page_title: Khara-Khoto
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Khara-Khoto / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Muhammadan Tomb K.K.VI. at southeast corner of Kharakhoto, from east, 3 June 1914. 中文: 西夏黑水城遺址東南角回教徒六號墓東面。
context_page_description: Khara-Khoto was a Tangut city in the Ejin Banner of Alxa League in western Inner Mongolia near Juyan Lake Basin. It has been identified as the city of Etzina, which appears in The Travels of Marco Polo. The present banner Ejin Banner is named after this city.
context_section_description: The city was founded in 1032 and became a thriving center of Western Xia trade in the 11th century. There are remains of 30-foot (9.1 m)-high ramparts and 12-foot (3.7 m)-thick outer walls. The outer walls ran for some 421 m (1,381 ft) east-west by 374 m (1,227 ft) north-south.
  The walled fortress was first taken by Genghis Khan in 1226, but—contrary to a widely circulated misunderstanding—the city continued to flourish under Mongol overlordship. During Kublai Khan's time, the city was expanded, reaching a size three times bigger than during the Tangut Empire. Toghon Temür concentrated his preparation for the reconquest of China at Khara-Khoto. The city was located on the crossroads connecting Karakorum, Shangdu and Kumul.
  In The Travels of Marco Polo, Marco Polo describes a visit to a city called Etzina or Edzina, which has been identified with Khara-Khoto.
  When you leave the city of Campichu you ride for twelve days, and then reach a city called Etzina, which is towards the north on the verge of the Sandy Desert; it belongs to the Province of Tangut. The people are Idolaters, and possess plenty of camels and cattle, and the country produces a number of good falcons, both Sakers and Lanners. The inhabitants live by their cultivation and their cattle, for they have no trade. At this city you must needs lay in victuals for forty days, because when you quit Etzina, you enter on a desert which extends forty days' journey to the north, and on which you meet with no habitation nor baiting-place.
  — Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo, translated by Henry Yule, 1920
  According to a legend of the local Torghut population, in 1372 a Mongol military general named Khara Bator (Mongolian: Black hero) was surrounded with his troops by the armies of China's Ming dynasty. Diverting the Ejin River, the city's water source that flowed just outside the fortress, the Han Chinese denied Khara-Khoto water for its gardens and wells. As time passed and Khara Bator realised his fate, he murdered his family and then himself. After his suicide, Khara Bator's soldiers waited within the fortress until the Ming finally attacked and killed the remaining inhabitants. Another version of the legend holds that Khara Bator made a breach in the northwestern corner of the city wall and escaped through it. The remains of the city have a breach through which a rider can pass.
  The defeat of the Mongols at Kharakhoto is described in the Ming dynasty annals: "In the fifth year of Hungu (1372), General Feng Sheng and his army reached Edzina. The town's defender Buyan'temur surrendered, and Chinese troops reached the mountains of Bojiashan. The ruler of Yuan, Gyardzhipan', fled. His minister... and 27 others were captured, together with ten or more thousand head of horses and cattle." After the defeat, and also possibly due to real water shortage, the city was abandoned and left in ruins. Its exceedingly remote location preserved it from looters.
caption: Image from Aurel Stein's visit. A tomb (possibly a mosque) at the southeast corner, viewed from the east.
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