Kochkor

Kochkor occupies a mountain valley near the upper Chu, on routes linking the Tian Shan with Issyk Kul and the country farther west. Its earlier urban history survives in the name Kochkor-Bashi. Kyrgyz historical scholarship associates that medieval town with the Tört-Kül ruins near Kum-Döbö. The site belonged to the Karakhanid period and stood on a route between Kashgar and Balasagun, with a pass across the mountains connecting the valley to the Chu country.

In the later fourteenth century, this wider mountain region formed part of Moghulistan. Timur's repeated campaigns against its rulers carried armies through the upper Chu and the Kochkor and At-Bashi valleys. These routes joined neighbouring basins, but also exposed them to raiding and pursuit during struggles between the conqueror and the Moghul leadership. Kochkor's position thus linked a landscape with an older history of towns and caravan travel to the military geography of the late medieval Tian Shan. Mountain passes made the valley accessible from several directions and brought the consequences of distant political rivalries into the same corridors used for communication.