Khara-Khoto

Also known as Heicheng Historic Site, Heicheng relic site, Black City, Heicheng

Khara-Khoto, also known as Heicheng, is an abandoned city near the Juyan Lake in the sum of Bayan Toroi, about 25 km south of the seat of Ejin Banner in Alxa League at the western end of Inner Mongolia, China. Built in 1032, the city thrived under the rule of the Tangut-led Western Xia dynasty. It has been identified as the city of Etzina, which appears in The Travels of Marco Polo, and hence today's Ejin Banner is named after this city.

Key facts

Ancient site.image_size: 300
Ancient site.name: Khara-Khoto
Ancient site.image: Khara-khoto.jpg
Ancient site.caption: The extant walls of Khara-Khoto
Ancient site.map_caption: Location of Khara-Khoto in Inner Mongolia
Ancient site.map_type: China#Inner Mongolia
Ancient site.location: Inner Mongolia,

via Wikipedia infobox

~9 min read

Encyclopedic overview

9 sections

Contents

Name
History
Exploration
Findings
Khara-Khoto Christian manuscripts
See also
Footnotes
Further reading
External links

==Name== Khara-Khoto is known by many names, including its Tangut endonym (Tangut script: , 'black water', reconstructed pronunciation: /*zjɨ̱r²-nja̱¹/, transcribed into Chinese as 亦集乃 Yijinai), Etzina through Marco Polo, modern Mongolian Хар хот (Khar khot, Middle Mongol language: qara qota, 'black city') and to the Chinese as Heishuicheng or Heishui City (), commonly abbreviated as Heicheng (). It is also written Qara-Qoto.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Khara-Khoto” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.