Qocho

Who holds it

Name

not known for 1 January 1200

Title

The idiqut (winter court); no town governor named

Since

not known

Born

not known

Family

The Uyghur royal house

Confidence

low

See the idiqut's record.

Lord in 1200

The idiqut and his court, with the Qara Khitai commissioner most probably in residence. The ruler's name is not pinned.

Overlord

The idiqut, who answers to the Gurkhan

What the town holds

• The three-walled city and the palace citadel
• The oasis fields east of Turpan watered by mountain streams and underground canals
• The caves of Bezeklik and Sengim in the Murtuk gorge, 10 km to the north

How it was acquired

By the Uyghur conquest from the Tibetans in the 860s (Chinese Wikipedia dates Pugu Jun's seizure of Xizhou to 866).

Allies and rivals

The commissioner and the begs; the monasteries as great landlords.

How things stand that morning

The capital for the winter; a Buddhist city with Manichaean, Christian and Muslim minorities; the Qara Khitai commissioner is probably here.

Wealth

Grapes, raisins and wine, cotton and cotton cloth, grain, the caravan trade and the road tolls, monastery rents, the copying of books.

Military

The idiqut's household guard; walls of rammed earth, inner and outer; no numbers known.

Threats

• Qara Khitai demands
• A Naiman raid across Dzungaria
• Water or harvest failure

Council

No town council is known. The idiqut's officers govern; the sangha, the merchant houses and the guilds of craftsmen have their own heads. Not recorded for 1200.

Communities

A Uyghur Buddhist majority; Chinese-speaking Buddhist monks; a Manichaean community with a temple and a library (the German expeditions found Manichaean manuscripts at the site called Ruin alpha); a Church of the East congregation (the church the German expeditions called Ruin K had Syriac, Sogdian and Persian texts and wall paintings, recalled); a few Muslim and Sogdian-descended merchants. The Manichaean and Christian finds are mostly of the 9th to 11th centuries and do not prove a community of the same size in 1200.

Walls and castle

Three enclosures of rammed earth and mud brick, still standing: an outer city, an inner city and a palace citadel at the north. The ruins are among the best-preserved of the Silk Road (UNESCO site, recalled). Dated 12th-century building phases are not known to me.

Trade and crafts

Cotton cloth, wine and raisins, copying and translating books, felt and leather, metalwork; lodging and credit for caravans.

Places of note

• Palace citadel: The idiqut's winter residence
• Bezeklik caves: Buddhist cave temples in the Murtuk gorge

Where the sources disagree

• The campaign board entry kara-khoja-qocho: coordinates (42.85 N, 89.53 E) are right. 'Barchuq' as the idiqut in 1200 is not pinned.

Evidence: The city and its archaeology are well known; what is thin is the year 1200 itself: no named ruler, no dated 12th-century event, and the text of the finds is mostly earlier. Location and layout from the campaign board and Wikipedia; religious finds recalled from the German Turfan expeditions.

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

On the map: The tierra is the oasis round the city, drawn from the place and a 12 km radius; the real irrigated area is a little larger on the west side toward Turpan.

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.