was one-third the size of Banākath (now in ruins near present-day Chinoz, Uzbekistan), the chief town of the neighboring district of Shāsh (present-day Tashkent). Sayram was divided into three districts, like others of the time: qohandez (citadel), madīnah (inner town), and rabaż (suburb), the latter two being protected by walls. All the houses were of mud brick. The government center (dār al-imārah), the prison, and the Friday mosque were all in the inner city. There were four main gates to the inner town, each guarded by a ribat manned by ghāzīs (volunteer fighters for the faith) recruited from Bukhara and Samarkand. The ruler of Sayram apparently also exercised some authority within the steppes, since Moqaddasi mentions that the "king of the Turkmen" at nearby rdū habitually sent presents to Asfījāb. Under the Qarakhanids The Qarakhanids seized the city in 980, during the reign of Nuh II of the Samanid Empire. At this time, according to al-Istakhri, the city marked the border between Karluks and Oğuz Turks. Sayram was part of the eastern Qarakhanid khanate based on three cities: Sayram itself, Talas, and Farghāna. Coins were minted there by the Qarakhanid rulers. In the opening years of the 7th/13th century, the district seems to have been taken over by the Qipchaqs of the middle Syr Darya, for the Khorezmshah ʿAlāʾ al-dīn Muḥammad devastated the area beyond the Syr Darya to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Mongol leader Küchlüg. Sayram under the Mongols The city of Sayram was captured by the Mongols using catapults under the command of the Siet Alahai. In 1220, the Taoist monk Qiu Chuji left his home town of Shandong in northern China and traveled to Persia to present himself before Genghis Khan. His fame as a pious exemplar of Taoist belief had preceded him, and his travels carried him over roads newly restored by the Mongols, roads that were then in better condition than when the Russian imperial orientalist V. V. Barthold described them in the early 20th century. Qui Chuji (Chan-Chun, or Чан-чунь in Barthold's work) traveled through the land of the Uyghurs, through Kulja, through Zhetysu, crossing first the Chu River on a wooden bridge, then the Talas River on a bridge of stone, before reaching Sayram in November 1221. The city of Sayram is mentioned in some detail in Qui Chuji's book Travels to the Western Regions, recorded by his