KASHGAR CITY.
(Showing the city wall and Tuman Su.) Page 68.
WOMEN AT THE SHRINE OF HAZRAT APAK.
Page 69.
The centre of Moslem veneration is Hazrat Apak, the shrine where the Priest-King of Kashgar, who died at the end of the seventeenth century, is buried, together with many of his descendants. Apak not only ruled over Chinese Turkestan, but had disciples in China and India. He was credited with powers of healing, and even of bringing the dead to life, and the Kashgaris regard him as second only to Mohamed and count him equal to Hazrat Isa (Jesus Christ): he is said to have converted many thousands from Buddhism to Islam. The road leading to the shrine is a vast cemetery, about two miles in length and stretching some distance inland on either side, and along this Via Appia, as Sir Aurel Stein has named it, burial is a costly affair and can be afforded only by the well-to-do. The domed mud tombs have an underground chamber in which are four niches, and here the principal members of a family are buried, each body being laid in turn in the receptacle that faces Mecca. As we passed along the road we heard women weeping loudly at some of the graves, in reality performing a kind of ancestor worship in imitation of their Chinese masters and not in accordance with Moslem practice. The idea is that deceased relatives will take more interest in the welfare of the survivors than do the saints, and accordingly the graves of the former are visited on holidays, and in this particular city of the dead also on Fridays and Saturdays. If any special blessing has been vouchsafed to a family, such as recovery from illness or a safe return from a journey, its members go in a body to express their gratitude at the tomb of parent or ancestor.
A number of beggars ran after our horses along this road; some of them dwell in small houses in the cemetery and are paid to keep certain graves in order. It is hinted that when the tombs crumble away these men are in the habit of turning them into dwellings, in order to sell the land again for burial plots after a decent interval has elapsed.
We dismounted at the imposing-looking gateway leading to the shrine, and were received by the mutawali bashi, or chief custodian, who takes a third of the large revenues, and a couple of turbaned, green-robed shaykhs. These escorted us up a poplar avenue past a big tank of water to a large building with a façade covered with blue and white tiles bearing Arabic inscriptions, the dome and the borders of the façade being in green, which contrasted curiously with the main colour scheme.
This was the famous shrine, and we were invited to step inside, where we saw a crowded mass of blue-tiled tombs, that of the Saint-King being draped with red and white cloths. There were numbers of flags and banners before the tombs, and on one side was a palanquin in which a great-grandson of Apak had travelled to and from Peking. While there he had married his daughter to a Chinaman, and at the date of our visit a Celestial had arrived in Kashgar accompanied by a band of relatives, to demand his share of the great wealth of the shrine. His credentials were unexceptionable, and during a century and a half his ancestors had been given pensions by the Chinese Government; but owing to the revolution these subsidies had been stopped. Hence his appearance, which was causing much perturbation among the managers of the shrine funds.