196 wilkens
A travelogue by the Muslim author Tamīm ibn Baḥr, which cannot be dated
with absolute certainty but which was probably composed around the year
821,26 describes the residential city of the Toghuzghuz, i.e. the Uyghurs, which
can only be Karabalgasun (OU Ordo Balık). Tamīm ibn Baḥr’s account con-
tains some precious information on religious topics. He states, for instance,
that the Manichaeans (Arab. zindīq) prevailed among the population but there
were ‘fire-worshippers’ as well. This statement certainly refers to the expatriate
Sogdian population who practiced a peculiar unreformed East Iranian form of
Zoroastrianism not only in their homeland (Sogdiana) but in their colonies as
well.27 Of Buddhism among the Uyghurs there is no mention at all. As regards
the presence of Buddhism in the East Uyghur Empire in Mongolia, the sources
are anything but explicit, but it is doubtful that there was a sizable group of
Buddhists, let alone Uyghur Buddhists, active in this period. Only after the
migration of the Uyghurs to the Eastern Tianshan (天山) area and to the Gansu
(甘肅) corridor does Buddhism start to play a significant role in the history of
religions of the Uyghurs. Smaller groups of Uyghurs who already inhabited the
oases on the Northern fringe of the Taklamakan desert before the demise of
the East Uyghur Empire may have converted to Buddhism.
In the course of time, Uyghur Buddhists had to cope with adherents of
other religions. First, they had to deal with rival Manichaeans who benefitted
from royal patronage, later with Christians of the Apostolic Church of the East
(inadequately called Nestorians) and Muslims. In Mongol times Buddhist and
Muslim encounters intensified and traces of these encounters are mirrored in
some Uyghur Buddhist texts.28
26 Cf. Minorsky, V[ladimir] [Fedorovič], “Tamīm ibn Baḥr’s Journey to the Uyghurs,” Bulletin
of the School of Oriental and African Studies 12.2 (1948): 303.
27 See Minorsky, “Tamīm ibn Baḥr’s Journey,” 283–284. Minorsky doubts the correctness of
this observation: “The presence of Zoroastrians among the subjects of the Toghuzghuz
is unlikely; by some aberration Tamīm’s designation might refer to Buddhists or to the
natural religion of the Turkish tribes.” (Minorsky, “Tamīm ibn Baḥr’s Journey,” 296). But in
the recent decades rich materials on Zoroastrianism in the Sogdian colonies have come
to light. See, e.g., Rong, Xinjiang, “The Migrations and Settlements of the Sogdians in the
Northern Dynasties, Sui and Tang,” trans. Bruce Doar, in The Silk Road: Key Papers, Part I:
The Preislamic Period, Volume 1, ed. Valerie Hansen (Leiden, Boston: Global Oriental,
2012), 338–396. Cf. as well the survey by Riboud, Pénélope, “Réflexions sur les pratiques
religieuses désignées sous le nom xian 袄,” in Les Sogdiens en Chine, ed. Étienne de la
Vaissière and Éric Trombert (Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 2005), 73–91.
28 See Tezcan, Semih and Peter Zieme, “Antiislamische Polemik in einem alttürkischen
buddhistischen Gedicht aus Turfan,” Altorientalische Forschungen 17.1 (1990): 146–151; Arat,
Reşid Rahmeti, Eski Türk Şiiri (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1991, 3rd edition),