Islam was not the religion of the Uighurs during the Mongol Empire. The Uighur land itself was not Muslim inhabited while the Muslim lands were towards its west. They were Nestorian, Manichaeans, and Buddhist, and by Mongol times the Buddhists and Nestorians absorbed the Manichaeans, and Buddhist clerics dominated the Mongol employed educated sector of their own population. The '"Compendium of the Turkic Dialects" by Mahmud al-Kashgari, included among the infidels, the Uighurs. It was written ""just as the thorn should be cut at its root, so the Uighur should be struck on the eye"" by Kashgari, who viewed them as untrustworthy and noted that Muslim Turks used the derogatory name "Tat" against the Buddhist Uighurs whom Kashgari described as "infidels". The identities of "Buddhist" and "Uyghur" were intertwined with each other.