[247] The accurate transcription of this name is Khitā´ī; however, for convenience the more familiar spelling of Khitāy has been retained throughout.
[248] The exact position of this town, which during the tenth and eleventh centuries was the capital of the Khāns of Turkestān (see Ibn el-Athīr), is not known. Abulfeda says it was not far from Kāshghar. Juvaynī says that in the days of the Mongols it was called Gu-Balik.
[249] Grigorieff, in his well-known but harsh, and indeed unjust, review of Vambéry’s Bokhara, published as an Appendix to vol. i. of Schuyler’s Turkestan, says (1) that the Ilik Khāns were not Uïghūrs, but Karlukhs, and (2) that the Kara-Khitāys were their descendants. Though he takes M. Vambéry to task for not knowing such “facts,” neither of these statements will bear the light of modern research. Vambéry was, however, wrong in calling the Kara-Khitāys Uïghūrs.
[250] Klaproth (Sprache und Schrift der Uiguren) proves convincingly that the Hui-ho of the Chinese authors anterior to the Mongol period are identical with the Uïghūrs, and that the Uïghūrs are to be classed among the Eastern Turks. The term Hui-ho was, however, used by Chinese writers of the Mongol period to designate Mohammedans generally (cf. Bretschneider’s article on the Uïghūrs in his Mediæval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources, to which excellent monograph most of these notes are due). Translations of the principal Chinese records of the Uïghūrs are to be found in Videlou’s supplement to d’Herbelot’s Bib. Orient.
[251] The name Uïghūr is first found in Mohammedan histories at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Previously to this they seem to have been known by the name of Taghazghaz, which is doubtless a corruption. Cf. Tarikh-i-Rashidi, or, History of the Moghuls of Central Asia, by Ney Elias and E. Denison Ross, p. 94 of Introduction.
[252] For notices of these places, consult Grigorieff’s article on the Kara-Khānides, and Bretschneider’s Mediæval Researches.
[253] He was not actually the last of the Sāmānides, for one member of the family named Isma`īl el-Muntazir had escaped from Ilik’s hands. His subsequent adventures would go to make an exciting story. For six years he maintained himself at the head of a faithful following. With the help of the Ghuz he twice defeated Ilik’s troops, and (in 391–1001) actually wrested Nīshāpūr from the hands of the governor, Mahmūd of Ghazna’s brother. He finally perished at the hands of a Bedouin in A.H. 395 (1005).
[254] His name was Abū-l-Husayn Nasr I.
[255] A tentative list of the Khāns of Turkestān is given in S. Lane-Poole’s Mohammedan Dynasties, p. 134. They ruled, according to this author’s computation, from about A.H. 320–560 (932–1165).
[256] He was born in A.H. 333 (944). Cf. Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 287.