APPENDIX. 
61 
APPENDIX B. 
A VISIT TO THE SHRINE OF HAZRAT AFAQ. 
The following account of a visit paid by myself and an English companion to 
the shrine of Hazrat Afaq, in December 1874, may be interesting as illustrating the 
text. 
After crossing the Tuman Fiver by a wooden bridge, just below the south¬ 
eastern angle of the wall of Kashghar city, we rode for nearly a couple of miles 
chiefly through a large cemetery—a perfect city of the dead—where numerous beg¬ 
ging dervishes, single, and even in families, had established their dwellings in the 
niches and under the domes of the tombs, and came out at the approach of our 
cavalcade to ask for alms with loud invocations and deep reverences. Presently the 
road became a walled lane, overhung by the branches of tall trees growing in a 
large park-like domain, which extended on either side and in front. This lane 
ended at a gateway where we all dismounted, and left cur horses under the charge 
of a number of boys and young men, who were hanging about there for the purpose 
of holding the horses of visitors and pilgrims. The hereditary guardian of the 
shrine, a Haji, accompanied by his retinue, met us at the gate and conducted us 
into the interior. We passed numerous collegiate buildings, the quarters of students 
who come to study theology here, and other buildings indicating the existence of 
quite a little religious colony. In summer it must be charming under the shade of 
the venerable trees, an air of religious and scholastic repose pervading the whole. 
After a short walk we reached the shrine, a square building with a barred gateway 
enclosing a small courtyard in which were more than seventy tombs of the members 
of the Afaqide branch of the Khoja family. Among them is a tomb marked only 
with the initials K. Sh. (Kdf, Shin). This is the nom de plume under which is 
known the writer of certain poems and semi-poetical biographies of Hazrat Afaq 
and his ancestors, which are in my possession. 
The shrine is marked by four tall masts decorated with yah tails {tagh) and 
flags inscribed with Arabic texts, and by numerous huge horns of the Ovis Poli (or 
rather Ovis Karilini) found in the neighbouring mountains. These are ranged 
along the top of the walls surrounding the shrine, and the finest are formed into 
two heaps, in front of a little pavilion where pious worshippers sit and meditate on 
the virtues of the saint. These fluttering yah tails and heaped-up horns are 
strange features for a Musulman holy place, although commonly found associated 
with grave-yards in Turkistan. They remind one of the cairns and built-up pillars 
or monuments, similarly adorned, which are found in all notable spots throughout 
the mountainous region between India and Eastern Turkistan, 1 and which are vari¬ 
ously called Devis (the haunts, that is, of female deities) in the Hindu region, 
Shdto ( i.e. demon-dwellings) in the Buddhist region (where they are not considered 
1 And even in Mongolia. See Perjevalski, Mongolia, volume I, pages 76, 283. Volume II, page 257. 
They are there called “obo.”—B. B. S. 
