Moghulistan (from , Moghulestân, ; ), also called the Moghul Khanate or the Eastern Chagatai Khanate (), was a Mongol breakaway khanate of the Chagatai Khanate and a historical geographic area north of the Tengri Tagh mountain range, on the border of Central Asia and East Asia. That area today includes parts of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and northwest Xinjiang, China. The khanate nominally ruled over the area from the mid-14th century until the late 17th century.
Beginning in the mid-14th century a new khanate, in the form of a nomadic tribal confederacy headed by a member of the family of Chagatai, arose in the region of the Ili River. It is therefore considered to be a continuation of the Chagatai Khanate, but it is also referred to as the Moghul Khanate.
In actuality, local control rested with local Mongol Dughlats or Naqshbandi Sufis in their respective oases. Although the rulers enjoyed great wealth from trade with the Ming dynasty, it was beset by constant civil war and invasions by the Timurid Empire, which emerged from the western part of the erstwhile Chagatai Khanate. The khanate was split into the Turpan Khanate based on the city of Turpan, and the Yarkent Khanate based on the city of Yarkent, until the Dzungar Khanate conquered the region by the early 18th century.
Etymology
"Moghulistan" is a Persian name and simply means "Land of the Moghuls" or Mongols (the term Moghul/Mughal is Persian for "Mongol" and -istan means land in Persian) in reference to the eastern branch of the ethnic Mongol Chagatai Khans who ruled it. The term "Moghulistan" occurs mostly in Soviet historiography, while Chinese historiography mostly uses the term "East Chagatai Khanate" (), which contrasts Moghulistan to the Timurid Empire. The Moghul Khans considered themselves heir to Mongol traditions and called themselves Mongghul Uls, from which the Persian term "Moghulistan" comes. Ming dynasty Mandarins called the Moghuls "the Mongol tribes () in Beshbalik". The Timurid exonym for Moghulistan was Ulus-i Jatah.
When the Mongols conquered most of Asia and Russia in the 13th century and constructed the Mongol Empire, they lived as minorities in many of the regions they had subdued, such as Iran and China. As a result, the Mongols in these regions quickly adopted the local culture. For example, in the Persian Ilkhanate the Mongol khans adopted Islam and Persian culture after less than half a century, while the khans of the Yuan dynasty embraced Chinese court customs. In contrast, the Mongols and their subordinates who settled in what came to be known as Moghulistan were in origin steppe nomads from Mongolia. Because of this, they were much more resistant to changing their way of life; they retained their primarily nomadic lifestyle for several centuries and were among the last of the Mongols who converted to Islam to do so. During the 14th century the inhabitants of Moghulistan were known as "Mogul" and the area they occupied was called "Mirza/Baig". This term is also used by numerous people in South Asia.
According to Vasily Bartold, there are “some indications that the language of the Moghuls was Mongolian until the 16th century". For the sedentary Mongols in Transoxiana, the nomadic Mongols to their east represented a bastion of true Mongol culture, hence the name "Moghulistan".
Geography
Since the Moghuls were nomads of the steppe, the boundaries of their territories seldom stayed the same for long. Still, Moghulistan in the strictest sense was centered in the Ili region. It was bounded on the west by the province of Shash and the Karatau Mountains, while the southern area of Lake Balkhash marked the northern limit of Moghul influence. From there the border gradually sloped in a southeastern direction until it reached the eastern portion of the Tian Shan Mountains. The Tian Shan then served as the southern border of Moghulistan. Besides Moghulistan proper, the Moghuls also nominally controlled modern-day Dzungaria (northern Xinjiang, including the Turpan Depression) and Nanjiang (southern Xinjiang, including the Tarim Basin). Besides Moghulistan, Nanjiang, and Beijiang, several other regions were also temporarily subjected to Moghul rule at one time or another, such as Tashkent, Ferghana and parts of Badakhshan. Moghulistan proper was primarily steppe country and was where the Moghuls usually resided. Because of the Moghuls' nomadic nature, the towns of Moghulistan fell into decline during their rule, if they managed to remain occupied at all.