Qocho: The Buddhist Uyghur Kingdom of the Silk Road
Uyghur refugees found a kingdom in the Turpan oasis, where they become Buddhists, translate scriptures, and develop the script that the Mongols and Manchus later adopt.
- 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)
- Xinjiang: China's Muslim Borderland — S. Frederick Starr (ed.), M. E. Sharpe (2004)
After 840 one group of Uyghurs settled in the Turpan basin, a hot, fertile oasis on the northern Silk Road, and built a kingdom centred on Qocho (Gaochang) and Beshbaliq. Over the following centuries most of them became Buddhists, while Manichaeism and Church of the East Christianity also flourished. Their monks translated Buddhist texts from Sanskrit, Tocharian and Chinese into Turkic, and painted the cave temples at Bezeklik.
- 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)
The Uyghurs of Qocho wrote in a vertical script derived from Sogdian. When the Uyghur ruler submitted peacefully to Genghis Khan in 1209, Uyghur scribes became administrators of the Mongol empire, and their script became the basis of the Mongolian and, later, the Manchu alphabets.
- 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)
The kingdom faded under Mongol rule in the fourteenth century, and by the fifteenth century the people of Turpan had become Muslim, joining the Turkic Muslim culture of the western oases.
- Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang — James A. Millward, Columbia University Press (2007)
- Xinjiang: China's Muslim Borderland — S. Frederick Starr (ed.), M. E. Sharpe (2004)
Why it matters today
Qocho shows that Uyghur culture was cosmopolitan long before Islam: Buddhist, Manichaean and Christian, literate and at the heart of the Silk Road. Its cave paintings at Bezeklik and the ruins of Gaochang draw Uyghur pride, and its Old Uyghur script lives on in the Mongolian script. For some devout Muslims today it is a pre-Islamic past to be acknowledged rather than celebrated.