The Tarim, the Uyghurs and Xia

The realms

1. The oasis lordships of the Tarim, vassals of the Qara KhitaiYelu ZhiluguOasis lordships, Qara Khitai tributaries

   East of Kashgar the Tarim basin is a ring of oases round the Taklamakan desert, each fed by a river off the Tian Shan, the Kunlun or the Pamirs.

2. The Uyghur kingdom of Qocho and BeshbaliqKingdom, Qara Khitai tributary

   Qocho is the Uyghur kingdom that grew out of the break-up of the steppe Uyghur empire after 840: a Buddhist oasis state (with Manichaean and Christian communities) of irrigated farmers, monks, scribes and caravan merchants on the northern Silk Road.

3. The Qarluq and the nomads of the Ili, the Zhetysu and DzungariaArslan Khan is attested as the Qarluq ruler at Qayaliq whenKhans and nomads, Qara Khitai tributaries

   The Qarluq are the Turkic people of the Ili valley and the country north of it, the old Qarluq jabgu's inheritance.

4. Great Xia, the Tangut empireWeiming ChunyouEmpire, Jin vassal

   Great Xia (in Chinese Xi Xia, Western Xia; in Tangut Mi-nia, 'the Great State of White and High') is the empire of the Tanguts (Dangxiang), founded in 1038 by Weiming Yuanhao and ruled since 16 October 1193 by his descendant Huanzong, a young man of twenty-two

5. Self-governing peoples of The Tarim, the Uyghurs and XiaNone named for 1199-1200 in the sources readSelf-governing peoples

   Much of this sheet's ground has no ruler, and it is drawn in one pale colour with each people's range outlined in its own record.

Primary sources for The Tarim, the Uyghurs and Xia

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• History of the Jin, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office, with Ouyang Xuan among the chief compilers (1343 to 1344, from the Jin veritable records and the Jin national history). The official history of the Jurchen empire that ruled north China and Manchuria in 1200.
• 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.
• Continuation of the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government, Bi Yuan (畢沅), completed by Feng Jiwu after his death (late eighteenth century, finished after 1801, from Song and Yuan sources). A Qing scholar's continuous month-by-month chronicle of the Song and Yuan centuries, compiled from the Song shi, the Liao, Jin and Yuan histories, Li Tao, Li Xinchuan and other Song sources.
• Annals of the Western Xia, Wu Guangcheng (吳廣成) (1825 to 1827, compiled from Song, Liao, Jin and Yuan sources). A Qing scholar's year-by-year reconstruction of Tangut history from the Chinese histories, since the Xia left no surviving annals of their own in Chinese.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• The Revised and Newly Established Law Code of the Tiansheng Era, The Xia state under Emperor Renzong (promulgated between 1149 and 1169; the surviving printed copies come from Khara-Khoto). The Tangut law code in force under Huanzong in 1200, in twenty chapters: offices and ranks, the army and its registers, the frontier garrisons, taxation, irrigation, markets, Buddhist and Daoist clergy, slaves, horses and the treatment of Tibetans, Uyghurs and Chinese within the state.

The whole sources library

How these entries are made

Every entry describes one morning, 1 January 1200, and keeps later events in a dated "what the year holds" list with the conditions each depended on. Each entry names its sources, rates its confidence and says where the sources disagree. Published 4 November 2026. Corrections are welcome.