Khoja (Turkestan)

Khoja or Khwaja (Kazakh: қожа; Kyrgyz: кожо; Uyghur: خوجا; Persian: خواجه; Tajik: хӯҷа; Uzbek: xo'ja; Chinese: 和卓; pinyin: hézhuó), a Persian word literally meaning 'master' or ‘lord’, was used in Central Asia as a title of the descendants of the noted Central Asian Naqshbandi Sufi teacher, Ahmad Kasani (1461–1542) or others in the Naqshbandi intellectual lineage prior to Baha al-din Naqshband.

The most powerful religious figure in the late Timurid era was the Naqshbandi Shaykh Khwaja Ahrar.

[1] The Khojas often were appointed as administrators by Mongol rulers in the Altishahr or present-day region of Tarim Basin in Xinjiang, China.

Although Ahmad Kasani himself, known as Makhdūm-i-Azam or "Great Master" to his followers, never visited Altishahr (today's Tarim Basin), many of his descendants, known as Makhdūmzādas and bearing the title Khoja (properly written and pronounced Khwaja) played important parts in the region's politics from the 17th to 19th centuries.

All were inhabitants of the lowlands and cities of Eastern Turkistan but each section made allies among the Kyrgyz of the neighboring mountains and apparently subsidized them in their internecine battles.