Mongolia | Dönön Ükhiin Ever Khöldöne | Killer Winter

The Fourth of the Nine-Nines, known as Dönön Ükhiin Ever Khöldöne—Time When Four Year-Old Cows’ Horns Freeze—began on Monday, January 18. This is supposed to be the coldest of the Nine-Nines, periods of nine days each, each period marked by some description of winter weather. On Monday, however, it was an incredibly balmy 14ºF / Minus 10ºC at three in the afternoon, probably the highest temperature of 2010. This morning things are back to normal:  Minus 33°F / -36 °C at 6:00 a.m.

This is turning out to be a Killer Winter. The UB Post:

Official figures indicate that approximately 90 percent of the country is suffering from zud  conditions, with snowfall reaching between 20-120 centimeters. The average temperature in northern Mongolia has dropped to -35 degrees Celsius, with temperatures in the rest of country ranging between-17 to -22 degrees Celsius. So far, the coldest temperature of -47 degrees was recorded in Uvs Province. As of 16 January 2010, a total of 198 sums in 19 provinces are suffering from severe weather.

According to estimates by the Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), a total of 786,639 heads of livestock have perished, 89 percent of which belong to the ten worst affected provinces. The total loss of livestock is approximately 17 per cent of the estimated 43.6 million heads of livestock in the country. Some five people died during a recent snowstorm.

Xinjiang Province of China, just south of western Mongolia, has also been hammered, According to the NYT:

Closed roads and delayed flights left thousands of travelers stranded Tuesday following blizzards and extreme cold that killed four people and affected 1.6 million others in northwestern China, a government spokesman said. Snowstorms delayed 122 flights in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang region, on Monday, leaving more than 4,000 passengers stranded, and blocked roads from nine avalanches stranded more than 1,000 passengers in the region, according to a Urumqi government spokesman surnamed Wang. Like many Chinese officials he declined to give his full name. Four people had died because of the bad weather, Wang said Tuesday. He did not give details.Rescue workers were evacuating thousands of rural residents to safer ground at lower altitudes because of the latest storm front, expected to last through Wednesday and plunge temperatures to minus 45 degrees (minus 43 Celsius), Wang said.

In neighboring Mongolia, an official appealed for help from the international community as his country battles the most severe winter it has seen in three decades.

I have several friends in Urumqi but I have not heard from any of them for months, since internet access Remains Cut Off to Xinjiang following the Upheavals there last July. The last I heard all internet cafes were closed and all common email services like hotmail.com were blocked.

China | Xinjiang | Urumqi

Update: Death Toll Rises to 156 in Ethnic Clashes in Western China. The riots have now spread to Khotan. Update #2: Internet service has now been cut to Xinjiang: China Locks Down Restive Region After Deadly Clashes.

My favorite city in China, Urumqi, is experiencing serious problems. See Riots Erupt in Western China Amid Ethnic Tension. Haven’t heard from any of my friends there yet. They are usually very hesitant to communicate by email, which they are convinced is monitored by the government. Urumqi is the capital of Xinjiang, which I used to visit quite frequently. Given the difficulty of acquiring Chinese visas here in the Big Buuz I doubt if I will be going back any time soon.

Downtown Urumqi

Uighur Market District in Urumqi

Uighur Carpet dealer in downtown Urumqi

Pomegranates in the Uighur Market

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.

Mongolia | Life & Death of the False Lama #13

In an earlier post I introduced the History of the Ili Basin.

This was the Ili Basin in which Dambijantsan suddenly appeared in the spring of 1890: the ancient home of Scythians, Yueshi, Wusun, Xiongnu, Türks, and Uighurs; the heartland of the Chagatayid Khanate, headquarters of Chagatai himself, and later of Moghulstan, or Western Mongolia; the wellspring of storied rulers like Tughug Temür and Baber, founder of the Moghul Empire in India; the favored grazing grounds of Esen and the Oirats of the first Oirat Empire, later of Baatar Khontaiji and Galdan Bolshigt and their Zungarian Khanate; the domain of Tseren Ravdan, Galdan Tseren, and Davatsi; the land from which Amarsanaa had fled and vowed to return; a place steeped in history, legend, and myth, inhabited by the descendants of a people who had very nearly been completely exterminated and who now harbored in their hearts a yearning for revenge against their oppressors, and the righting of past wrongs. By 1890 the Ili Basin and the rest of the Zungarian realm had been controlled by the Qing for 133 years. Now appeared a man who proclaimed that the days of the Qing were numbered and that Mongols would once again claim their independence and retake their rightful place in the world.

One can imagine the stir Dambijantsan created among the Torgut Mongols of the Ili Basin when he announced that he was a descendant of Amarsanaa. According to many accounts he would claim to be the son of Tömörsanaa, the son of Amarsanaa and thus Amarsanaa’s grandson. In all the now-available accounts of Amarsanaa’s life, however, I have not been able to find any mention of a son named Tömörsanaa. Even the relentless researcher Podzneev, who while in Mongolia in 1892–93 no doubt dug up information aplenty on the Oirats, says that Amarsanaa, “supposedly had a son, Temüsanu [Tömörsanaa] by name,” as if he himself doubted his existence. We known Amarsanaa married the daughter of Sultan Ablai and he presumably had other wives and various liaisons, but except for an infant son who escaped with him to Russia and reportedly died in a Russian prison in 1804 the record appears mute on children. In any case, Dambijantsan’s claim to be a grandson of Amarsanaa, who died in 1757, is chronologically impossible. Later, in Mongolia, Dambijantsan would enlarge on his pedigree. Supposedly Tömörsanaa had a son named Tövsanaa, who had a son named Tögrög Naran, and it was this Tögrög Naraon who was Dambijantsan’s father. Thus he claimed to be the great-great grandson of Amarsanaa. The oft-repeated claim that Dambijantsan was Amarsanaa’s grandson may just be a misunderstanding of Mongolian genealogical usage. I myself have been told numerous times in Mongolia that so-and-so was so-and-so’s grandson when this was clearly impossible, For example I was once informed that the grandson of Zanabazar, who died in 1723, was alive and working at a hotel in Ulaan Baatar. When I pointed out that this was not possible, my informant explained, “Well, you know, great, many greats, grandson.” This may be what happened in the case of Dambijantsan. It seems highly unlikely a people as deeply concerned, if not obsessed, with genealogy as the Mongols would be taken in a story as blatantly bogus as Dambijantsan being the grandson of Amarsanaa.

Dambijantsan appeared to be about twenty-five years old at the time (he would have been thirty, according to our chronology) and was dressed as a monk. He explained that at the moment he was passing through the Ili Valley, but that he would return on a certain day and month in the year of the dragon and begin the battle to liberate the Western Mongols. By his own account—for what it is worth—he stayed in Ili City for a month and even met with the Qing amban, or governor there. Although he said Ili City he probably meant not the current city of Yining, sometimes called Ili, but Huiyuan, where the Qing Military government had established its headquarters after the defeat of Amarsanaa. From 1759 to 1864 the military governor here had authority over all of what is now Xinjiang Province, including the Zungarian, Tarim, and Turpan basins, an indication of the strategic importance attached to the area. By the mid-nineteenth century there were over 50,000 Qing troops in Xinjiang, with four-fifths of them in the Zungarian and Ili basins. In the Ili River Valley alone there were nine Qing garrisons.

In 1864 the people know as Taranchis (now-called Uighurs), Dungans (Chinese Moslems, now known as Hui) and other disaffected elements in the Ili Valley took part in a rebellion against the Qing which would spread throughout all of Xinjiang during the next decade. From this turmoil rose the legendary adventurer Ya’qub Beg who established an emirate encompassing much of Xinjiang. In 1871, however, Czarist Russian, who by that time controlled much of the Kazakh Steppe to the west, occupied the Ili Basin, ostensibly to safeguard Russian citizens living in the areas and protect Russian business interests. By 1875 the Qing had rallied their forces and began the reconquest of Xinjiang. Ya’qub Beg died in 1877—probably of a stroke, but just as with Galdan Bolshigt, the Qing made up their own story, claiming he had committed suicide—and his emirate quickly collapsed. By January of 1878 Qing armies had retaken all of Xinjiang except for the Ili Valley, which remained in Russian hands. Not until 1881 would the upper Ili Valley be ceded back to China and a boundary established roughly along the current China-Kazakhstan border. In 1884 Xinjiang Province was formally established (it is only from then that we can properly call the area Xinjiang) and a new capital established at Urumqi, the provincial capital today. Thus the Qing amban who Dambijantsan claimed to have met in Huiyuan would have been a local official and not the governor of all of Xinjiang. In any case, the Qing military headquarters in Huiyuan—now a bustling little market town famous for its picturesque Qing-era bell tower in the main square, has been restored and is now a tourist attraction.

Market town of Huiyuan — Former Qing headquarters in Xinjiang

Qing-Era Bell Tower in Huiyuan

Restored Military Headquarters in Huiyuan. This may be the place Dambijantsan claimed to have visited.

Office of Qing Amban in Huiyuan

Qing-Era Wall around Huiyuan

What is not clear from available accounts is just how many Oirats remained in the Ili Basin by this time. The Zungarians themselves when they had ruled the area had brought in so-called Taranchis (Uighurs) to develop agricultural lands and they along witth Dungans (Huis) had continued to colonize the area through the nineteenth century. There were also Eastern Mongol and Manchu settlers from what are now the Chinese provinces of Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang. The scant mention of Oirats in historical sources would seem to indicate that by that time they were a distinct minority, and they would have differed from the dominant Uighurs and Huis in both life-style and religion. It would appear that the Oirats—mostly Torguts—who still nomadized in the basin occupied the more arid grazing lands on the fringes of the rich agricultural belts along the rivers. The old core of Moghulistan had been largely taken over my non-Mongol Moslems ruled over the Qing. The hey-day of Oirat dominance in the area were now just a memory. It was among these disaffected people that Dambijantsan now spread his message that he was the descendant of Amarsanaa come to liberate the Mongols from Qing rule and restore them to their rightful place. He only spent at most a couple of months in the region, but he had certainly left an impression.

Fourteen years later, in 1904, a party of seven Kalmyks who had been sent by the Russian government on a secret mission to foment anti-British sentiment in Tibet passed through the Ili Basin on their way to Lhasa. On tributary of the Ili River they encountered a large encampment of Torgut nomads. A monk with the nomads asked the mission’s second-in-command, an emchin (doctor) and bagsh (teacher) by the name of Dambin Ulianov, if he was in fact the famous Kalmyk “Danbi Dzhal‘san,” a. k. a., Dambijantsan. Ulianov had no idea who the monk was referring to. The monk related the whole story about Dambijantsan’ sudden appearance in the Ili Valley in early 1890 and how had he had promised that he would soon return to liberate the Oirats from their Qing oppressors. Since then, apparently, there had been no word of him, but the nomads still remembered the charismatic Kalmyk and were still waiting for him to return and lead an uprising against the Manchus. As we shall see, Dambijantsan’s actual whereabouts at this time are a complete mystery.

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 | The Life & Death of the False Lama #11

Earlier I elaborated on the Fall of Galdan Bolshigt.

With the elimination of Galdan Boshigt and the expulsion of the Zungarians from Khalkh Mongolia Zanabazar and his Khalkh followers were free to return to their homelands. The Zungarian state was by no means crushed however. His nephew Tsevang Ravdan (r. 1697–1627) quickly seized the reins of the Zungarian realm and rallied the Oirats of the Zungarian Basin to his banner. This new Zungarian state stretched from Hami in the east, on the current-day boundary of Xinjiang and Gansu, the Seven Rivers Region in the West, and including the old realms of Uighuristan, Kashgaria and the Ili Basin. Like so many Inner Asian chieftains before him Tsevang Ravdan set up his headquarters in the Ili River Valley, probably near Kulja.

The aging Kangxi emperor was for the moment content to consolidate his gains among the eastern Mongols in Khalkh Mongolia, the current-day country of Mongolia, and did not immediately take up the struggle against the Zungarians in the west. But his ultimate goal was to “exterminate (jiaome)” the Zungarians, to “wipe out the evil so as to have eternal peace.” In 1715 a Qing army moved beyond the western garrison city of Jiayuguan, at the Westernmost Extension of the Great Wall, and occupied Hami, then ruled by a Moslem beg. Moving on from Hami, the Qing generals hoped to set up a garrison at Barköl, on the northside of the Tian Shan, which could be used as a springboard for further advances into the Zungarian Basin. They also advanced along the southern flanks of the Tian Shan, and by 1718 had occupied Turpan, where the ruins of the Han and Tang dynasty cities of Gaochang and Jiaohe could be still be seen, reminders of former Chinese occupation of the area (major tourist attractions, they can be there today). The now emboldened generals envisioned marching on Ravdan’s headquarters in the Ili Basin far to the west, but for the time being were content to seize in Urumqi, a city just north of a major pass through the Tian Shan and the current-day capital of Xinjiang Province. And they were soon forced to abandon Urumqi and retreat back eastward.

This first attempt to wipe out the Zungarians and add their domains to the Qing Empire ended with the Kangxi emperor’s death in 1722. His son and successor, the Yongzheng emperor, was at first more interesting in consolidating his shaky hold on the throne than engaging in risky military adventures in far-off Zungaria. In 1724 he signed a peace treaty with Tsevang Ravdan which temporarily halted hostilities, and Tsevang Ravdan’s own death in 1727 resulted in another stalemate. His successor, Galdan Tsering (r. 1727–1745) soon fell out with the Yongzheng emperor. All other Mongols had capitulated to the Qing, Yongzheng pointed out to Galdan Tsering’s envoys, only the Zungarians refused to submit. His own father had defeated Galdan Bolshigt but had failed to bring the Zungarians to heel. As historian Frank Perdue points out:

the Qing goal of universal peace among humans led the Qing to endorse elimination of those humans who obstinately refused to knuckle under to the view. Humans who chose to resist the Qing terms remained human, but they had to pay the costs of their choice: “righteous extermination” (zhengjiao), designed to return the world to a rational order.

In the summer of 1729 two expeditionary forces, the West Route Army with 26,500 men and North Route army set out from Bejing with the ultimate goal of converging on the Zungarian headquarter in the Ili Valley. Not until 1731 did the West Route Army retake Urumqi, still 400 miles short of the Ili Valley. Meanwhile the North Route Army had proceeded to Khovd, in current-day Khovd Aimag in Mongolia, where they began construction of a fortress. In July of 1731 the Qing army numbered some 20,000 soldiers marched from Khovd westward towards the Zungarian Basin and the Ili River Valley beyond. The Zungarians had been tracking their advance, however, and prepared a surprise. At Khoton Lake, in current-day Bayan-Olgii Aimag, the Qing army was ambushed and nearly annihilated; only 2,000 survivors made it back to Khovd. The Qing general in charge of this debacle, Furdan, was then ordered to start construction of what was to be a huge fortress at Khovd. Intended to measure some 4.3 miles in circumference, with walls 16.5 feet high, the fortress was to eventually house a garrison of 16,000 men. Eventually this ambitious plan was abandoned, but a more modest fortress was established at Khovd. The reader should be alerted that in 1912, after the Qing Dynasty collapsed, Dambijantsan would play the leading role in Dislodging the Qing Holdouts here and demolishing the fortress.

Meanwhile the Western Route Army had been driven out of Urumqi by the Zungarians and chased the whole way back to Barkol. The news of this defeat coupling with the disaster at Kholon Lake thoroughly demoralized the not-too-stable-to-begin-with Yongzheng. He sued for peace and sent ministers to the Zungarians to negotiate a boundary between their two realms. Galdan Tsering wanted the border drawn along the western end the Khangai Mountains, which would have put most of modern-day western Mongolia, including Khovd, where the still extant ruins of the Khovd fortress are located, in the Zungarian sphere. Yongzheng favored the Mongol-Altai and Gov-Altai Mountains as the border, very roughly the current-day boundary between Mongolia and China. No agreement was reached, but Galdan Tsering dispatched a transmigrated before any further settlement could be reached. He alone had spent upward to 60 mllion taels of silver (2,280 tons) in his campaigns against the Zungarians and had failed to subdue or eliminate them. It would be left to his successor, the Qianlong emperor, to finally extinquish the Zungarian state and virtually exterminate the Zungarian people.

For the next fifteen years or so an uneasy peace reigned between the Qing and the Zungarians. In 1739 a truce was signed and formal trade relations agreed upon. Commerce soon thrived, with Inner Asian Moslems acting as middlemen in caravan traffic which revitalized the ancient Silk Road routes. But the lull in tensions did not lessen the basic antagonism between the two culture, as Frank Perdue points out,

Peace with the Zunghars did not genuinely soften Qing altitudes. The Qing regarded these barbarians as greedy, violent, and untrustworthy. The Qing believed, however, that the emperor’s grace would soften them to they would accommodate to imperial dominion. Barbarians by nature had ‘insatiable desire’ and ‘shameless greed’ but by controlling their actions and “cherishing’ them, the Qing could tame them. Tying the Zungar elites to the interior with trading links would make them less inclined to attack the frontier.

Galdan Tsering transmigrated in 1745. The ensuing succession struggles shattered whatever unity the Zungarians enjoyed among themselves and left the door open for Qing intervention. Out of the chaos which ensued would rise Amarsanaa, of whom Dambijantsan would eventually claim to be a descendant and/or an incarnation. All the various strands of Oirat-Zungarian history, including their struggles against the various Chinese dynasties down through the ages, would come together in Amarsanaa, only to be torn asunder when the Zungarian State was extinguished forever. For a brief moment in time Dambijantsan would try to reunite them in his own person.

Amarsanaa was a son of a Khoit nobleman. The Khoit were a minor tribe subordinate to the Dörböts (Dambijantsan’s tribe), themselves subordinate to the Zungars (or Choros), who under Khara Khula had claimed control over the Oirats as a whole. The rise of the Zungars to prominence in the Oirat confederation is one reason, as we have seen, that some Dörböts choose to emigrate to the Caspian Steppes, where they became part of the larger grouping known as Kalmyks. Thus by claiming to be an incarnation of Amarsanaa Dambijantsan was realigning himself with the Oirats who had remained behind in Inner Asia.

Amarsanaa mother’s was Boitalak, the daughter of Tsevang Ravdan, who as we have seen had became taishi (chieftain) of the Zungars after the death of his uncle Galdan Bolshigt in 1697. Boitalak had earlier, in 1714, married Danjung, the eldest son of Lazang Khan, himself the grandson of Güüsh Khan, who had put the Dalai Lama on the throne of Tibet in 1642. After Danjung was killed in Tibet around 1717, Boitalak married a taishi from the Khoit tribe and Amarsanaa, born in 1723, was the fruit of this coupling. The Qing emperor Qianlong would later maliciously suggest that Amarsanaa was conceived before Boitalak’s second marriage and thus being illegitimate could not himself claim to be taishi of the Khoits. Qianlong was certainly not an unbiased observer, and most historians have dismissed this slur.

Amarsanaa

Amarsanaa would have been twenty-two when Galdan Tseren, the ruler of the Zungarians, transmigrated in the early fall of 1745. In his will Galdan Tseren passed over his oldest son, nineteen year-old Lama Darja—who was considered illegitimate by some—and named his second son, fourteen year-old Tsewang Dorji Namjal as his successor. The boy soon revealed himself to be a notorious n’er-do-well. Damchø Gyatsho Dharmatala, in his Rosary of White Lotuses, Being a Clear Account of How the Precious Teachings of Buddha Appeared in the Great Hor Country, a monumental nineteenth-century history of Buddhism in Mongolia, states that Tsewang Dorji Namjal’s “favorite ways were to roam around in the villages, drinking chang [barley beer], seducing girls and indulging in carnal pleasures.” Even the staid, sober-minded author of that Tsewang Dorji Namjal’s entry in the encyclopedic Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period points out that he was “more interested in killing dogs than attending to affairs of state.” Finally fed up by his antics, in 1750 a group of noblemen led by his older brother Lama Darja seized him, put out his eyes, and sent him to Aksu, on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin in what is now Xinjiang, where he was held captive and eventually executed.

Lama Darja became the new Zungarian taishi. His new position was precarious; the Oirats nobles despised him because of his low birth—his mother had apparently been a commoner with whom Galdan Tseren had coupled with only briefly. Soon a plot was spawned to depose him and place his remaining younger brother, perhaps nine years old at the time, on the throne. Davatsi (a.k.a., Dawaci), the leader of the conspirators was the grandson of the famous—in Tibet notorious—Tseren Dondub, a general who under the command of Tsevang Ravdan invaded Tibet in 1717 and trashed numerous Red Hat (Nyingma) monasteries, including Dorje Drak and Mindroling. When I visited Dorje Drak, on the north side of the Tsangpo River, between Chitishö and Dranang, in 2003, the monks there were still grousing about this Oirat incursion, even though the monastery which had been rebuilt after its destruction by Tseren Dondub was in turn destroyed by the Red Guards in the late 1960s. The current monastery was rebuilt yet again after that.

The plots was soon revealed and Lama Darja and Davatsi came to blows. Davatsi was quickly defeated and with only about a dozen followers—among them Amarsanaa—fled westward to the Kazakh steppes, where they found refuge among the Kazakh Middle Horde led by Sultan Ablai. The Sultan, perceiving that a civil war between the two Zungarian factions would inevitably weaken the khanate, and thus be to the advantage of the Kazakhs, encouraged the two rebels, even giving Amarsanaa one of his daughters as a wife. The emboldened Amarsanaa soon snuck back to the Tarbagatai Mountain region north of Ili where his tribe the Khoit were living and managed to round up an army of a thousand men. This force, along with some Kazakh troops sent along by the Sultan to aid the rebellion, marched on Kulja, in the Ili River Valley, where Lama Darja was holed up, caught him by surprise, and on January 13, 1752, dispatched him to the Heavenly Fields. Lama Darja’s little brother, in whose name the banner of revolt had been raised, was now bypassed, and Davatsi himself—who was after all a direct descendant of great Baatar Khongtaiji, founder of the Zungarian State—assumed the title of taishi of the Zungars.

Davatsi, however, proved to “a drunken and incompetent ruler,” as one commentator has described him, and he and Amarsanaa soon fell out. There were rumors that Amarsanaa demanded that he and Davatsi divide the rule of the Zungarians between them, a proposal which Davatsi flatly rejected. Davatsi was the descendant of the great Baatar Khongtaiji; Amarsanaa the son of a minor Khoit nobleman. There was no question of them sharing power as equals. Very quickly the two became deadly enemies. In 1754 Amarsanaa, along with a following of some five thousand soldiers and 20,000 women and children, broke away from the Zungarians under Davatsi and fled to Khovd, in current-day western Mongolia, where as mentioned the Qing had established a fortress. Here he struck what one historian terms his “fateful Faustian bargain.” He now swore allegiance to the Qing emperor, just has Zanabazar had done in 1691. In return the Qing would assist him in seizing control of the Zungarian state and recognize him as sole ruler of the Zungarians, with the Qing as suzerains. Forgotten, as least for the time being, was the traditional enmity between the Zungarians and the Qing. It was the Qing under emperor Kangxi who of course had hounded to his death the greatest Zungarian khan of all, Galdan Bolshigt. In light of later events, it would appear that Amarsanaa was just biding his time, using the Qing for protection against Davatsi, until he could himself return to Zungaria and seize control of the khanate. For the moment however Amarsanaa played his role as a devoted Qing subject. With the ostensibly loyal Amarsanaa now in his pocket Qianlong saw at long last a way of finally ridding himself of the Zungars and extending the Qing empire westward into what is now the province of Xinjiang. He, the loyal grandson, would complete the task began by Kangxi and Yongzheng and finally subdue the Zungars, the last large group of nomads on China’s borders still maintaining their independence. Ironically, a Oirat, Amarsanaa, was the key to his plans.

To further solidify Amarsanaa’s new-found loyalty to the Qing the emperor Qianlong granted him and his followers land along the Orkhon River, in current day Övörkhangai Aimag, then invited him down to Beijing, where he was declared a prince of the first degree. Then in 1755 Qianlong appointed him as assistant commander of the so-called Northern Route Army, under the overall command of Bandi, an Eastern Mongol of Chingis Khan’s own Borjid clan who had held numerous important posts in the Qing administration. The army, which numbered about 100,000, was made up in large part of Khalkh Mongolians, and the Khalkh had to furnish most of the horses, food, and other supplies for the force. This was the army which would be sent to subdue the Zungarians. Thus Qianlong was using the Eastern Mongols to rid himself of the Western Mongols.

The Northern Route Army left Uliastai, then one of the Qing headquarters in Mongolia (capital of current-day Zavkhan Aimag), in March of 1755. Around the same time the Western Route Army, also numbering about 100,000 and under the command of General Yung-ch’ang, left from Barköl. The two armies linked up at Amarsanaa’s own base of Bortala (Mongolian bor = tan; tal = steppe), the grasslands ramping up from the Zungarian Basin to the eastern side of the the Borohogo Shan, in June of 1755. From there they crossed the Borohogo Shan and marched on Kulja in the Ili Basin, the headquarters of Davatsi. “They met little or no resistance and took Ili without fighting. Most Sungars [sic] simply surrendered,” concludes one historian. Davatsi and a band of followers fled southwest to Gedengshan, 110 miles from from Ili, where on July 2 they were finally cornered and defeated by Qing troops. Davatsi himself escaped over the Tian Shan Mountains and hid out for a while in Kashgar, on the western edge of the Tarim Basin. The Moslem beg of Kashgar, divining which way the wind was blowing and not wishing to alienate the Qing, seized Davatsi and turned him over to Amarsanaa in July of 1755.

That should have been the end of the Zungar taishi. Qianlong, however, realizing that he had a valuable pawn on his hands, had Davatsi brought to Beijing where he was ceremoniously paraded as a captive. Then Qianlong granted him a princedom of the first degree and a mansion in Kalgan (current-day Zhangjaikhou), on the edge Mongolian Plateau north of Beijing, to reside in. Despite his title and comfortable accommodations he was now of course totally powerless. Free to devote himself to his favorite pastime, drinking, he died four years later, in 1759, but his descendants were honored with the rank of hereditary prince of the fourth degree.

Qianlong, meanwhile, had ordered up special ceremonies in the Monasteries of Dolonnuur to celebrate his victory over the Zungarians. His elation was premature. Amarsanaa, it turned out, was not playing the role Qianlong had designed for him. Qianlong had insinuated that after Davatsi had been defeated each of the Oirat tribes would be allowing to live on their traditional lands under a ruler appointed by the Qing emperor. Amarsanaa, in reward for his part in defeating Davatsi, was appointed ruler of the Khoits, answerable of course to the Qing emperor. But now suddenly Amarsanaa revealed his much greater ambitions. Why should he now be satisfied with ruling only the Khoits, a minor tribe in the Oirat confederation? He had helped the Qing defeat the Zungars, who had previously been the dominant power among the Oirats of the Zungarian State, so why shouldn’t he be the new ruler of the all of the Oirat tribes, including the Zungars? Making no secret of his ambitions he told Bandi, the commander of the Northern Route, to inform Qianlong in Beijing that he demanded to be made overall khan of the Oirats. To make his point clear, he refused to use the official seal given him by Qianlong, and instead appropriated the seal of his father-in-law Galdan Tseren, the “the last officially recognized lead of all the Zunghars.” Apprized of Amarsanaa’s presumptuous demands, on August 20,1755 Qianlong ordered that be seized and brought to Beijing. Amarsanaa was taken into custody, but on September 24, 1755, he escaped first to the Irtysh River Valley and then to the Kazakh Steppes, where he sought refuge with his father-in-law Sultan Ablai.

Believing that the Zungarians had finally been conquered, and that Amarsanaa himself, in exile in the Kazakh steppe, no longer posed a threat, Qianlong ordered most of the 200,000-man Qing army, which was costing a fortune to maintain in Zungaria, back to China, leaving only a small detachment with General Bandi. But Qianlong had seriously under-estimated Amarsanaa’s resilience. From his bolt hole in the Kazakh steppe he snuck back into Zungaria, rallied the Oirat princes to his side, and incited a general rebellion. The small Qing detachment left behind in Zungaria proved to be no match for the newly reunited Oirats under Amarsanaa. On October 4, 1755, acknowledging his hopeless position, Bandi, commander of the Qing troops, committed suicide. Amarsanaa took control of Ili and laid claim to all of Zungaria. Very quickly he had realized his dream of being the independent ruler of the Oirats. On February 17, 1756 his followers named him the new Zungarian Khan. By late 1756 he had managed to retake Ili. Qianlong must have been beside himself; twice he thought the Zungarians had been defeated; and each time they had managed to regroup and defy Qing authority. And now not only was Zungaria in revolt, but Mongolians in Mongolia itself, Qing territory since 1691, were now opening opposing the Qing . . .

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 | Urumqi

Urumqi, in Xinjiang Province, China, has long been one of my favorite cities. Thus it is sad to read this news on the first day of Olympics in Beijing:

Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi, appeared to be on high alert today. Security guards were checking bags at the entrances of hotels, department stores and discos in the busy city, where office towers and apartments buildings have been shooting up in recent years. Guards with red arm bands rode on most public buses, watchful for attackers. Small groups of police patrolled the sidewalks of the bustling Muslim quarter, where merchants cooked lamb kebabs and sliced up watermelons at fruit stands.

Downtown Urumqi

Hong Shan (Red Mountain) in downtown Urumqi

Uighur Quarter in Urumqi

The famous Erdaoqiao Market in the Uighur Quarter

Uighur Restaurant

Performers in Uighur Restaurant

Uighur Carpet Store

Sample carpets

Pomegranates

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.

See More Photos of Jiaohe

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.

See More Photos of Bezeklik