The Toquz Tatars and the Silk Road trade during the 10th Century

Abstract

On the route described in Marwazi's Taba'i' al-hayawan (The Natural Properties of Animals) from the Karahan Dynasty's capital of Kashgar to the Qidan Dynasty's capital via Hetian 和田 and Shazhou 沙州 (i.e., Dunghuang) there lay the town of Khatun-san located a two-months journey from Shazhou, which corresponds to Zhenzhou Keduncheng 鎮州可敦城, the fortress within the territory of the Toquz (or Nine) Tatars of the central Mongolian Plateau. Another point on the route, Utkin, located a one-month's journey from Khatun-san is also mentioned in 10th century Uighur documents as Otukan, which corresponds to the Hanggai Mountains of present day Mongolia. Judging from this route between Qidan and Shazhou and the era of envoys exchanged between the Qidan Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty's Guiyi 帰義 Army, which governed Dunhuang between 848 and 1039, the Tatars who are recorded in the Dunhuang document collection in various conditions of war and peace with the Guiyi military regime can be identified as the same Toquz Tartars of the Mongolian Plateau. The documents indicate that during the 10th century, the Toquz Tatars formed an independent political entity and documents preserved on the reverse side of Sogd language items P.28 and P.3134 inform us that these nine tribes were engaged in the Silk Road trade during the 10th century through Uighur merchants of the Nestorian Christian faith. The author of this article concludes that the Toquz Tatars must have enjoyed close relations with the Western Uighur Kingdom, the homeland of these merchants, and that the conversion of the central Toquz tribe, the Kereit, to Nestorianism was no doubt due in large part to their contact with the Uighur Silk Road merchants.