Uyghur Khaganate

The Uyghur Khaganate ruled the Mongolian steppe for about a century, from 744 to 840, after overthrowing the Second Turkic Khaganate. It was unusual among steppe empires for building a large walled capital and for adopting Manichaeism, a religion from Iran, as its state faith. Today's Uyghurs of Xinjiang take their name from its people.

The Uyghurs were a Turkic people, one of the Toquz Oghuz, "nine tribes", of Mongolia, who had been subjects of the Göktürks and rebelled against them several times. In 742, with the Basmyls and Karluks, they rose against the Second Turkic Khaganate, and by 744 they had destroyed it, killing the last khagan. Kutlug Bilge Köl became the first Uyghur khagan. His son Bayanchur, or Moyanchur, who ruled from 747 to 759, consolidated the state, recording his deeds in inscriptions.

When the An Lushan rebellion broke out in China in 755, the Tang court asked the Uyghurs for help. Uyghur cavalry helped retake the Tang capitals, Chang'an in 757 and Luoyang in 757 and again in 762, and plundered Luoyang. In return, the Tang paid the Uyghurs huge amounts of silk, gave them Tang princesses as brides and agreed to buy Uyghur horses at high prices, about forty bolts of silk per horse. The Uyghurs grew rich, and Uyghur traders and moneylenders in Chang'an became powerful and resented.

The Uyghurs built a capital, Ordu-Baliq, "city of the court", in the Orkhon valley, near the old Turkic and later Mongol centres. It had massive earthen walls, a citadel, palaces, temples and quarters for merchants and craftsmen. An Arab traveller, Tamim ibn Bahr, who visited around 821, described a great walled city with twelve iron gates, crowded markets and farmland around it. Other walled towns, such as Bay-Balyq, were also built.

Sogdian merchants from Central Asia, many of them Manichaeans, played a large role in the Uyghur state, as traders, scribes and advisers. In 762, during the campaign in China, Bögü Khagan met Manichaean priests and, on returning, adopted Manichaeism as the state religion, a faith founded by the prophet Mani in Persia that taught a struggle between light and darkness. The Karabalgasun inscription, written in Old Turkic, Sogdian and Chinese, records the conversion. Bögü was later killed in 779 by a relative who opposed the Sogdians' influence, but Manichaeism remained important. The Uyghurs adopted a script derived from Sogdian, which later became the basis of the Mongolian and Manchu scripts.

The Uyghurs fought the Tibetan Empire for control of the Tarim basin and the Silk Road, especially around Beshbalik, and the Karluks and Kyrgyz. They controlled trade routes between China and Central Asia.

In the 830s, the khaganate was weakened by succession disputes, famine, epidemics and a heavy snowfall that killed much livestock. In 840 a rebellious Uyghur general invited the Yenisei Kyrgyz, from the north, who attacked and destroyed Ordu-Baliq, killing the khagan.

The Uyghurs scattered. Some fled to the Chinese border and were attacked by the Tang. Others moved south to the Gansu corridor, founding the Ganzhou Uyghur Kingdom, and others to the Turpan basin, in today's Xinjiang, where they founded the Kingdom of Qocho, or the West Uyghur Kingdom. Qocho was a centre of Buddhist and Manichaean culture, famous for its cave paintings at Bezeklik, and later submitted peacefully to Genghis Khan in 1209. The Uyghurs of Xinjiang gradually converted to Islam from the tenth century onwards.

Our maps show the Uyghur Khaganate on the 700, 800 and 900 maps. Its largest outline, about 3.7 million square kilometres on the 800 map, is mostly in today's China and Mongolia, with parts in Russia and Kazakhstan. Ulaanbaatar's site lies inside it. The 900 map continues the name after the khaganate's fall in 840.