A strange legend is told of the conversion of Sātūq Bughrā Khān, the founder of the Muhammadan dynasty of the Īlik-Khāns of Kāshgar, about the middle of the tenth century. A prince of the Sāmānid house, Khwājah Abu’l-Naṣr Sāmānī, a man of great piety and humility of character, finding no scope for the exercise of his talent for administration, resolved to become a merchant, with the purpose of spreading the true faith in the lands of the unbelievers. Instead of trying to acquire a fortune by his commercial enterprises, he devoted all his gains to the furtherance of his proselytising efforts. One night the Prophet appeared to him in a dream, saying: “Arise, and go into Turkistan where the prince Sātūq Bughrā Khān only awaits your coming to be converted to Islam.” The young prince had in a similar manner been warned in a vision to expect the arrival of an instructor in the faith, and when some days later he met Abu’l-Naṣr Sāmānī he was prepared to accept his teaching and become a Musalman. This legend would appear to have been based on the historic fact that Islam made its way from the Sāmānid kingdom into the neighbouring country of Turkistan, and the example of the ruler seems to have been followed by his subjects, for in A.D. 960 as many as 200,000 tents of the Turks, i.e. probably the greater part of the Turkish population of Bughrā Khān’s kingdom, professed the faith of Islam. [717] Legend credits him with miraculous powers in his wars against the heathen, when a devouring flame would issue from his mouth and the sword that he brandished would become forty feet long. By the time he had reached the age of ninety-six, the terror of his sword is said to have converted the unbelievers from the banks of the Oxus in the south to Qurāquram in the north, and just before his death he is said to have led his victorious army into China, and spread Islam as far as Turfan. [718] This picturesque account of a dynastic struggle with the Buddhist kingdom of Khotan credits the hero with a measure of success which was not really achieved until the fourteenth century. How limited the success of Sātūq Bughrā Khān really was, may be judged from the fact that when his successors among the Īlik-Khāns sought in 1026 to contract matrimonial alliances with princesses of the house of Maḥmūd of Ghazna, Maḥmūd replied that he was a Musalman, while they were unbelievers, and that it was not the custom to give the sisters and daughters of Musalmans in marriage to unbelievers, but that, if they would embrace Islam, the matter would be considered. [719] A few years later, in 1041–1042, a number of Turks who were still heathen and living in Tibetan territory sought permission from Arslān Khān b. Qadr Khān to settle in his dominions, having heard of the justice and mildness of his rule; when they arrived in the neighbourhood of Bālāsāghūn [720] he sent a message to them urging them to accept Islam; but they refused, and as he found them to be peaceable and obedient