hrew fresh light on
the strange deed he was reported to have done of disinheriting his own
family, and it speedily became the accepted version. The question then
was, who was Hakim Khan Torah? Two versions were put forward; one was
that he was the son of Buzurg Khan, the other that he was a Khoja chief
of Kucha. The former was the more plausible, but as his name does not
occur in Sir Douglas Forsyth's exhaustive report, it is open to some
objection, more particularly when we are told that he bore a principal
part in the conquest of Kashgar by Yakoob Beg. The latter suggestion was
much more difficult to prove, but was not open to the same objection.
Grant that Hakim, or Aali, Khan Torah was a pardoned Kucha chief when
that city fell into the hands of the Athalik Ghazi, and there was
nothing extraordinary in his having proved a traitor. Assume that he
still conceived he had claims upon the governorship of that city, of
which the _Turkestan Gazette_ asserts he had been Dadkwah, and there is
nothing inconsistent in his having sought to realize his own ambitious
schemes the moment fortune frowned upon his conqueror. That Hakim Khan,
if son to Buzurg Khan, should seek to revenge his father's deposition
and life of exile is not in itself strange we admit; but if he were a
subjected ruler, who regarded Yakoob Beg as an adventurer from Khokand
with no claims to his fealty, his plot against and murder of the
Kashgarian prince at once appears not only possible, but the true story.
As a leading Khoja of Kucha he would also have claims to represent one
branch of the old reigning family of Kashgar. In the face, too, of a
great and pressing danger from the Chinese, his hereditary enemies, a
son of Buzurg Khan would scarcely make confusion worse confounded by
murdering the _de facto_ sovereign; whereas a Kucha leader might aspire
to play in such a crisis the same part that Amursana did in the last
century. It was said that Hakim Khan entered into some negotiations with
the Chinese, who gave him little encouragement.

The _Turkestan Gazette_ still adhered to its original statement that
Yakoob Beg had died of fever on the 1st of May, after an illness of
seven days' duration, and that on the 13th of May the body was brought
in state from Korla to Kashgar for the purpose of being deposited in the
mausoleum of Appak Khoja. Then, according to the _Turkestan Gazette_,
there ensued one of those atrocious deeds which have so often marked the
hi