Turkic settlement of the Tarim Basin

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An Lushan Rebellion
, after which the Turkic peoples and the other native inhabitants living in the area gradually converted to Islam.

Tarim Basin

"Tocharian donors", 6th-century mural from the Kizil Caves

The Tarim Basin, populated by the

Kingdom of Qocho and the Muslim Turkic Karluk Kara-Khanid Khanate
.

The Turfan and Tarim Basins were populated by speakers of Tocharian languages,[2] with "Europoid" mummies found in the region.[3] The oases were populated by Iranian and Tocharian language speakers.[4] Different historians suggest that either the Sakas or Tokharians made up the Yuezhi people who lived in Xinjiang.[5] The northern Tarim Basin is where Tokharian language records were found.[6]

The inhabitants of the Tarim Basin consisted of Buddhist Indo-Europeans, divided between

Sakas
.

Han and Tang rule

Tang campaign against the oasis states
Main articles: Protectorate of the Western Regions, Protectorate General to Pacify the West, and Four Garrisons of Anxi

During the Han dynasty, the Tocharians and Sakas of Xinjiang came under a Chinese protectorate in 60 BC, with the Chinese protecting the Tocharian and Saka city states from the nomadic Xiongnu who were based in Mongolia, and during the Tang dynasty they once again became a protectorate of China with China protecting the Tocharian and Saka city states against the First Turkic Khaganate and the Turkic Uyghur Khaganate.

Arab sources claim that first recorded incursion into the Tarim Basin by an Islamic force is the alleged attack on Kashgar by Qutayba ibn Muslim in 715[7][8] but some modern historians entirely dismiss this claim.[9][10][11]

The Tang dynasty Chinese defeated the Arab Umayyad invaders at the Battle of Aksu (717). The Arab Umayyad commander Al-Yashkuri and his army fled to Tashkent after they were defeated.[12]

Uyghur migration into the Tarim Basin

Uyghur princesses from the Bezeklik murals

Tang China lost control of Xinjiang after it was forced to withdraw its garrisons during the

Yenisei Kirghiz
and defeated and destroyed the Uyghur Khaganate in a war, triggering the collapse of the Uyghur Khaganate which caused Uyghurs to migrate from their original lands in Mongolia southwestwards into Xinjiang.

Protected by the

Uyghur ethnic group.[1]

Kara-Khanid conquest of Khotan

Further information: Shule Kingdom, Kingdom of Khotan, and Kara-Khanid Khanate

By the 10th century, the area was ruled by the

Kara-Khanids invaded, Khotan was the only state in the area that had not come under Turkic rule.

Kara-Khanid conquest of Khotan
Datelate 10th to early 11th centuries
Location
Tarim Basin
(in modern Xinjiang, China)
Result Kara-Khanid victory
Belligerents
Kara-Khanid Khanate Kingdom of Khotan
Commanders and leaders
Satok Bughra Khan
Ali Arslan
Musa
Yusuf Qadir Khan

The Kara-Khanids formed from several Turkic groups that had increasingly settled portions of the Kashgar area.[14] The tribes are thought to have converted to Islam following the conversion of Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan in 934. Khotan conquered Kashgar in 970,[15] after which a long war ensued between Khotan and the Kara-Khanids.[16] The Karakhanids fought Khotan until sometime before 1006 when the Kingdom was conquered by Yusuf Qadir Khan.[17] The attacks likely related to Khotanese requests for aid when China.[18][19] Relations with China factored heavily in the war. In 970, after the Khotanese capture of Kashgar, an elephant was sent as tribute by Khotan to Song dynasty China.[20] After the Qara Khanid Turkic Muslims defeated the Khotanese under Yusuf Qadir Khan at or before 1006, China received a tribute mission in 1009 from the Muslims.[21]

Following the war, a Buddhist revival occurred in the

Tangut Empire, located in contemporary Western Xia, following the attacks on the Buddhist states in the region.[22] The Empire became a safe haven for Indian Buddhist monks who were attacked and forced to flee to Tangut.[23]

Legacy

Many of the Muslim soldiers who died fighting the region's Buddhist kingdoms are regarded as martyrs (shehit), and are visited by pilgrims at shrines called mazar.[24] For instance, the killing of the martyr Imam Asim led to his grave being worshiped in a massive annual ceremony called the Imam Asim Khan festival.[25] According to Michael Dillon, the conquest of the region is still recalled in the forms of the Imam Asim Sufi shrine celebration.[26] However, due to the ongoing persecution of Uyghurs in China, the pilgrimage has no active participants, and the mosque at the shrine has been demolished.[27]

Taẕkirah is literature written about Sufi Muslim saints in Altishahr. Written sometime in the period from 1700 to 1849, the Eastern Turkic language (modern Uyghur) Taẕkirah of the Four Sacrificed Imams provides an account of the Muslim Kara-Khanid war against the Khotanese Buddhists. The Taẕkirah uses the story of the Four Imams as a device to frame the chronicle, the Four Imams being a group of Islamic scholars from Mada'in city (possibly in modern-day Iraq), who travelled to help the Islamic conquest of Khotan, Yarkand, and Kashgar by the Kara-Khanid leader Yusuf Qadir Khan.[28] The legend of the conquest of Khotan is also given in the hagiology known as the Tazkirat or "Chronicles of Boghra".[29] Extracts from the Tazkiratu'l-Bughra on the Muslim war against the Khotan was translated by Robert Barkley Shaw.[30]

Contemporary poems and attitudes are recorded in the dictionary of the Turkic lexicographer

Dharmic religions is striking in comparison to several earlier Islamic texts that portrayed Buddhism in a more charitable light, such as the works of Yahya ibn Khalid.[35] Elverskog states that the attitudes in Hudud al-'Alam are dissonant, containing both accurate and libelous descriptions of Khotanese Buddhists (including a claim that the Khotanese are cannibals). He argues that these accounts were a way to dehumanize the residents of Khotan and encourage the conquest of the region.[35]

Bezeklik
murals

The conquest of Khotan led to the destruction of Buddhist art, motivated by Islamic iconoclasm.[26] The iconoclastic fervor is captured by a poem or folk song recorded in Mahmud al-Kashgari's Turkic dictionary.[36] Robert Dankoff believes the poem refers to the Qarakhanids' conquest Khotan's despite the text's claim that it refers to an attack on the Uyghur Khaganate.[37]

Khizr Khoja's attack on Turfan and Qocho

Khizr Khoja's attack on Turfan and Qocho
Date1390s
Location
Tarim Basin and Turfan Basin
(in modern Xinjiang, China)
Result Chagatai victory
Belligerents
Chagatai Khanate
Qara Del
Commanders and leaders
Khizr Khwaja

Mansur

In the 1390s, the Chagatai ruler

Jiaohe was abandoned in the 15th century.[40] Buddhist presence in Turfan is thought to have ended by the 15th century.[41]

Kara Del was a Mongolian ruled and Uighur populated Buddhist Kingdom. The Muslim Chagatai Khan Mansur invaded and used force to make the population convert to Islam.[42] It was reported that between Khitay and Khotan the Sarigh Uyghur tribes who were "impious" resided, and they were targeted for ghazat (holy war) by Mansur Khan following 1516.[43][44]

After converting to Islam, the descendants of the previously

Buddhist Uyghurs in Turfan failed to retain memory of their ancestral legacy and falsely believed that the Dzungars were the ones who built Buddhist monuments in their area.[45] Buddhist influences still remain among the Turfan Muslims.[46] Since Islam reached them much after Altishahr, personal names of un-Islamic Old Uyghur origin are still used in Qumul and Turfan while people in Altishahr use mostly Islamic names of Persian and Arabic origin.[47]

Buddhist murals at the

Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves were damaged by local Muslim population whose religion proscribed figurative images of sentient beings, the eyes and mouths in particular were often gouged out. Pieces of murals were also off for use as fertilizer by the locals.[48]

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^ a b "The mystery of China's celtic mummies". The Independent. London. August 28, 2006. Archived from the original on April 3, 2008. Retrieved June 28, 2008.
  2. ^ Millward (2007), p. 15.
  3. ^ Millward (2007), p. 16.
  4. ^ Millward (2007), p. 374.
  5. ^ Millward (2007), p. 14.
  6. ^ Millward (2007), p. 12.
  7. ISBN 978-1-317-64721-8
    .
  8. ^ Marshall Broomhall (1910). Islam in China: A Neglected Problem. Morgan & Scott, Limited. pp. 17–.
  9. ISBN 92-3-103211-9
    .
  10. ISBN 978-90-04-07819-2
    .
  11. OCLC 685253133
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  12. ISBN 0-691-02469-3
    .
  13. ^ Millward (2007), p. 43.
  14. ISBN 978-1-884964-04-6
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  15. ISBN 978-0-19-515931-8
    .
  16. ISBN 978-0-7112-2913-6
    .
  17. ^ Hansen (2012), p. 227.
  18. ISBN 978-0-7007-0679-2
    .
  19. ISBN 978-1-4655-1134-8
    .
  20. ISBN 978-0-521-20092-9
    .
  21. ^ "KHOTAN ii. HISTORY IN THE PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD – Encyclopaedia Iranica".
  22. ISBN 978-0-8248-1719-0
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  23. ISBN 978-0-8248-1719-0
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  24. ISBN 978-0-7546-7041-4
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  25. ISBN 978-0-7546-7041-4
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  26. ^
    ISBN 978-1-317-64721-8
    .
  27. ^ Lily Kuo (May 6, 2019). "Revealed: new evidence of China's mission to raze the mosques of Xinjiang". The Guardian.
  28. S2CID 162917965
    . Retrieved September 29, 2014.
  29. ^ Sir Percy Sykes and Ella Sykes. Sykes, Ella and Percy Sykes. pages 93-94, 260-261 Through deserts and oases of Central Asia. London. Macmillan and Co. Limited, 1920.
  30. ^ Robert Shaw (1878). A Sketch of the Turki Language: As Spoken in Eastern Turkistan ... pp. 102–109.
  31. JSTOR 599159
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  32. ^ "Kaşgarlı Mahmut ve Divan-ı Lugati't- Türk hakkında- Zeynep Korkmaz p. 258" (PDF). Retrieved May 29, 2023.
  33. ^ Dankoff, Robert (1980). Three Turkic Verse Cycles (PDF). Vol. III/IV 1979-1980 Part 1. Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. p. 160. Archived from the original on November 18, 2015.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  34. ISBN 978-0-8240-7210-0
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  35. ^ a b Elverskog (2011), p. 94
  36. ISBN 978-0-7546-6956-2
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  37. ^ Elverskog (2011), p. 287.
  38. ^ Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb; Bernard Lewis; Johannes Hendrik Kramers; Charles Pellat; Joseph Schacht (1998). The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Brill. p. 677.
  39. ^ Millward (2007), p. 69.
  40. ^ Journal of the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Archaeology Publications. 2002. p. 72.
  41. ISBN 978-0-521-65704-4
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  42. ^ "哈密回王简史－回王家族的初始". Archived from the original on June 1, 2009.
  43. ^ Tōyō Bunko (Japan) (1986). Memoirs of the Research Department. p. 3.
  44. ^ Tōyō Bunko (Japan); Tōyō Bunko (Japan). (1983). Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko: (the Oriental Library). Tôyô Bunko. p. 3.
  45. ^ The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Brill. 1998. p. 677.
  46. ^ Silkroad Foundation, Adela C.Y. Lee. "Viticulture and Viniculture in the Turfan Region". Archived from the original on August 7, 2018. Retrieved February 8, 2016.
  47. ISBN 978-0-7546-7041-4
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  48. ISBN 978-1-60606-013-1. Archived from the original
    (PDF) on October 30, 2012.

Sources

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