EPITOME OF THE MEMOIRS OF THE KHOJAS. 
41 
taking him with them, now attacked Kashghar which, after a short resist¬ 
ance, surrendered. Danyal advised the Qalmaqs not to offend the religions 
feelings of the country by slaying any of the Khojas. They approved 
of this counsel and merely imprisoned Ahmad Khwaja (son of Yabya), 
Ruler of Kashghar, and put on a well-wisher of their own in his place; but 
they afterwards carried both Ahmad and Khwaja Danyal to Ila. Here 
the Chiefs treated Danyal with great respect, but sent Ahmad to one of 
their frontier stations, called Iran Kaburgha 25 . 
When Muhammad Amin had plundered Ila, he had captured thirty 
thousand people of the country, and from among them had bestowed 
a Chief’s daughter on Danyal, who had converted her to Islam and married 
her. On the Qalmaqs taking Yarqand and Kash gh ar. they had released 
their compatriots, and Danyal’s wife, then enceinte , was given to a Qalmaq 
Chief, who, however, had no intercourse with her, until her child by Danyal 
was born. The child was a son, w T hom his mother swaddled in fine clothes 
and devoted herself to. He was brought up, till the age of seven, in all 
the learning of the Qalmaqs, without its being known, publicly, that he 
was the child of a Musulman. 
The mother, at last, found an opportunity to inform Khwaja Danyal 
of the fact, by means of a letter sent through a Musulman merchant. 
He appealed to the chief of the Qalmaqs, who sent a man of his own and 
a disciple of the Khojas to enquire into the matter. The woman stood to 
her declaration, but her new husband denied it and would not show the 
child, telling him that the Musulmans would eat him. Finally all the 
parties were brought to the court of the chief of the Qalmaqs. The 
husband fell at the feet of the Kongtdji 26 (the chief) who was a relative of 
his, appealing to him not to deprive him of his only child, for the sake of 
the Musulmans. 
35 Muhammad Sadiq adds that Khwaja Ahmad remained at Iran Kaburgha, on 
the frontier of Ila, for seven years. 'Jhe Iran Kabur gh a district is in the range of 
hills forming the northern shed of the valley of the river Kash— a tributary of the 
III. The date of these events can be traced, through Chinese accounts of the Qalmaqs, 
to about the year 1713, if our author’s indication of seven years ” is to be accepted. 
See the next note below. 
36 Perhaps a better spelling would be Rung Taishi. It was the title of the 
highest rank among the Qalmaqs and stood for “ Sultan ” or King. Sir H. Howorth, 
quoting Pallas, says the meaning of the words is “ Swan-like Prince ” (1, p. 617-n). 
The Rung Taishi in the present instance was the famous Tse Wang ftabtan, and the 
date about 1720, for the author tells us, lower down, that the restoration of Danyal to 
the government of Eastern Turkistan took place seven years previous to Tse V\ ang 
Pabtan’s death, an event which is known, from Chinese sources, to have happened in 
1727 (see also p. 20 of the introduction, above). 
