Local tradition ties the shrines of the Khotan oasis to the Qarakhanid war on the Buddhist kingdom of Khotan, in which the khan's imams and soldiers died as martyrs.
The best known is the tomb of Imam Asim in the desert edge north of the city, said to be of a Sufi imam and soldier who led the conquest about 1000 under the Qarakhanid khan. A pilgrimage custom with flag-poles, the Ordam, is said to commemorate the martyrdom of the Qarakhanid general Ali Arslan Khan in battle with the Khotan Buddhists, and the Silk Road journal's author calls Khotan and the Ordam area the main battlegrounds. None of this is dated evidence.
The shrine texts and the pilgrimage are of later centuries, and nothing shows that these shrines drew pilgrims or held endowments on 1 January 1200. What is dated is the memory itself: Mahmud al-Kashgari in the 1070s quotes verses of the Muslim victors tearing down idol temples (reported in the travel essay, not rechecked). The record is a marker, so the campaign can use the tradition if a player asks.
Who holds it
- Title
- Keepers (shaykhs) of the shrines; none named
- Since
- not pinned
- Born
- not known
- Family
- Not known. The tradition names martyrs, not keepers.
- Confidence
- low
Read: 'Shrine Pilgrimage among the Uighurs' (Silk Road journal), a travel essay on the tomb of Imam Asim (Ajam Media Collective, 2013), Iranica 'Khotan'. The sources describe present-day practice and a tradition; none dates a shrine or a keeper to the twelfth century.
Overlord
The khan of Khotan, as the Muslim prince whose house the martyrs served, by tradition.
What it holds
- The tomb shrines of the martyrs of the conquest, north of the city and in the oasis (positions not fixed here)
- Alms, gifts and the pilgrimage fees, if the practice existed in 1200: not known
How it was acquired
The tradition dates the martyrs to the conquest of about 1000 to 1006; the shrines' founding is not dated.
Allies and rivals
The wider shrine tradition of the Qarakhanid house centres on Satuq Bughra Khan at Atush (the Persia map's ground). Rival memory: the Buddhists of the old kingdom, whose monks mostly left for Tibet before the fall (Wikipedia 'Buddhism in Khotan').
How things stand that morning
Not recorded.
Wealth
Alms and gifts, if any; no figures.
Threats
- Later: Kuchlug's rule of 1213 or 1214 forbids public Muslim worship, by report
Places of note
- Khotan oasis shrines: The tomb shrines lie in the oasis and the desert edge to the north; positions not fixed.
Where the sources disagree
- Sheet asks for 'the Muslim shrines and Sufi lodges (the mazar of Khotan and Yarkand)'. For Khotan a tradition only. For Yarkand no shrine is attested before the Tombs of the Yarkand Khans of the 16th and 17th centuries (see Yarkand qadi and mosques). No Sufi lodge in the Tarim is attested for 1200.
Evidence: Tradition and present practice, not dated evidence.
On the map: A point only, at the city; the shrines are scattered and their exact positions are not given in the sources read.
Primary sources for Tarim oases
Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.
- History of the Liao, chapter 30, on the Western Liao, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office (1343 to 1344). The only Chinese official notice of the Qara Khitai, a few pages at the end of juan 30. Read online
- History of the Song, the chapters on Xia and on foreign states, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office (1343 to 1345). The Song court's accounts of its neighbours, each arranged as an annal of embassies and wars. Read online
- History of the World Conqueror: the Qara Khitai (Gur Khans) and the Uyghurs of Beshbaliq, Ala al-Din Ata-Malik Juvayni (begun about 1252 to 1253, ends with 1260). Juvayni's chapters on the Uyghur kingdom (its origin legend, Beshbaliq and Qocho, and the idiqut Barchuq's murder of the Qara Khitai resident before his submission to Chinggis Khan in 1209) and on the Gur Khans of the Qara Khitai are the fullest Muslim account of the Tarim and Zhetysu around 1200: the gurkhan Zhilugu's court at Balasagun, his tax collectors in the oasis towns and in Samarkand, his relations with the Khwarazmshah Tekish and then Muhammad, and the arrival of the Naiman prince Kuchlug in 1208. Read online
- Old Uyghur contracts, land sales, loans and administrative documents from the Turfan oases (mostly thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with some earlier; dated by animal years and rarely to a reign). Sale deeds, loans, leases, slave sales, wills and tax lists from Turfan, Qocho and Beshbaliq, the only internal evidence for everyday life, land tenure, prices and officials in the Uyghur kingdom whose idiqut was a vassal of the Qara Khitai in 1200.
- Journey to the West of the Perfected Changchun (Qiu Chuji), Li Zhichang (李志常) (about 1228, from the journey of 1220 to 1224). A dated eyewitness itinerary across the steppe and the Tarim twenty years after 1200: the Kereyit country and the Ongud frontier, the Naiman mountains, the Uyghur towns of Beshbaliq and the Tarim with their Buddhist and Christian communities, Almaliq of the Qarluq, and Samarkand. Read online
Sources and studies
- 'Shrine Pilgrimage among the Uighurs', Silk Road journal
- 'At the Tomb of Imam Asim', Ajam Media Collective, 2013 (a travel essay: tradition, not dated evidence)
- Encyclopaedia Iranica, 'Khotan' (History in the Islamic Period)
- Wikipedia, 'Buddhism in Khotan'
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.