Beshbaliq lords

Who he is

Title

The idiqut's governor or kinsman at Beshbaliq, and the begs of the oases westward

Since

not known

Born

not known

Family

Branches of the royal house and local families

Confidence

low

No source names a governor of Beshbaliq for 1200. The town is the summer capital, so in winter it is held by a household and the governor if there is one. In the Mongol period it is a province (the Yuan make a Beshbaliq province in 1251, Wikipedia Fuhai County), but nothing that late can be sent back to 1200.

Overlord

The idiqut

What it holds

• Beshbaliq (Beiting): walled Tang-Uyghur city and its Buddhist and Christian temples
• The Jimsar and Qitai plain, with its pastures
• The small oases of the north slope westward to Manas (thin)
• The mountain pastures of the Bogda

How it was acquired

Taken from the Tibetans by the Uyghur leader Pugu Jun in the 860s (zh.wikipedia, 866), together with Xizhou (Gaochang) and Luntai.

Allies and rivals

The Qarluq and Naiman nomads to the north and west are the neighbours who use the pastures. The Qara Khitai commissioner follows the court here in summer.

How things stand that morning

In January the town is a winter household; the summer court has gone south to Qocho. The pastures are in winter camp on the plain.

Wealth

Pasture (horses, sheep, felt), the road tolls, sal ammoniac from the smoking mountain, the temples' estates.

Military

A fortified town; no numbers.

Threats

• Raids from the steppe north and north-west
• Naiman or Merkit refugees in the future

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

1. summer 1200 (not documented)The court and commissioner move up to Beshbaliq for the summer, as they do each year.Depends on: An ordinary year Stopped by: War, plague or a death at court

Places of note

• Beiting ruins (Beshbaliq): Summer capital; ruins of the Tang-Uyghur city north of Jimsar
• Jimsar: Modern county seat beside the ruins
• Qitai: Plain east of Jimsar on the road to Barkol
• Urumqi: No known town in 1200; modern city on the old road

Where the sources disagree

• The brief and the campaign board have no Beshbaliq board place. The Uyghur hold on the north slope west of Fukang is a best guess; the e-history account puts the Qarluq in the Ili and the Qara Khitai in the south, and says nothing for Manas.
• English Wikipedia (Qara Khitai) says that in 1137 Karakhanid subjects who had joined Yelu Dashi conquered 'Kashgar, Khotan, and Beshbalik'. If that Beshbalik is the Uyghur summer capital, the Qara Khitai might hold the town more closely than a tributary overlord would. The Chinese and Yuan accounts keep the idiqut and his court at Beshbaliq and Qocho, so we treat the town as Uyghur; flagged as a risk.

Evidence: Summer and winter capitals: Wikipedia (Qocho), zh.wikipedia (Gaochang Huigu), Wang Yande (recalled). No governor or event is dated to 1200. The Beiting excavation (Western Temple, Nestorian remains) is recalled, not read this session.

"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.

On the map: Beshbaliq is firm. The western string is a guess at how far the Uyghur hold ran along the Tian Shan foot.

Primary sources for Qocho

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.

• The Secret History of the Mongols (1228 or 1240 (the colophon's Year of the Rat is disputed), with later additions; the surviving Chinese transcription and gloss were made under the Ming in the 1380s). The only Mongol account of Temujin's rise, written within living memory. Read online
• 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
• Compendium of Chronicles, Rashid al-Din Fadl Allah Hamadani (1300 to 1311, at Tabriz). The official Ilkhanid history, compiled from Mongol oral tradition and the lost Altan Debter. Read online
• Compendium of Chronicles: the Turkic and Mongol tribes and the life of Chinggis Khan, Rashid al-Din Hamadani (about 1300 to 1311, in the Ilkhanate). The fullest description of who held what on the steppe around 1200, written a century later from Mongol court records (the Altan Debter) and from informants such as Bolad Chingsang. Read online
• History of the Yuan, Song Lian (宋濂) and the Ming history office (1369 to 1370). Juan 1, the annals of Taizu (Chinggis Khan), gives a dated outline of Temujin's early wars drawn from the same lost Altan Debter as the Shengwu qinzheng lu: the Tatar war with the Jin in 1196, the Merkit and Naiman campaigns, the Tayichi'ut war, Jamuqa's coalition of 1201 and the Tatar and Kereyit wars of 1202 and 1203. Read online
• The History of the World Conqueror, Ata-Malik Juvayni (1252 to 1260). Written for the Mongols but with a long retrospective on the powers they destroyed. Read online

3 more in the sources library for The Tarim, the Uyghurs and Xia.