the local king.
The Arab Caliphate
In the 8th century came the Arab rule from the west, and Kashgar and Turkestan lent assistance to the reigning queen of Bokhara, to enable her to repel the enemy[who?]. But although the Muslim religion from the very commencement sustained checks, it nevertheless made its weight felt upon the independent states of Turkestan to the north and east, and thus acquired a steadily growing influence. It was not, however, till the 10th century that Islam was established at Kashgar, under the Kara-Khanid Khanate.
The Karakhanids
Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan converted to Islam in the 10th century and captured Kashgar. The Kara-Khanid Khanate in Kashgar lasted until the 12th century when it was conquered by the Kara-Khitans.
The Uyghurs
The Uyghurs employed an alphabet based upon the Syriac and borrowed from the Nestorian, but after converting to Islam widely used also an Arabic script. They spoke a dialect of Turkic claimed to be preserved in the Kudatku Bilik, a moral treatise composed in 1065.
The Mongols
The Kara-Khanid Khanate was destroyed by an invasion of the Kara-Khitai, another Turkic tribe pressing westwards from the Chinese frontier, who in their turn were swept away in 1219 by Genghis Khan. On his death, and during the rule of the Chagatai Khans, who also converted to Islam, Islamic tradition began to reassert its ascendancy.
Marco Polo visited the city, which he calls Cascar, about 1273-4 and recorded the presence of numerous Nestorian Christians, who had their own churches.
In 1389–1390 Timur ravaged Kashgar, Andijan and the intervening country. Kashgar endured a troubled time, and in 1514, on the invasion of the Khan Sultan Said, was destroyed by Mirza Ababakar, who with the aid of ten thousand men built a new fort with massive defences higher up on the banks of the Tuman river. The dynasty of the Jagatai Khans collapsed in 1572 with the division of the
