As briefly and as clearly as possible, we will endeavour to lay before
the reader the chief events of this troubled epoch, when the numerous
progeny of Genghis Khan warred throughout the whole extent of Central
Asia, and a term was only at last placed to their restlessness by their
disappearance. In the first place, it may be as well to mention, that
the religions of Christ, Buddha, and Mahomed, were equally tolerated in
Eastern Turkestan during the greater part of this period. The Arab
invasion and the advance of Islam, had been hurled back beyond Bokhara
"the Holy," by the victorious arms of the great Buddhist conqueror,
Genghis Khan; and for a long period after the Mongol conquests, little
was heard of attempts at conversion to the tenets of the "true Prophet."
But it must not be supposed that, although Genghis Khan, in the sack of
Bokhara, had almost exterminated the race of Mahomedan priests, he was
disposed to stamp out the new heresy from his realms. Having crushed its
power in the field, he was quite content to let it live on or die out,
so long as his imperial or personal 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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