, and the one where the greatest ingenuity of the inhabitants, both ancient and modern, has been displayed in irrigating the land so as to render it habitable. Mirza Haidar relates the personal exertions of Vais Khan (though these were not particularly ingenious) to provide water for the cultivation of the land; but possibly the tradition regarding Vais Khan's manual labour is not intended to be taken literally. The attention of modern travellers has been attracted by the remains of aqueducts and systems of wells, showing how dependent the population was, and is, on artificial irrigation. Thus Dr. Regel mentions the reservoirs where water from the mountains is stored, and the underground canals that lead it to the town, and serve also as dwelling-places for the inhabitants, during the fierce heat of summer.* Captain F. E. Younghusband found the modern city of Turfán surrounded by lines of pits upwards of a hundred feet in depth—the lines extending for several miles into the desert.*

In contrast to the low-lying group of oases in the burning desert, and among the “fire hills,” there rise immediately to the north, the eastern ranges of the Tian Shan, with summits reaching to 12,000 or 14,000 feet above the sea, and capped with eternal snow. One of these is the famous Bogdo-Ula of the Mongols and Kalmáks, or the Tengri-Tágh of the Kirghiz; a mountain that, for ages past, has been held sacred by the pastoral tribes that have inhabited the regions around, and whose people have venerated it, no doubt, because it is the central and most commanding feature of their landscape, and the parent of many of the streams that bring them life.

Yet, in spite of its natural drawbacks of heat and drought, the country appears to have supported, at times during its history, a fairly large population, and to have been one of the chief centres of the Buddhists in the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages; for these communities have left many relics behind them, not only in the shape of buildings, but also of inscriptions and objects of art. The Russian traveller Grijmailo speaks of a place called Singim, lying to the south of Lu-ko-tsin (the old Liu-Chêng),* where “leaflets enclosed in horn and wooden boxes,” and bearing ancient writings in a language now unknown, are still, from time to time, unearthed;* while Dr. Regel, again, tells us of vast ruins at a short distance to the south-east of modern Kara-Khoja (the Ho-Chao of the Chinese), to which he gives the name of ‘Old Turfán,’ but which are more likely to be those of ancient Kara-Khoja. These re­mains are described as covering a large tract of ground, with massive walls, gates and bastions, besides underground passages, vaulted and arched; the whole bearing witness to a high development of architectural knowledge. He mentions also other ruins of a similar kind, lying to the south of the town of Turfán.* From the Ming history too, we learn that to the east of Ho-Chao there stand the ruins of a city of the past, which are regarded as remains of the ancient Uighur capital, Kao-Chang, and with regard to the aspect of the place in the days of the Mings, the author adds that there were in Ho-Chao more Buddhist temples than dwelling-houses of the people.*

With the gradual break up of the power of the Moghuls towards the end of the sixteenth century, and the rise of the Manchu dynasty in China in the first half of the seventeenth, the Khanate of Uighuristán fell more and more under the influence of China. For a time, during the eighteenth century, the Kalmáks, with the help of the Tibetans, obtained a hold over it, but this was of short duration, and on their final sub­jugation by the Manchus, about 1755, the whole country became Chinese territory. In the intervals, however, several petty principalities arose within its limits, and some of these appear to have had for their chiefs, Musulman Khans who claimed descent from the Moghuls. It was probably to one of these that the Manchu emperor Shun-Chi alluded, when in his rescript of 1644 (mentioned above) he spoke of his tributary as a descendant of ‘Cha-ha-tai.’