Lord of Hami

Who he is

Title

Lord of Hami (Kumul, Chinese Yizhou): an Uyghur lord of the idiqut, or a local chief

Since

not known

Born

not known

Family

not known

Confidence

low

No source we could open names the lord of Hami in 1200 or says whether Hami stood under the idiqut, Xia or its own chiefs. The best evidence is later: the Yuan shi says of the idiqut's descendants that Barchuq stationed troops at Hamili (Hami) in the Mongol period (Wikipedia Hami, citing Yuan shi 122), and describes the Uyghur domain as touching Jiuquan. In the 10th and 11th centuries Hami (Yizhou, home of the Zhongyun people) was repeatedly Uyghur or Chinese-contested.

English Wikipedia's page on the Qara Khitai draws the empire's southern boundary 'from Balkh to Khotan to Hami', which fits Hami as ground under the Gurkhan's suzerainty through the Uyghurs, though that line is a modern reading and not a source. We read Hami as Uyghur in 1200, with a local lord or chiefs and a light hand from the idiqut. Not pinned.

Overlord

The idiqut (probable); Xia's nearest town on the road is Shazhou

What it holds

• The Hami oasis with its fields, wells and caravan halts
• Barkol (Balikun), the lake and steppe north of the Karlik Tag
• Yiwu (Yiwu, Aratürük), the oasis east of Barkol
• The road tolls at the east end of the northern road

How it was acquired

Uyghur from the 9th century by migration (Wikipedia, Hami); the earlier Zhongyun people of the oasis are named in Chinese sources of the 10th century.

Allies and rivals

Xia's Shazhou and Guazhou across the Gobi; the idiqut at Qocho; the Naiman and other nomads of the Altai and the Gobi to the north.

How things stand that morning

Probably Uyghur, with a local lord. No raid or war recorded. The Qara Khitai commissioner's writ runs here only through the idiqut.

Wealth

Road tolls, melons and raisins and fruit (the Mongol-era fame of Hami melons is later), grain from the oasis, pasture at Barkol, a share of the Dunhuang-Turfan trade.

Military

None known; the lord has retainers and the oasis a refuge.

Threats

• Xia pressing west or demanding tolls
• Steppe raiders from the north through the Barkol pass

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. 1209 and afterThe Yuan-era sources place Uyghur troops at Hami once the idiqut is Chinggis's vassal; this shows the place is Uyghur by the Mongol age.Depends on: The Uyghur submission of 1209 Stopped by: Xia taking the oasis

Places of note

• Hami (Kumul): The oasis town
• Barkol: Lake and steppe north of the Karlik Tag
• Yiwu: Oasis east of Barkol
• Baiyanggou temple ruins: Buddhist temple site in the hills north of Hami (position approximate)

Where the sources disagree

• The campaign board entry hami-yizhou: 'shared with the Tangut caravans'. We found no source for a Xia share of Hami; the Tangut frontier is at Shazhou. Hami's allegiance is not pinned.
• The English Wikipedia page puts the conversion of Hami to Islam in 1513; in 1200 Hami is Buddhist with small Manichaean, Christian and Muslim groups (thin).

Evidence: Fetched: Wikipedia Hami and the Qomul mirror (Zhongyun, Uyghur settlement, Barchuq's troops at Hamili); the Yuan shi geography passage. Nothing dated to 1200.

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

On the map: The block is a guess at one road-lordship; the eastern edge toward Xia (about 95 E) is not pinned.

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.