Researches On The City Sites Of Huihe Khanate

Huihe,also known as the Uighur,was an ancient ethnic group activing in the Mongolian plateau and northwest China during 6-9^th centuries.The Uighurs established a vast and flourished Khanate of Uighur centered on Orkhon River basin（AD 744-840）.After the Uighur migrated to the west,they gradually integrated with the local people,and formed the present Uygur and Yugur ethnic groups,which have now become an important part of the Chinese nations.The history of Uighur Khanate bears the memory of the distant ancestors of these two nationalities.Uighur townsite is widely distributed in China,Mongolia,the Republic of Tuva of the Russian Federation and Central Asia,therefore it can be regarded as one of the main types of Huihe khanate archaeological site.All the sites are important resources for studying Uighur society and history.Because of its wide distribution,archaeology of Uighur city-site has become a worldwide research subject.This paper focuses on Uighur cities,comprehensively introduces the status of distribution and conservation on these archaeological sites.Combining with archaeological materials and historical literature,we investigated some problems in the study of Uighur.The main conclusions of this book are as follows:1.The ancient cities of Harabarakas,Por-Bajiin,Tsagansum,Qilian were identified as the sites of the Khan Court by analyzing the contents of the epigraph of the ancient Turkic inscriptions.The ancient literature also mentioned"Khatun City"many times,and this paper holds that the Khatun City located in southern desert is Turkic Khatun City lied on the north of desert is HuiheKhatun City.There were two locations of Huihe City.One isХэрмэнДэнжin the Tuul River Valley.The other,possibly the ancient city of Zukrem,is on the banks of the Herlen River,.2.Although Karakorum city was famous as the capital of Mongolia empire,the literature and archaeological materials indicated that the city was firstly found in the period of HuiheKhanate.Wang Khan,Genghis Khan,and?g?dei managed the empire successively,gradually changing the original appearance of Huihe city.3.Huihecity-sites can be classified to four categories based on class,function and the main inhabitants.That is,（1）Khan Court,Khatun City,and Princess City,which occupied positions of authority in hierarchy.（2）Small town.（3）Frontier city.（4）Leftover city.4.The Huihe people had formed some rules on opting for the location of cities.There were three main methods of building the city wall of Huihe:ramming,adobe masonry and stone masonry.Huihe cities did not have barbican entrances.However,there did exist double side towers outside the city gate of Khan Court.5.Modular control was a traditional method of architectural design in ancient China.Chang’an City in Sui dynasty and Luoyang City in Tang dynasty were the products of this method,and it was also employed by the Uighurs in the process of building Khan Court.Through series of design philosophy,such as modular control,separation of functional area,diagonal intersection placement of important buildings,axisymmetric,division of primary and secondary,rises and fall,and so on,Huihe City were built imposingly and orderly by the designer.6.During the period of Huihe Khanate,the majority of Huihe people still lived in felt tents,except for the ruling class and some residents in the suburbs of Kharbalgas.The fact that a palace was built on the central axis of HuiheKhan Court,a combination of front hall and rear hall in both the ancient city of Kharbalgas and Por-Bajiin suggested that they were obviously influenced by the architectural pattern of Taiji Palace and Daming Palace in Chang’an City.In addition,the designing idea,whichto build a large rammed platform on the central axis of the imperial capital of Kharbalgas,was probably influenced by the Ming Hall（the great hall of the Chinese ancient emperor’s office）and Tian Hall in Luoyang City.7.Taking the Huiheanimal-headed tiles as examples,this paper summarizes their evolution processes The manufacturing process,design and development of these tiles of Huihe were similar to those of animal-headed tiles in Tang dynasty,which reflected the two empires had direct and persistent communication in construction technology.8.The axis of the city was east-west because of their veneration for southeast.The"日"-like structure of the Home City of the Kharbalgas had been widely accepted in the Khan Court cities of Huihe Khanate.At the same time,it influenced the ancient cities of the northern capital of Liao and Chintolgi city.The administrative district of Kharbalgas was located in the north of the whole city site without outer wall,which also influenced the layout of Shajang hot and Abulag cities in the period of Meng and Yuan dynasties.The Huihe cemetery and the small city had commonalities in structure,which implied that the Huihe ruling class might have the idea of"serving death as life".9.The greatest contribution of Huihe nationality did to the construction of ancient cities in the region of the northern desert,was their first establishment of the real capital in the northern desert grassland.The Huihe ruling class had accumulated abundant experience of semi-nomadic（semi-settled）life in the northern part of the desert,which helped them quickly adapted to the environment after migrating westward,and soon became powerful again.10.By the introduction of this paper,we could conclude that appearance,structure,layout concept,construction technology,architectural components modeling and painted decoration,etc,of Huihe Khan court were fully impacted by the Tang Dynasty’s capital system.An architectural culture and art world all over East Asia had been formed by the Tang Dynasty,including Changan City and Luoyang City.