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Moghulistan, also called the Moghul Khanate or the Eastern Chagatai Khanate, was a Turco-Mongol, Muslim, breakaway khanate of the Chagatai Khanate and a historical geographic area north of the Tengri Tagh mountain range, on the border of Central Asia and East Asia. That area today includes parts of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and northwest Xinjiang. The khanate nominally ruled over the area from the mid-14th century until the late 17th century.
Beginning in the mid-14th century a new khanate, in the form of a nomadic tribal confederacy headed by a member of the family of Chagatai, arose in the region of the Ili River. It is therefore considered to be a continuation of the Chagatai Khanate, but it is also referred to as the Moghul Khanate.
In actuality, local control rested with local Mongol Dughlats or Naqshbandi Sufis in their respective oases. Although the rulers enjoyed great wealth from trade with the Ming dynasty, it was beset by constant civil war and invasions by the Timurid Empire, which emerged from the western part of the erstwhile Chagatai Khanate. The khanate was split into the Turpan Khanate based on the city of Turpan, and the Yarkent Khanate based on the city of Yarkent, until the Dzungar Khanate conquered the region by the early 18th century.
"Moghulistan" is a Persian name and simply means "Land of the Moghuls" or Mongols (the term Moghul or Mughal is Persian for "Mongol" and -istan means land in Persian) in reference to the eastern branch of the ethnic Mongol Chagatai Khans who ruled it. The term "Moghulistan" occurs mostly in Soviet historiography, while Chinese historiography mostly uses the term "East Chagatai Khanate" (Chinese: 东察合台汗国; pinyin: Dōng Cháhétái Hànguó), which contrasts Moghulistan to the Timurid Empire. The Moghul Khans considered themselves heir to Mongol traditions and called themselves Mongghul Uls, from which the Persian term "Moghulistan" comes. Ming dynasty Mandarins called the Moghuls "the Mongol tribes in Beshbalik (Chinese: 别失八里; pinyin: Bié Shī Bā Lǐ)". The Timurid exonym for Moghulistan was Ulus-i Jatah.
When the Mongols conquered most of Asia and Russia in the 13th century and constructed the Mongol Empire, they lived as minorities in many of the regions they had subdued, such as Iran and China. As a result, the Mongols in these regions quickly adopted the local culture. For example, in the Persian Ilkhanate the Mongol khans adopted Islam and Persian culture after less than half a century, while the khans of the Yuan dynasty embraced Chinese court customs. In contrast, the Mongols and their subordinates who settled in what came to be known as Moghulistan were in origin steppe nomads from Mongolia. Because of this, they were much more resistant to changing their way of life; they retained their primarily nomadic lifestyle for several centuries and were among the last of the Mongols who converted to Islam to do so. During the 14th century the inhabitants of Moghulistan were known as "Mogul" while the Mogul chieftains and aristocracy used titles of turkic and turko-persian origin, such as "Mirza", "Bek", and "Amir". Despite that, the first Khan of Moghulistan, Tughlugh Timur, became Muslim in 1354 alongside 160,000 followers. This event ultimately marked the Islamization of Moghulistan.
Moghols formed from numerous Turkic tribes of Jetisu (Üysün, Dughlat, etc), Turkic tribes of Desht-Kipchak (Qipchaq, Qangli, etc), Mongolic tribes from Mongolian plateau (Arlat, Barin, Barlas, Besüd,Qunghrat/Kongirat, Sudus), and Non-Mongolic tribes from Mongolia (Jalayir, Kereyit, Merkit, Naiman). The Muslim view of the Turks as Inner Asian nomads was adopted by the Mongols of the Ilkhanate and the Mongol successors in Central Asia (Timurids, Moghuls, and Shibanid Uzbeks), who viewed themselves as the most prominent branch of the Turks. Moghols adopted the Turkic language resulting in formation of Chagatai Turkic language. According to Vasily Bartold, there are "some indications that some of the Moghuls still spoke Mongolian until the early 16th century". For the sedentary Mongols in Transoxiana, the nomadic Mongols to their east represented a bastion of true Mongol culture, hence the name "Moghulistan".
Since the Moghuls were nomads of the steppe, the boundaries of their territories seldom stayed the same for long. Still, Moghulistan in the strictest sense was centered in the Ili region. It was bounded on the west by the province of Shash and the Karatau Mountains, while the southern area of Lake Balkhash marked the northern limit of Moghul influence. From there the border gradually sloped in a southeastern direction until it reached the eastern portion of the Tian Shan Mountains. The Tian Shan then served as the southern border of Moghulistan. Besides Moghulistan proper, the Moghuls also nominally controlled modern-day Dzungaria (northern Xinjiang, including the Turpan Depression) and Nanjiang (southern Xinjiang, including the Tarim Basin). Besides Moghulistan, Nanjiang, and Beijiang, several other regions were also temporarily subjected to Moghul rule at one time or another, such as Tashkent, Ferghana and parts of Badakhshan. Moghulistan proper was primarily steppe country and was where the Moghuls usually resided. Because of the Moghuls' nomadic nature, the towns of Moghulistan fell into decline during their rule, if they managed to remain occupied at all.
Aside from the towns, which were at the foot of the mountains, nearly all of Nanjiang was desert. As a result, the Moghuls generally stayed out of the region and it was a poor source of manpower. The Dughlat amirs or leaders from the Naqshbandi Islamic order administered these towns in the name of the Moghul khans until 1514. The Moghuls more directly governed Nanjiang after they lost Moghulistan itself. The capital city of Nanjiang was usually Yarkand or Kashgar. A contemporary Chinese term for part of the Nanjiang area was "Southern Tian Shan route" (Chinese: 天山南路; pinyin: Tiānshān Nánlù), as opposed to the "Northern" route, i.e. Dzungaria.
A later Turki word "Altishahr", meaning "Six Cities", came into vogue during the rule of the 19th century Tajik warlord Yaqub Beg, which is an imprecise term for certain western, then Muslim oasis cities. Shoqan Walikhanov names them as Yarkand, Kashgar, Hotan, Aksu, Uch-Turpan, and Yangi Hisar; two definitions by Albert von Le Coq substitute Bachu (Maralbishi) for Uch-Turfan or Yecheng (Karghalik) for Aksu. During Yaqub's rule, Turfan substituted for Uch-Turfan, and other informants identify seven, rather than six cities in "Alti-shahr". The borders of Alti-Shahr were better defined than those of Moghulistan, with the Tian Shan marking the northern boundary, the Pamirs the western, and the Kunlun Shan the southern. The eastern border usually was slightly to the east of Kucha.
The Buddhist kingdom in Beijiang centered around Turfan was the only area where the people were identified as "Uyghurs" after the Islamic invasions. The broader Turfan area was bordered by Nanjiang to the west, the Tian Shan to the north, the Kunlun Shan to the south, and the principality of Hami. In 1513 Hami became a dependency of Turfan and remained so until the end of Moghul rule. As a result, the Moghuls became direct neighbors of Ming China. Although the term "Uyghurstan" was used for the Turfan city-state, the term is confused in Muslim sources with Cathay. The Uyghur khans had voluntarily become Mongol vassals during the reign of Genghis Khan and as a result were allowed to retain their territories. As the Mongol Empire was split up in the middle of the 13th century, the Xinjiang region was assigned to the Chagatayids. The power of the Uyghur khans slowly declined under Mongol rule until the last recorded khan was forcibly converted to Islam in the 1380s or 90s. After the 15th century it seems to have been subjected to direct Moghul rule, and a separate Moghul Khanate was established there in mid-15th century. After the Islamization of Turfan, the non-Islamic term "Uyghur" would disappear until the Chinese Nationalist leader Sheng Shicai, following the Soviet Union, introduced it for a different, Muslim population in 1934.
Arguments about succession resulted in the breakup of the Mongol Empire in Asia into the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia, Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) in China, Ilkhanate in Persia, and Golden Horde in Desht-i-Kipchak, which waged destructive wars with one another.
Moghulistan, which had formed the eastern portion of the Chagatai Khanate, became independent in 1347 under the Chagatayid named Tughlugh Timur. There is no accepted date for the dissolution of the Chagatai Khanate, although some historians mark it with the ascendance of Tughlugh. There were few contemporary histories of Moghulistan, in contrast to the well-documented Timurid Empire; most of modern knowledge about the region comes from the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, the only primary source for the region.
The eastern regions of the Chagatai Khanate in the early 14th century had been inhabited by a number of Mongol nomadic tribes. These tribes resented the conversion of Tarmashirin to Islam and the move of the khan to the sedentary areas of Transoxiana. They were behind the revolt that ended in Tarmashirin's death. One of the khans that followed Tarmashirin, Changshi, favored the east and was non-Muslim.
In the 1340s as a series of ephemeral khans struggled to hold power in Transoxiana, little attention was paid by the Chagatayids to the eastern regions. As a result, the eastern tribes there were virtually independent. The most powerful of the tribes, the Dughlats, controlled extensive territories in Moghulistan and the western Tarim Basin. In 1347 the Dughlats decided to appoint a khan of their own, and raised the Chagatayid Tughlugh Timur to the throne.
Tughlugh Timur (1347–1363) was thereby made the head of a tribal confederacy that governed the Tarim Basin and the steppe area of Moghulistan (named after the Moghuls). His reign was contemporaneous with the series of puppet khans that ruled in Transoxiana, meaning that there were now effectively two khanates headed by Chagatayids: one in the west, centered in Transoxiana, and one in the east, centered in Moghulistan. Unlike the khans in the west, however, Tughlugh Timur was a strong ruler who converted to Islam (1354) and sought to reduce the power of the Dughlats. Tughlugh Timur converted to Islam, whose concepts of ummah, ghazat (holy war), and jihad inspired his territorial expansionism into Transoxiana. The conversion was also politically convenient in that he branded the dissident princes which he killed as "heathens and idolaters". Conversion amongst the general population was slow to follow. In 1360 he took advantage of a breakdown of order in Transoxiana and his legitimacy as descendant of Chagatai Khan to invade the region and take control of it, thereby temporarily reuniting the two khanates. Despite invading a second time in 1361 and appointing his son Ilyas Khoja as ruler of Transoxiana, however, Tughlugh Timur was unable to keep a lasting hold on the region, and the Moghuls were ultimately expelled by Amir Husayn and Timur, who then fought amongst themselves for control of Transoxiana.
Chagatayid rule in Moghulistan was temporarily interrupted by the coup of the Dughlat Amir Qamar-ud-Din, who likely killed Ilyas Khoja in 1368 and several other Chagatayids. This takeover provoked a period of near-constant civil wars, because the tribal chiefs could not accept that Qamar-ud-Din, a "commoner", could accede to the throne. Opposition to Qamar-ud-Din within his own Dughlat tribe compromised the unity of Moghulistan, as Mirza Abu Bakr Dughlat took control of Kashgar. The Moghuls that remained obedient to him were constantly at war with Timur, who invaded Moghulistan several times but was unable to catch Dughlat invaders. Timur sent at least five victorious expeditions to Moghulistan, seriously weakening Qamar-ud-Din's regime. The Moghuls had sent an unsuccessful supplication to the Hongwu Emperor of China pleading for help, as Tamerlane had also wanted to conquer China, while emphasizing that Transoxiana was the land belonging to their own Moghul forefathers, regarding the Timurids control over Transoxiana as illegitimate. Although a military alliance did not result, the Ming dynasty opened up caravan trade to Moghulistan, greatly enriching the Moghul rulers who collected zakat (tax) on the lucrative Silk Road trade. This trade ushered in an era of economic and cultural exchange with China, in exchange for the state accepting (what the Ming saw as) tributary status to the Ming.
After the Han Chinese united and expelled the Mongols from China, establishing the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Yuan Mongol refugees, principally of the Borjigin clan, migrated to the eastern Chagatai Khanate. Those Mongols allied with the nomadic Buddhist, Christian and Shamanist rebels of the Issyk Kul and Isi areas against the Chagatai Khan Tarmashirin in the 1330s upon his conversion to Islam.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Moghulistan”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.