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0070 Report of a Mission to Yarkund in 1873 : vol.1
Report of a Mission to Yarkund in 1873 : vol.1 / Page 70 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000196
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families. They are emigrants from Andijân, Badakhshân, and Kashmir in nearly equal proportions, besides a few Hindustani and Kabuli outcastes. They bear a character for all sorts of knavery and debauchery in common with the Tartar residents, who are besides characterized as seditious and turbulent. They belong to the Karâtâghlûk faction, whose doings have been mentioned in the preceeding history.

Under the Chinese rule Yârkand was the seat of govèrnment and a most flourishing centre of trade. Besides the garrison of 5,000 men, there was a floating population of nearly ten thousand followers, suttlers, artificers, pedlars, and merchants whose activity brought life, wealth, and prosperity to the city.

" What you see on market day now," as a citizen informed me, " is nothing to the life and activity there was in the time of the Kkitcig.. To-day the peasantry come in with their fowls and eggs, with their cotton and yarn, or with their sheep, and cattle and horses for sale ; and they go back with printed cottons, or fur caps, or city made boots, or whatever domestic necessaries they may require, and always with a good dinner inside them, and then we shut up our shops and stow away our goods till next week's market day brings back our customers. Some of us go out with a small venture in the interim to the rural markets around, but our great day is market day in town. It was very different in the Khitsy time. People then bought and sold every-day, and market day was a much jollier time. There was no Kâzi Rais with his six muJtasib armed with the dira to flog people off to prayers, and drive the women out of the streets, and nobody was bastinadoed for drinking spirits and eating forbidden meats. There were musicians and acrobats, and fortune-tellers and story-tellers, who moved about amongst the crowds and diverted the people. There were flags and banners and all sorts of pictures floating at the shop fronts, and there was the jallab, who painted her face and

decked herself in silks and laces to please her customers."   " Yes. There were many rogues and
gamblers too, and people did gat drunk, and have their pockets picked. So they do now, though not so publicly, because we are now under Islam, and the Slaaric t is strictly enforced.

The city contains several large colleges—there are thirty-eight in all—and mosques, and a number of sarâes. None of them are of architectural note, except perhaps the new Andijân Sadie, which is a brick and mortar building with commodious vaults and lodges: A peculiar feature of the city are its kol or " tanks" of drinking water. There are, it is said, 120 within the walls. They are filled from canals on the outside, and are • mere excavations in the soil, and are in no way protected from the-impurities of the streets, or from wind drifts. In other respects of municipal arrangement and general conservancy, as well as in the appearance of the bazars, streets, and tenements, the city may be compared with a third rate Musalman town in which the houses are for the most part built of raw brick and mud plaster.

The principal industry here is the leather trade. Excellent boots and shoes of the European pattern are manufactured in the city ; as are all sorts of saddlery and harness gear, together with sheepskin cloaks, and fur caps of the Tartar fashion. And these are exported to the neighbouring districts. The coarse cotton called klu m is also woven here, and exported with that from Khutan to Andijân. For the rest the industrial trades are such as supply the domestic requirements of the people, and produce nothing for export.

The Yârkand division is traversed by several rivers on the course of which, and on canals drawn from which, its settlements are situated. They are the Sânjû or Gûmâ river, the Kilyân, the Tiznâf, and the Zarafshân. The two first are lost on the desert, and the two last unite to form the Yârkand river. The Tiznâf waters the settlements of Kokyâr, Besharik, and Kârghalic. The Zarafshân irrigates those of Yakka Arik and the city and south suburbs of Yârkand. The Orpa river flows through its western suburbs and joins the Yârkand river to the north. The Orpa is the only river which is bridged in this division, though most of the canals are so too. It and they flow on sandy bottoms ; the other rivers on firm pebbly beds.

Yângl Hissâr.—This division lies to the north-west of Yârkand and connects it with Kâshghar. It is a flourishing and populous settlement extending some twenty miles from west to east along the course of the Shâhngz river. The city and fort, however, are separated from the river by an intervening ridge of sand stone and gravel heights called Kgyrâgh ; and with their suburbs are watered by six ustang or " canals," which are brought from the Ak Kay