In previous issues of Ming Mongols and Veyrat, a name that seemed lofty was mentioned— the Yarkand Khanate. Contrary to this name, however, the khanate was often bullied by the Veyrats in the north and the Kazakh khanate in the west. So how did the khanate with such a fresh name come about, and why was it bullied?
▲ Modern restored Yarkand Khan Palace
The founder of the Yarkand Khanate, Said Khan, can be said to be of noble birth. His grandfather Yunus was the khan of the Eastern Chagatai Khanate, and his father, Sutan Aheima, not only established the Turpan Khanate, but was denounced by the latter as "Araza (murderous)" for repeatedly taking the initiative to attack the Weyrat people. But compared to his grandfather and father, Sayyid is a real child. In his early years, he followed his father and his uncle, the Khan of the Eastern Chagatai Khanate, Sutan Mahammad, against the Uzbek chief Muhammad Shaybani, but was defeated miserably. Although Said escaped by chance, he was sent to Shaybany due to the betrayal of the local lords of Eastern Chagatai. Fortunately, this Same Born Andi Khan did not embarrass this young man much, but on the contrary took him with him to the southern expedition to the northern war, and Said also saw the opportunity and fled back to The Eastern Chagatai.
Muhammad Shaybani who ran rampant in Central Asia
However, the low point of the captive's life did not bring The head to give Sayed the opportunity to rise in life. In 1508, in another battle between Eastern Chagatai and the Uzbeks, the Eastern Chagatai Khanate was once again defeated, and the Khan Sutan Mahammaham was killed on the battlefield, and Said was not only imprisoned, but also the Uzbeks decided to execute all the Eastern Chagatai prisoners at that time. Fortunately, the local magistrate could not bear to see the young man of the golden family being beheaded in public, so he let Said escape the disaster.
▲ The Uzbek Khanate swept through Central Asia
Saeed, who survived death, defected to his cousin, a descendant of Timur and the founder of the Mughal Empire. However, at this time, Babur, who is deep in today's Afghanistan, is not living well at this time. Therefore, after recruiting some Kyrgyz people, Said took advantage of the opportunity that Muhammad Shaybani was defeated by the Kazakh Khan Hasmu and the Safavid Persian Shah Ismayi, and finally died on the battlefield, returned to Eastern Chagatai and established the Yarkand Khanate in Shache.
▲ Old photos of Shache County in Kashgar Region
However, the establishment of the khanate was only the beginning of their history of listening to sadness and weeping. Although Said established his own khanate in the Kashgar region, his own weak forces still had difficulty gaining a foothold in the turbulent steppe, and more importantly, his Own Kyrgyz people were unwilling to fight with him and Eastern Chagatai and defected on a large scale. So he tried to invade Uszang (present-day Tibet) as far south as possible in order to expand his land. Unfortunately, however, before Saeed could start his career, he died of altitude sickness on his way to Tibet.
The Kunlun Mountains between the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and present-day Xinjiang ended Sayyid's tragic life
Fortunately, the Eastern Chagatai Khanate was later severely damaged by the Weyrats, which gave the Yarkand Khanate the opportunity to unify southern Xinjiang during the reign of the third generation of Khan Abdul Harin. However, the expansion of the territory did not allow the Yarkand Khanate to flourish, on the contrary, because the Yarkand Khanate completely inherited the rough Mongol-style political, financial, and military system of the Chagatai Khanate, and most importantly, the system of electing the successor of the Khan through the Kuritai Assembly during the Mongol Empire was also inherited. In the Mongol era, this system caused a lot of problems because it was too simple and crude. With the passage of time, the coexistence of a large number of nomadic herders and settled city-states in Xinjiang is much more complicated than that of a simple nomadic society. Moreover, the Yarkand Khan's headquarters was small. This brought disaster to the Yarkand Khanate as a system of kuritai congresses.
The Kuritai Congress, which elected a successor to the throne, brought devastating disasters to the politics of the Yarkand Khanate
In the territory of the Yarkand Khanate, the Black Mountain Sect and the White Mountain Sect, which were split by the Nakshbandi Order of Central Asian Islam Sufi, can be said to be the two largest forces in the Yarkand Khanate. The former was also known as the "Black Hat Hui" during the Ming and Qing dynasties because believers wore black leather hats to indicate their identity, while the Baishan Sect and although they were not directly related to the "White Hat Hui", they caused the famous Size and Zhuo Rebellion in the Qing Dynasty. Of course, these are all afterwords. Since the two factions and Zhuo (sect leaders) had great influence among the nomads and the city-state nobles, every succession to the Khanate was actually a competition between the two factions, and the Khan of Yarkand was basically hollowed out by Hezhuo.
▲ The black hat of the Yarkand Khanate in the "Hunting Map of Xifan" returns to the rider
However, unlike the election of the king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the competition between the Montenegro and White Mountains was not limited to the Kuritai Congress. In fact, under the control of the two factions and Zhuo, the Yarkand Khanate fell into a whirlpool of constant war and chaos that washed blood with blood. This not only seriously weakened the khanate's power, but also made various contradictions within the khanate prominent. In the simplest example, most of the Khans of Yarkand, because they did not have perfect fiscal revenue and faced constant war, basically adopted the simplest and most brutal "Central Asian" solution, that is, to loot the cities under their control. This, in turn, led to an intensification of tensions between the domestic nomads and the city-state Burke (i.e., the ruling nobility).
▲ The Yarkand Khanate, which has been in civil war for many years and has a backward system, is naturally powerless to resist the perennial invasion of Weyrat and Kazakhs.
In the time of the tenth Khan, Yaolebas Khan, the Dzungar Taiji Sangha had already begun to manipulate the internal affairs of the Yarkand Khanate on the surface. Of course, before that, there were also cases of Gushi Khan moving south to occupy a large area of grassland in the Yarkand Khanate, but thanks to the fact that the Yarkand Khanate still had a trace of strength at that time, and Gushi Khan's intention was to qinghai-Tibet, it was saved from destruction. But even so, the Yarkand Khanate continued to fight among themselves, and eventually in the time of the last Khan Akbasi Khan, he was defeated by their son Sutan Ahmat, who was supported by them, because he was opposed by the Kyrgyz herdsmen and the White Mountain faction, and was eventually killed by the Kyrgyz.
▲ Today's Kyrgyz people, it is they who promoted the demise of the Yarkand Khanate.
The Yarkand Burks, who supported Akbar si khan, were not willing to fail, so they asked the Dzungars for help. It seems that patience with these Muslim sects and nobles was finally lost, and after defeating the Kyrgyz, the Dzungar Taijitse Alabutan no longer supported the new Yarkand Khan, but appointed Burke to rule between himself. In the end, this bumpy and bloody khanate ended its 165-year tragic history.
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