A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

Russia, the Golden Horde, and the Chaghatayids 165
dynasties, which ended in 1508 with the capture and execution of
Mahmud, the khan of Altishahr (Kashgaria), by Muhammad Shaybani.
Mahmud’s elder brother, Ahmad, the khan of Moghulistan, had meanwhile
died in 1503, and it was his two sons, the aforementioned Mansur
and Said, who would propel the dynasty to a relatively successful reign
in Sinkiang for several more generations.Mansur Khan (1503–43), a
devout Muslim, spent his chief efforts on a jihad eastward into the grey
zone of lingering Buddhism and Mongol and Chinese claims, as for
example were the oasis towns of Hami (Qomul) and Tunhuang.He also
endeavored, on the home front, to quicken the conversion of those of
his subjects who still remained alien to Islam, chiefly the Kyrgyz.Said
Khan (1514–32) meanwhile directed his efforts southward toward
Ladakh; he was assisted in this by Muhammad Haydar Mirza, the aforementioned
Dughlat emir and historian who subsequently also served
Said’s successor Abd al-Rashid (1532–70).A break soon occurred
between the latter two, however, and resulted in Haydar Mirza’s retreat
to India in 1541, where he entered the service of Babur’s son Humayun
and was given the task of governing the province of Kashmir.
Abd al-Rashid became preoccupied with events in northwestern
Moghulistan, the area of the Tianshan mountains around lake Issyk Kul
and the lower Ili region.It was thither that the Kazakh khan Haqq
Nazar, as we have mentioned, directed the thrust of his campaigns.
Haqq Nazar was unopposed by Mansur Khan’s successor Shah Khan
(1545–70), who was too preoccupied with his brother Muhammad’s
rebellion farther east.The latter complication illustrates the weakness of
this diminished resurrection of the Chaghatayid principality, its breakup
among family members who seldom displayed a concord of the kind
that had produced a minor “Chaghatayid renaissance” under Mansur
Khan and Said Khan.Moreover, their successors gradually lost control
of northern Moghulistan, an area increasingly overrun by Kazakhs and
Kalmyks, so that only Sinkiang proper – Kasgharia and Uighuristan –
remained their principal possession.There their rule tended to split up
into three segments whose urban centers were usually: (1) Aksu, the
northwestern fringe of the area and, although reckoned as one of the
cities of Altishahr, also viewed as part of Moghulistan; (2) Kashgar or
Yarqand (Altishahr); and (3) Turfan (Uighuristan).Kashgar, which like
Turfan enjoyed a special status for a variety of reasons – as an ancient
intersection on the Silk Road and gateway to Transoxania, as a timehonored
capital of regional kingdoms, and as the residence of venerated