The Kara-Khanids and the Coming of Islam
The Kara-Khanid ruler Satuq Bughra Khan converts to Islam, Kashgar becomes a centre of Turkic Islamic culture, and Mahmud al-Kashgari and Yusuf Khass Hajib write the founding classics of Turkic literature.
- An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples — Peter B. Golden, Otto Harrassowitz (1992)
- Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang — James A. Millward, Columbia University Press (2007)
- The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History — Rian Thum, Harvard University Press (2014)
- Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Dīwān Luγāt at-Turk) — Mahmud al-Kashgari, ed. and trans. Robert Dankoff with James Kelly, Harvard University (1982)
- Wisdom of Royal Glory (Kutadgu Bilig): A Turko-Islamic Mirror for Princes — Yusuf Khass Hajib, trans. Robert Dankoff, University of Chicago Press (1983)
A khan’s conversion
In the tenth century a Turkic dynasty known to historians as the Kara-Khanids ruled lands on both sides of the Tian Shan, from Kashgar to the edge of Transoxiana. Around 934, according to later accounts, its prince Satuq Bughra Khan converted to Islam, influenced by Muslim merchants and scholars from the Samanid lands of Central Asia. He died in 955, and his tomb at Artush near Kashgar remains one of the region’s most revered shrines.
- An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples — Peter B. Golden, Otto Harrassowitz (1992)
- The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History — Rian Thum, Harvard University Press (2014)
The Kara-Khanids became a Muslim Turkic state, and their wars carried Islam east. The Buddhist kingdom of Khotan, which had flourished for a thousand years, fell to them after a long struggle around 1006. Stories of these holy wars, and of the martyrs who fell in them, became the basis of later shrine traditions in the southern oases.
- Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang — James A. Millward, Columbia University Press (2007)
- The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History — Rian Thum, Harvard University Press (2014)
Two classics
Kashgar became a centre of learning where Islamic culture was expressed in Turkic for the first time. In 1069–70 Yusuf Khass Hajib presented the Kara-Khanid ruler with Kutadgu Bilig (“Wisdom that Brings Good Fortune”), a long poem on just kingship and the good life, framed as a dialogue between a king, his ministers and a hermit.
- Wisdom of Royal Glory (Kutadgu Bilig): A Turko-Islamic Mirror for Princes — Yusuf Khass Hajib, trans. Robert Dankoff, University of Chicago Press (1983)
A few years later, in Baghdad, Mahmud al-Kashgari wrote the Diwan Lughat al-Turk (“Compendium of the Turkic Dialects”) in Arabic, to teach the language of the Turks, then the dominant soldiers of the Islamic world. It records words, poems and proverbs from across the Turkic world, and includes a round map with Balasaghun at its centre. Both works are seen today as founding monuments of Turkic, and especially Uyghur, literature.
- Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Dīwān Luγāt at-Turk) — Mahmud al-Kashgari, ed. and trans. Robert Dankoff with James Kelly, Harvard University (1982)
- An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples — Peter B. Golden, Otto Harrassowitz (1992)
A slow transformation
Islamisation took centuries. The Kara-Khanids themselves split into eastern and western khanates and fell under the non-Muslim Kara Khitai in the twelfth century, and then under the Mongols. Turpan and Hami in the east remained largely Buddhist until the fifteenth century, when they were converted, partly by force, under the Chaghatayid khans.
- Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang — James A. Millward, Columbia University Press (2007)
- An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples — Peter B. Golden, Otto Harrassowitz (1992)
By then the oases had a shared Turkic Muslim culture, rooted in Sufi orders and in the veneration of saints’ tombs. Rian Thum shows that local histories of saints and holy warriors, copied by hand and read aloud at shrines, became the main way oasis people understood their past. In this sense the Kara-Khanid conversion is less a single event than the beginning of the Islamic world the Uyghurs still identify with.
- The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History — Rian Thum, Harvard University Press (2014)
Tradition says the young prince Satuq learned of Islam from a Muslim merchant and converted in secret, then won power and brought his people to the faith. He is honoured as a saint, and the Kara-Khanids are seen as the first great Muslim Turkic state of the Uyghurs' homeland.
- The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History — Rian Thum, Harvard University Press (2014)
- Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang — James A. Millward, Columbia University Press (2007)
The Kara-Khanids' origins are obscure, probably among Karluk and other Turkic tribes rather than the Uyghurs proper. Conversion spread over centuries: Buddhist Khotan fell only after a long war in the early 1000s, and Turpan and Hami became Muslim centuries later.
- An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples — Peter B. Golden, Otto Harrassowitz (1992)
- Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang — James A. Millward, Columbia University Press (2007)
Why it matters today
For most Uyghurs, Islam is inseparable from identity, and its story starts here. Satuq Bughra Khan's shrine at Artush and the tombs of Mahmud al-Kashgari and Yusuf Khass Hajib are treasured sites, and the two writers are celebrated as founding fathers of Uyghur letters. That is why restrictions on religion and the demolition of shrines are felt as attacks on who Uyghurs are, not only on what they believe.