National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

families. They are emigrants from Andiján, Badakhshán, and Kashmír in nearly equal
proportions, besides a few Hindustani and Kábuli 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 Karátághlúk faction, whose doings have been
mentioned in the preceeding history.

Under the Chinese rule Yárkand was the seat of government 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 Khitáy. 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 Khitáy time. People then
bought and sold every day, and market day was a much jollier time. There was no Kázi
Rais with his six muhtasib armed with the díra to flog people off to prayers, and drive the
women out of the streets, and nobody was bastinadoed for drinking spirits and eating forbid-
den 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 get drunk, and have their pockets picked. So they do now,
though not so publicly, because we are now under Islám, and the Shariát is strictly enforced.

The city contains several large colleges—there are thirty-eight in all—and mosques, and a
number of saráes. None of them are of architectural note, except perhaps the new Andiján
Saráe, 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 khám is also woven here, and exported
with that from Khutan to Andiján. For the rest the industrial trades are such as supply the
domestic requirements of the people, and produce nothing for export.

The Yárkand division is traversed by several rivers on the course of which, and on canals
drawn from which, its settlements are situated. They are the Sánjú or Gúmá river, the Kilyán,
the Tiznáf, and the Zarafshán. The two first are lost on the desert, and the two last unite to
form the Yárkand river. The Tiznáf waters the settlements of Kokyár, Besharik, and Kár-
ghalic. The Zarafshán irrigates those of Yakka Arik and the city and south suburbs of
Yárkand. The Orpa river flows through its western suburbs and joins the Yárkand 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.

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