The Life of Yakoob Beg

ns 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 o

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

ble 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.

solidated, 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 His

e 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 wa

age 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

s 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 succeed

e 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

ill 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 Buddh

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

fteen 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 shor

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 hu

ar 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 wh

ars 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, i

nd 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

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 thou