The Life of Yakoob Beg; Athalik Ghazi, and Badaulet; Ameer of Kashgar

PREFACE

The following account of the life of Yakoob Beg was written with a twofold intention. In the first place, it attempts to trace the career of a soldier of fortune, who, without birth, power, or even any great amount of genius, constructed an independent rule in Central Asia, and maintained it against many adversaries during the space of twelve years. The name of the Athalik Ghazi became so well known in this country, and his person was so exaggerated by popular report, that those who come to these pages with a belief that their hero will be lauded to the skies must be disappointed. Yakoob Beg was a very able and courageous man, and the task he did accomplish in Kashgaria was in the highest degree creditable; but he was no Timour or Babur. His internal policy was marred by his severity, and the system of terrorism that he principally adopted; and his external policy, bold and audacious as it often was, was enfeebled by periods of vacillation and doubt. Yet his career was truly remarkable. He was not the arbiter of the destinies of Central Asia, nor was he even the consistent opponent of Russian claims to supremacy therein. He was essentially of the common mould of human nature, sharing the weaknesses and the fears of ordinary men. The Badaulet, or "the fortunate one," as he was called, was essentially indebted to good fortune in many crises of his career. He cannot, in any sense, be compared to the giants produced by Central Asia in days of old; and among moderns Dost Mahomed of Afghanistan probably should rank as high as he does. Yet he gives an individuality to the history of Kashgar that it would otherwise lack. The recent triumphs of the Chinese received all their attraction to Englishmen from the decline and fall of Yakoob Beg, the hero they had erected in the country north of Cashmere.

In the second place, the following pages strive to bring before the English reader the great merits of China as a governing power; and this object is really the more important of the two. It is absolutely necessary for this country to remember that there are only three Great Powers in Asia, and of these China is in many respects the foremost. Whereas both England and Russia are simply conquering Governments, China is a mighty and self-governing country. China's rule in Eastern Turkestan and Jungaria is one of the most instructive pages in the history of modern Asia, yet it may freely be admitted that the brief career of Yakoob Beg gave an interest to the consideration of the Chinese in Central Asia that that theme might otherwise have failed to supply. The authorities used in the compilation of the facts upon which the following pages have been erected are principally and above all the official Report of Sir Douglas Forsyth, and the files of the Tashkent and Pekin Gazettes since the beginning of 1874. Mr. Shaw's most interesting work on "High Tartary," Dr. Bellew's "Kashgar," and Gregorieff's work on "Eastern Turkestan," have also been consulted in various portions of the narrative. A vast mass of newspaper articles have likewise been laid under contribution for details which have not been noticed anywhere else.

In conclusion, the author would ask the English reader to consider very carefully what the true lesson of Chinese valour and statesmanship may be for us, because those qualities have now become the guiding power in every Indian border question, from Siam and Birma to Cashmere. Mr. Schuyler's "Turkestan," which still maintains its place as the leading work on Central Asia, although not treating on the affairs of Kashgar, has been frequently referred to for the course of affairs in Khokand; but, in the main, Dr. Bellew's historical narrative in Sir D. Forsyth's Report has been followed.

CHAPTER I.
GEOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION OF KASHGAR

The state of Kashgar, which comprises the western portion of Eastern or Chinese Turkestan, has been defined as being bounded on the north by Siberia, on the south by the mountains of Cashmere, on the east by the Great Desert of Gobi, and on the west by the steppe of "High Pamere." This description, while sufficiently correct for general speaking, admits of more detail in a work dealing at some length with that country. Strictly, the name Kashgar or Cashgar applies only to the city, and it was not until after the time of Marco Polo, when it was the most populous and opulent town in the whole region, that it became used for the neighbouring country. The correct name is either Little Bokhara or Eastern Turkestan, and the Chinese call it Sule. Recent writers have styled the territory of the Athalik Ghazi Kashgaria. It certainly extended through a larger portion of Chinese Turkestan than did any past native rule in Kashgar, the Chinese of course excepted. The definition given above of the limits of Kashgar states that on the north it is bounded by Siberia, but this is erroneous, for the extensive territory of Jungaria or Mugholistan intervenes. Jungaria under the Chinese was known as Ili from its capital, and now under the Russians is spoken of as Kuldja, another name for the same city. This very extensive and important district was included in the same government with Kashgar when the Chinese dominated in all this region from their head-quarters at Ili; but in the final settlement after the disruption of the Chinese power in 1863, while Kashgar fell to the Khoja Buzurg Khan, and the eastern portion of Jungaria, together with the cities of Kucha, Karashar, and Turfan south of the Tian Shan range, to the Tungani; Kuldja or Ili was occupied by the Russians. The frontier line between Kuldja and Kashgar is very clearly marked by the Tian Shan, and the same effectual barrier divides the continent into two well-defined divisions from Aksu to Turfan and beyond. Eastern Turkestan is, therefore, bounded on the north by the Tian Shan, and on the south the Karakoram Mountains form a no less satisfactory bulwark between it and Kohistan and Cashmerian Tibet. As has been said, on the west the steppe of Pamir and on the east the desert of Gobi present distinct and secure defences against aggression from without in those directions. There are few states in Asia with a more clearly marked position than that of which we have been speaking. Nature seems to have formed it to lead an isolated and independent existence, happy and prosperous in its own resources and careless of the outer world; but its history has been of a more troubled character, and at only brief intervals has its natural wealth been so fostered as to make it that which it has been called, "the Garden of Asia." This condition of almost continual warfare and disturbance during centuries, has left many visible marks on the external features of the country, and in nothing is this more strikingly evident than in the small population. A region which contains at the most moderate estimate 250,000 square miles, is believed by the highest authorities to contain less than 1,000,000 inhabitants. In breadth Kashgaria may be said to extend from longitude E. 73° to 89°, and in width from latitude N. 36° to 43°; but the ancient kingdom of Kashgar has been always considered to have reached only to Aksu, a town about 300 miles north-east of Kashgar. When the Chinese about fifty years ago conceded certain trade privileges to Khokand, they were not to have effect east of Aksu; this fact seems conclusive as to the recognized limits of the ancient dynasty of Kashgar. The capital of this district, which at one time has been a flourishing kingdom under a native ruler, at another a tributary of some Tartar conqueror, and then distracted by the struggles of his effete successors, and at a third time a subject province of the Chinese, has fluctuated as much as the fortunes of the state itself. Now it has been Yarkand, now Kashgar, and yet again, on several occasions, Aksu. The claims of Kashgar seem to have prevailed in the long run, for, although Yarkand is still the larger city, Yakoob Beg established his capital at Kashgar, and made that town known throughout the whole of Asia by the means of his government.

Kashgar is situated in a plain in the north of the province, and the small river on which it is built is known as the Kizil Su. Immediately beyond it the country becomes hilly and mountainous, until in the far distance may be seen the snow-clad peaks of the Tian Shan, and the Aksai Plateau. Although the population is barely 30,000, there is now an air of brisker activity in the bazaars and caravanserais of this capital than in any other city in the country. The trade carried on with Russia in recent years has given some life to the place; but few, if any, merchants proceed more inland than this, whether they come from Khokand or from Kuldja. The town stretches on both sides of the river, which is crossed by a wooden bridge; but there are no buildings of any pretensions for external beauty or internal comfort. The orda or palace of the Ameer, which is in Yangy Shahr, five miles from the city, is a large gloomy barrack of a place with several buildings within each other; the outer ones are occupied by the household troops and by the court officials, and the inner one of all is set apart for the family and serai of the ruler himself. In connection with this is a hall of audience, in which he receives in solemn state such foreigners as it seems politic for him to honour. In the old days, Kashgar used to be a strongly fortified position, but the only remains of its former strength are the ruins which are strewn freely all around. Kashgar is, therefore, an open and quite defenceless town, and lies completely at the mercy of any invader who might come along the high road from Aksu or Bartchuk, or across the mountains from Khokand or Kuldja; but at Yangy Shahr, about five miles south of Kashgar, Yakoob Beg constructed a strong fort, where he deposited all his treasure, and this may be taken to be the citadel of Kashgar as well as the residence of the ruler. Yangy Shahr means new city, and as a fortification erected by a Central Asian potentate with very limited means, it must be considered to be a very creditable piece of military workmanship. The Andijanis or Khokandian merchants who have at various times settled here, form a very important class in this town in particular, and it was they who more than any one else contributed to the success of the invasion of Buzurg Khan and Mahomed Yakoob. It is, however, said that these merchant classes had become to some extent dissatisfied with the late state of things, whether because Yakoob Beg did not fulfil all his promises, or for some other reason, is not clear. If Kashgar under its late rule was not restored to that prosperous condition which excited the admiration of Marco Polo, and the Chinese traveller, Hwang Tsang, before him, it may be considered to have been as fairly well-doing as any other city in either Turkestan, while life and property were a great deal more secure than in some we could mention.

Situated about half-way on the road to Yarkand is Yangy Hissar, a town which has always been of importance both as a military position and as a place of trade. It has greatly fallen into decay, however, but still possesses a certain amount of its former influence from being a military post, and from the exceptional fertility of the neighbouring country.

Yarkand, about eighty miles as the crow flies, and 120 by road, to the south-east of Kashgar, is still the most populous of all the cities of Eastern Turkestan. It lies in the open plain on the Yarkand river, and its walls, four miles in circuit, testify to its former greatness. Under the Chinese it was quite the most flourishing town in the region, and even now Sir Douglas Forsyth estimates that it contains 40,000 people, while the surrounding country has nearly 200,000 more. The fruit gardens and orchards, which extend in a wide belt round it, give an air of peculiar prosperity to the country, and quite possibly induce travellers to take a too sanguine view of the resources of the country. In addition to the abundance of fruit and grain produce that is brought into the city for sale, there is a large and profitable business carried on in leather. Yarkand has almost a monopoly of this article, and the consumption of it is very great indeed. The Ameer himself took large quantities yearly for his army, for, in addition to that required for boots and saddles, many of his regiments wore uniforms of that substance.

But, although Yarkand is the chief market-place of the richest province, and although its population is thriving and energetic, there is a general consensus of opinion that it has become much less prosperous and much more of a rural town since the transference of the seat of government to Kashgar, and the disappearance of Chinese merchants with the Chinese ruler. A very intelligent merchant of the town replied as follows to questions put to him, as to the Chinese and native rulers, and it will be seen that it was especially favourable to the claims of the Chinese as the better masters.

"What you see on market-day now, is nothing to the life and activity there was in the time of the Khitay. To-day the peasantry come in with their fowls and eggs, with their cotton and yarn, or with their sheep and cattle and horses for sale, and they go back with printed cotton, a fur cap, or city made boots, or whatever domestic necessaries they may require, and always with a good dinner inside them; and then we shut up our shops and stow away our goods till next week's market-day brings back our customers. Some of us, indeed, go out with a small venture in the interim to the rural markets around, but our great day is market-day in town. It was very different in the Khitay time. People then bought and sold every day, and market-day was a much jollier time. There was no Kazi Rais, with his six Muhtasib, armed with the dira to flog people off to prayer, and drive the women out of the streets, and nobody was bastinadoed for drinking spirits and eating forbidden meats. There were mimics and acrobats, and fortune-tellers and story-tellers, who moved about amongst the crowd and diverted the people. There were flags and banners and all sorts of pictures floating at the shop fronts; and there was the jallab, who painted her face and decked herself in silks and laces to please her customers." And then, replying to a question whether the morals were not more depraved under this system than under the strict Mahomedan rule of the Athalik Ghazi, the same witness went on to say – "Yes, perhaps so. There were many rogues and gamblers too, and people did get drunk and have their pockets picked. But so they do now, though not so publicly, because we are under Islam, and the shariàt is strictly enforced."

This very graphic piece of evidence gives a clearer picture of the two systems of government, than perhaps paragraphs of explanatory writing; and, to return to the immediate subject before us, it shows that Yarkand has deteriorated in wealth and population since the Chinese were expelled from it fifteen years ago.

Khoten is situated 150 miles south-east of Yarkand, and about ninety miles due east of Sanju. It lies on the northern base of the Kuen Lun Mountains, and is the most southern city of any importance in Kashgaria. Under the Chinese, it was one of the most flourishing centres of industry, and as the entrepôt of all trade with Tibet it held a bustling active community. The Chinese called it Houtan, and even now it is locally called Ilchi. In addition to the wool and gold imported from Tibet, it possessed gold mines of its own in the Kuen Lun range, and was widely celebrated for its musk, silk, and jade. It likewise has suffered from the departure of the Chinese; and the energy and wealth of that extraordinary people have found, in the case of this city also, a very inadequate substitute in the strict military order and security introduced by Yakoob Beg.

Ush Turfan, New Turfan, is a small town on the road from Kashgar to Aksu, and is not to be confounded with the better known Turfan which is situated in the far east on the highway to Kansuh. This latter town is called Kuhna Turfan, or Old Turfan, to distinguish it from the other. Ush Turfan, without ever having been a place of the first importance, derived very considerable advantage from its position on the road followed by the Chinese caravans, and Yakoob Beg converted it into a strong military position by constructing several forts there.

Aksu, one of the old capitals of Kashgar, may fairly be called the third city of the state, although it has, perhaps, more than any other declined since the expulsion of the Khitay. Before that event took place there was a road across the mountains to Ili, by the Muzart glacier, and relays of men were kept continually employed in maintaining this delicately constructed road in a state fit for passage both on foot and mounted. But all this has been discontinued for many years now, and not only is the road quite impassable, but it would require much labour and more outlay to restore it to its former utility. In the neighbourhood of this town there are rich mines of lead, copper, and sulphur. These have, practically speaking, been untouched in recent years. Coal is also the ordinary fuel among the inhabitants; and both in intelligence as well as in worldly prosperity, the good people of Aksu used to be entitled to a foremost position among the Kashgari. As a consequence of the blocking up of the Muzart Pass, the old trade with Kuldja has completely disappeared, and all communications with this Russian province are now carried on by the Narym Pass to Vernoe. This change benefits the city of Kashgar, but is a decided loss to Aksu. Aksu may still justly rank as an important place, and under very probable contingencies may regain all the ground it has lost. In conclusion, we may say that Yakoob Beg has converted its old walls and castles into fortifications, which are said to be capable of resisting the fire of modern artillery.

We have enumerated six cities – Kashgar, Yangy Hissar, Yarkand, Khoten, Ush Turfan, and Aksu – and these constitute the territory of Kashgar proper. At one time, indeed, it was called Alty Shahr, or six cities, from this fact. In addition to these may be mentioned, in modern Kashgaria, Sirikul, or Tashkurgan, in the extreme south-west, which is principally of importance as the chief post on the frontier of Afghanistan. Near Sirikul are Badakshan and Wakhan, and it has been asserted that Shere Ali, of Afghanistan, viewed with a suspicious eye the presence of Kashgar in this quarter. It is quite certain that he would not have tolerated that further advance along the Pamir, which Yakoob Beg seemed on several occasions inclined to make. Sirikul commands the northern entrance of the Baroghil Pass, and has consequently been often mentioned in recent accounts of this road to India.

Maralbashi, or Bartchuk, a military post of some strength, is strategically important, as being placed at the junction of the roads from Kashgar and Yarkand, which lead by the bed of the Yarkand river to Kucha. But it possesses greater interest for us, as being the chief town of the district inhabited by the extraordinary tribe of the Dolans. These people are in the most backward state of intelligence that it is possible to imagine human beings to be capable of. In physical strength and stature they are, perhaps, the most miserable objects on the face of the earth, but their social position is still more deplorable. Some of their customs are of the most disgusting character, and their dwellings, such as they are, are of the rudest kind and subterranean. Travellers who have seen them in the larger cities, say that all the rumours that have been circulated about them do not exaggerate the true facts of the case; and the most pitiable part of the matter is, that they have become so resigned to their degraded position, that they are averse to any measure calculated to improve their existence. They have been compared to the Bhots of Tibet, but these latter are quite superior beings in comparison with them. They are treated with contempt and derision by all the neighbouring peoples.

Kucha is, or rather was, another very flourishing city which has never recovered the loss of Chinese wealth, and the subsequent disturbances during the Tungan wars. At one time Kucha had at the least 50,000 people, and it was not less famed than Aksu for the resources and ingenuity of its people. But now it is almost a deserted city. The greater part of the old town is a mass of ruins, and during the nine years that have elapsed since the Tungani were crushed by the Athalik Ghazi, scarcely anything has been done to repair the damage caused in those very destructive wars.

Korla, Kouralia, or Kouroungli, as it has been named, and Karashar, two towns which lie to the east of Kucha, have likewise never revived from the period of anarchy and bloodshed, through which the whole of this district has passed; but even the state of these places contrasts favourably with the far worse ruin wrought at Turfan. Turfan, perhaps more than any other, profited by the trade with China, for, although it may not itself have been as rich as either Aksu or Kucha, it derived a certain source of income as the rendezvous of all the caravans proceeding either east or west, or north to Urumtsi and Chuguchak. Very often a delay of several weeks took place, before merchants had arranged all the details for crossing the Tian Shan to Guchen, or for proceeding on to Hamil through the desert, and Turfan flourished greatly thereby. Now its streets are desolate, the whole country round it is represented to be a desert, and all its former activity and brightness have completely disappeared. Yakoob Beg had extended his rule a short distance east of Turfan, to a place called Chightam, but Turfan may be styled his most eastern possession.

We have now given a somewhat detailed description of the chief cities of Kashgaria, and in doing so we have distinctly intended thereby to convey the impression to the reader that it is only these and their suburbs that were at all productive under the late régime. To those who have been to Kashgar, nothing has remained more vividly impressed on their mind, than the exceedingly prosperous appearance of the farms in the belt of country from Yarkand to Kashgar; but at the same time this wealth of foliage and of blossom has only made the barrenness of the intervening and surrounding country more palpable. The farms are certainly not small in extent, but rather isolated from each other, and surrounded by orchards of plums, apples, and other fruit trees, in which they are completely embowered. A Kashgarian village is not a main street with a line of cottages and a few large farms; but it is a conglomeration of farmsteads covering a very extensive area of country, and presenting to the eye of a stranger rather a thinly peopled district than a community of villagers. Again, although the soil is naturally fertile, the system of agriculture is of an exhaustive character, and it seems probable that only a small portion of the land on each farm is at all productive. But these settlements, which present an exterior of rural happiness and simplicity, are but oases in an enormous extent of barren country. If each proprietor seems to possess more land than he can require, and if the fertile soil produces bountifully that which is unskilfully sown therein, the total amount of land under cultivation is still very limited indeed. Worse still, the soil is gradually exhausted, and as the system of sowing but one kind of grain seems to have taken deep root among the people, it is to be feared that it may be perpetuated without hope of recovery. There is a constant difficulty to be overcome, too, on account of the meagre supply of water. The general aspect of the region is barren, a bleak expanse stretches in all directions, and in the distance on three sides the outlines of lofty ranges complete the panorama. The scarcely marked bridle track that supplies the place of a highway in every direction except where the Chinese have left permanent tokens of their presence, offers little inducement to travellers to come thither; nor must these when they do come expect anything but the most imperfect modes of communication and of supply that a backward Asiatic district can furnish. If we wish to imagine the scene along the road from Sanju to Yarkand, we have only to visit some of the wilder of the Sussex Wealds to have it before us in miniature. The spare dried-up herbage may be still more spare, and the limestone may be more protruding on the Central Asian plain; and the wind will certainly remind you that it comes either from the desert or from the mountain regions; but you have the same undulating, dreary expanse that you have above Crowborough. The miserable sheep watched by some nomad Kirghiz will alone forcibly remind you that you are far away from the heights of the South Downs. In the far distance you will see the cloud-crested pinnacles of the Sanju Devan or of the Guoharbrum, and then the traveller cannot but remember that he is in one of the most inaccessible regions in the world. But if these southern roads are scarcely worthy of the name, the great high road from Kashgar to Aksu, Kucha, Korla, Karashar, and Turfan is a masterpiece of engineering construction. It need not fear to brave comparison with those of imperial Rome herself, and remains an enduring monument to Chinese perseverance, skill, and capacity for government. In China itself there are many great and important highways, but there the task was facilitated by the possession of great and navigable rivers. In Eastern Turkestan no such assistance was to be found, and consequently this road, along which was conducted all the traffic that passed from China to Jungaria, Kashgar, Khokand, and Bokhara, had to be maintained in the highest state of efficiency. To do this we cannot doubt was a most expensive undertaking, and, not mentioning such an exceptional work as the Muzart Pass, one that required a very perfect organization to accomplish with the success that for more than a century marked it.

The great drawback in the geographical position of Kashgar, is the want of a cheap and convenient outlet by water. The country itself suffers in a less degree from the same cause, but with a more perfect system of irrigation, the rivers, such as the Artosh, &c., which in spring carry down the mountain snows, might be made to give a more extended supply throughout western Kashgar at all events. The climate is equable, and the people suffer from no very prevalent disease, except in the more mountainous parts, and in Yarkand, where goitre is of frequent occurrence. The people themselves seem to be frugal and honest, but indeed there are so many races to be met with in this "middle land," that no general description can be given of them all. The Andijanis, or Khokandian merchants, are the most prosperous class in the community, and they appear to be, from all accounts, possessed of more than an average amount of business capacity in the arts of buying and selling. The Tarantchis are the descendants of Kashgarian labourers imported by the Chinese into Kuldja in 1762, and there is still both in the army and in the state a large number of Khitay remaining, who were permitted to pursue in secret the observances of their religion. The other races are ill disposed towards them, and attribute all the vices they can think of to their doors. But these Khitay managed to efface themselves in the country, and although they formed a very important minority among the males, they never appear to have been regarded in the light of a possible danger when their brethren from China should draw near. In addition to the native Kashgari, and these two important elements just mentioned, there are numerous immigrants from the border states, particularly from Khokand, to the people of whom Yakoob Beg naturally manifested especial favour. We have now given at some length a description of the geographical features of Kashgar, and are about to follow it up with an ethnological description as well as a historical statement of the past features of the same region. It is hoped that these preliminary chapters will clear the way from some obscurity for a correct appreciation of the career of the late Athalik Ghazi.

Kashgaria may be said to be a portion of Asia which possesses some great advantages of position and very considerable resources, but by a singularly hard fortune, except for the brief period of Chinese rule in modern times, it has been so distracted by intestine disturbances that it has retrograded further and further with each year. It is quite possible that its natural wealth has been too hastily taken for granted, and that it does not possess the necessary means of restoring itself in some degree to its former position. This is quite possible, but the best authorities at our disposal seem to point to a more promising conclusion, and to justify us in assuming that the position, natural resources, and general condition of Kashgar will enable a strong and settled rule to raise it into a really important and flourishing confederacy.

CHAPTER II.
ETHNOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION OF KASHGAR

In the extensive region stretching from the Caspian and Black Seas to the Kizil Yart and Pamir plateaus, and from the Persian Gulf to Siberia, the two great families, the Aryan and the Turanian, have in past centuries striven for supremacy. The latter, embracing in its bosom in this part of the world the more turbulent and warlike tribes, succeeded in subjecting those who claimed the same parent stock as European nations. The Tajik or Persian is the chief representative in this region of the Aryan family, and he has now for many centuries been the subject of the Turk rulers of the various divisions of Western Turkestan. These latter are the personifiers of Turanian traditions. The Tajik appears to have been subdued, not so much by the superiority of his conqueror in the art of war, as by his own inclination to lead a peaceful and harmless life. The pure Tajik, hardly to be met with now anywhere in Asia, except in the mountainous districts of the Hindoo Koosh, is represented to us to have been of an imposing presence, with a long flowing beard, aquiline nose, and large eyes. He is generally tall and graceful; yet in Khokand and Bokhara the Tajik is at present viewed much as the Saxons were by the Normans. In those states, too, a man is spoken of by his race. He is an Usbeg, a Kipchak, a Kirghiz, or a Tajik, as the case may be, and by this means the rivalry of past ages is to some extent preserved down to the present time. It is the dissension spread, or rather the destruction of any sympathy between the various races caused, by these outward tokens of diversity in origin, that has made Western Turkestan the familiar home of intestine disturbance, which has in its turn led up to the easy dismemberment of the various Khanates by Russian intrigue and by Russian force. In Eastern Turkestan the rivalry of races has become less bitter, and in nothing is this better manifested than in the fact that there a man is described by his native town. He may be a Tajik, or an Usbeg, or a Kirghiz, or a Kipchak, too, but he is only known as a Yarkandi, or a Kashgari. And while we are at once struck by this broad and salient difference in popular custom, and consequently in popular sentiment also, between the Western and Eastern divisions of Turkestan, a slight inquiry is sufficient to show that the antipathies of the various races towards each other have become much more a thing of the past in Kashgaria than they have in the Khanates of Khokand and its neighbours. At all events, the antipathies that still prevail in that state are clearly traceable to other causes than Aryan-Turanian hostility, and are undoubtedly produced either by religious fanaticism, motives of personal ambition, or the hatred roused by Chinese pretensions on the one hand, and Khokandian on the other, to the supreme control of Kashgaria. Bearing these facts clearly in mind, it is evident that ethnographical descriptions will not make the political relations of the peoples of the state more easily intelligible; yet, as matter of historical import, these cannot be altogether passed over in silence.

The inhabitants of the little known regions now variously known as Jungaria and Eastern Turkestan were, until recent years, considered to be of pure Tartar origin, and consequently members of the Turanian family. There are some still who believe that this definition is the most accurate. Others dispute it on various grounds, and with much plausibility. There is no question that the original inhabitants, historically speaking, were the Oigurs, or Uigurs, and these people were certainly Tartars. But frequently the Tajik merchants who traded with Kashgar in the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages, took up their abode in the country, and by degrees a large colony of Tajik immigrants was formed on the foundation of the original Oigur stock. These Tajiks gradually became Tartarised, but they still retained the unmistakable characteristics of the Aryan family. The two brothers Schlagintweit, and Mr. Shaw following in their footsteps, were the first to maintain this view, which is becoming generally accepted. We have, therefore, in Kashgar the strange spectacle of a Tajik people becoming not only unidentifiable from the Turanian stock with which it has been intermingled; but we have also a race tolerance that is unknown in any other portion of Asia. Undoubtedly the hostility of the settled and peaceful Andijani immigrant and Kashgari resident to the irreclaimable Kirghiz is deep-rooted, and, so long as the latter continues a source of danger to all peaceful communities, abiding; but even this sentiment, and the religious hatred that has at various epochs marked the political intercourse of Buddhist and Mahomedan, are probably less durable, and susceptible of greater improvement in the future, than the race antipathies that seem perennially vital among the tribes of Western Asia. The vast majority of the inhabitants of Alty Shahr are of Tajik descent. In the course of centuries the purity of their lineage has been leavened by much intermingling with Tartar blood, both at the time of the Mongol subjection and of the Chinese. In addition to these two great divisions, there are many Afghan and Badakshi settlers, who have flocked to Kashgar whenever the progress of events seemed to justify the expectation that military service in that state would prove a remunerative engagement. Many of these remained, and they have also left a clear impression on the features of the inhabitants. It is, however, to pre-historic times, or certainly to a period lost in the mist of history, that we must refer for that general exodus of the Aryan family from the Hindoo Koosh and the plains of Western Asia into the more secluded prairies of Kashgar, which took place when the Turanian nations first spread like destroying locusts over the face of that continent. It was at this period that Khoten, which in its name shows its Aryan origin, was founded.

The great nomadic tribe of the Kirghiz, or Kara Kirghiz, as the Russians call them, to distinguish them from the Kirghiz of the various hordes who, by the way, are not true Kirghiz at all, has at all times played a fitful, yet important part in the histories of Khokand, Jungaria, and Eastern Turkestan. Preserving their independence in the inaccessible region lying west of Lake Issik Kul, and along the Kizil Yart plateau and range, this tribe has always been a source of trouble to its neighbours, whosoever they might be. On various occasions, too, they have joined the career of conquest to their usual avocation of plunder, and under the few great leaders that have arisen amongst them they have appeared as conquerors, both of Eastern and Western Turkestan. But their achievements have never been of a permanent nature. Like the irregular undisciplined mass of horsemen which constitute their fighting force, their chief strength lay in a sharp and decisive attack. They had not the organization or the resources necessary for the accomplishment of any conquest of a permanent kind. Their incursions, even when most formidable and most sweeping, were essentially mere marauding onslaughts. Their object was plunder, not empire; and having secured the former, they recked little of the value of the latter. At one time they were able to carry their raids in almost any direction with perfect impunity; but as settled governments arose around their fastnesses, and curtailed their field of operations, what had been a life of adventure through simple love of excitement, became a struggle for sheer existence. The region where they dwelt was far too barren to support throughout the year even the limited numbers of the Kirghiz, and yearly they had to issue forth against prepared and disciplined enemies in search of the sustenance that, to preserve their existence, had to be obtained. But for the intestine quarrels that were sapping the life strength of the Asiatic states slowly away, there is no doubt that the Kirghiz would have been gradually exterminated. Soon, however, they had the skill to avail themselves of these disagreements to sell their services as soldiers to the highest bidders; and although they were not equal to the Kipchak tribes in valour, their alliance was considered of importance, and on many a dubious occasion sufficed to turn the fortune of the day. By such measures of policy their existence has been preserved, and at the present time they perform much the same functions, and are regarded in much the same manner by their neighbours, as in the past.

The Kipchaks, another great tribe, who however are scarcely represented at all in Kashgaria, pride themselves on being the most select of all the Usbegs, but their day of power has passed by, for the present at all events. Thirty years ago they were at the height of their success, but they incurred the jealousy of other Usbeg tribes and of the Kirghiz. Owing to the abilities of their great chief, Mussulman Kuli, they succeeded in erecting in Khokand a powerful state, which was able to restrain the encroachments of Bokhara, at that time the great enemy of the former Khanate. But the plots that broke out against them in 1853, in conjunction with the advance of Russia on the Syr Darya, were crowned with success, and with the execution of Mussulman Kuli the Kipchak power was completely broken. Since that date, however, several of the more distinguished leaders who have appeared on the scene, such as Alim Kuli and Abdurrahman Aftobatcha, have been members of this clan. The eastern portion of the dominion of Yakoob Beg is almost exclusively inhabited by Calmucks, or tribes of Calmuck descent. The great majority of the inhabitants of Manchuria and Jungaria are of Calmuck descent, and even in Russia in Europe there are many settlements of this tribe along the Volga and the Don. None of these, however, possess any political importance except those who inhabit the country north of Gobi and between Eastern Turkestan and China, and the chief of these are the Khalkas. The Calmucks are attached by old associations to the Government of Pekin; and, although they have sometimes revolted against, and often caused trouble to, the Central Government, they have generally acknowledged their culpability and submitted to the Chinese authorities. In the revolt of the Tungani the Calmucks remained true to China, and performed very opportune service on various occasions. The Chinese army in Eastern Turkestan was mainly recruited from among these tribes, who became distinguished from the Tungani by their religion and fidelity.

The origin of the Tungani, or Dungans, as the Russians call them, is much in dispute; and as they played so important a part in the loss of Kashgar and Ili by China, as well as in the history of the rule of Yakoob Beg, it may be as well to put the facts as they stand at some length before the reader. There is no question, we believe, that the Chinese in applying the term Tungani attach the meaning thereto of Mahomedan. There is equal reason for supposing that the term Khitay, literally meaning simply Chinese, has been applied to the Buddhists by general usage. If we acknowledge the validity of these two assumptions – and, so far as we have been able to ascertain, the best authorities have adopted them – there would be little difficulty in explaining who the Tungani were. Granting these, they would simply be the Mahomedan subjects in the eastern portions of China. But others believe that the Tungani are a distinct race, presenting peculiar ethnological features. According to this version, the tribe of the Tungani can be traced back as a distinct community to the fifth and sixth centuries, when they were seated along the Tian Shan range, with their capital at Karashar. The most recent investigations, under Colonel Prjevalsky, are believed to show no signs of there having been any important cities in this quarter. It may be convenient to mention here, that at that time they were Buddhists; but when Islamism broke over Asia in the eighth century, they were among the first to adopt the new tenets. This defection from the religion of China brought them into collision with the Emperors of Pekin, and many of these Tungani were deported into Kansuh and Shensi, where we are to suppose they continued a race apart, with their own religion and their own code of morality, for more than ten centuries. Even granting the possibility of such a consistency to a new religion, which history informs us was thrust upon them at the point of the sword, it seems scarcely credible that we should not hear more of this troublesome tribe in Chinese history. Frequent allusions are made in imperial edicts and other official proclamations to the Tungani, but always in reference to their religion, and not in any way as if they were any other but heretic Chinamen. Besides, even in this way little is heard of the Tungani until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when very sharp measures were taken against them by the emperors, solely because religious propagandists from their ranks were appearing as enemies of a Buddhist Government. The theory that the Tungani were a people and not a sect is new, but it is possible that it may be a true discovery. On the other hand, it is far more probable that it is only an ingenious attempt at elucidating what appears on the face of it to be a simple matter enough. The reader must decide for himself between the two versions. If the Tungani are to be considered a distinct race, then the majority of the inhabitants of Eastern Turkestan are not Calmucks, but Tungani; if the view taken here is adopted, then they are Calmucks who have at various times adopted Mahomedanism. These are the chief tribes of this portion of Central Asia; and in the following pages it may be as well to bear in mind that Khitay is applied exclusively to the Buddhist or governing class, and Tungani to the Mahomedan or subject race in Kansuh and its outlying dependencies. As race antipathies have not entered during recent times so much into the contests of the people of the regions immediately under consideration as religions, the difference as to the true significance of the term Tungani does not materially affect one's view of the general question.

CHAPTER III.
HISTORY OF KASHGAR

The great difficulty encountered in giving a description of the past history of Kashgar is to evolve, out of the series of successive conquests and subjections that have marked the existence of that state for almost two thousand years, a narrative which shall, without confusing the reader with a mere repetition of names that convey little meaning, place the chief features of its history before us in a light that may make its more recent condition intelligible to us. We may say in commencement, that those who desire a historical account in all its fulness of Kashgar must turn to that contributed by Dr. Bellew to the Official Report of Sir Douglas Forsyth on his embassy to Yarkand. They will there find ample details of the events that took place in this region of Central Asia from the commencement of our era; but a mere reiteration of the various calamities, with brief and intermittent periods of prosperity, each wave of which bore so striking a similarity to its predecessor, would not serve the purpose we have at present in view – viz., of considering its own history, for the purpose of better understanding its relations with its neighbours and with China, and how the state consolidated by the Athalik Ghazi was constructed on ruins handed down by an almost indistinguishable antiquity.

For a considerable number of years anterior to the ninth century, the Chinese Empire extended to the borders of Khokand and Cashmere. But the dissensions that marked the latter years of the Tang dynasty were not long in producing such weakness at the extremity of this vast empire that the subject races and their proper ruling families were enabled to obtain either their personal liberty or their lost positions once more, unhappily without in any case achieving with the severance of their connection with China any perceptible amelioration in their lot – indeed, on almost every occasion only binding themselves with harder fetters, and sinking into a deeper state of servitude. When the petty princelets of Kashgar, Yarkand, Turfan, and the rest broke away from their allegiance to Pekin, and when the imperial resources were unable to coerce their rebellious subjects, the whole country passed under the hands of their feudatories, who split up into innumerable factions, waged continuous war, and sacrificed the happiness and welfare of the subject people to a desire to promote their own individual interests. As the barons and counts of Italy in the Middle Ages devastated some of the fairest provinces of Europe, so these Oigur princes fought for their own hand in the valleys of the Artosh and the Ili. It is very possible that this state of things would have continued until China became sufficiently strong and settled to reassert once more her dormant rights over her lost provinces, but that a new force appeared on the western frontiers of Kashgar. As early as 676 the Arabs, under Abdulla Zizad, had crossed over from Persia, and were carrying destruction and terror in their course along the banks of the Oxus. At that moment a beautiful and gifted queen, named Khaton, ruled for her son in Bokhara. She had not long been left a widow when her country was threatened by this unexpected and terrible invasion. Although assistance came to the queen from all the neighbouring States, including Kashgar, she was defeated twice in the open field, and compelled to seek safety within the walls of her capital. But the Arab leader was unable to take the city by storm, and slowly retired, with a large number of captives and an immense quantity of booty, back to Persia. Some years later the Arabs again returned, but withdrew on the payment of a heavy indemnity. Another chief, Kutaiba, was still more successful, for on one occasion he carried fire and sword through Kashgar to beyond Kucha. This was the first occasion on which the doctrines of Mahomed had been carried into the realms of China, and with so cogent an argument as the sword it is not wonderful that some hold was secured on the country. Subsequent expeditions in the next few centuries strengthened this beginning, and it was not long before the ruling classes of Kashgar became infected with the new doctrine.

In the tenth century, Satuk Bughra Khan, the ruling prince of Kashgar, who had been converted to Islam, forced his people to adopt that religion, although it is tolerably clear that up to this time there had been no acknowledgment of supremacy to the representative of Mahomed on earth. A disunited state, which had on several occasions felt the heavy hand of the authority of its generals, and at whose very gates its power was consolidated, could not but be in some sort of dependence to the stronger power, as there was no ally to be found sufficiently powerful to protect it, now that the Chinese had retrogressed into Kansuh. Towards the end of the tenth century the Mahomedans met with a series of reverses from the Manchoo and Khoten troops, who still preserved their relations, political and commercial, with China. It was in the neighbourhood of Yangy Hissar that their general, Khalkhalu, inflicted the most serious defeat on the Mahomedan rulers of Kashgar, but within the next twenty years, assistance having come from Khokand, these defeats were retrieved, and Khoten itself for the first time passed under the rule of Islam. The family of Bughra Khan was now firmly established as rulers of Eastern Turkestan, and their limits were almost identical with those of the late Yakoob Beg.

The Kara Khitay, who had migrated from the country bordering on the Amoor and the north of China, after long wanderings, had settled in the western parts of Jungaria, and, having founded the city of Ili, in course of time formed, in union with some Turkish tribes, a powerful and cohesive administration. Their chief was styled Gorkhan, Lord of Lords, and their religion was Buddhism. It was of this tribe, according to some, that the celebrated Prester John, or King John, was supposed to be the chief in the Middle Ages. Some neighbours who had been harassed by predatory tribes came to Gorkhan for assistance, which was willingly conceded; but, having successfully repulsed the Kipchaks and other tribes, this leader did not withdraw from the country he had occupied as a friend and ally. Not only did he then annex Kashgar and Khoten, but he crossed the Pamir into the province of Ferghana, and in a short period brought Bokhara, Samarcand, and Tashkent under his dominion. This extensive empire was of very brief duration however, and civil war was waged for more than half a century after the first successes of Gorkhan, in which Khiva, or Khwaresm, and the Kara Khitay fought for supremacy. A chief of the Naiman tribe of Christians, Koshluk by name, then entered the lists against the aged Gorkhan, who was, after some hard fighting, defeated and captured. This was in the year 1214. Koshluk's triumph was also, however, of very brief duration, for he now came into contact with one of the most formidable antagonists that the soil of Asia has ever produced, Genghis Khan.

The Mongols or Mughols began to appear as a distinct tribe about the same time that the Kara Khitay migrated to Jungaria, and as early as the commencement of the twelfth century they had carried destruction into the Chinese provinces of Shensi and Kansuh. When Genghis Khan appeared upon the scene he found the tribe which he was destined to lead to such great triumphs in a state of singular strength, and its neighbours either at discord among themselves or only just recovering from a long period of anarchy. The Chinese were particularly divided at that moment, and Genghis Khan, who had family connections in that empire, soon found it an easy task to lead successful inroads into the heart of his rich but defenceless neighbour. Genghis Khan was born at Dylon Yulduc, in the year 1154. His father, Mysoka Bahadur, was a great warrior, and waged several successful wars with the Tartars. The earlier years of Genghis Khan were occupied exclusively in overcoming the difficulties of his own position. His tribe, divided into several distinct bodies, formed only one confederacy when a foe had to be encountered in the field. It required years to remove the dislike they experienced at submission to a distinct authority; and it was only when the renown of his military achievements threw a halo over his name that these tribes could be induced to acknowledge a supremacy which they had become powerless to resist. But during these years, when he led a life unknown and insignificant as the chief of a small nomad clan, he was all the time preparing for a wider career, and for a more extended authority. It was while he was residing in the remote district round the salt springs of Baljuna that he drew up the code on which his administrative system was founded. It was based on the fundamental principle of obedience to the head, on the maintenance of order and sobriety in the ranks of the warriors, and on the equal participation in the spoils of battle by all; but its regulations were so strict on the former points, and the gain of the individual had to be so completely sacrificed for the advantage of the many, that at first the establishment of this code of order had rather the effect of driving his followers from him, than of attracting to his standard zealots capable of the conquest of a world. It was not until the year 1203, when he was nearly forty-nine years of age, that Genghis Khan succeeded in bringing all the Mongol tribes under his leadership. No sooner had he accomplished this much than he embarked on military enterprises, which, in the course of a very few years, placed the greater part of Asia at his disposal. Having subjugated various Tartar and Tangut tribes, he included them in his military organization, and by making them embrace his system of compulsory service in the army, he found himself in the possession of an enormous following. Genghis Khan therefore ruled at the time we have specified over Kashgar, including Khoten, Jungaria, and the Tangut country; and there was no force capable of opposing his except, in the east China, and in the west the government of Khiva, at this period omnipotent in Western Turkestan. The rumours which reached the Shah of Khwaresm of the formation of this new confederacy in Mugholistan induced him to send an embassy to discover the true facts of the case, and accordingly, while Genghis Khan was prosecuting a war against the Chinese, there arrived in his camp the emissaries of Western Asia. Haughty and imperious as this conqueror undoubtedly was, he received the embassy affably, and with expressions of the deepest friendship. He sent them back with rich presents and the following characteristic message: – "I am King of the East. Thou art King of the West. Let merchants come and go between us and exchange the products of our countries." In furtherance of this wish he sent a mission composed of merchants and officials to represent the advantages that would be derived from mutual intercourse. But the Shah of Khiva, either incredulous of the formidableness of the adversary with whom he had to deal, or mistaking his own strength, did not reciprocate the amicable expressions of Genghis Khan, nor, when the merchants who had been despatched to his country were murdered, did he make any offer of reparation. Such treatment would not be tolerated by any civilized ruler of the nineteenth century, much less was it brooked by an irresponsible conqueror, whose will was his sole law, in the thirteenth. As soon as his campaign with China had closed with success, Genghis Khan made every preparation for the punishment of this act of treachery. It was then that Genghis Khan, with an armed horde of many hundred thousands, burst upon the astonished peoples of Western Asia like a meteor from the east. It was then that some of the fairest regions of the earth were given over to a soldiery to devastate, a soldiery who had raised the work of destruction to the level of one of the fine arts; and whose handiwork in Bokhara, Balkh, Samarcand, Khiva and the lost cities of the desert, is to be seen clearly imprinted in the ruins which mark the site of ancient capitals, even at the present moment, 700 years after the Tartar conqueror swept all resistance from his path. Afghanistan, and the mountain ranges which are now considered to be impassable by Russians, did not retard the progress of this "Scourge of God." Cabul, Candahar, Ghizni fell to the warriors of far distant Mongolia, as they fell not forty years ago to British valour, and as they must again fall when the onset shall be made with equal intrepidity and with equal discipline. And not content with having defaced the map of Asia, with having converted rich and populous cities into masses of ruins, and with having depopulated regions once prolific in all that makes life enjoyable, Genghis Khan carried the terror of his name into the most remote recesses of the Hindoo Koosh. He wintered in the district of Swat on our north-west frontier, a territory which is quite unknown to us except by hearsay, and which has only been occupied by the Mongol and Macedonian conquerors. From his headquarters on the banks of the Panjkora he sent messengers to Delhi; and it is uncertain whether he did not meditate the addition of an Indian triumph to those already obtained.

A rebellion in the far eastern portion of his dominions distracted his attention from the Indus, and he was compelled to hasten with all speed to quell in person the rising that was jeopardising his position in the seat of his power. He hastily broke up from his quarters in Swat, and, by the valley of the Kunar and Chitral, he entered Kashgar, through the Baroghil Pass. Although he suffered much loss from a journey across mountain roads, which were scarcely practicable in the early spring, he succeeded in reaching Yarkand, with his main body, and hastening across Turkestan arrived at Karakoram, his capital, in time to quell the disturbance. After this his life was spent in conquering China, a feat which he never accomplished. But in several campaigns, extending over a period of about twenty years, he worsted the Imperial troops so continually, that before his death, in 1227, he had occupied all the northern provinces of that empire, with Pekin, and left to his son and successor, Ogdai Khan, the task of completing the work which he had commenced. On the death of Genghis Khan, his vast possessions were divided amongst his children, and Kashgar, including Jungaria, Khwaresm, and Afghanistan, fell to the lot of Chaghtai Khan. This ruler was able to hold during his life the extensive territory he had succeeded to; but on his death dissensions broke out in all quarters of the country, and produced a fresh distribution of the various provinces. It may be mentioned that, although Chaghtai was a fanatical Buddhist and a confirmed debauchee, he was a prudent and sagacious ruler, and no unworthy successor to his distinguished father. The dissensions that broke out on his decease continued, with more or less violence, for a period of almost 100 years after that event took place, and they finally only received a momentary solution in the formation of a new kingdom of Mugholistan, or Jattah Ulus, as it was more specifically called, under one of Chaghtai's descendants.

As briefly and as clearly as possible, we will endeavour to lay before the reader the chief events of this troubled epoch, when the numerous progeny of Genghis Khan warred throughout the whole extent of Central Asia, and a term was only at last placed to their restlessness by their disappearance. In the first place, it may be as well to mention, that the religions of Christ, Buddha, and Mahomed, were equally tolerated in Eastern Turkestan during the greater part of this period. The Arab invasion and the advance of Islam, had been hurled back beyond Bokhara "the Holy," by the victorious arms of the great Buddhist conqueror, Genghis Khan; and for a long period after the Mongol conquests, little was heard of attempts at conversion to the tenets of the "true Prophet." But it must not be supposed that, although Genghis Khan, in the sack of Bokhara, had almost exterminated the race of Mahomedan priests, he was disposed to stamp out the new heresy from his realms. Having crushed its power in the field, he was quite content to let it live on or die out, so long as his imperial or personal interests were not affected. So we have the strange picture before us, of the three great doctrines of the earth flourishing side by side in Eastern Turkestan in the fourteenth century. The Nestorian Christians of Kashgar, who in the time of Marco Polo were rich and flourishing, were obliged later on to succumb to the violent measures of the other members of the community, and have entirely disappeared for many centuries.

Shortly after the death of Chaghtai Khan, Kaidu, a great-grandson of Genghis, obtained the throne of Kashgar and Yarkand; and a few years later on, by a skilful piece of diplomacy, backed up by force, added thereto the greater part of Khokand and Bokhara. His triumph was, however, of brief duration, and he was displaced by other competitors. Dava Khan, the son of Burac, the great-grandson of Chaghtai, had been appointed governor of Khoten, but his ambition was not satisfied with less than the throne of Western Turkestan also. He eventually obtained his desire; but in a rash moment he threw himself in the path of the Chinese Emperor, Timour Khan, who was returning from a raid carried almost to the gates of Lahore. He was defeated somewhere in the neighbourhood of Maralbashi, and was compelled to acknowledge the supremacy of China. He is of some note to us, as having been the father of Azmill Khoja, who was selected as ruler by the people themselves, about the year 1310, and from whom descend that line of Khoja kings of Kashgar, who have clung to their hereditary claims for a longer time than any other royal Central Asian house. The last of the Chaghtai Khans who held the sceptre with any effective purpose, was Kazan Ameer. On his death another period of trouble broke out, and military governors and rival princelets of dubious titles advanced their pretensions to the vacant seat. Up to this all the rulers had, however, been Buddhists. Toghluc Timour, one of the few remaining representatives of the Genghis families, had only been saved by the pity of a leading man in Kashgar, from one of the most extensive massacres of his kinsmen, and for years he was obliged to lead an uncertain existence in the mountains or deserts bordering on the state. His associations were all Buddhist; but one day he was so struck by the definition of the "true faith" given by the descendant of a Mahomedan priest, spared by Genghis Khan at the destruction of Bokhara, that he made a vow to become a Mussulman when he had regained his rights. Not long after this the turn of events in Kashgar made people seek for some person with recognized claims to be their ruler, and none in this respect surpassed Toghluc Timour. He, on succeeding to the throne, openly owned his conversion to Islam, and in a few years he was gradually imitated by all the leading chiefs of Turkestan. From this time downwards to the present day, the religion of the majority in this state has been Mahomedanism, except perhaps during the Chinese rule, when the number of Chinese merchants, officials, and soldiers, put the minority of the followers of Buddha on a par with those of the rival religion. Toghluc died in 1362.

It was about this time that the second great conqueror of Asia appeared upon the scene. Timour was born in 1333 in the Shahrisebz suburb of Kish. He was the son of Turghay, governor of that district and chief of the Birlas tribe, and on the death of his father he himself became governor of Kish also. During his earlier years he was hospitably received at the Court of Kazan Ameer, and that ruler, in addition to giving him several high and distinguished appointments, married him to his beautiful granddaughter Olja Turkan Khaton. Timour did not continue long in favour at Court. His restless spirit impelled him to fields of greater activity than any the Ameer could, or indeed felt disposed to, place at his disposal. He openly mutinied against the central authority in his government of Kish, and on being overthrown by the troops of the state, he sought safety with his wife among the Turcomans of the Khivan desert. Among these uncertain nomads he felt scarcely secure, and collecting round him a small band of desperadoes, he entered upon a more ambitious enterprise by undertaking a marauding expedition into the Persian province of Seistan. This was attended with considerable success, but he himself was wounded in the foot by an arrow. From the effects of this wound he never completely recovered, and was known henceforth as Timour Lang, Timour the Lame, whence the well-known name of Tamerlane. The éclat obtained by this marauding expedition stood him in good stead, for shortly afterwards he was able to raise a sufficient force to invade Tashkent. He occupied the whole of what is now Russian Khokand including Ferghana, and he placed a fresh occupant on the throne, Kabil Shah, in 1363. In the following years he contended for supremacy with another chief named Husen, and in 1369 had so far been victorious that he threw off the mask, and declared himself king. He made Samarcand his capital, and converted that once populous city into the wonder and admiration of Western Asia. Having settled his internal affairs, he commenced operations against the states lying beyond his border. The mountaineers of Badakshan were the first to incur his wrath, and after several stubborn battles they were obliged to acknowledge his supremacy. He then turned his attention to his northern frontiers, beyond which the Jattah princes reigned in Jungaria. He overcame their prince, Kamaruddin, in several encounters, but not with complete success until his final campaign against him in 1390. As he advanced they retired to the fastnesses east of Lake Issik Kul, and only reissued from their hiding-places when the invader had withdrawn.

To return to Kashgar, on the death of Toghluc, his son Khize Khoja was displaced and did not regain possession of his kingdom till 1383, when he was thirty years of age. He was a stanch Mussulman, and was on terms of as much amity and as close alliance with Timour as it was possible for any neighbour, wishing to preserve his independence, to be. Allied as he was with, yet not participating in the wars of Timour, against the Jattahs, he suffered in common with those people from the expedition of 1389–90, when both sides of the Tian Shan were ravaged by the armies of that ruler. Although for the next fifteen years they maintained friendly relations, it can easily be imagined that Khize Khoja was not very comfortable with so formidable a suzerain just over his frontiers. The irksomeness of the position is well illustrated by the orders transmitted to Khize Khoja by Timour, to have corn planted and cattle collected at certain places for the immense army which he was levying for the invasion of China. It was while engaged in fulfilling these commands, that news reached the ruler of Kashgar that this "Scourge of God" had died suddenly on the 5th of February, 1405. Khize Khoja himself survived but a short time afterwards. For the second time within the short space of 150 years had the possessions of a great conqueror to undergo the process of redistribution. In Timour's case it was simpler than it had been in that of Genghis Khan, for the former ruler left no worthy representative of his cause as the Mongol conqueror had in Ogdai and Chaghtai. The branches of the great family of Genghis struck root so deeply, that down to modern times he has had descendants who perpetuate his name, but Timour left none such. With the death of his favourite son Jehangir, his hopes of having a worthy successor expired.

Kashgar was in particular the scene of confusion and trouble, and it was not until about 1445 that any settled government was attained, when Seyyid Ali, grandson of the aged and patriotic minister Khudadar, restored some order and cohesion to the distracted country for a short period. He died in 1457. During these years Yunus, king of Jungaria, played a very prominent part in all the disturbances that were occurring on his borders. He is represented to have been a very enlightened prince, and emissaries from foreign nations returned from his court relating with surprise how they had found a courteous and refined man where they expected to have seen a coarse and savage Mongol. While Yunus ruled in Jungaria another striking individual was predominant in Kashgar. Ababakar, son of Saniz, who was the son of Seyyid Ali, ruler of Kashgar, was one of the few sovereigns of that state whose acts entitle them to consideration. During a long and troubled tenure of power he had the good fortune to overcome many difficulties, and although his career was to become clouded before his death, the brilliant years that preceded the catastrophe justify us in considering his career for a little while. He was a great athlete, hunter and soldier, and was so favoured by his mother on that account that he distanced his brethren in the race for supremacy. As governor of Khoten he soon absorbed Yarkand, and long and furious were the wars he waged with Hydar, the ruler of Kashgar, who was assisted by Yunus of Jungaria. Nor, although successful on several occasions in the field against the allied forces, could Ababakar hope to overcome the huge armies at the disposal of Yunus; and it was not until Hydar himself foolishly broke off from Yunus, that Ababakar succeeded in asserting his claim to all Eastern Turkestan. War then broke out between Hydar and Yunus, and the latter with the assistance of large reinforcements from Jungaria overthrew and captured his former ally. But these dissensions favoured the cause of Ababakar, and on the death of Yunus in 1486, his possession of Kashgar became undisputed. The first serious danger with which he was menaced after his complete possession of Kashgar, was in 1499, when Ahmad, the son of Yunus, or Alaja the "slayer," as he was generally called, invaded his territory at the head of the Jattah Mongols. The campaign was in the commencement indecisive, but Ababakar before long triumphed over his northern invader.

During the next fifteen years Ababakar ruled in peace and prosperity in Kashgar, accumulating great riches and presenting an object of attraction to his covetous neighbours. During these years the country, although ruled in an arbitrary way, flourished, and, as one of the native chronicles put it, "A traveller could go from Andijan to Hamil on the borders of China without fear of molestation, and without having to make an extra long march in order to find a place wherein to rest and obtain refreshment." But in 1513 a storm broke upon his country that resulted in his complete overthrow. Said, son of Ahmad and brother of Mansur, who was ruling in Jungaria, undertook the invasion of Kashgar in that year, and it was not long before he occupied Kashgar, which, however, Ababakar left but a heap of ruins. His advance on Yangy Hissar was opposed, but, having defeated the army of Kashgar before that city, he occupied it without any further opposition, and thus secured what has been called the key of Yarkand as well as of Kashgar. For some months Ababakar remained shut up in Yarkand, but on the approach of Said's army he abandoned that position and fled to Khoten. But not long afterwards he retired still further into the mountainous country south-east of Kashgar, and halted some time at Karanghotagh. But being first plundered and then deserted by his attendants, he withdrew into the valleys and deserts of the Tibetan table-land. For many months he wandered, half-starved and solitary, in this deserted region, and at last it was reported that he had been found murdered by some of the mountaineers. Such was the end of the once magnificent Ababakar, a prince who in his fortunes reminds us very much of the great Darius. That he was avaricious is clear to those who read of the great treasures he had stored away; that he was bloodthirsty and cruel is impossible of denial; but that he possessed in his earlier years many of the virtues, with some of the vices, of a great ruler is equally incontestable. His son Jehangir, whom he had left in command at Yarkand, on the approach of the army of Said fled to Sanju, and was in a few months captured and executed. About this epoch the third great Asiatic conqueror was appearing on the scene. Babur was born in 1481, and was chosen to succeed his father Uman Sheikh on the throne of Khokand, by the nobles of that state, when he was only twelve years of age. This conqueror of India influenced but indirectly the fortunes or Kashgar. His career was in another sphere, and it is not necessary here to enter into any description of his life, such as has been given of his predecessors Genghis Khan and Timour.

Said, having overcome Ababakar, employed himself in extending his rule over the neighbouring states. He was seized with the desire of occupying that mountainous region, which is divided into almost as many petty states as it contains mountain chains, lying between our Indian frontier and the Pamir and Badakshan. But although he employed all his resources in endeavouring to subject the Kafirs of Bolor, or Kafiristan as it is now called, he was unable to make any permanent additions in this direction. In other years he carried fire and sword into Tibet and Cashmere; and it was when returning from one of these expeditions, in the year 1532, that he expired from the effects of the rarefied atmosphere, near the Karakoram pass. His death was the signal for the outbreak of fresh disturbances. His legitimate sons were ousted by Rashid, the son of Said by a slave, who had already distinguished himself as a general in the wars against Kafiristan and Tibet, and on the death of Rashid after a brief reign, the confusion became, if possible, worse confounded. It would be tedious in the extreme to follow the variations that now took place. Benedict Goes, a Portuguese missionary and traveller, found a ruler named Mahomed Khan on the throne in 1603, by whom he was hospitably received; but as he had placed the sister of the Khan, when returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, under an obligation to him, this is scarcely a fair criterion either of the personal merits of this ruler, or of the state of civilization to which the country had attained.

It was now that the Khoja family appeared prominently upon the scene. Two factions were playing the parts of Montagu and Capulet in Eastern Turkestan in the earlier years of the seventeenth century. They were known as the Aktaghluc and Karataghluc, and in the course of their strife the leader of the former called in to his aid the Khoja Kalar of Khodjent, a descendant of Azmill before mentioned. It was in the year 1618 that this Khoja first came to Kashgar, and his grandson, Hadayatulla, was the chief means of attracting the affections of the people to this family. That veneration has not disappeared to-day, and the Hazrat Afak, as he is generally spoken of, is scarcely inferior in the eyes of the people to Mahomed himself. The great miracles he is reported to have wrought, and the peculiar sanctity which attached to him during his life, gave him complete ascendancy throughout the country, and before his death he was entrusted with the supreme authority. His son, Yahya or Khan Khoja, succeeded him during his lifetime, but was murdered in a riot a few months after the death of Hadayatulla. Then recommenced with fresh vigour the old series of disturbances. Aspirant after aspirant appeared in the political arena, but, as each had little claim to lead on account of original merit, a successful rival always was forthcoming, and so this wearying cycle continued until 1720.

The course of the history of Kashgar has now been brought down to the commencement of the eighteenth century, during which a fresh change occurred in the history of the country by the Chinese conquest. It may be well, therefore, before narrating that event and the causes which immediately produced it, to consider the chief lessons taught us by the history of Eastern Turkestan, as revealed in the preceding pages. The most cursory reader must have been struck by the fact, that only twice in the course of eight centuries did the country secure a firm and settled government, and they were when two conquerors, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, reduced every semblance of authority to one bare level of subjection. At fitful moments there arose, indeed, some leader, Yunus, Ababakar, or the first Khojas, capable of preserving for a few years his frontiers against the inroads of hostile neighbours, and of maintaining an outward show of prosperity and tranquillity to foreign travellers; but even such gleams of sunshine as these were transitory on the dark horizon of the condition of mankind in Central Asia. With the fall of each pretender, too, hopes of an improvement became fainter in the breasts of the people; and when the successors of the Khoja saint showed themselves not less amenable to the errors and frailties of their predecessors than any past ruler had been, it was to some extraneous circumstance, we may feel sure, that the people looked for aid. There is an old saying in this part of the world, that when "the people's tithe of bricks is full, then comes a Moses in the land;" and it cannot be doubted that in the year 1720 the people of Kashgar had suffered much and for so long, that relief, so that it came effectually from some quarter or another, could not be otherwise than welcome. But the Moses who had been, for centuries almost, expected, had as yet not proved forthcoming, and as "hope deferred maketh the heart sick," so had the Kashgari lost the courage even to look forward to a period when their life of misery, under oppressive tyrants and exorbitant taxation, aggravated by every form of peculation in its levy, might be changed for a more favourable state of being. There can be no doubt that if the chaos which reigned throughout Jungaria and Kashgar had continued much longer those vast regions would have been completely exhausted. As it was the population decreased in alarming proportions, and the wealth and general resources of the country disappeared with no apparent means of supplying the gap. What is, perhaps, most surprising of all is that all these later rulers seem to have lived in a sort of fools' paradise with regard to the resources of their state. The thought never seems to have occurred to them that there must be an end some day or other to a realm distracted by continual wars and sedition, and that subjects who have been tyrannised over for centuries will at last rise up in arms and teach their tyrants, in the words of the poet, "how much the wretched dare." These Khans or Ameers of Central Asia are not worthy of one moment's consideration for their own sake; but, as some account of them is a proper preparation for the modern history of Kashgar, they have been described in this chapter. From the disappearance of Chinese authority in Central and Western Asia in the eighth and ninth centuries, down to the commencement of the eighteenth century, the history of Kashgar, in common with that of its neighbours, was a series of misfortunes. There is nothing to attract our sympathies in any of the rulers, with the exception perhaps of Yunus; and all our commiseration is monopolised for the unhappy races who peopled that region. We therefore have arrived at this crisis in a fit state to appreciate the feelings of the Kashgari at the changes that occurred in the eighteenth century; and before we consider, in a fresh chapter, those alterations we may close this without regret at the disappearance of a long line of Central Asian Khans, who possessed scarcely one redeeming quality among many vices.

CHAPTER IV.
THE CONQUEST OF KASHGAR BY CHINA

Before continuing the narrative of the events that took place in Kashgar after the year 1720, until it fell into the hands of the Chinese in 1760, it may be as well to consider briefly the history of China, in order that it may be intelligible to us how that power was induced to undertake such far distant enterprises, and how, moreover, it was able to accomplish them successfully. In the earlier years of the seventeenth century the dynasty of Ming was seated on the throne of Pekin, but its power had been shaken to its foundations by repeated disasters in wars with the Mantchoo Tartars, who had wrested the province of Leaou Tung from the Emperor Wan-leh, before his death in 1620. The Mantchoos are said to have been the descendants of the Mongol conquerors of the thirteenth century, who had been forced to take refuge in the wilds north of China when the native Chinese rose up and destroyed their power. Whether this very plausible suggestion be true or not, or whether, as some affirm, these were a new race issuing from the frozen regions of Kamschatka and driven south by the necessity for obtaining sustenance for their increasing numbers, matters little for our present purpose. It is certain that they were a warlike people at this time, and that they could bring considerable numbers into the field, and it is very probable that, when they had obtained some success, their ranks were swollen by recruits from their Tartar kinsmen of Eastern Jungaria. On the death of the Chinese Emperor Wan-leh, dissensions broke out in China as to his successor, and in the struggle that ensued the Mantchoos were invited in to support the cause of one of the claimants. Their aid turned the scale in his favour; but when the fortunes of war had been clearly manifested, the Mantchoos showed no disposition to take their departure as had been stipulated. As the Saxons in our own history, and the Mongols in the Chinese had acted, so now did the Mantchoos, and in 1644 their first Emperor Chuntche was installed in the imperial dignities, as the first of the present ruling dynasty of Tatsing, or "sublimely pure," When Chuntche was crowned by his victorious soldiery, it must not be supposed that he had conquered the whole of China. During the seventeen years of his reign he was constantly engaged in warring with the native Chinese forces; but always with invariable success. In 1661 Kanghi, his son, ascended the throne, and by a series of judicious measures and successful enterprises, firmly maintained the position won in China by his father. It was during this brilliant reign that Tibet was annexed to the Chinese Empire, and from Cochin-China and the frontiers of Birma to the River Amoor there was none to question the power of the Mantchoo Government. It cannot be doubted that the conquest of Tibet opened up fresh ideas in the minds of the Chinese as to their right to rule in Eastern Turkestan; and with the re-assertion of their old suzerainty over the Tibetan table-land, the remembrance of a similar claim, at a far distant epoch, over Jungaria and Turkestan would be forced on the minds of the Chinese people, until some ambitious ruler or viceroy might avail himself of the opportunity of distinction by acquiescing in, and giving effect to, the popular desire. Kanghi was too prudent to jeopardize his recently consolidated state by expeditions either into Jungaria or Turkestan; and was quite satisfied with the respect shown to his empire by the Eleuthian princes of those regions. On Kanghi's death, in 1721, his son, Yung-Ching, came to the throne, and during his short reign, the example of his two predecessors not to interfere in the troubles of the states lying beyond Kansuh, was closely followed. Yung-Ching died in 1735, and thus made way for his ambitious and warlike son, Keen-Lung. When Keen-Lung first commenced to reign for himself he found that he was irresponsible ruler of a most powerful empire, at peace within itself, and satisfied to all outward seeming with its de facto government. His treasury was full; the country was, perhaps, at its very highest point of prosperity, and the sovereign had only to maintain in this wealth and vigour the nation which had been brought to such a pitch by the wisdom of his predecessors. To a warlike monarch, however, the career of ruler of a thriving, peace-loving, and domestic people, has never been a palatable one, and Keen-Lung thought, as have many other great sovereigns of our own age, that the only use of a wealthy and numerous subject race was to enable the ruler to undertake high-sounding enterprises, and to spread the terror of his name through distant regions. The reputation and the real strength of the Chinese Empire were so great at this time in Asia, that no single power, or even any possible confederacy, would have thought of entering the lists against it. Keen-Lung had, therefore, no just cause for hostilities with the neighbouring states, as they were always too willing to offer the amplest reparation for any cause of offence to the Imperial dignity. The conquest of Turkestan was therefore an object with which he would heartily sympathise; and when we remember his warlike disposition, and the exact condition of China at the time, possessing a superabundance of wealth, and of numbers sufficient to achieve far more difficult enterprises than the one in question, it is easier to understand the eagerness with which Keen-Lung intervened in the affairs of Jungaria, when the following opportunity, which we are about to narrate, offered for so doing.

It is now time to return to Kashgar and narrate the events that were happening in that troubled district. The feud between the Aktaghluc and Karataghluc factions reached its height when Afak, who had been placed on the throne of Yarkand by the Calmucks, under Galdan, the chief representative of the Aktaghluc, succeeded in expelling all the prominent supporters of the rival clan. Afak ruled for some years, but with difficulty maintained himself in some parts of Kashgar, against the Calmucks, Kirghiz, and Kipchak. His sons had no better fortune, and the state was finally divided between a Kipchak and a Kirghiz leader. These quarrelled between themselves, but happily they each expired in the first encounter. Acbash, one of the sons of Afak, was executed at Yangy Hissar in the course of this contention; but he had previously called in to his assistance from Khodjent, in Khokand, a Khoja, Danyal, of the rival Karataghluc faction. This roused the enmity of the more bitter among the Aktaghluc, and, on this, Khoja Ahmad was brought in to represent their interests. Danyal was besieged in Yarkand, but, with the assistance of a contingent of Kirghiz, he was able to repulse his assailants. But, although successful in the field, Danyal was compelled shortly afterwards to flee, and leave his rival in possession of the state. He fled to the Calmucks, in Jungaria, and pleaded so well, that an army was lent him to regain Kashgar. Victory attended this expedition, but the Calmuck leader, who had captured Ahmad at the siege of Kashgar, instead of placing Danyal in power, took both him and his rival as prisoners to his capital of Ili. With so forcible a settlement of the question, little room was left for useless complaining to the ambitious Danyal, and from this time down to the Chinese conquest, the Calmuck rulers of Ili asserted their right to supremacy over Eastern Turkestan. Danyal, himself, was appointed, some years later on, governor of Kashgar, now called Alty Shahr, or six cities; but, under him, there was a local governor for each town, appointed by the Calmucks themselves. His power was more apparent than real. His eldest son was kept at Ili as a hostage for the good behaviour of his father, and Danyal, himself, had frequently to proceed to Ili to make his report on the state of affairs in Kashgar. Such was the condition of Kashgar, as a subject province of the Calmuck rulers of Ili, governed by Danyal, a member of the Karataghluc party, in the year 1740. On the death of Galdan, the son of Arabdan Khan of Jungaria, in 1745, two chiefs, Amursana and Davatsi, or Tawats, seized the governing power, and for a time they divided the authority fairly between them; but it was not long before they fell out, and resolved to advance their own interests at the expense of each other. Amursana was unable to cope with the armies of his rival, Davatsi, and, having been defeated in several encounters, fled from Jungaria to China. On his arrival at Lanchefoo he demanded permission to proceed to Pekin to lay his grievances at the feet of the Emperor, and to offer in his name, and in that of many of his compatriots, the districts of Ili and of Kashgar to his omnipotent majesty.

The request was granted, and Keen-Lung received him with favour, promised to consider what he had stated, and, in the meanwhile, gave him titles and revenues within the Chinese Empire. Amursana's address was so insinuating, and he played so skilfully on the king's ambition and love for military renown, that at last Keen-Lung consented to lend him the forces, which he had been so lavish of promises to secure. In 1753, the Chinese army, under Amursana, appeared in Jungaria, and, after several desperate encounters, Davatsi was driven out of that state, and, according to one account, was delivered up to the Chinese by Khojam Beg, the governor of Ush Turfan. According to another version, he was captured in the field; but both agree that he was taken to Pekin and there executed. Amursana, having regained his position in Jungaria, now turned his attention to the conquest of its dependency, Kashgar. He was now supreme in Jungaria, with his capital at Ili; but his army, which maintained him in his position, was a Khitay force, owing allegiance solely to the Emperor of Pekin, and only obeying the instructions issued by his general accompanying the Eleuth prince Amursana. At this epoch Yusuf, a son of Galdan, had seized the chief authority in Kashgar, and, raising a cry that the true religion of Islam was in danger from the advance of the Khitay, endeavoured to rally to his cause in the struggle that he saw was approaching the Mahomedan governments of Khokand and Bokhara. Amursana, on the northern frontiers of Kashgar, was eagerly watching for the opportunity to arise for an active interference in that state, and Yusuf was prudent in seeking beyond his frontiers for allies that were able to assist him against the machinations of his foes. Yusuf had made himself the leader and representative of the Karataghluc party in the state, and Amursana accordingly resolved to put forward the pretensions of the rival Aktaghluc faction. In this design the Chinese general acquiesced, and, with the assistance of the Calmuck governors of Ush Turfan, and Aksu, no delay interfered with its prompt realization. The descendants of the ancient Khojas were consequently sought out, and Barhanuddin, son of Ahmad, was selected for the purpose. He, at the head of a mixed following, promptly seized Ush Turfan, and was there received with acclamation, and several of the minor tribes joined him at once. Yusuf was, however, hurrying up with a large force from Yarkand, and Barhanuddin's chances seemed to be more than doubtful, when Yusuf died on the way. His son Abdulla, who took the name of Khoja Padshah, hastened on, however, and besieged Barhanuddin in Ush Turfan. Abdulla then endeavoured to come to terms with Barhanuddin, and made overtures for the reconciliation of the Karataghluc and Aktaghluc parties to be cemented in a crusade against the invading Khitay. Barhanuddin, a true Mussulman, was personally inclined to accept the arrangement offered, but, as he was surrounded by Chinese officials and their allies, he was constrained to give instead the advice that Abdulla should surrender to the Chinese and acknowledge their supremacy. Abdulla was not at all willing to forfeit his independence without some struggle, and the siege of Ush Turfan was pressed on. In the camp of the besieging forces there were some who favoured the pretensions of Barhanuddin, and these deserting from the Karataghluc cause, the remaining forces of Abdulla were compelled to retreat with precipitation. Barhanuddin immediately advanced on Kashgar, where he was received with open arms. Yarkand soon afterwards fell into his possession, and the conquest of Kashgar by the descendant of the Khojas and the triumph of the Aktaghluc party were complete.

So far the Chinese had been merely spectators of the progress of events in Kashgar. Amursana had induced them to approve of this enterprise of Barhanuddin, and they had given general support in the war with Yusuf and his son; and it was not until Barhanuddin, elated with his success, set their wishes at defiance, that they resolved to occupy the country. But before that, Amursana's career had been cut short. Although escorted by a large force of native Chinese troops, he had aspired, in 1757, to establish himself as an independent prince in Jungaria, and had broken loose from Chinese control. The forces he raised were, however, defeated with remarkable ease by the Chinese, and Amursana was compelled to flee once more from his home – this time with no certain refuge, as he had before in Pekin. The Russians were then in possession of Siberia, but their influence for good or for ill beyond their desert and almost impenetrable stations was practically nil; but, such as it was, it seemed to Amursana the only place affording any prospect of security. He died at Tobolsk, in 1757, soon after he arrived there; but the implacable Chinese haughtily demanded from the Russians his body as a proof of his decease, and the Russian government sent it to Kiachta for surrender to them. Such was the career of the ill-fated, but ambitious, Amursana, who was the immediate cause of the introduction of Chinese power into Eastern Turkestan.

With so unmistakable a proof before his eyes of the power of the Chinese, it is strange to find Barhanuddin also proving contumacious in Kashgar, but so it was. In 1758, the very next year after the death of Amursana, this ruler and his brother Khan Khoja broke out in open mutiny to the Chinese. At Ili some Khitay officers were maltreated, and outspoken contempt was shown for Chinese commands. Such attitude could not be brooked by any established rule, and, to do the Chinese simple justice, never had been tolerated by them on any occasion; and accordingly a Chinese army was despatched from Ili to chastise this recalcitrant ruler, and to remind him that the arm of Chinese power was terribly long. Barhanuddin and his brother were defeated in several pitched battles, city after city opened its gates to the dreaded invader, and the last representatives of the Khojas were compelled to seek refuge in the isolated region of Badakshan. But even here they were not safe. The terror of the Chinese name had gone before them, and the sovereign of Badakshan, eager to propitiate the conqueror, sent the heads of the two brothers to the Chinese general, who was advancing from Yarkand. Only one of the numerous sons of Barhanuddin escaped the destruction wrought in the family of the Khojas by the victorious Chinese: his name was Khoja Sarimsak. The Chinese had now completely annexed all the territory north of the Karakoram and east of the Pamir and Khokand, and it does not appear that in doing so they had suffered any great loss. By availing themselves of Amursana's claims in Jungaria they had obtained a firm foothold in that state, and then by an equally skilful manipulation of the rival parties of Aktaghluc and Karataghluc, they had extended their authority over Kashgar as well. When their puppets, Amursana and Barhanuddin, became restive as Chinese vassals, and strove for independence, the Chinese forces were called into action and swept all opposition from their path. All this may seem the most unjustifiable ambition, nor do we wish to palliate in any way the terribly harsh repressive measures adopted by the Chinese. There is no doubt that, so long as there remained the shadow of any opposition to their rule, they did not temper their power with any exhibition of mercy. It is computed that almost half a million of people were slain during the wars of these two or three years, and that the great majority of these were the innocent inhabitants, who had been massacred. Nor, although we should be disposed to think that this is a greatly exaggerated number, have we any reason to doubt that the sword of the Chinese was called into use whenever any resistance was offered to their advance, and that the feelings of the soldiers were embittered to a great extent by religious fervour, in their encounters with the Mussulmans. The Chinese, having conquered Kashgar, turned their arms against Khokand, and entered Tashkent and the city of Khokand in triumph. As the year 1760 was drawing to a close, quite a panic was spreading through Western Asia at the advance of the Chinese. Afghanistan, then as now the only formidable Mahomedan territory left intact from foreign conquest, was implored by the suffering Islamites to check the Chinese advance. Then, as recently on a somewhat similar occasion, Afghanistan thought prudence the better part of valour, and confined her action to the invasion of Badakshan, which she coveted, in order to punish its ruler for the murder of the fugitive Khojas. But, having terrified Khokand, the Chinese wisely retired to the proper frontier of Kashgar, and then set about consolidating their rule there by an energy and administrative capacity which must excite the admiration of every governing nation.

It was some years, however, before the conquest of Kashgar, which had been so rapidly accomplished, could be considered to have been altogether completed. Fresh troops had to be summoned from Kansuh, and military settlers imported in large numbers from Shensi and other Chinese provinces, to supply the place of the massacred Kashgari. Settlers were also brought from the neighbourhood of Urumtsi and Hamil; and with these and imperial troops sent from Pekin, the Chinese felt complete masters of the situation. It was only then that the Chinese viceroy considered himself sufficiently strong to place his army in detachments in the various cities. Up to that time it had been kept mobilised in one, or at most two or three stations, ready for instant action. When the Chinese withdrew from Khokand they imposed a tribute on that state, and then they turned their arms against the nomad tribes on the north of the Jungarian frontier. The various hordes of the Kirghiz nomads sent in their submission one after the other, and the Chinese invariably accepted their fealty, and as a rule rewarded their duteous behaviour with Chinese titles and rank Thus Ablai, Chief of the Middle Horde, was made Prince in 1766, and Nur Ali, of the Little Horde, went so far as to send special emissaries to Pekin, where they were favourably received, and returned with recompenses for the fidelity of their master. The Chinese had thus secured their position in Jungaria and Kashgar before the dose of 1765, and by their possession of Khoten, they had opened up communications with their province of Tibet. On the south they possessed an admirable frontier, and it was only in the south-west that any check seemed to be put upon their advance. As already mentioned, the Ameer of Afghanistan had overran Badakshan, in chastisement for the murders of Barhanuddin and his brother; and he was continually receiving applications to declare an open war against the Chinese. His own troubles with the rulers of Scinde and Persia were sufficient to keep his religions sympathies within due bounds. But he sent an embassy to Pekin, to point out that his fellow-religionists were suffering under the conquering sway of the Chinese forces in Central Asia; and on its return with an unsatisfactory reply, he appears to have stationed a large body of troops in Badakshan. The proud Durani monarch was probably eager to oppose the Chinese, but, wiser than his contemporaries in Turkestan and Jungaria, he accurately reckoned up the risks of the enterprise, and contented himself with the maintenance of the powerful empire he had erected on the ruins of the conquests of Nadir Shah. When the Afghans had done so much, and given promises of aid in the defence of Samarcand, it is not to be wondered at if the people of Kashgar thought they would do more, and risings took place in several parts of the state, notably at Ush Turfan. The Chinese measures were prompt and effectual; the rebellion was suppressed, the inhabitants massacred, and the town destroyed. This failure struck so complete a panic into the hearts of the people, that no inducements, for more than half a century, could encourage them to rise against the Chinese. The Chinese conquest of Kashgar gave an effectual solution to the rivalries of the numerous claimants to its sovereignty, and among other competitors to the Khojas, that is, to the descendants of that Sarimsak who alone survived the massacre of his family in 1760. While very possibly the people may have suffered that mental depression which must accompany the installation of a foreign rule, and despite the very harsh and unmistakable evidences given by the Chinese of their intolerance of opposition, there was some prospect, notwithstanding these, that the Chinese would prove permanent masters, and that their rule would consequently become milder and milder every year. It was this feeling, that things could not become much worse, that rendered the Kashgari apathetic in their resistance to the Chinese. They did not dare to expect much improvement in their lot; but at all events they might suppose that Chinese massacres would cease with the disappearance of resistance, whereas massacres by their own countrymen and tyrants had been for centuries an every-day occurrence.

Before considering the Chinese occupation of Kashgar, it may be useful to give some description of the Aktaghluc and Karataghluc parties, of whose rivalry the history of Kashgar in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries is so full. It may be remembered that in 1533, Reshid, the younger son of Said, who had distinguished himself in his father's wars, seized the state from his brothers, to whom he was inferior both in age and in birth on his mother's side. In effecting this he availed himself of the alliance of the Usbeg rulers west of Pamir, and during the negotiations that were transacted between them, the distinguished divine, Maulana Khoja Kasani, of Samarcand, visited him. He was greeted with the most striking marks of Reshid's affection, and granted a large estate in Kashgar. He married and left two sons in that state to represent his interests and share his possessions. The elder son, whose mother was a Samarcand lady, was averse to the younger, whose mother was a native of Kashgar. In the course of time they each rose prominently in the service of the state, but they transmitted their antipathy to their descendants. Khoja Kalan, the elder, whose influence was greatest in Yarkand and Karatagh, was the founder of the Karataghluc, or "Black Mountaineers." Khoja Ishac, the younger, whose influence was greatest in Kashgar and Actagh, another form of Altai, was the founder of the Aktaghluc, or "White Mountaineers." The descendants of either of these Khojas, or priests, the sons of the great divine of Samarcand, claim the title of Khoja, but that must not be confounded with the more exclusive signification it possesses as representing the once ruling family.

CHAPTER V.
THE CHINESE RULE IN KASHGAR

The Chinese conquest of Jungaria and Eastern Turkestan having become an accomplished fact, what did the new rulers do to justify their forcible interference in Central Asia? What measures did they adopt to conciliate the subject peoples, and what to increase the prosperity of a vast region, naturally fertile, but impoverished by centuries of improvident government and of civil anarchy and war? Did they follow the precedent that had been set them by every past ruler of those countries, and leave the people to their own devices, to starve or to exist as best they might, so long as the tribute money was forthcoming? Did the Chinese Viceroys of Ili, or their lieutenants in Kashgar, Yarkand, Aksu, or Kucha adopt a policy of inaction, and pursue a line of conduct of unprincipled selfishness in advancing their own personal fortunes, and thus prove that they were of the same stamp as all other Asiatic despots, careless of the day and utterly regardless of the morrow? The best way to see how they acted, what they did, and what they did not that was possible, is to follow their rule in Kashgar with some attention. In itself this may be found to be no uninstructive lesson for us, who are also a great governing people; and from the perusal of what the Chinese administrators did in Central Asia we may arise willing to accord them high praise, because we are better able than other nations to appreciate the difficulties of their task.

After the fall of Amursana, the Chinese, in the first place, organized their administrative system upon the following basis: – The supreme authority was vested in the hands of the Viceroy of Ili. Under him an amban, or lieutenant-governor, administered affairs in Kashgar. His place of abode was Yarkand. In internal matters the Yarkand Amban was without a superior south of the Tian Shan, but in external affairs he only acted in subordination to the Viceroy of Ili, who alone was in communication with Pekin. Under each of these potentates there were the usual deputy-ambans and Tay Dalays, or military commanders. All the cities had Gulbaghs constructed outside of them, and these forts were held by Chinese troops – that is, by a mixture of Khitay and Tungani. It is computed that 20,000 troops used to garrison Kashgar and the neighbourhood alone. The military posts were restricted to Chinamen, and the higher judicial and administrative offices were also withheld from the subjected race. But these were the only privileges retained by the Chinese.

The Khan, or chief Amban, who resided in Yarkand, made all the appointments to the minor offices, which were filled almost exclusively by Mahomedans. The only precaution the Chinese seem to have taken was to refuse employment to a Kashgari in his native town, so that a Yarkandi would have to go to Aksu, or some other place away from his home, if he desired to participate in the government of his country. But beyond this there was no restriction, and nominally the Hakim Beg, the highest Mussulman officer, ranked on an equality with the Chinese amban. His subordinates were all Mahomedans, with the exception of his personal guard of Khitay troops. In the hands of these natives of the country lay all the administration of justice among their co-religionists, the collection of the revenue, and the levying of customs dues on the frontier and of trade taxes in the cities. It was only when cause for litigation arose between a Buddhist and a Mussulman that the amban interfered. We have therefore the instructive spectacle before us of a Buddhist conquest becoming harmonized with Mussulman institutions, and Chinese arrogance not content with tolerating, but absolutely fostering, a régime to which its hostility was scarcely concealed. This is the only instance of the Chinese exhibiting such more than Asiatic restraint towards Mahomedans; for their dealings with Tibet, a country of peculiar sanctity and Buddhist as well, is not a case in point. The scheme worked well, however. Chinese strength was husbanded by being employed only when absolutely necessary to be called into play, and the people, to a great degree their own masters, did not realise the fact of their being a subjected nation. Their first anxiety was the payment of their taxes – far from exorbitant, as it had been under their own rulers; but that task accomplished, they could free their minds from care.

Very often their own countryman, the Hakim Beg, was a greater tyrant than the Chinese amban in the fort outside their gates; but against his exactions they could obtain speedy redress. When their Hakims, or Wangs as the Chinese called them, became unpopular in a district, the amban promptly removed them; even if he considered they were not much to blame, he always transferred them to some other district. The first object in the eyes of the amban was the maintenance of order, and he knew well enough that order could not be maintained, unless he resorted to force, which he studiously avoided, if the people were discontented. The people therefore could repose implicit trust in the Chinese amban securing a fair hearing and justice for them in their disagreements with their own leaders; and the Mussulman Wangs, who were the old ruling class, saw the unfortunate tax-payer at last secure from their tyranny through the clemency of a Buddhist conqueror. We are justified in assuming that the population saw the force of these patent facts, and that, if not perfectly to be relied on in any emergency, the Chinese had no danger to expect from the tax-producing and patient Kashgari.

So long as the Chinese rule remained vigorous – that is, for about the first fifty years – the Ambans worked in perfect concord with the Wangs, and through them with the people. But the internal relations between these various personages became more complicated and less cordial through the importation, about the beginning of this century, of a fresh factor into the question. The Chinese had granted the cities west of, and including, Aksu very considerable privileges in carrying on trade with Khokand; and in the course of commercial intercourse a Khokandian element was slowly imported into these cities, when it became a people within a people, enjoying the prosperity to be derived from the Chinese Empire, but not experiencing any sentiment of gratitude towards those by whom the favours were conferred. After some years, when these Khokandian immigrants had become numerous, the Chinese acquiesced in their selecting a responsible head for each community, and this head, or Aksakal, was nominated by the Khan of Khokand, the only temporal sovereign these people recognized. The creation of this third power in the state, which was first sanctioned as a matter of convenience, was to be fraught with the direst consequences for the Chinese. The Khitay would be justified in saying that the Aksakals were "the cause of all their woe," in Kashgar at all events. The Aksakals were far too prudent to challenge the supremacy of the Chinese officials, and their first object was rather to make themselves independent of the Wangs than to compete with the Ambans. In this they were successful, for the Chinese neglected to take into account the dangers that might arise from these same bustling, intriguing, and alien Aksakals. The Wangs had always been obedient vassals, but the plausibility of the Aksakals put them on a par with their rivals. The Chinese washed their hands of the quarrel, and may have imagined that their rule was made more assured by divisions among the Mussulmans. In this they were mistaken. The Aksakals, who after a time repudiated their obligations to the Wangs, became the centre of all the intrigue that marked the last half-century of Chinese rule, and, puffed up by their triumph over the Wangs, did not hesitate to challenge the right of the Ambans to exercise jurisdiction over them. But of this more later on.

While the Chinese adopted these liberal measures in their dealings with the Mussulman population, they did not neglect those other duties which belong to the government by right. The greatest benefit they could confer was of course the preservation of order, and to maintain the balance impartially between the numerous litigants was the first article in the creed of the Chinese viceroys. As tranquillity settled down over these distracted regions, trade revived. The native industries, which had greatly fallen off, became once more active; and foreign enterprise was attracted to this quarter, which Chinese power soon made the most favoured region in Central Asia. But the rulers did not rest content with the mere preservation of good order. They did not leave it to the inclination of an indolent people to progress at as tortoise-like a speed as they would wish; but they themselves set the example which the rest felt bound to imitate. Not only did the enterprising Khitay merchant from Kansuh and Szchuen visit the marts of Hamil and Turfan, but many of this class penetrated into Kashgar proper, where they became permanent settlers. These invaluable agents supplied the deficiency that had never before been filled up in the life of the state, for they brought the highest qualities of enterprise and practical sagacity, together with capital, as their special characteristics. In the train of these Khitay merchants came wealth and increased prosperity. Yarkand, Kashgar, Aksu, and Khoten became cities of the first rank, and the population of the country in the year 1800 was greater than it had ever been before.

There was perfect equality too between all the various races in respect to trade. The Chinese did not demand special immunities for their own countrymen, as might have been expected. The Khitay, who came all the way from Lanchefoo in search of a fortune, must be prepared to compete in an equal race with the Khokandi, the Kashgari, or the Afghan. His nationality would obtain for him no immunity from being taxed, or could give him no advantage over the foreign or native traders. The main portion of the trade of the country remained in the old hands. Khokand benefited as much as Kashgar by the trade, and China, in a direct manner, least of the three.

The Chinese have at all times been justly famous for their admirable measures for irrigating their provinces. The wonderful canals which cut their way, where there are no great rivers, in China proper are reproduced even in this outlying dependency. Eastern Turkestan is one of the worst-watered regions in the world. In fact there is only a belt of fertile country round the Yarkand river, stretching away eastward along the slopes of the Tian Shan as far as Hamil. The few small rivers which are traced here and there across the map are during many months of the year dried up, and even the Yarkand then becomes an insignificant stream. To remedy this, and to husband the supply as much as possible, the Chinese sank dykes in all directions. By this means the cultivated country was slowly but surely spread over a greater extent of territory, and the vicinity of the three cities of Kashgar, Yangy Hissar, and Yarkand became known as the garden of Asia. Corn and fruit grew in abundance, and from Yarkand to the south of the Tian Shan the traveller could pass through one endless orchard. On all sides he saw nothing but plenty and content, peaceful hamlets and smiling inhabitants. These were the outcome of a Chinese domination.

The Chinese, besides possessing a dual line of communication with their own country, one north and the other south of the Tian Shan, had also a caravan route from Khoten to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. There was also some intercourse with Cashmere by this way. The jade, for which Khoten was justly, and is still, famous, was exported in immense quantities, both to Tibet and to China, through Maralbashi. This mineral was held in high esteem by Chinese ladies, and alone sufficed to make the prosperity of Khoten assured. Gold, silk, and musk, were other articles included in the commerce of this flourishing city. There was also, in the Chinese time, a very extensive manufacture of carpets and cotton goods. The gold mines, which, with two exceptions, have not been worked since the same time, are believed to be scarcely touched, and only await a fostering hand to be put in working order once more.

The Chinese also devoted great attention to the coal mines in the vicinity of Aksu, and these were worked both by private enterprise and the Government. Coal was an article of common use in that city, but it does not appear to have been exported beyond the neighbourhood. It is known that the Chinese took greater interest in the development of the internal means of wealth of the country than in inducing foreigners to enter it. Thus, we see that mines, in a special degree, received state approval and support. The gold mines of Khoten, the coal of Aksu, and the zinc of Kucha, are all conspicuous instances of this; as, under all past, and the recent Mahomedan, rule, they have been most foolishly, but consistently neglected.

Nor were those special trades for which Kashgar had in prosperous moments been renowned, neglected. The leather-dressers of Yarkand and Aksu, the silk-mercers of Kashgar and Khoten, were never so busy as in the warlike days of Keen-Lung, and the great mass of the people, the agricultural class in the villages, was equally prosperous and well governed. Trade was fostered on all sides, and the conquering power was content to stand aside and witness the steady progress of its subjects towards hitherto unattained and unattainable prosperity.

Lastly, the Chinese directed their attention to the improvement of the means of communication between one part of the province and another. It was absolutely necessary to the security of their rule that there should be an easy and always open road between Ili and Kashgar. Therefore, a way was cut, at great expense, through the Tian Shan, north of Aksu, and this pass was known as the Muzart, or Glacier. So difficult was the country through which it passed, and such the danger from ice-drifts and snow-storms, that relays of men had to be kept constantly at work in order to prevent it getting out of repair for a day. The construction of this road was, in the first place, most expensive, but, perhaps, the cost of repairing was much more. This, the most striking engineering achievement of the Chinese, has become practically useless, through fifteen years of neglect. If China is to regain Ili, it will, no doubt, be restored. The passes west of this, by the Narym River to Vernoe, and through Terek to Khokand, were those selected by Yakoob Beg to supply its place.

The next object to which the Chinese specially paid attention was the preservation of their road home to China. Thus the road in Tian Shan Pe Lu, and the other in Tian Shan Nan Lu, were kept in the most effective state possible. The former, north of the mountains, passed through Manas and Urumtsi to Hamil; the latter, south of them, through Aksu and Kucha to the same place. The alternative route from Kucha to Kashgar and Yarkand, through Maralbashi, was also much used, more especially, however, by those who desired to break off at that outpost in the desert to reach Khoten and Sanju. In each city there was appointed a committee to superintend the roads in the district, and this Road Board was a highly important and useful corporation. It was by such measures as these that the Chinese made their rule a blessing to Kashgar and Jungaria for more than fifty years. Of course, there was the fiscal side of these schemes of public utility. Roads could not be opened up and maintained in order, canals could not be dug, the state could not administer justice, promote trade, and make itself respected abroad, without an assured revenue, and this revenue, after the first ten years, was very productive.

The principal taxes were the tithe on the produce of the land, called "ushr" and the zakat (fortieth), on merchandise and cattle. Then, in the cities, there was a house tax, which was essentially, like our own income tax, a war tax, fluctuating in accordance with the military necessities, caused by foreign or civil war. From the mines, too, the state derived a large annual sum, which was generally devoted to some object of public utility. There was also the tribute money from the Kirghiz nomads, whose flocks and horses were numbered and taxed at a low rate, in return for which they were taken under the protection of China. In addition to these great taxes there were several smaller ones, such as a fee on fuel sold in the market, and another levy on milch-kine kept in cities. A writer on Kashgar has said that these "proved a ready means of oppression, and a prolific source of that discontent which left the rulers without a single helping hand, or sympathising heart, in the hour of their distress and destruction." But this assumption of cause and effect is scarcely just.

Of course, all taxes can be made a ready means of oppression by the tax-gatherer, who, in this case, was a Mussulman and fellow-countryman. But taxes are absolutely necessary to all good government, and when we consider what China did with her revenue, with what public spirit her representatives laid it out in plans for the advantage of the state, can we pronounce an opinion that she imposed unfair burdens on the subjected race? Moreover, no one denies the prosperity general throughout Kashgar in those days, a period looked back to with regret by the inhabitants during the most favoured years of Yakoob Beg's rule. It is not in accordance with facts, then, to imply that the Chinese ground Kashgar under them by severe taxation, and whatever petty tyranny there was, was carried on not by the Khitay Ambans, but by the Mahomedan Wangs.

In the hour of distress and destruction the people, indeed, proved traitorous to their best friends, or, more generally, apathetic; leaving to the energetic Andijani element within their gates the task of crossing swords with Buddhist rule, to which the hostility of these immigrants had always been declared.

The short-sightedness of the Kashgari played the game of the more fanatical and ambitious people of Khokand; but the rule of China did not pass out of Eastern Turkestan until the disturbances of forty years had generated ill-feeling that formerly was not, and had so embittered the relations of governing and governed, that what had come to be considered a lenient and impersonal government, assumed all the darker hues of a military and foreign despotism. Even then China did not fall until there was dissension within herself, when, split into three hostile camps, her sword dropped nerveless from her hand in Central Asia, 2,000 miles away from her natural border. To follow Chinese rule in Kashgar down to 1820, is to observe the monotonous course of never varying prosperity. From that year to 1860, the tale is of a different complexion, less monotonous but also less satisfactory.

In 1758 and 176 °Chinese armies entered Khokand. Tashkent fell in the former year, and the capital in the latter. The Chinese then withdrew, after imposing a tribute upon Khokand. During the long reign of Keen-Lung – that is, down to 1795 – the tribute was regularly paid. After that year, however, the payment became irregular, and border warfare of frequent occurrence between the two neighbours. At last, in 1812, Khokand, then under an able prince, refused to pay tribute any longer, and the Chinese acquiesced in the repudiation. Nor did the change in the relations between China and Khokand stop here; for, a few years afterwards, the Chinese found it expedient to pay Khokand an annual sum to keep the Khoja family, whose representatives were residing in Khokand, from intriguing against them. The amount of the subsidy was £3,500 of our money. In addition to this, the Khan of Khokand was permitted to levy a tax on all Mahomedan merchandise sold in Kashgar through Andijan merchants. This tax was collected by the Aksakals before mentioned, and was a very profitable source of income for the impecunious khans. But even these concessions and perquisites did not satisfy the Mussulmans of Central Asia, who saw in Chinese moderation an evidence of weakness and decline. The Aksakals, in these years of Mahomedan revival, became political agents of the greatest importance. It was they who gave a point to all the discontent there might be in Kashgar; it was they who attributed to the Chinese the blame for whatever evils this world is never wholly free from; and it was they who agitated for the return of the old Khoja kings, who were always destined, in their eyes, to bring the most perfect happiness. With such causes at work both within and without their position, the Chinese had not to wait long before their authority was more openly challenged.

Sarimsak, the only member of the Khoja family surviving the massacre by the Chinese, had fled, as a child, into the impenetrable recesses of Wakhan. From thence, in later years, he had gone to settle in Khokand, where he married. This prince had three sons – Yusuf, Bahanuddin, and Jehangir, the youngest and best known. In 1816, the first outbreak against Chinese authority occurred, when a small rising took place in Tash Balik, a town to the west of Kashgar. This was speedily put down, and its leaders executed. It was but the forerunner of the storm.

In 1822, Jehangir resolved to reassert his claims over Kashgar, and, while his eldest brother continued to reside in retirement at Bokhara, he joined the Kara Kirghiz. With a party of these, under the command of their chief, Suranchi Beg, Jehangir raided up to the city of Kashgar. He was there repulsed in the suburbs, and compelled to flee. He then joined the Kirghiz of Bolor round Narym, who were nominally feudatories of China, and, with their aid, commenced a petty sort of border war. A small Chinese force was despatched against him, and drove the Kirghiz up as far as Fort Kurtka. On their return from this successful attack, they were, however, surprised in one of the defiles, and almost all were destroyed. This was the first reverse the Chinese had ever met with in the field, and it was at once bruited about through all parts of Central Asia. It gave a life to the Khoja cause which it had hitherto lacked, and adventurers from all parts flocked to the standard Jehangir now raised on the borders of Kashgar. The Khan of Khokand so far assisted him as to send him a skilled general, Isa Dadkhwah, and extended over his cause that protection and sanction which Khokand has ever since thrown over the Khoja family.

In the spring of 1826, Jehangir advanced in force against Kashgar, and the Chinese, despising their assailant, left their fortifications to encounter him in the open. A battle then ensued, of which the particulars have not come down to us, but which resulted in the defeat of the Chinese. Jehangir entered Kashgar in triumph, was received with acclamations by the people, urged on by the Aksakals, and proclaimed himself sovereign of the country, under the style of Seyyid Jehangir Sultan. His first act – the most significant exposure of the true sentiment of the Kashgarian people there well could be – was to order the execution of the Mahomedan Wang of Kashgar, by name Mahomed Seyyid.

The fall of Kashgar was the signal to the Aksakals throughout Altyshahr to begin that work for which they had been long preparing. In Yangy Hissar, Yarkand, and Khoten risings at once took place. The Chinese, surprised and unarmed, were butchered in the streets, and the Gulbaghs, as the visible token of the foreign rule, were razed with the ground.

The Gulbagh of Kashgar itself alone held out, but it at last fell, after sustaining a long siege, into the hands of Jehangir. His triumph completed, he had to concern himself more with his relations with Khokand than about the Chinese, who were mysteriously quiet. Mahomed Ali Khan, of Khokand, who thought that Jehangir's success was solely due to him, laid claim to a certain historical superiority over his vassal of Kashgar, to which the Khoja prince was not willing to assent. A large Khokandian army which had been sent to Kashgar returned, after losing 1,000 men before the walls of the Gulbagh, and its withdrawal was the signal for plots and counterplots to break out in the palace of the new ruler. These he promptly repressed, reduced the intriguing general, Isa Dadkhwah, in rank, and had emancipated himself from his thraldom to Khokand, when the news came that the Chinese were at last returning.

Although the western portion of Altyshahr had fallen away from the Chinese, Aksu and Maralbashi remained true to their allegiance. The Chinese still possessed the military keys of the country. Moreover, their possession of Ili gave them an enormous strategical advantage, and in the Tungan population they possessed an almost inexhaustible supply for recruiting "revindicating" armies. It is apropos here to state that China retained both of these advantages down to the time of Buzurg Khan and Yakoob Beg, and that, so long as she possessed them, the utmost Mussulman fanaticism and Khokandian patronage of the Khojas could do was futile against the arrest of fate. During six months Jehangir ruled in Kashgar, and during six months the Chinese viceroy made his preparations at Ili for a thorough revenge. An army of more than 100,000 men, raised from the Tungani, the Calmucks, and the Khitay garrison, was despatched from Ili, and in January, 1827, entered Aksu. Here all the brigades were concentrated, and the Viceroy, in conjunction with the general under him, by name Chang-Lung, drew up the plan of campaign, which was as follows: – A small army of 12,000 men was sent against Khoten across the desert through Cày Yoli, while the remainder of the host advanced on Maralbashi. Here another detachment of 7,000 strong was directed against Yarkand, while the main body marched on Kashgar by the banks of the Kizil Su.

Their advance was unopposed until they reached Yangabad, or Yangiawat, where Jehangir had concentrated an army computed at 50,000 men, but probably considerably less. When the armies sighted each other they pitched their camps in preparation for the decisive contest that was at hand. In accordance with immemorial custom, each side put forward on the following day its champion. On the part of the Chinese a gigantic Calmuck archer opposed on the part of Jehangir an equally formidable Khokandi. The former was armed with his proper weapons, the latter with a gun of some clumsy and ancient design, and while the Khokandi was busily engaged with his intricate apparatus, the Chinese archer shot him dead with an arrow through the breast. Of course, neither army would have acquiesced in the decree of the God of Battles as shown by the fate of its champion, but, in this case, it was true that —

"Who spills the foremost foeman's life,
His party conquers in the strife."

After a sharp, but brief, skirmish, the Kashgarian army withdrew in confusion, and the following day the Chinese surrounded Kashgar on three sides. During the night the heart of Jehangir misgave him, and he fled to the Karatakka mountains. But here the snow had rendered the passes impracticable, and, after hiding for a few days in that difficult region, he was captured by the Chinese. His fate was that usually met with by traitors to that empire, for, being sent to Pekin, he was executed after torture. In this war Ishac Wang, of Ush Turfan, played a great part against the Khoja prince, and was rewarded for his good service by being appointed Wang of Kashgar. The Chinese constructed a fresh fort, Yangyshahr, in the place of the destroyed Gulbagh, and left a large Khitay garrison under Jah Darin. But Ishac Wang, who was given some such title as Prince of Kashgar, was soon afterwards deposed and recalled to China.

The Chinese authority was re-established without difficulty in the three cities, and peace settled down over Eastern Turkestan. But the repressive and punitive measures that the Chinese felt compelled to adopt raised a bitterer sentiment in the minds of the people than had previously existed. The Chinese were, indeed, only employing the same weapons that had been used against themselves, but none the less did these reciprocal atrocities dissipate whatever friendship there had been. Among other acts the Chinese removed 12,000 Mahomedan families from Kashgar to Ili, and these, destined to play an important part in the history of that province, became known as Tarantchis, or Toilers.

The Chinese resolved to punish Khokand as well. They broke off all trade with that state, and happy would it have been for them if they could have continued to preserve a closed frontier. But the Khan of that time was Mahomed Ali Khan, the most ambitious, as he was the ablest, of the princes of that country. He had just annexed Karategin, and had acquired some of the outlying provinces of Badakshan, which Mourad Beg, of Kundus, had absorbed about the same time. It was not probable that he would put up with the Chinese defiance. He was prudent enough to delay his advance until the main body of their army had been withdrawn. But, as soon as he was informed that the Chinese had gone back to Ili, Mahomed Ali, calling Yusuf, Sarimsak's eldest son, from his retirement in Bokhara, placed him at the head of an army, under the charge of his own brother-in-law, Hacc Kuli Beg. The Chinese were worsted at Mingyol, and all the cities west of Aksu turned against the Chinese, as before, and proclaimed for Yusuf Khoja. Then the massacres were repeated, and the invasion of Yusuf was that of Jehangir over again in exact detail. But Yusuf's triumph was still more brief. Whereas Jehangir had ruled for nine months, Yusuf only swayed the sceptre for three.

The Chinese movements were delayed by small Mussulman revolts in Barkul and Shensi until the spring of 1831, but then, when they returned, they found that Yusuf and the Khokandian army had retreated some months before. The facts were that the moment Khokand invaded Kashgar, Bokhara attacked Khokand, and Hacc Kuli Beg had to be recalled to cope with matters more pressing than Khoja rights. With the general had gone Yusuf, far from anxious to encounter the Chinese alone. The return of the Khokandian army sufficed to dispel all danger from Bokhara, and, a few months after, Mahomed Ali Khan recommenced operations – in the east this time – against the Kirghiz under Chinese protection. The Chinese were thoroughly sick of these petty disputes, and made a treaty with Khokand, by which that state acquired fresh commercial privileges, in addition to the old ones, and by which the importance of the Aksakals rather increased than waned. Mahomed Ali Khan had acquired all he wanted, and discouraged the Khoja party, as, indeed, the terms of this treaty compelled him to do. The risings under Jehangir and Yusuf were undoubtedly a great blow to Chinese prestige. To all appearance each had nearly been successful, and the Chinese, whose prestige was enormous in Central Asia – quite as great as that of Russia is now – had been, on one or two occasions, openly defeated. But, after all, this was a little matter compared to the shock the sentiments, called into being by sixty happy years, had received. Between Buddhist and Mussulman, between Chinaman and Central Asiatic, all the old antipathy was revived in the butcheries of Yarkand and Kashgar. The Kashgari showed that they could not appreciate the benefits they had received from China, and the Chinese, enraged at the slaughter of their countrymen, and, perhaps, also at the ingratitude evinced towards them, retaliated in kind. They did not appreciate that moderation, which Europeans have not always shown under similar circumstances, and wrought out their revenge in their own ancient fashion. It is absolutely necessary that the reader should remember that the two rapidly succeeding invasions of Jehangir and Yusuf form a turning-point in the history of the Chinese rule in Kashgar. Up to that epoch it is difficult to find words sufficient to do justice to China's beneficent government there; after that year it would be absurd to employ the same language. For the change the chief blame must fall upon the fickle and ungrateful Kashgari themselves, and then on the intriguing Andijanis. The Chinese are justified, at least, in saying that, having for more than half a century ruled this people with justice, they only relaxed in their efforts to promote its well-being when their unarmed countrymen and soldiers had been surprised and butchered by thousands.

Strange, and almost contradictory, as it may appear, there was a brief respite during which things seemed to have got into their old groove of happy prosperity; and the chief credit for this must be given to a Mahomedan sub-governor of the Chinese viceroy. Zuhuruddin, such was his name, had raised himself to the high post of Amban in Kashgar, a post never before held by any other than a Khitay. By birth he was of Kashgar, but he always represented himself as having been born and brought up in Khokand, where he had been imprisoned for a political offence. For seven or eight years he governed Kashgar to the perfect satisfaction both of the people and of the Chinese, and among some of his public acts may be mentioned the reconstruction of new forts outside the cities, in the place of those destroyed in the recent revolts. These were known now as Yangyshahr instead of Gulbagh. But in 1846 Zuhuruddin's rule was disturbed by hostilities on the part of Khokand and the Khojas.

In 1845 Khudayar Khan had been called to the throne after the death of Mahomed Ali, but his authority was not without its rivals. In the state of confusion that then ensued, Khokandian adventurers urged the Khoja princes, who were now represented by the sons of Jehangir, to renew their old attacks against the Chinese. To these advisers the Khojas turned a willing ear, and preparations were accordingly made for the enterprise. At that time Khokand was full of adventurers to whom Mahomed Ali had been able to give constant employment, but who now under the more peaceful rule of Khudayar idled their time in the cities of that khanate. Among these and the ever willing Kirghiz, it was not difficult for the princes of Kashgar to raise an army, formidable in numbers, if not remarkable for cohesion. At that time there were seven prominent Khoja princes in Khokand, of whom we may here mention Eshan Khan, usually called Katti Torah, Buzurg Khan, and Wali Khan. This inroad did not take its name from any one of these, but from them all combined; thus it was distinguished as Haft Khojagan, or that of the Seven Khojas.

With his brothers and relations and a considerable following, Katti Torah advanced upon Kashgar, always the first object of these invaders, which fell after a siege of thirteen days through treachery. This was the only success they achieved; the other cities would have nothing to do with them; and after two months' indulgence in unbridled licence the Chinese beat them in a fight at Kok Robat, and drove them out of the country. For the first time there was an air of ridicule thrown over these Khoja invasions in the eyes of the Kashgari, while the outrages they had committed during their brief stay had raised bitterer feelings still. Zuhuruddin, who fell under the displeasure of the Chinese, was removed from his post, and fresh Ambans, once more Khitay, were appointed. For nine years the Khojas remained passive, but in 1855 Wali Khan and his brother Kichik Khan, began to bustle once more on the Kashgarian frontier. It was not until 1857 that Wali Khan succeeded in forcing the advanced guard of pickets maintained in the passes by the Chinese, but having accomplished that his triumph was rapid. Kashgar fell into his possession by a coup de main, and once more a Khoja prince was seated in the orda at Kashgar. Artosh and Yangy Hissar fell into his possession, and he threatened Yarkand. But everywhere the Chinese garrisons remained unconquered in the forts, biding the exhaustion of their foe and the arrival of reinforcements. After a rule of nearly four months the armies of Wali Khan having been then defeated by the Chinese, the Khoja fled to the remote state of Darwas, where he was surrendered to Khokand by its chief Ismail Shah. This ruler, the most tyrannical, bloodthirsty, and licentious of all the Khojas, met the fate which he deserved long afterwards at the hands of Yakoob Beg. His temporary tenure of power is still remembered with dread by the people, who consider him to have been the most incarnate monster who ever held the destinies of their country in his hand. The Chinese were more severe in their punitive measures after this campaign than they had been after any other, but, notwithstanding the part Khudayar and his people had played in Wali Khan's affair, the old relations between "these incompatible people," as Dr. Bellew aptly calls them, were restored. After this event there was but one minor disturbance caused by an inroad of Kirghiz nomads, headed by the sons of one of the principal victims of Chinese vengeance, but this had no political importance.

The invasion of Wali Khan was the last of those Khoja expeditions which took place prior to the Tungan revolt. In the thirty-two years that elapsed from the date of Jehangir's attempt to that of his son, there had in all been four of them. That of Jehangir himself being the first; of his elder brother Yusuf, the second; of Yusuf's eldest son, Katti Torah, the third; and of Jehangir's second son, Wali, the fourth. Not one of these is in any sense noteworthy, except for the crimes with which it was attended, and none of them did more than inflict an untold amount of misery and suffering on their own followers, as well as on the people they claimed to represent by right divine. It may also be noticed that with each enterprise there was a decline in moral character. Thus Jehangir was infinitely the best of them in every sense, and ruled fairly according to his lights. His brother Yusuf was of a more timid mind, but evidently not less imbued with some notion as to the sanctity of his mission. But from these to Katti Torah is a long descent. That prince seemed to aspire to securing his personal comfort and enjoyment alone, and disregarded all his subjects' complaints at the arbitrary rule of his deputies. But Wali Khan, the next of these Khoja kings from "over the mountains," excelled his cousin in vice, and tyranny, and utter want of purpose, not to speak of honour, quite as much as Katti Torah surpassed their sires. Nor can there be much hesitation in saying, from what Buzurg Khan did during the few months he held power, that, had not Yakoob Beg clipped his flight, he would have surpassed Wali Khan in his own peculiar vices. The reader will scarcely be disposed to take much interest in this irredeemable family, mad with the insanity of wickedness. But in justice to the Chinese, and to Yakoob Beg, it is only right that the rivals of the former should be made to appear in their true colours. All the sanctity that a peculiarly venerable descent from Hazrat Afak could give; all the stories told of the good deeds of some of their ancestors; all the affection that naturally attaches to a native rule, and all the dislike that must undermine a foreign, be it never so beneficent; all these things were destroyed by the weakness and ill success that attended the first two Khojas, and by the cruelty, indifference, and licentiousness that marked the last two. When Buzurg Khan came he found loyalty to the Khoja the heirloom of a few families, not of a people.

Had the Chinese restrained their vindictive feelings after the war with Jehangir, and proclaimed a free pardon to every one save the Khokandis, and then devoted their attention with the old vigour to peaceful pursuits, we believe that the Chinese rule would have been permanently secured. At that moment the Chinese were strong enough to have defied Khokand, and to have broken off all intercourse with that state. By dismissing the Aksakals, and severing the connection between the two states, the Chinese would have dispelled a danger that was for forty years to be ever before them, and, in the end, when the Tungani also rose, was to overcome them. Even clemency after Yusuf's inroad, which was really caused by the Chinese repressions, might not have been wholly in vain, and would have consolidated their position, when reinvigorated by Zuhuruddin's tenure of power. But the Chinese did not appreciate the quality of mercy. They could be just and impartial in the ordinary avocations of life, but to those who revolted against their authority they showed no trace of human feeling. For a man to rebel against them was certain death; for a people, history tells us, the fate was not far different. Nor in dealing with such did they hesitate to supplement their military strength by the most despicable of artifices. Garrisons, accorded honourable terms, ruthlessly butchered; princes, who threw themselves on their mercy, deported to Pekin to be hanged or tortured out of life: these are frequent occurrences in the history of China, and of her career in Central Asia the tale is identical. Yet, while drawing a veil over these blots on an otherwise brilliant surface, should we not desire to conceal them wholly from the view. It is necessary that they should be stated to understand what Chinese domination means as a whole; of its great benefits there can be no doubt, if the people will remain quiescent. For fifty years, or for five hundred, China will rule an unmurmuring people with justice, and lead them into the paths of prosperity and peace; but if they rebel, if they openly defy authority, if they invite a hostile stranger within their borders, the punishment will be as sweeping, as cruel, and, in one and a higher sense, as wrongfully foolish, whether the association of the races may have been for fifty years or five centuries, as it was in the case of Kashgar. There is not much reason for hoping that China will deviate from her ancient custom, on the occasion now transpiring, of demanding "an eye for an eye" and "a tooth for a tooth."

CHAPTER VI.
THE BIRTH OF YAKOOB BEG AND CAREER IN THE SERVICE OF KHOKAND

We have now traced the history of Kashgar and of the neighbouring states down to the year 1860, immediately before the last Khoja invasion under Buzurg Khan, and the Kooshbege, Mahomed Yakoob. Before giving an account of that enterprise it is necessary that the reader should know what the past career of the future Athalik Ghazi had been. The previous chapters have, it is hoped, thrown some light on the state of Central Asia, and will assist the student of the question in comprehending how it was that Yakoob Beg achieved success, and what claims he may have to be considered a great ruler, for having done a work that is unique in the annals of modern Asia.

Mahomed Yakoob was born in or about the year 1820, in the flourishing little town of Piskent, in the khanate of Khokand. His father, Pur Mahomed Mirza, had, at various periods of his life, filled positions of responsibility in the government of the towns in which he resided. Thus, a native of Dihbid, near Samarcand, he had migrated to Khodjent, in the reign of Mahomed Ali Khan, with the intention of entering the priestly order. There, although he enrolled himself as a student in a religious seminary, for some reason or other, he appears to have changed his mind, and, instead of entering the Church, turned his attention to secular affairs. He was soon made Kazi of Kurama, a district and town of Khokand, and married a lady of that place. By this marriage he had one son, Mahomed Arif, who has since filled several posts of trust in Kashgar, notably that of Governor of Sirikul; but of late this half-brother of Yakoob Beg seems to have been, either for incompetence or some other reason, under a cloud. Pur Mahomed, or Mahomed Latif, as he was more usually called, changed his residence from Kurama to Piskent, about the year 1818, and he shortly after his settlement in his new abode married again, his second wife being the sister of Sheik Nizamuddin, the Kazi of Piskent. Yakoob Beg was the issue of this marriage. The family of Yakoob Beg's father seems originally to have come from Karategin, on the borders of Badakshan, but in the time of the Usbeg conquest of that district the father of Mahomed Latif, then an infant, took refuge in Khokand. It is uncertain whether Mahomed Latif was born before their arrival at Dihbid or afterwards; and it is now asserted that he claimed descent from Tamerlane. Whether this was a claim brought forward when his son was advancing in the world or not, it is impossible to test its accuracy. The parents of Yakoob Beg were therefore not without some pretensions, and it would seem that the bad fortune, from which for some generations they had been suffering, was beginning to disappear before the ability of Yakoob Beg raised it to a higher point than ever. In addition to the claims of his father and grandfather as Kazis of an important community, a sister of Yakoob Beg married Nar Mahomed Khan, Governor of Tashkent; and, as we shall see later on, this connection was very instrumental in promoting the interests of the youthful Yakoob.

Piskent, Pskent, or Bis-kent, as it is sometimes spelt, is still a flourishing little community, fifty miles south of Tashkent, on the road to Khodjent. Its inhabitants are a thrifty, good-tempered set of people, who take great pride in the fact that the great Athalik Ghazi, the supporter of Islam, and the reputed terror of the Russians, was one of themselves. In this little settlement there are many Tajiks, and this, doubtless, with other reasons, induced Mahomed Latif, a Tajik himself, to take up his abode there. To the east of Piskent the mountains begin to rise, which stretch onward until they become the Tian Shan and the Kizilyart ranges, and in these elevated regions the Tajik descendants muster in strong numbers. The Tajiks are Persian in their origin, and consequently of the Aryan stock, in contradistinction to the Turk or Tartar ruling class in Western Turkestan. They have, however, for so many generations been restricted to a limited career in the organization of the state, that, quite unjustly as it is, they have come to be regarded as an inferior race. English writers have fallen into this mistake, and have accepted as correct the definition given by the Turks of this subject race. As a matter of fact the contrary holds true, and the Tajik is superior to any of his masters in point of mental capacity. They are represented to still retain the fine presence and long flowing beards which distinguish those of Aryan blood from their Tartar opposite; and in height and strength they quite eclipse every other race of Central Asia. It was of this race that Yakoob Beg was the representative, and, although the greater part of his life was passed in ruling nations almost exclusively Tartar, some of the more prominent among his supporters, as well as the flower of his army, boasted that they, too, represented that master race, whose birth-place was to be found in the Indian Caucasus. The Tajiks still speak a Persian dialect, and their Iranian origin is thereby rendered almost indisputable.

Mahomed Yakoob's early years were passed at his home at Piskent, and it is said that it was intended that he should follow the profession which his father had repudiated. As a youth he was too wayward to submit to any check on his impulses, and the design of educating him as a "mollah," if it was ever seriously entertained, was abandoned long before he arrived at man's estate. He appears to have passed the first twenty years of his life in an idle, uneventful manner at Piskent, and then suddenly to have resolved to seek his fortune as best he might in the troubled waters of Khokandian politics. In 1845, we find him in the train of the newly seated khan, Khudayar, as "mahram," or chamberlain, and shortly afterwards, by the influence of his brother-in-law, the Governor of Tashkent, nominated a Pansad Bashi, a commander of 500. This was in 1847, about which year he married a Kipchak lady of Zuelik, a village in the district of Ak Musjid. He had three sons, of whom we shall hear more hereafter, by this marriage – Kooda Kul Beg, Kuli Beg, and Hacc Kuli Beg. Later on, in the year 1847, he was raised to the rank of Koosh-Bege, or "lord of the family" – more intelligibly described as vizier – and entrusted with the charge of the important post on the Syr Darya, called Ak Musjid, "White Mosque." This post he held with credit for six years, until 1853, when the Russians commenced that forward movement, of which we have not yet seen the close. At that time, Russia had not acquired one of the numerous strategic points now in her possession. The Syr Darya then was as far off from her frontier as the Oxus is now. Ak Musjid, built in the lower reaches of the river, and representing a Khokandian outpost of exceptional importance, was the grand obstacle in the path of the Russians operating from Kazalinsk, at the mouth of the Syr Darya. It was resolved, therefore, that this post, which, doubtless, encouraged all the marauders in the neighbourhood to continue their depredations against the Russian caravans, should be wrested from the hands of its owners, and either razed to the ground or converted into a Russian stronghold. General Perovsky was entrusted with this undertaking. The distance from Kazalinsk, or Fort No. 1, to Ak Musjid is not much over 200 miles, along the banks of the Syr Darya. Not many commissariat arrangements were necessary, nor did the distance to march require much time to delay the Russian officer in beginning his operations against the fort. The army with which he appeared before the walls may not have been large in numbers when compared with the armies of modern times, but, in all that makes a disciplined force formidable, it was exceptionally well supplied. The artillery was in greater strength than is usually considered necessary, and the expedition was still more efficient in engineers and cavalry. The garrison of Ak Musjid was, on the other hand, ill supplied, both in provisions and in ammunition, and the fort itself presented, neither in its position nor in its construction, any feature that an engineer officer would have considered calculated to make it capable of sustaining the attack of artillery for twenty-four hours. The Russian lines were constructed in the most approved method; but twice were their approaches destroyed, and twice their mines counter-mined. During twenty-six days the Russian bombardment was fast and furious, and during all that time the Khokandian defence was stubborn and persistent. But all the efforts of the garrison to break through the beleaguering lines were unavailing, and after so long a cannonade little more resistance could be expected from ramparts which were pierced in several places by wide and gaping breaches. The resolute commandant, who had done everything required by the most exacting code of military honour, confessed that there was nothing to be gained by a continued defence, and as it was known that the Russians were making preparations for an early assault, a messenger was despatched without delay to the Russian commander, expressing the willingness of the garrison to capitulate on honourable terms. General Perovsky, who had expected an easy triumph here, and possibly some more extended triumph in farther regions, was indignant at the resistance opposed to him by a paltry place like Ak Musjid, and received the messenger from the fort with ill-concealed impatience. Scarcely bestowing any attention on the letter, couched in humble terms as it was, of the commandant, General Perovsky petrified the astonished emissary with the declaration that on the morrow the fort would be taken by assault. This arbitrary assertion of his power, which was carried into practice, of course successfully, the next day, on an occasion when magnanimity ought to have been shown by the successful general, does not redound to the credit of the officer in question, and throws an instructive light on the latitude left to Russian generals in their instructions, and on the opinion felt for Central Asiatics by the civilizing representatives of the White Czar. To say that General Perovsky was urged to this act of gratuitous tyranny by a desire to obtain a cross of either St. Anne or St. George, is, after all, only to magnify the offence, and that Ak Musjid has taken the name of its conqueror, Fort Perovsky, is the means of perpetuating, not his fame, but his infamy, and the courageous conduct of the defenders. In the winter following its fall Yakoob Beg, with Sahib Khan, brother of the Khan of Khokand, attempted to retake the fort, but the coup