127-128) that Marco Polo
did not visit Kashgar. - Grenard (II. p. 17) makes the remark that it took
Marco Polo seventy days from Badakhshan to Kashgar, a distance that, in
the Plain of Turkestan, he shall cross in sixteen days. - The Chinese
traveller, translated by M. Gueluy (Desc. de la Chine occidentale, p.
45), says that the name Kashgar is made of Kash, fine colour, and gar,
brick house. - H. C.]
Kashgar was the capital, from 1865 to 1877, of Ya'kub Kushbegi, a soldier
of fortune, by descent it is said a Tajik of Shighnan, who, when the
Chinese yoke was thrown off, made a throne for himself in Eastern
Turkestan, and subjected the whole basin to his authority, taking the
title of Atalik Ghazi.
It is not easy to see how Kashgar should have been subject to the Great
Kaan, except in the sense in which all territories under Mongol rule owed
him homage. Yarkand, Polo acknowledges to have belonged to Kaidu, and the
boundary between Kaidu's territory and the Kaan's lay between Karashahr
and Komul [Bk. I. ch. xli.], much further east.
[Bretschneider, Med. Res. (II. p. 47), says: "Marco Polo states with
respect to the kingdom of Cascar (I. 189) that it was subject to the
Great Khan, and says the same regarding Cotan (I. 196), whilst Yarcan
(I. 195), according to Marco Polo, belonged to Kaidu.
