interests were not affected. So we
have the strange picture before us, of the three great doctrines of the
earth flourishing side by side in Eastern Turkestan in the fourteenth
century. The Nestorian Christians of Kashgar, who in the time of Marco
Polo were rich and flourishing, were obliged later on to succumb to the
violent measures of the other members of the community, and have
entirely disappeared for many centuries.

Shortly after the death of Chaghtai Khan, Kaidu, a great-grandson of
Genghis, obtained the throne of Kashgar and Yarkand; and a few years
later on, by a skilful piece of diplomacy, backed up by force, added
thereto the greater part of Khokand and Bokhara. His triumph was,
however, of brief duration, and he was displaced by other competitors.
Dava Khan, the son of Burac, the great-grandson of Chaghtai, had been
appointed governor of Khoten, but his ambition was not satisfied with
less than the throne of Western Turkestan also. He eventually obtained
his desire; but in a rash moment he threw himself in the path of the
Chinese Emperor, Timour Khan, who was returning from a raid carried
almost to the gates of Lahore. He was defeated somewhere in the
neighbourhood of Maralbashi, and was compelled to acknowledge the
supremacy of China. He is of some note to us, as having been the father
of Azmill Khoja, who was selected as ruler by the people themselves,
about the year 1310, and from whom descend that line of Khoja kings of
Kashgar, who have clung to their hereditary claims for a longer time
than any other royal Central Asian house. The last of the Chaghtai Khans
who held the sceptre with any effective purpose, was Kazan Ameer. On his
death another period of trouble broke out, and military governors and
rival princelets of dubious titles advanced their pretensions to the
vacant seat. Up to this all the rulers had, however, been Buddhists.
Toghluc Timour, one of the few remaining representatives of the Genghis
families, had only been saved by the pity of a leading man in Kashgar,
from one of the most extensive massacres of his kinsmen, and for years
he was obliged to lead an uncertain existence in the mountains or
deserts bordering on the state. His associations were all Buddhist; but
one day he was so struck by the definition of the "true faith" given by
the descendant of a Mahomedan priest, spared by Genghis Khan at the
destruction of Bokhara, that he made a vow to become a Mussulman when he
had regained h