Turkey | Istanbul | Caravanserais | Shambhala

Update: If you are unfortunate enough to be in New York City you can swing by the American Museum of Natural History for their new Silk Road Exhibition, which features several of the places listed below, including Xian and Turpan.

From the Sultanahmed Koftesi I walked up Divan Yolu and turned right at Constantine’s Column onto Vezirhani Street. This neighborhood, which includes the Grand Bazaar, is the repository of many old hans, or caravanerserais, which offered lodging and warehousing to foreign merchants and traders, some of whom plied the Silk Road. Istanbul was of course the western terminus of at least two of the overland branches of the Silk Road. Burak Sansal summarizes these:

The caravan routes transporting silk, china, paper, spices and precious stones from one continent to the other followed several itineraries in Asia before arriving in Anatolia, which served as a bridge linking it to Europe via the Thrace region. These caravan routes later acquired the name of silk roads and Anatolia constituted the crossroad of these routes. The major cities lying on the Silk Road Anatolia were, in the north: Trabzon, Gümüshane, Erzurum, Sivas, Tokat, Amasya, Kastamonu, Adapazari, Izmit, Istanbul and Edirne; and in the south: Mardin, Diyarbakir, Adiyaman, Malatya, Kahramanmaras, Kayseri, Nevsehir, Konya, Isparta, Antalya and Denizli. Another frequently used itinerary is known to be the one between Erzurum, Malatya, Kayseri, Kirsehir, Ankara, Bilecik, Bursa, Iznik, Izmit and Istanbul.

The Vezir Han, one of the more venerable of the caravanserais in the Grand Bazaar area, is located not far from the corner of Vezirhani Street and Divan Yolu. The entrance does not seem to be marked, but this might well be the portal leading to the inner courtyard. The han itself was built sometime in the fourteenth century, and thus may have caught the tail end of the trading boom that accompanying the Pax Mongolica established by Chingis Khan and his successors, most of whom favored free trade. In his Guidebook to the Silk Road, written just before the Black Plague of 1348–50, Balducci Pegolotti wrote that you could travel from Khanbalik (Beijing) to the Black Sea in 300 days. “The road you travel . . . to Cathay (China) is perfectly safe, whether by day or by night, according to what the merchants say who have used it,” he wrote.

Just down the street, a gateway on the left leads to the Nuruosmaniye Mosque and the Grand Bazaar. The mosque is now undergoing renovation and was not open on the day I was there.

Nuruosmaniye Mosque, started in 1748 by Mahmut I and completed in 1755 by Osman III: the first large mosque to incorporate the Baroque style then popular in Europe.

The passageway past the Nuruosmaniye Mosque leads to the famous and indeed notorious Grand Bazaar, one of the world’s oldest and largest markets, founded in 1461, with more than 58 covered streets and over 1,200 shops. I will be returning here before I leave Istanbul, but for the moment I am hot on the trail of caravanserais.

One of the main entrances to the Grand Bazaar

Alongside the Grand Bazaar are ancient shopping arcades which may well date back to Silk Road times.

Old stone building near the Grand Bazaar

Just down the street is the Mahmud Pasha Mosque, one of the oldest private mosques in Istanbul. It was built in 1463 by Mahmud Pasha, the Grand Vizier of Sultan Mehmed II, who had conquered Constantinople in 1453, turning it into Istanbul. He eventually fell out with Mehmed and was executed in 1474. His tomb, directly behind the mosque, is said to be decorated with some of the oldest existing Iznik Tiles in Istanbul, which must offer him some consolation. Unfortunately, on the day I was there the tomb was locked.

Mahmut Pasha Mosque

From the Mosque Mahmut Pasha Yokusu (Hill) the street drops down to the Spice Market and the shore of the Golden Horn.

Street dropping down from Mahmut Pasha Yokusu

This street is lined with various hans, including the Kurkchu Han, said to be the oldest caravanserai in Istanbul. This han specialized in people involved in the fur trade. It is now fronted by nondescript sheds, but the gateway, although covered with thick paint and topped by a new sign, is said to be the original. Behind the gateway can be seen the ancient stone walls of the old caravanserai.

Kurkchu Han

Another khan on Mahmut Pasha Yokshu

Wandering about down this street lined with hans I could not help but wonder about the people who washed up here over the centuries and what they may have brought with them besides the material goods in which they were trading. In additional to being a trade route the Silk Road was of course also a conduit for ideas, philosophies, and religious beliefs. We have already seen how Nestorian Christianity moved eastward into China, establishing a Beachhead in Xian, the eastern terminus of the Silk Road (notwithstanding the contention of our Beloved Peony that in fact the eastern terminus was in Japan), in the eighth century if not earlier, and how a Mosque in Xian had been built in 742, a mere 120 years after the Hegira (we are of course speaking here of the 622 AD Hegira and not the twentieth-century Hippy Hegira).

The Eastward Advance of Buddhism from India into China is well-known; the dispersion of Buddhism westward less so. Did the traders and travelers who arrived here at these hans from the East bring with them the teachings of Buddha, either in written form, formal oral transmissions, or traveler’s tales? More specifically, did the Shambhala Mythologem, as first expounded in the Kalachakra Tantra and later elaborated on by many commentators, ever reach these ancient cobblestone streets?

As you know, according to legend the Kalachakra Tantra was first taught by the Buddha to Sucandra, the First King of Shambhala. Also according to legend, pilgrims to Shambhala brought an abbreviated version of the Kalachakra Tantra back to India in the tenth century or so, and from there it was disseminated into Tibet and later into Mongolia. More literal minded, beady-eyed scholars have bypassed the legendary origins of the Kalachakra Tantra altogether and contend that it was written in the tenth or eleventh century. Exactly where remains a matter of great dispute. Some scholars in the past have suggested that it was written in the Turpan Basin, on the north side of the Tarim Depression, still other in Khotan, on the south side of the Tarim Depression. Both of these cities were of course famous stops on the Silk Road. Could the Kalachakra Tantra and attendant Shambhala Mythologem have been carried the whole way westward to the terminus of the Silk Road in Istanbul?

The Tarim Basin as Shambhala. Branches of the Silk Road ran along both the north and south sides of the basin. See Enlargement of Map

Also, we know that the Kalachakra Tantra reached the court of Khubilai Khan, ruler of the Mongol Empire, in what is now Beijing in the late thirteen century. Khubilai Khan may have himself taken the Kalachakra Initiation (this is a matter of contention). We know for sure a copy of the Kalachakra Tantra was made to commemorate his death in 1294. This copy still exists and I myself had digitized copies of it distributed in Mongolia. Thus the Kalachakra Tantra and attendant Shambhala Mythologem could also have move westward on the Silk Road from Beijing.

Just how far did Buddhism itself extend its influence westward? In the 1250s Khülegü Khan (1217–1265), grandson of Chingis Khan and brother of Khubilai Khan, invaded what is now Iran and in 1256 destroyed the stronghold of the Ismaili Sect at Alamut. In 1258 He Sacked Baghdad, overthrowing the 500 year-old Islamic Abbasid Dynasty, and in the process reopening the Silk Road. Khülegü was a Buddhist, at least in his later life, but his wife Doquz Khatun and his mother, the legendary Sorghaghtani Beki, were Christians.

One of Khülegü’s successors, the Il-Khan Arghun, eventually made the city of Tabriz, in the northwest corner of what is now Iran, just west of the Caspian Sea, his capital, and here Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam were all said to flourish, at least at first. From here Buddhism might well have moved further westward. As is turned out, Tabriz may mark the the limits of Buddhist expansion to the west, at least until the late twentieth century and the Tibetan Diaspora. The Mongol Il-Khans soon converted to Islam, and what is now Iran eventually became a predominately Islamic country. Buddhism virtually disappeared from Persia, thus cutting off the lands further to the west from the wellsprings of Buddhism in the East.

But while Buddhism as an organized religion may not have traveled the whole way west on the Silk Road traders and travelers may well have brought texts and tales with them, including accounts of the legendary realm of Shambhala. There is, as we shall soon see, a persistent connection between Sufis, practitioners of a mystical brand of Islam, and Shambhala. Indeed, just before I came to Istanbul, a pandita in Ulaan Baatar informed me that a considerable percentage of the current population of Shambhala are in fact Sufis. Could Sufis have learned about Shambhala from Silk Road travelers, or had Sufis themselves plied the old trade routes and brought back to Istanbul knowledge of the legendary Kingdom? Could they then have used their knowledge to locate a Portal here in Istanbul? Of course Istanbul was in the past a hotbed of Sufism. My next stop is the old Mevlevi Tekke in Galatea, on the other side of the Golden Horn, once home to the Whirling Dervishes, one of the most famous Sufi sects.

Turkey | Byzantium | Shambhala

For years I have heard rumors in Mongolia that Istanbul, or Turkey in general, was somehow connected with Shambhala. It’s difficult to say exactly when and how this variant of the Shambhala Mythologem arose. The Third Panchen Lama of Lama (1738-1780), who wrote what is perhaps the most famous guidebook to Shambhala, reportedly stated that the final battle between Buddhism and the infidel unbelievers will take place in Rum, the old name for ancient Byzantium and modern Turkey; he does not seem to equate “Rum” with Shambhala itself. In any case his guidebook was widely distributed in Mongolia and readers may have assumed from his references to Rum—Byzantium—that it was somehow connected with Shambhala. The Mongolian lama and teacher Ishbajor (1704–1788), wrote in a work entitled Zaxidal Xariltsaa that the realm of Shambhala was to the west of “Küngküri,” by which he meant Anatolian Turkey. Istanbul of course lies to the west of Anatolian Turkey. Then the nineteenth-century chronicle Erdeni-yin Erike stated that the fourth son of Chagatai, himself one of Chingis’s sons, “was made King of Rum, and so dwelt in the great city of Shambhala.” This is obviously an historical inaccuracy; no son of Chagatai’s ever ruled as the King of Rum, i.e, Byzantium. This statement does show, however, the persistent identification of Turkey and more particularly Istanbul with Shambhala.

Also, the Mongolian historian Damdinsüren (1908-1986) intimated “that Küngker may have, at one time, been thought of as both Shambhala and Istanbul, thus identifying Shambhala and the Turkish city.” Küngker is a common term for Turkey and/or Istanbul: it frequently pops up on old texts and older lamas in Mongolia use it in conversation to this day. In the Bolor Toli, or Crystal Mirror, a encyclopedic account of Buddhism by the ethnically Mongolian but Tibetan-named lama Nyima Chokyi Thuken (1737–1802), we read that “Going ten day’s journey in the direction of the setting sun from the River Volga, there is the city of the King of Küngker.” But the text does not seem to imply that Küngker is synonymous with Shambhala. It does state that to the west of Küngker “is a great lake called Tinggis [the Mediterranean],” and to the south of Küngker “is a blue stone known as Meka (Mecca), the shrine of the Tirteki [Moslems].” This Mecca is identified as the homeland of the infidel enemies of Shambhala. West of Mecca the Mongolian chroniclers were entering terra incognita, the realms of people with horses heads, antlers, and sexual organs on the soles of their feet.

Despite all these references to Istanbul and Turkey the connection of these places with Shambhala remains nebulous at best. Yet where there is smoke there may indeed be fire. I decided I better continue my researches on the ground. Between the Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque, both of which I had already visited, is the so-called Miliarium Aureum (Golden Milestone), erected by Byzantine emperor Constantine the Great in the 4th century AD. This stele served as the geographic center of Byzantium, the point from which the distances to all other cities and towns in the far-flung Byzantine Empire were measured. Basically it served the function of those posts we see at popular tourist locations with signs pointing to distance cities, as in “London: 5427 miles.”

The Golden Milestone, once the center of the Byzantine Empire; still located in the very heart of modern Istanbul.

It has occurred to me that we pay far too little attention to the Byzantines. Go ahead, admit it—you probably don't think of Byzantium more than two or three times a day. The word itself has become synonymous with mystifyingly intricate bureaucracies and devious, underhanded intrigue, but beyond that what do we really know about the Byzantines? Yet the Byzantium Empire lasted over 1000 years, much longer than the 400 or 500 year-duration of the Roman Empire that Edward Gibbon had such Wet Dreams about.

Recently there has been a spate of books about Byzantium and its capital Constantinople. Why, you ask? Since most of these books are by Americans I can only surmise that consciously or unconsciously Americans are questioning their own Empire-building endeavors and looking for pointers from the past. Debate rages about when America became an empire rather than a republic, but for the sake of argument let’s say that the late 1940s marks the turning point. America had emerged from World War II dominate on the world stage while at the same time the English Empire disintegrated with the loss of India and other Asian possessions. So maybe America has been an empire for sixty years at best. Compare this with the 1000-year span of the Byzantine Empire. Does anyone seriously think America will still be an empire 1000 years hence? Already we are witnessing the classic symptoms of decline: foreign wars sucking off vast amounts of money, a rapidly devaluing currency, and the concentration of wealth in the hands of tiny elite whose actual contribution to the common weal is by no means clear. And as the future becomes more and more uncertain we see the proliferation of fundamentalist religions and the rise of Wild-Eyed Cults which attract those who formerly would have been the bedrock of society. But I digress . . .

Here is a sampling of books about Byzantium currently in my Scriptorium. I can recommend any of them if you want to get up to speed on the Byzantines:

It may or may not be significant that just a hundred yards or so from the Golden Milestone is a restaurant which back in the 1960s and 70s served as the western terminus of the Hippie Hegira, also known in some circles as the Hash Highway, through Central Asia, Afghanistan and on to Kathmandu, where as Janis Joplin noted, the road ended for some, or still farther on to Goa and other notorious hangouts in India. Gunj, my host here in Istanbul, apparently made this trip herself. As usual, she is being very coy, but she has hinted that she herself may have located a Portal in Kashmir.

But what about Istanbul? What is Istanbul’s connection with Shambhala? Was there a Portal here in the past and if so does it still exists? It is important to remember that when Mongolians refer to a place in the four dimensional world as Shambhala they are generally referring to a location where a portal to Shambhala can be found, not Shambhala itself. At these places a warp in the time-space continuum may provide access to the Kingdom of Shambhala. Needless to say, opinions vary on this matter, but some knowledgeable Mongolians maintain that Shambhala exists in a seven-dimensional universe which intersects with the four-dimensional world that we all know and love only at very special places known as Portals. One such place is Khamariin Khiid in Mongolia. There are a few others. The location of this portals is not fixed, but can open or close due to various factors. Thus there may have been a Portal in Istanbul previously but now it could be closed. One factor in the location of a Portal may well be the number of people at a given location who are actually attempting enter it. Through the focusing of their energies they may indeed be able create a Portal. Istanbul has been the focus of vast amounts of energy for two millennia; whether it is the kind of energy which results in the creation of a Portal is still uncertain.

Just a stone’s throw from the Million Stone is the entrance to the underground Basilica Cistern. Could this opening into the physical earth also mark the location of a multidimensional Portal? In any case, I remember the Cistern well from its use as a location in the 1963 James Bond flick From Russia with Love and was anxious to see it.

This immense man-made underground cistern, 410 feet long by 210 feet wide, was built by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine the Great in the Fourth Century AD and later enlarged by Emperor Justinian in the 450s. It provided water for the Great Palace of Constantinople—during Byzantine times located near the site of the current Blue Mosque—and to the nearby Topkapi Palace during the Ottoman Era. Its ceiling is held up by 336 thirty-foot high marble pillars in twelve rows of twenty-eight columns each. Water was piped into the cistern via an aqueduct built during the reign of Emperor Justinian from the Belgrade Forest some twelve miles away. When full the cistern could hold up to 27 million gallons of water. According to one account the cistern fell into disuse towards the end of Ottoman times and amazingly enough its existence was completely forgotten, even though it was located in the heart of Istanbul and thousands walked right over its ceiling every day. It was rediscovered in the twentieth century and occasionally used for special events like the James Bond flick. After repairs and renovation it was opened as a tourist attraction in 1987.

Walkway through the Cistern. There is currently only a foot of water in the cistern. When actually in use the cistern it could be filled to the top.

View of the Cistern

View of the Cistern

At the northwest corner of the cistern two of the columns rest on huge blocks of stone featuring the visage of Medusa, one of the three Gorgons. It is not quite clear why they are portrayed sideways and upside down.

Medusa upside down

Closeup of Medusa upside down

Medusa sideways

Closeup of Medusa sideways

I received no vibration indicating that the Cistern was a Portal to Shambhala. It did occur to me, however, that there may be some out there who view the Cistern as an entrance to Agharta, the underground Kingdom described by Marquis Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre and Ferdinand Ossendowski. But despite the best attempts of Nicholas Roerich and the host of New Age Nut Bars who followed in his wake to conflate Agharta and Shambhala there is no real connection between the two. So I retired from the Cistern and had tea at the nearby Kervan Guesthouse, where I had quite an interesting, to say nothing of animated, discussion about carpets with its owner, the estimable Turgut Baturay. But the subjects of Turkish Tea and Carpets deserve posts of their own . . .

Mongolia | Life & Death of the False Lama #14

In Dambijantsan’s day, just as now, the main access from the Ili Basin to the rest of Xinjiang is via the Xinertai Pass through the Borohogo Shan. From the basin bottom the rugged western ramparts of the Borohogo Shan rise precipitously some 4500 feet to the pass. It was this formidable barrier which separated the Ili Basin from the rest of Xinjang and oriented it toward Kazakhstan to the west. Nowadays the road which switchbacks down the side of this rampart is notorious for the many accidents which occur here, especially in wintertime when heavy snow and ice storms blanket the area (I myself was in an accident on this section of road). As of 2007 a mammoth construction project was underway to built a railway tunnel through the Borohogo Shan in the Xinertai Pass area, connecting by railroad the rest of Xinjiang with the Ili Valley and the country of Kazakhstan to the west via the border town of Khorgas and thus lessening the basin’s isolation from the rest of the province.

This is the way Dambijantsan came in the spring of 1890. Just beyond the crest of the mountains he passed by 177 square-mile Lake Sayram (sayram = “blessing” in Kazakh), at 6791 feet the highest alpine lake in Xinjiang.

Sayram Lake

Sayram Lake

Bordering the lake and ramping down to the Zungarian Basin is the Bortala (bor tal = “brown steppe”) region where Amarsanaa himself was headquartered. The Oirats who had nomadized in Bortala were largely decimated after the defeat of Amarsanaa, but many of the Kalmyks who fled Russia in 1771 settled in this area. We have no record of what Dambijanstan did here, but he no doubt would have found a warm welcome among the descendants of the people from Kalmykia, where he had been born. These descendants of the Kalymks still live here, residents of the current-day Bortala Mongol Autonomous Prefecture.

From Bortala Dambijantsan traveled eastward along the southern rim of the Zungarian Basin to Urumqi, then as now the capital of Xinjiang Province. He would have found few like-minded cohorts here in this relatively new city inhabited largely by government officials colonists from elsewhere in China and he quickly moved on. He probably traveled south through the Tian Shan, either through the pass leading to the Turpan Basin or the 14,967-foot Shangli Pass to the northern edge of the Tarim Basin. More likely he took the latter, since it leads to the Bostum Lake area, where thousands of Torguts who had returned from Kalmykia to China in 1771 had been settled by Qing authorities (today the area is the Bayan Gol Mongol Autonomous Prefecture). Here among the Torguts nomads he would have found rapt listeners to his message of Mongolian independence, but unfortunately we have no record of his movements through the area. Dambijantsan probably moved east through the Turpan Basin and perhaps proceeded to the town Hami, on the border between current-day Xinjiang and Gansu provinces. Here he would have found many Oirats living in the Hami area and in the Tian Shan Mountains between Hami and Barköl to the north. But again we have no record of his passage.

The next reported sighting of the badarchin (wandering holy man) was in the Tsaidam Depression, south of Hami in current-day Qinghai Province. Here among the Khoshuut who had moved into the area with Güüsh Khan back in the early seventeenth century Dambijantsan repeated his message which by now had taken on the overtones of a messianic prophesy: he was the long-waited descendant of Amarsanaa come to free the Mongols from their oppressors.

The Kalymk party who as mentioned earlier had turned up in the Ili Basin proceeded on the Tibet. Noran Ulanov, head of the group, died of atttitude sickness en route to Lhasa and Dambin Ulianov, who in the Ili Basin had been mistaken for Dambijantsan, took over as head of the mission. By the time they arrived in Tibet the English Younghusband Expedition had already invaded the country, and on July 30, 1904 the Dalai Lama accompanied by his tutor the Buryat Agvan Dorjieff, who Damijantsan had allegedly met while they were students at Drepung, and others had fled north and would eventually turn up Mongolia. Although unable thwart the British, Ulianov did manage met with various high-ranking Tibetan officials, including the ruling Regent, Lozang Gyaltsen Lamochar, the Gandan Tri Rinpoche. He presented the Rinpoche with a document which argued that according to various ancient prophesies Buddhism would flourish in Russia and China and that therefore the Tibetans should align themselves with these two countries and not with the English, who it was claimed were basically hostile to the teachings of the Buddha. His message delivered, Ulianov and the Kalymk party started on the long journey back to Kalmykia. While passing through the Tsaidam Basin they heard from Khoshuut Mongols living there still more stories and legends about the mysterious Kalmyk who had turned up among them fourteen years earlier claiming to be a descendant of Amarsanaa and promising to liberate them from their Manchu-Chinese oppressors. Wherever Dambijantsn appeared he made an impression which would be remain years and even decades later.

From the Tsaidam east we get only faint glimpses of the badarchin. He supposedly passed through Beijing, where he claimed he had earlier studied at the college of the Jangjya Khutagt, and then quickly moved on northward to Örgöö [Ulaan Baatar], at the time the largest monastic settlement in Mongolia and home of the Eight Bogd Gegeen. But this was ground zero of Khalkh Mongolia, home of the Eastern Mongols who under Zanabazar had capitulated to the Qing back in 1691, and Dambijantsan was no doubt eager to move on westward to the lands still inhabited in part by his ancient ancestors, the Oirats. We next hear of Dambijantsan in what was then Zasagt Aimag in western Mongolia. Here he first met the boy who would be become known as the Diluv Khutagt. The budding Diluv Khutagt and his family were then probably living near Khairkhan Uul in what is now Zavkhan Aimag. In this area were born the “Nine Famous Khutagts” now honored with ovoos in Uliastai. Decades later, when he was living in the United States, the Diluv Khutagt would write:

When I was only six years old . . . Ja Lama made a trip through Outer Mongolia going from east to west, and he stayed one night at the tent of my father and mother. He was riding one horse and leadng two. He let his horses out to graze, and in the morning did not have to catch them, he just went to the top of a little hill and called, and they came to him.

The Diluv Khutagt claims this happened in 1889, but he was recalling from memory events which had happened some sixty years earlier and no doubt was mistaken about the date. All other sources maintain Dambijantsan first appeared in Mongolia in 1890.

In any case, here in western Mongolia he launched into his by-now practiced line that he was the descendant of Amarsanaa (most accounts say grandson, but as mentioned, it was more likely he claimed to be the great-great-grandson of the Khoit chieftain) who had returned to free the Mongols from the Qing yoke. The charismatic badarchin and his anti-Chinese propaganda very quickly caught the attention of officials in Uliastai, the Qing military headquarters in western Mongolia.

China | Xinjiang | Yuezhi Potheads

Earlier I wrote about the Yuezhi Who lived in the Ili Basin in western Xinjiang and the Turpan Basin. While in Turpan I visited the ruins of the ancient city of Jiaohe and the nearby Yueshi graves dating to over 2000 years ago.

Yuezhi Graves

Yuezhi Graves

Yuezhi Graves

Yuezhi Graves

Now comes word that the Yuezhi (or Gushi as they are sometimes called) of Turpan were Proto-Hippy Potheads.

According to CNN:

An ancient race that lived 2,700 years ago in the Gobi Desert may have been among the first to use cannabis for medical or religious purposes. Researchers believe an ancient Gushi [Yueshi] shaman may have consumed or burned pot for medical or religious purposes.

Nearly two pounds of the plant was found stashed in the tomb of a Gushi shaman. It was high in the chemical compounds that provide its psychoactive properties.

"It had evidence of the chemical attributes of cannabis used as a drug," said Dr. Ethan Russo, an author of a study published in the Journal of Experimental Botany. "It could have been for pain control. It could have been for other medicinal properties. It could have been used as an aid to divination."

The Gushi people were a Caucasian race with light hair and blue eyes who likely migrated thousands of years ago from the steppes of Russia to what is now China. A nomadic people, they were accomplished horsemen and archers.

Chinese archaeologists excavating a network of 2,500 tombs near the town of Turpan in the Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region unearthed the shaman's grave, which contained the cannabis, along with a trove of artifacts such as bridles, archery equipment and a rare harp.

Since archery equipment and pot were found together these people may have been the distant ancestors of Ted Nugent. The harp was no doubt a precursor of the electric guitar. And speaking of which, thanks to former punk-rocker and now Nyingma monk Konchog Norbu, who tipped me off to the Yuezhi-Grass Connection.

Mongolia | Life & Death of the False Lama #9

How Dambijantsan spent the late 1880s is unclear. In the spring of 1890 he suddenly appeared near the city of Kulja, on the Ili River in what is now Xinjiang Province of China. Whatever he had been doing in the previous years he was now transformed. He was no longer an aspiring member of a monastic community, nor an itinerant drifter, nor a hired-hand with Russian expeditions. Instead he made a startling announcement to all who would listen: he was the grandson of the Oirat chieftain Amursana, who had led the last great revolt again Qing rule, and he had returned to take up the struggle once again and free Mongol peoples from the tyranny of the Qing Dynasty.

The Ili Basin where Dambijantsan chose to reappear in his new guise was part of the New Frontier (xin jiang) added to the domains of the Qing Dynasty China after the defeat of Amursana in 1757, but separated as it was from the rest of Xinjiang by formidable geographical barriers it constituted a distinct domain of its own. Also, as one geographer points out, the Ili Basin is of “special interest as the historical divide between the eastern and western halves of Inner Asia.” As such it was more oriented toward the west, towards the vast steppes and deserts that stretch off to the shores of Caspian Sea. rather than to mountain-rimmed basins and depressions to the east. The Ili River was the easternmost of the rivers known to the Türks who inhabited the region in the sixth century as Jetisu, or “Seven Rivers.” Later this area would become known as Semireche, Russian for Seven Rivers. Bounded on the west by the Talas River and the east by the Ili, and including the Chu and other rivers in eastern current-day Kazakhstan, “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 . . .”

The Ili River and the Ili Basin

The Ili River itself begins about thirty miles east of the current-day city of Yining (also know as Ili, Yili, Kulja, and Gulja), at the confluence of the Kax and the Künes rivers. Both of these rivers, which flow roughly parallel through the Ili Basin, begin about 150 miles farther east, originating from glaciers sheathing 18,044-foot Erenhaberg Shan (shan = mountain), a peak located at the nexus of the of the Tian Shan Range and the Borohogo Shan Range. The Tian Shan, which bisects Xinjiang east to west, culminates in the 22,949-foot peak of Khan Tengri, about 260 miles west of Erenhaberg Shan. This formidable range separates the Ili Basin from the huge Tarim Basin and Taklimahan Desert to the south. From the peak of Erenhaberg Shan the Borohogo Shan Range extends west to the Zungarian Alatau Mountains on the current-day border between China and Kazakhstan.

Western flanks of the Borohogo Shan

With peaks of up to 11,000 feet, this range separates the Ili Basin from the immense Zungarian Basin to the north. The Ili River itself flows 388 miles west from the confluence of the Kax and Künes rivers, emerging from the double prongs of the Tian Shan and the Borohogo Shan and flowing out onto the Khusundaka Steppe before finally debouching into the land-locked, 6,562-square-mile Lake Balhash in Kazakhstan.

The fertile Ili Basin

Up to sixty miles near the current border with Kazakhstan, well watered by rivers flowing off the flanks of the Borohogo Shan and Tian Shan ranges, with fertile riverine bottomlands bordered by rich grasslands ramping to the mountains on the north and south, and the Ili Basin was a prize that was coveted and fought over by nomads for at least 2500 years. Many of these nomads, after rising to power in this fecund land, eventually migrated elsewhere and founded great dynasties and empires. The people known as Scythians, or Saka, may have inhabited this area as early as the seventh-century B.C. After they were dislodged by the Yuezhi in the second century b.c.. they emigrated to northern India where they eventually founded a Indo-Scythian kingdom. The Yuezhi an Indo-European people described by some sources as having reddish or blonde hair, established their capital in the Ili Basin. With a population of some 400,000 people (apparently adults), they were capable of mobilizing a mounted army of 100,000 archers. The Yueshi were in turn displaced by the Wusun and moved westward to the found the Kushan Empire in what is now Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. The Kushan Empire, straddling the great trade routes between India and Inner Asia, became one of the major vectors for the dissemination of Buddhism throughout what is now Xinjiang and Transoxiana and on into China. The Wusun, who replaced them, occupied the Ili Valley and set up a capital on a tributary of the Ili River believed to be the current-day Tekäs River. At one time they numbered some 120,000 households with 630,000 individuals, including 188,000 men capable of bearing arms. As such they were a power to be reckoned with in Inner Asia. According to one Chinese annalist, “Of all the [people] of the Western Regions, the Wusun looked the most peculiar. [They] have cerulean eyes and red beards and look like Mi monkeys are their descendants.” The Wusun were eventually defeated by the Xiongnu (Hunni), who then presumably occupied the Ili Valley, although little it known about their presence in the region. By the seventh century A.D. the western branch of the Khökh Türks occupied the Ili Basin, and still others, including Sogdians, the Khara Khitai, and Uighurs would also make their homes here between the eighth and thirteenth centuries.

With the rise of the Mongol Empire the Ili Basin came into still greater prominence. In 1209, Barchug, the Uighur ruler of Uighuristan, centered around the capital city of Khocho, near current-day Turpan in eastern Xinjiang, recognized the rising power of the Mongols and prudently allied himself with Chingis Khan, thus avoiding the terrible fate of so many who opposed the Mongol khan. In appreciation, Chingis gave him one of his daughters in marriage and even referred to him as his “fifth son.” Eastern Xinjiang thus secured the Mongols moved on to western Xinjiang and the Ili Basin. Earlier, in 1204, Chingis had defeated the tribe known as the Naiman, who occupied what is now northwestern Mongolia. The Naiman chieftain Tayang Khan was killed in the battle, but his son Küchlüg escaped to the Semireche region and after various complicated machinations had by 1211 managed to overthrow the then-ruling Khara Khitai regime and usurp power for himself. Originally a Christian who had converted to Buddhism, Küchlüg soon made himself intensely unpopular in Semireche and the western Tarim Basin by his persecutions of Moslems. Apprised of Küchlüg’s unpopularity with many of his subjects, Chingis Khan sensed an opportunity to deal once and for all with this loose end who had earlier escaped from his grasp in Mongolia, and at the same time extend his reach westward. Küchlüg had also murdered of the husband of one of his granddaughters, an act for which Chingis may also have been seeking revenge.

In 1216 Chingis dispatched one of his most trusted generals, Jebe (the Arrow) with a force of some 20,000 men to the Ili Basin. At a place called Almalik, near current-day Yining, Jebe “accepted the peaceful submission of the tribes in Zungharia and Semireche” who had been alienated by Küchlüg. The Naiman renegade himself fled over the Tian Shan to Kashgar at the western end of the Tarim Basin with Jebe in pursuit. Küchlüg had worn out his welcome with the Moslem populace of Kashgar, but Jebe himself was greeted as a liberator. “It was as if the arrow of prayer hit the target of answer and acceptance,” pronounced the thirteen-century historian Juvaini, playing on Jebe’s name. Jebe, according to Juvaini’s informants, ““caused a herald to proclaim in the town that each should abide by their own religion and follow his own creed. Then we knew the existence of this people [the Mongols] to be one of the mercies of the Lord and one of the bounties of divine grace,’” Deprived of his power base in Kashgar, Küchlüg fled south over the Pamir Mountains, apparently hoping to escape to India.

The Pamirs from near Kashgar

The Gez River flowing out of the Pamirs. This is the main passageway to the Pamirs on the route from Kashgar to Pakistan. Jebe pursuited Küchlüg via this vallley. Marco Polo probably also came this way, as did the Chinese Pilgrim Xuanzang.

Jebe caught up with the wayward son of Tayang Khan in the Pamirs and killed him (according to one account, he was beheaded) near a place called Sarikol south of the current-day border town of Tashkurgan, in what is now Pakistan.

24,757-foot Muztagh Ata Mountain, on the route to Pakistan

The Pamir Highland near Sarikol where Küchlüg bit the dust

With the elimination of Küchlüg, Kashgaria (the oases cities of the western Tarim Basin) and the Semireche region, including the valleys of the Chu and Talas rivers and the Ili Basin, were all incorporated into the Mongol Empire.


Chingis Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire, died in 1227. Before his death he bequeathed his realm to his four sons, with Chagatai, the second oldest, receiving a huge swath of Inner Asia from Turpan in the east to the oases cities of Bukhara and Samarkand in the west, including Lake Issuk Kol in current-day Kyrgyzstan and Ili Basin. The Chagatayids eventually established their capital at Almalik in the Ili River valley, near current-day Yining, where Jebe had earlier accepted the allegiance of the local populace. The exact location of the former Chagatayid capital of Almalik is unknown, although some local sources maintain it was near the current-day market town of Yakxamba Bazaar, about 20 miles west of Yining.

Yakxamba Bazaar on an off-day—Believed to have been the site of Almalik

After the death of Chagatai in 1243, for the next 150 years or so, until the latter part of the fourteenth century, his descendants would continue to occupy Ili Basin and surrounding territories. As with many inheritances, however, there were disputes, and large chunks of the territory left to Chagatai would be fought over by his brothers and their descendants. Ögödei, Chingis’s third son and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire after Chingis’s death, took effective control of Uighuristan, centered around Khocho (near current-day Turpan), and other settled areas of the Tarim Basin. After the death of Ögödei, Möngke, the son of Tolui, Chingis’s youngest son, eventually assumed the title of Great Khan and attempted to divide the Chagatayid khanate between himself and his cousin Batu, son of Jochi, Chingis’s oldest son and ruler of the Golden Horde which occupied much of current-day western Russia. After Möngke‘s death, Khubilai and his brother Arig Böke, sons of Tolui, fought for the title of Great Khan, with khanate of Chagatai to the west a pawn in their disputes. Upon Arig Böke’s death in 1264 Khubilai became undisputed Great Khan and founded the Yüan Dynasty, but rival relatives soon wrested away control of the western Tarim Basin which he had earlier claimed. From 1271 to 1301 Khaidu, son of Ögödei, became the de facto ruler of the Chagatai khanate, with Chagatayid princes in place as figure-head khans. After Khaidu’s death in 1301, the resurgent Chagatayids retook control of much of the original khanate, including the Ili Basin. Secure in their homeland, they now launched attacks on northern India, Afghanistan, and eastern Persia.

By the 1340s, however, the Chagatayids had split into two factions. The khan Tarmashirin, based in the oasis cities of Transoxiana, had converted to Islam in the late 1320s. In 1334 the Chagatayids in the Issuk Kul region of current-day Kyrgyzstan and the Ili Basin, adherents of Buddhism, Christianity, and shamanism, rebelled and recognized their own khan. Tarmashirin remained in control of Transoxiana, but the breakaway branch of Chagatayids now ruled the rest of Chagatai’s original patrimony. This new khanate soon acquired a new significance and a distinctive moniker. As geographer Svat Soucek points out, “Semireche and the adjacent territories, from the Talas river all the way to the upper course of the Ili, together with present-day Kyrgyzstan . . . developed a special identity, that of a Mongol homeland, to the extent of acquiring a new name, Moghulistan—in other words, Mongolia.”

One of the most famous rulers of this western extension of the Mongolia homeland was Tughluq Temür (r. 1347 to 1364), an eleventh generation descendant of Chingis Khan through Chagatai. When still a young man he had met Jamal al-Din, a member of an Islamic sect known as the Khwajas (Masters), who explained to him the teachings of Islam. As noted, Tarmashirin’s conversion to Islam was one of the reasons for the split between the two factions of Chagatayids in the 1330s. Tughluq Temür did not then accept Islam, but he promised that if he ever became khan of the Moghulistan branch of the Chagatayids he would indeed convert. By the time he did become Khan Jamal al-Din had died, but his son Arshad al-Din appeared before Tughluq Temür tent at dawn one day and made the call for morning prayers. Tughluq Temür was enraged at having his slumber disturbed, but after Arshad al-Din reminded him of his promise he agreed to convert to Islam and offered himself to be circumcised, always a dicey proposition for a adult male. Not only that, but he ordered that all his princes also convert. With the exception of one, they did, along with, according to the perhaps apocryphal account of Moslem historians, 160,000 of their followers. Whatever the actually numbers, by the mid-fourteenth century the Chagatayid Khanate was largely Islamicised.

In March of 1360 Tughluq Temür marched on Transoxiana and quickly retook the Chagatayid domains, claimed earlier by Tarmashirin. The then-ruler of Transoxiana fled to Afghanistan, but his nephew Temur switched sides and allied himself with Tughluq Temür. Later Tughluq Temür appointed his son Ilyas-khojas as viceroy of Samarkand and named Temur as the young man’s advisor. Temur would later became world famous as Tamerlane, “The Sword of Islam,” and “The Scourge of God.”

“Thus the unity of the old khanate of Jagatai [Chagatai] was restored under a forceful and dreaded khan [Tughluq Temür],” intones historian of the steppes René Grousett, “No one could have foreseen at that time that not many years later the Tamerlane who he had given his son as mentor would bring this Jagataite restoration to an end and replace it with a new empire.”

Tughluq Temür, although completely forgotten by most of the world, is well remembered in Xinjiang. His Mausoleum Complex near the village of Huocheng, about thirty miles from Yining, contains both his tomb and the tomb of his sister (according to some accounts his daughter) and is now a hallowed pilgrimage site and popular tourist destination.

The Tomb of Tughluq Temür

The coffin of Tughluq Temür

The coffin of Tughluq Temür’s sister (or daughter)

Fetishes left by pilgrims at the tomb of Tughluq Temür

China | Xinjiang Province | Turpan | Jiaohe

Back in Turpan after my Berlin interlude I wandered six miles west of the city to the ruins of the ancient city Jiaohe.

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China | Xinjiang | Turpan | Toyuq

About another twenty miles east of Bezeklik is the small oasis of Toyuq, located right on the edge of the Taklamakan Desert. The hills around here are riddled with caves which once served as Buddhist hermitages and monastic complexes. Unfortunately these caves are now closed to the public. Since the late fourteenth century the area has been Islamic and is now a favorite pilgrimage site for Moslems from all over Central Asia. Toyuk is known as “Little Mecca,” and a pilgrimage here is considered “half as sacred” as a pilgrimage to Mecca itself. Pilgrims who come here can count themselves as “half-hadji” (pilgrim to Mecca). The oasis is also famous for its elongated white grapes, known as Mare’s Nipple Grapes, which are highly valued as far away as Beijing.

Oasis of Toyuq on the northern edge of the Flaming Mountains

Incredibly lush oasis land surrounded by bleak desert

The Emerald-domed Mosque is the center of “Little Mecca.”

Main Mosque in Toyuq

China | Xinjiang | Turpan | Bezeklik

From Gaochang I mosied up to the nearby Bezeklik Grottos, located in the gorge of the Murtuk River, which flows through the Flaming Mountains. Here there are seventy-some caves dating from the fourth to thirteen centuries. At one time the caves were filled with one of the most staggering collections of Buddhist wall paintings in Central Asia and perhaps the world. Moslem iconoclasts, who arrived in the area in the late fourteen-century, damaged some of the paintings; Western archeologists, including Aurel Stein and Von Le Coq, removed many of the remaining paintings at the beginning of the twentieth century; and what was left was almost completely destroyed by the Mao’s Little Generals, the Red Guards, during the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although a dozen or so of the caves are now open to the public almost no of the original artwork, with the exception of some barely visible 1000 Buddhas motifs on the ceiling of one or two of the caves, has survived in situ. Many examples of the wall paintings, “stolen” by Western archeologists such as “the thief Stein” and others—as information signs at the complex are now quick to point out, can however be seen in museums in London, Berlin, and St. Petersburg. See Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia for the sordid details on Stein, Le Coq, et. al.

Given the fact that nearby Gaochang is often posited as a possible location of the history Shambhala, it is interesting to speculate the Kalachakra Tantra was composed here or at the many Buddhist monastic complexes tucked away in the adjacent mountains. However, the art work produced here was entirely lacking in any Vajrayana influences, leading one to believe that tantric Buddhism was not practised in this area.

The gorge of the Murtuk River, flowing through the Flaming Mountains. The cave complex is just above here.

The caves were dug into cliffs along the bank of the Murtuk River.
More views of Bezeklik:

Uighur women at Bezeklik

Near where the Murtuk River debouches onto the desert floor is another cave complex known as Shenjinkou, just visible above the curve of the river. This area is now closed to the public.

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