Kara-Khanid Khanate

The Kara-Khanid Khanate was a Karluk Turkic khanate that ruled Central Asia from the ninth to the early thirteenth century, formed around 840 AD from a confederation of Turkic tribes, including the Karluks, Yagmas and Chigils, in the Zhetysu and Xinjiang regions. Its rulers converted from Nestorian Christianity and Tengrism to Islam around 934 AD, and by 999 the Karakhanids had conquered Transoxiana, the region between the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers, a shift scholars describe as marking the definitive turn from Iranic to Turkic predominance in Central Asia; the khanate held capitals at Balasagun, Kashgar, Uzgen and Samarkand and split into eastern and western divisions during the 1040s. Its authority weakened progressively afterward, becoming a Seljuk vassal around 1089 and then falling under Qara Khitai domination after 1141, until the Eastern Khanate collapsed in 1211 and the Khwarazmian Empire extinguished the Western branch in 1212, ending nearly four centuries of Karakhanid rule.