A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

Introduction 23
never was an official name, except for the half-century of the Tsarist era,
it lacks precise delimitations, although Lake Balkhash and the Tianshan
mountains can be assigned the role of its northern and southern brackets.The
rivers Talas and Ili can assume the same role on the west and
east (unless we assign this role to the expanded borders represented by
the mountain range of Karatau and by Lake Alakol).Semireche is an
area where sedentaries and nomads have met at various points in history
– coexisting, overlapping, or competing – because it lends itself to both
ways of life (as do, in fact, many other parts of the Eurasian steppe).At
the time of the Arab conquest of Transoxania, Semireche’s southern
fringe had a flourishing agricultural and urban population chiefly composed
of the same Sogdian stock, engaged in irrigated or dry farming,
professing one or another of the main religions – Zoroastrianism,
Buddhism, or Christianity – entertaining a lively exchange with the
Turkic nomads, and acknowledging, when necessary, their suzerainty.
This prosperity continued and even increased after the spread of Islam
here in the tenth century, which began with the conquest of the westernmost
segment of Semireche and then made giant strides with the voluntary
conversion of entire Turkic tribes.In the eleventh century,
Semireche became the senior province of the Qarakhanid dynasty, and
shone with a florescence of Turkic–Islamic culture.This came to an end
after the Mongol invasion, but not through the standard method of
willful destruction accompanying the conquest; here it resulted from the
fact that the Mongols preferred to live in Semireche, grazing their herds,
holding there their quriltays (conventions), or fighting their internecine
wars.Agricultural and urban civilization ultimately succumbed to the
nomads’ way of the Mongols, and reappeared only after the Russian
conquest in the 1860s.A small settlement which the natives called Alma-
Ata or Almaty was then developed as the administrative center of
Semireche under the name Vernyi (“The Loyal [City]”), before recovering
its original Turkic name (the etymology of Alma-Ata or Almaty suggests
the presence of apple trees or orchards, from alma = apple).
Bishkek, the capital of the future Kyrgyzstan but then a modest fort, was
also included in the oblast of Semireche.
After the Mongols modified Semireche to suit their lifestyle, the region
came to be called Moghulistan (or Mongolistan, “Land of the
Mongols”; the form Moghulistan is based on its spelling in the Arabic
alphabet, which tended to omit the abraded sound n from the word
“Mongol”).The name also acquired a political connotation as the patrimony
of the Chaghatayid branch of the Genghisids who ruled the area,