A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

The conquering Mongols 113
in the Dasht-i Kipchak.Neither did Khurasan, which for the most part
remained in the orbit of Ilkhanid Persia.Transoxania proper, Fergana,
Semireche, and western Sinkiang represented Chaghatayid territories,
each of which would gradually assert its own individuality and distinctive
evolution.For over a century, Chaghatay’s descendants lived mainly
in the aforementioned steppes of Semireche and the Ili valley; most
retained their nomadic lifestyle and remained pagan; the political and
moral norm they respected was the yasa, the traditional Mongol code of
behavior as formulated under Genghis Khan or, more probably, shortly
after his death.Both their nomadism and yasa presented a striking contrast
to the sedentarism and the sharia, Islamic law, of the ulus’s mostly
Muslim townspeople and agriculturalists.The Mongols, following the
characteristic religious tolerance (or indifference) of Eurasian nomads,
did not interfere with their subjects’ Islam (except in those instances
where Islamic rituals clashed with the Mongol yasa strictly upheld by
Chaghatay; this applied especially to Mongol strictures against ablution
in running water and against the Muslim way of ritually slaughtering
animals) – nor, for that matter, with other religions such as Christianity
(their rule even gave a brief opportunity for Roman Catholic proselytism),
and on the whole they let the settled areas be administered by
Muslim governors (monitored by usually Mongol or Turkic residents
called darughachis). The Mongol term darughachi, the Turkic term basqaq
(both apparently deriving from the verb to “press,” meaning “to impress
a seal”), and the Arabic term shahna seem to have been used synonymously
by Muslim historians.There may have been shifting nuances of
meaning between them, but it does appear that the term was often
applied to types of functionaries translatable as “governor,” “resident,”
or “tax collector.”
A remarkable illustration of the last-named feature is the career of
Mahmud Yalavach, originally a Khwarazmian merchant who was
appointed governor of the settled segments – urban as well as agricultural
– of Transoxania in 1225 and was then succeeded by his son
Masudbek (1239–89).These Muslim governors were under the jurisdiction
of the Great Khan rather than under that of the Chaghatayid ruler
of the ulus; this gave the cities and areas under cultivation considerable
autonomy, relative peace, growing prosperity, and a special cultural
dimension under what some modern historians are fond of calling the
pax mongolica: for the fact that Ulus Chaghatay was a component of the
Mongol empire, and eventually lay at the geographical core of this