page_title: History of Kashgar
section_title: The Mongols
hierarchical_section_title: History of Kashgar / The Mongols
caption_attribution_description: a road in Kashgar
context_page_description: The earliest mention of Kashgar occurs when a Chinese Han dynasty envoy traveled the Northern Silk Road to explore lands to the west.
  Another early mention of Kashgar is during the Former Han, when in 76 BCE the Chinese conquered the Xiongnu, Yutian, Sulei and a group of states in the Tarim Basin almost up to the foot of the Tian Shan range.
  Ptolemy speaks of Scythia beyond the Imaus, which is in a “Kasia Regio”, probably exhibiting the name from which Kashgar and Kashgaria are formed. The country's people practised Zoroastrianism and Buddhism before the coming of Islam.
  In the Book of Han, which covers the period between 125 BCE and 23 CE, it is recorded that there were 1,510 households, 18,647 people and 2,000 persons able to bear arms. By the time covered by the Book of the Later Han, it had grown to 21,000 households and had 3,000 men able to bear arms.
  The Book of the Later Han provides a wealth of detail on developments in the region:
  In the period of Emperor Wu [140-87 BC], the Western Regions1 were under the control of the Interior [China]. They numbered thirty-six kingdoms.
context_section_description: The Kara-Khitai in their turn were swept away in 1219 by Genghis Khan. After his death, Kashgar came under the rule of the Chagatai Khans. Marco Polo visited the city, which he calls Cascar, about 1273-4 and recorded the presence of numerous Nestorian Christians, who had their own churches. Later In the 14th century, a Chagataid khan Tughluq Timur converted to Islam, and Islamic tradition began to reassert its ascendancy.
  In 1389−1390 Tamerlane ravaged Kashgar, Andijan and the intervening country. Kashgar endured a troubled time, and in 1514, on the invasion of the Khan Sultan Said, was destroyed by Mirza Ababakar, who with the aid of ten thousand men built a new fort with massive defences higher up on the banks of the Tuman river. The dynasty of the Chagatai Khans collapsed in 1572 with the division of the country among rival factions; soon after, two powerful Khoja factions, the White and Black Mountaineers (Ak Taghliq or Afaqi, and Kara Taghliq or Ishaqi), arose whose differences and war-making gestures, with the intermittent episode of the Oirats of Dzungaria, make up much of recorded history in Kashgar until 1759. The Dzungar Khanate conquered Kashgar and set up the Khoja as their puppet rulers.
caption: Kashgar road scene, 1870s
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "ACD Systems Digital Imaging", "Image DateTime": "2005:02:12 14:43:27", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "174", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF SubSecTime": "850", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1734", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "858", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "240"}