INTRODuc'1'ORY NOTICE. 547
prince who reigned at Yarkand. Khotan appears under a separate sovereign, sister's son to the king at Yarkand, and perhaps
subsidiary to him.
The rulers of Eastern Turkestan had always been Mahomedan from the tiine of Tughlak Timur, who was, we are told, the first Mahomedan sovereign of Kashgar of the lineage of Chinghiz. Buddhism, indeed, was found still prevalent in the cities of Turfan and Kamil at the time of the embassy of Shah Rukh in 1419, and probably did not become extinct much before the end of the century. But in the western states Islam seems to have been universal from an earlier date and maintained with fanatical zeal.' Saintly teachers and workers of miracles, claiming descent from Mahomed, and known as Khwajas or Hojahs, acquired great influence, and the sectaries attached to the chief of these divided the people into rival factions, whose mutual hostility eventually led to the subjugation of the whole country. For late in the seventeenth century, Hojah Appak, the leader of one of those parties called the White Mountain, having been expelled from Kashgar by Ismail Khan the chief of that state, who was a zealous supporter of the opposite party or Black Mountain, sought the aid of Galdan Khan, sovereign of the Eleuths or Kalmuks of Dzungaria. Taking the occasion so afforded, that chief in 1678 invaded the states south of the Thian Shan, carried off the Khan of Kashgar and his family, and established the Hojahs of the White Mountain over the country in authority subordinate to his own. Great discords for many years succeeded, sometimes one faction and sometimes another being uppermost, but some supremacy always continuing to be exercised by the Khans of Dzungaria. In 1757 the latter country was conquered by the Chinese, who in the following year, making a tool of the White party which was then in opposition, succeeded in bringing the states of Turkestan also under their rule. So they have continued until the present day,
I According to the Mecca pilgrim, whose statements are given in the Jour. As. Soc. Bengal, vol. iv (I borrow from Ritter, vii, 353), there are now many Buddhist priests and temples at the capital of Khotan. But the presumption is that these have been reestablished since the revival of Chinese domination in the last century. Islam seems to have been extensively prevalent in those regions for centuries previous to the Mongols' rule, though probably the rise of the latter gave a lift to other religions.
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