The first place which called the Grand Khan was Kara Kitai on the west, then conterminous with his own growing Empire. Kara Kitai had the following origin: When Kitan rule in North China was overthrown by the Kins, Yeliu Tashi, a relative of the last Kitan Emperor, and also his leading commander, took farewell of his sovereign in 1123, and with two hundred men journeyed westward. Governors and chiefs of tribes in those Chinese provinces through which he passed showed him homage as a descendant of Apaki, and gave armed warriors to strengthen him. At the head of these and his own men, he went farther. Bilik, prince of the Uigurs, from whom he asked a passage, went out to receive him at the boundary, with a large gift of sheep, horses, and camels. Bilik gave also as hostages a number of his sons and grandsons, and recognized the renowned man as overlord. Yeliu conquered Kashgar, Yarkend, Khotan and Turkistan. Turkistan was at that time under Nahmud Khan, the twentieth prince of his dynasty, a ruler claiming descent from Afrasiab, so famous in Persian story. Nahmud was reduced to the possession of Transoxiana, and, as this region too was attacked somewhat later by Kara Kitans, he became Yeliu’s vassal. Kwaresm met soon the same fate as Transoxiana; Yeliu’s troops brought sword and flame to it, and Atsiz, the second prince of the dynasty of the Kwaresmian Shahs, obtained peace by paying thirty thousand gold coins for it yearly. When Yeliu had brought under his dominion all regions between the Yaxartes and the Gobi desert, and between the headwaters of the Irtish and the Pamir highlands, he took the title of Gurkhan of Kara Kitai, and fixed his chief residence at Bela Sagun on the next large stream east of the Yaxartes River. In 1136, while preparing for war against the Kin sovereigns to win back the Empire which they had snatched from his family, he died, leaving only one son, then a minor. Till 1142 this son was under the tutelage of his mother. Dying in 1155 he left a son, Chiluku, for whom his aunt, Pussuen, was regent till 1167 when he came to majority. When the son of the last Naiman ruler came in 1208 to seek an asylum in Kara Kitai, Chiluku was still ruling. He showed the fleeing Khan a kind welcome, and gave him his daughter in marriage. Chiluku was occupied mainly in hunting wild beasts, and in seeking for pleasure. This weakness caused the defection of great vassals: the Idikut of the Uigurs; the Khan of Transoxiana; the Kwaresmian Shah, and now it led his perfidious new son-in-law to dethrone him.