Satuq Bughra Khan and the conversion of the Karakhanids to Islam

Little about the conversion is certain. Its story survives only as legend: the oldest version, recorded in the 13th century by Jamal Qarshi from an 11th-century History of Kashgar, was later expanded in the Tadhkira of Bughra Khan. According to it, Satuq lost his father as a child and grew up at the court of his uncle and stepfather Oghulchak, khan of Kashgar. A Muslim from Bukhara — a jurist of Samanid descent in the older version, a merchant called Abu Nasr Samani in later ones — had been allowed to build a mosque at Artush (Artuj) near Kashgar, and there Satuq, twelve years old according to the legend, secretly accepted Islam, taking the name Abd al-Karim. Later, with the help of ghazis — fighters for the faith — from Fergana, he overthrew his uncle and took Kashgar. Jamal Qarshi dates his death to the year 344 of the Hijra (955/956); his tomb at Artush is still venerated.

Historians treat these tales with caution. Vasily Bartold pointed out that the tradition is full of anachronisms and that its chronology cannot be trusted, and the date of the conversion remains uncertain: some authors place it in the 930s (932 or 934), others nearer 950–955. A firmer date comes from outside: under the year 349 of the Hijra (960) the chroniclers Ibn Miskawayh and Ibn al-Athir report that “200,000 tents” of Turks had become Muslims, and Bartold and later historians refer this report to the Karakhanids. In the view of Michal Biran, Samanid missionary efforts and the military, cultural and commercial prestige that the Samanids enjoyed in the steppe probably played their part.

Once Muslim, the Karakhanids turned against their neighbours. From the 960s they fought a long war against the Buddhist kingdom of Khotan, which they subdued only in the early 11th century, about 1006, and they moved west against the Samanids themselves: Satuq’s grandson Hasan (Harun) Bughra Khan briefly took Bukhara in 992, and in 999 Nasr ibn Ali took it for good. As Sunni Muslims the Karakhanids met little resistance in Transoxiana, and their conversion opened the way for Islam among the Turks of the Tian Shan and the Tarim Basin.