City · The Uyghur kingdom of Qocho and Beshbaliq · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Beshbaliq

Beshbaliq ('Five Cities', Turkic) is the Tang Beiting protectorate town 12 km north of modern Jimsar, on the plain north of the Bogda mountains.

The Uyghurs took it in the 860s and use it as the summer residence of the kingdom: the Song envoy Wang Yande recorded in 982-84 that the king lived at Beiting in summer and Gaochang in winter (recalled, not re-read). It stands on the road from Qocho over the Bogda pass to the Dzungarian plain and the Qarluq country, and on the road west to Urumqi and Manas and east to Barkol and Hami. The ruins show a walled city of rammed earth with a large Buddhist temple (the Western Temple) and Christian remains.

On 1 January the court is away at Qocho and the town is quiet. The commissioner, if he follows the court, goes up with it in summer (inferred).

Who holds it

Title
The idiqut in summer; a governor if any in winter
Since
not known
Born
not known
Family
The royal house
Confidence
low

No governor named.

Lord in 1200

The idiqut in summer; in January a household and perhaps a governor, name unknown.

Overlord

The idiqut

What the town holds

  • The walled city and its temples
  • The plain of Jimsar and Qitai, with winter pastures
  • The pass road to Qocho

How it was acquired

Uyghur since the 860s.

How things stand that morning

A winter town. The Qara Khitai commissioner and the court come up in summer.

Wealth

Pasture, tolls on the Bogda pass road and the steppe road, sal ammoniac from the smoking mountain to the north.

Military

A walled town; no numbers.

Threats

  • Raids from the north and west
  • Naiman refugees later

Communities

Uyghur Buddhists; a Church of the East presence (a church ruin is reported at Beiting, recalled); Manichaean remains of earlier centuries; nomad herders in the plain; small groups of Muslim merchants. No bishop is attested for 1200.

Walls and castle

A Tang-Uyghur city of rammed earth with an outer and an inner enclosure; the ruins north of Jimsar include the large Buddhist temple known as the Western Temple. Details of the 12th-century phases are not known to me.

Trade and crafts

Horses, sheep, felt and leather; caravan service; Buddhist temple estates.

Places of note

  • Beiting ruins: Ruins of the Tang-Uyghur city

Where the sources disagree

  • English Wikipedia (Qara Khitai) says Karakhanid subjects allied to Yelu Dashi conquered 'Kashgar, Khotan, and Beshbalik' in 1137. If that is this town, the Qara Khitai may hold it more closely than a tributary overlord would; the Chinese and Yuan accounts keep the idiqut here, so we treat it as Uyghur. Risk flagged.

Evidence: Capital function from Wikipedia and Chinese Wikipedia; site details recalled, not re-read; nothing dated to 1200.

On the map: The tierra is a 12 km disc round the ruins and Jimsar.

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.

Sources and studies

  1. Wikipedia: Qocho (list of idiquts drawn from Turghun Almas, flagged by the page itself as full of gaps)
  2. Chinese Wikipedia: Gaochang Huigu (rulers, Western Liao supervisor, summer and winter capitals)
  3. Wikipedia: Fuhai County
  4. James Hamilton, Les Ouighours a l'epoque des Cinq Dynasties (1955), cited from memory

Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.