Uyghur
ئۇيغۇر, Уйғур Regions with significant populations China
(Xinjiang) 11,303,355 [1]
15,000,000+ (Uyghur American Association)[2][verification needed] Kazakhstan 223,100 (2009)[3] Uzbekistan 55,220 (2008) Kyrgyzstan 49,000 (2009)[4] Turkey(Uyghurs in Turkey) 45,800 (2010)[5][6] Saudi Arabia ~50,000 (2013) (Saudi Labor Ministry)[7] Syria ~3,500 (2015) (Uyghur Turkistan Islamic Party members plus families in Zanbaqi (الزنبقي) in Jisr al-Shughur)[8][9][10][11] Pakistan
(Uyghurs in Pakistan) ~1,000 families(2010)[12] Russia 3,696 (2010)[13] Ukraine 197 (2001)[14] Languages Uyghur and Chinese language Religion majority Sunni Islam, minority Shi'a Islam Related ethnic groups Karluks, other Turkic peoples and Tocharians This article contains Chinese text.Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters. This article contains Uyghur text.Without proper rendering support, you may see unjoined letters or other symbols instead of Uyghur script. The Uyghurs (/uːˈiːɡərz, ˈwiːɡərz/; Uyghur: ئۇيغۇر, Уйғур, ULY: Uyghur [15] [ʔʊjˈʁʊː]) are a Turkic ethnic group living in East and Central Asia. Today, Uyghurs live primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China, where they are one of 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities.
They primarily practice Islam, and are a physically diverse ethnic group ranging from Western Eurasian (Europeans, Middle Eastern) to a more East Asian appearance.
An estimated 80% of Xinjiang's Uyghurs live in the southwestern portion of the region, the Tarim Basin.[16] Outside Xinjiang, the largest community of Uyghurs in China is in Taoyuan County, in south-central Hunan.[17] Outside of China, significant diasporic communities of Uyghurs exist in the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, and in Turkey.[18] Smaller communities are found in Afghanistan, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Canada, and the United States.
Contents
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- 1Name
- 2Identity
- 2.1Origin of the modern ethnic concept
- 3History
- 3.1Early history
- 3.2Uyghur Khaganate
- 3.3Uyghur kingdoms
- 3.4Islamization
- 3.5Qing rule
- 3.6Modern era
- 4Uyghurs of Taoyuan, Hunan
- 5Genetics
- 6Culture
- 6.1Religion
- 6.2Language
- 6.3Literature
- 6.4Music
- 6.5Dance
- 6.6Art
- 6.7Education
- 6.8Medicine
- 6.9Cuisine
- 6.10Clothing and accoutrements
- 6.11Names
- 7See also
- 8References
- 9Further reading
- 10External links
Name[edit]
Uyghur is often pronounced /ˈwiːɡər/ by English speakers, though an acceptable English pronunciation closer to the Uyghur people's pronunciation of it is /uː.iˈɡʊər/.[19][20]
Several alternate romanizations also appear: Uighur, Uygur, and Uigur (Уиғур, Уйгур, and Уигур). The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region provincial government recommends that the generic ethnonym [ʊjˈʁʊː], adopted in the early 20th century,[21][22] be transcribed as "Uyghur".[23]
The meaning of the term Uyghur is unclear. The Old Turkic inscriptions record a word uyɣur[24] (𐰺𐰍𐰖𐰆[25]) which was transcribed into Chinese as *[ɣuɒiɣət] > Huíhé (Chinese: 回纥) in Tang dynasty annals.[26] Later, in response to an Uyghur request, this was changed to [ɣuɒiɣuət] > Huíhú (Chinese: 回鹘) in 788 or 809 as mentioned in the Old History of the Five Dynasties.[27] Modern etymological explanations have ranged from "to follow, accommodate oneself" and "non-rebellious" (from Turk. uy/uð-) to "to wake, rouse, stir" (from oðğur-), none of which is thought satisfactory because the sound shift ð/ḏ > y did not appear to have taken place by this time.[27] The etymology therefore cannot be accurately determined, and historically the groups it denoted were not ethnically fixed, since it denoted a political rather than a tribal identity,[28] or was used originally to refer to just one group among several, the others calling themselves Toquz Oghuz.[29]
The earliest record of an Uyghur tribe is from the Northern Wei (386-534 AD). At that time the ethnonym *[kɑutɕʰĭa] > Gaoche (Chinese: 高车; pinyin: Gāochē; literally: "high carts", Uyghur: قاڭقىل, Қаңқил, ULY: Qangqil) was used, and later, Tiele (Chinese: 铁勒; pinyin: Tiělè).[30] The first use of Uyghur as a reference to a political nation occurred during the interim period between the First and Second Göktürk Khaganates (630-684 AD).[31]
The term Uyghur disappeared from historical records in the 15th century but the Bolsheviks reintroduced the term Uyghur to replace the previously-used Turk or Turki.[32][33] In modern usage, Uyghur (romanized as Chinese: 维吾尔族; pinyin: Wéiwúěr zú in Chinese) refers to settled Turkic urban dwellers and farmers of the Tarim Basin who follow traditional Central Asian sedentary practices, distinguishable from the nomadic Turkic populations in Central Asia.
Identity[edit]
A Uyghur girde naan baker
Uyghur blacksmiths at work. Yengisar, Xinjiang.
Throughout its history, the term Uyghur has taken on an increasingly expansive definition. Initially signifying only a small coalition of Tiele tribes in Northern China, Mongolia, and the Altai Mountains, it later denoted citizenship in the Uyghur Khaganate. Finally it was expanded into an ethnicity whose ancestry originates with the fall of the Uyghur Khaganate in the year 842, which caused Uyghur migration from Mongolia into the Tarim Basin. This migration assimilated and replaced the Indo-European speakers of the region to create a distinct identity as the language and culture of the Turkic migrants eventually supplanted the original Indo-European influences. This fluid definition of Uyghur and the diverse ancestry of modern Uyghurs create confusion about what constitutes true Uyghur ethnography and ethnogenesis.
Contemporary scholars consider modern Uyghurs to be the descendants of a number of people, including the ancient Uyghurs of Mongolia who arrived at the Tarim Basin after the fall of the Uyghur Khaganate, Iranic Saka tribes, and other Indo-European peoples who inhabited the Tarim Basin before the arrival of the Turkic Uyghurs.[34] DNA analyses indicate that the peoples of central Asia such as the Uyghurs are all mixed Caucasian and East Asian.[35] Uyghur activists identify with the Tarim mummies, remains of an ancient people who inhabited the region, but research into the genetics of ancient Tarim mummies and their links with modern Uyghurs remain controversial, both to Chinese government officials concerned with ethnic separatism, and to Uyghur activists concerned that research could affect their claims of being indigenous to the region.[36][37]
Origin of the modern ethnic concept[edit]
The Uighurs are the people whom old Russian travellers called Sart (a name which they used for sedentary, Turkish-speaking Central Asians in general), while Western travellers called them Turki, in recognition of their language. The Chinese used to call them Ch'an-t'ou ('Turbaned Heads') but this term has been dropped, being considered derogatory, and the Chinese, using their own pronunciation, now called them Weiwuerh. As a matter of fact there was for centuries no 'national' name for them; people identified themselves with the oasis they came from, like Kashgar or Turfan.
— Owen Lattimore, "Return to China's Northern Frontier." The Geographical Journal, Vol. 139, No. 2, June 1973[38]
The term "Uyghur" was not used to refer to any existing ethnic group in the 19th century, but to an ancient people. A late 19th-century encyclopedia titled The cyclopædia of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia said "the Uigur are the most ancient of Turkish tribes, and formerly inhabited a part of Chinese Tartary (Xinjiang), which is now occupied by a mixed population of Turk, Mongol, and Kalmuck".[39]The inhabitants of Xinjiang were not called Uyghur before 1921/1934. Western writers called the Turkic-speaking Muslims of the oases "Turki", and the Turkic Muslims in Ili were known as "Taranchi". The Russians and other foreigners referred to them as "Sart",[40] "Turk", or "Turki".[41][42] In the early 20th century, they would call themselves by different names to different peoples and in response to different inquiries: they called themselves Sarts in front of Kyrgyz and Kazaks, while they called themselves "Chantou" if asked about their identity after identifying as a Muslim first.[43][44] The term "Chantou" (纏頭, Ch'an-t'ou, meaning "Rag head" or "Turban Head") was used to refer to the Turkic Muslims of Xinjiang,[45][46] including by Hui (Tungan) people.[47] These groups of peoples often identified themselves by the oases they came from rather than an ethnic group;[48] for example those from Kashgar may refer to themselves as Kashgarliq or Kashgari, while those from Hotan called themselves "Hotani".[44][49] Other Central Asians once called all the inhabitants of Xinjiang's Southern oases Kashgari,[50] a term still used in some Pakistan regions.[51] The Turkic people also used "Musulman", which means "Muslim", to describe themselves.[49][52][53]
Rian Thum explored the concepts of identity among the ancestors of the modern Uyghurs in Altishahr (the native Uyghur name for eastern Turkestan or southern Xinjiang) before the adoption of the name "Uyghur" in the 1930s, referring to them by the name "Altishahri" in his article Modular History: Identity Maintenance before Uyghur Nationalism. Thum indicated that Altishahri Turkis did have a sense that they were a distinctive group separate from the Turkic Andijanis to their west, the nomadic Turkic Kirghiz, the nomadic Mongol Qalmaq, and the Han Chinese Khitay before they became known as Uyghurs. There was no single name used by them to refer to themselves, the various native names Altishahris used to refer to themselves were Altishahrlik (Altishahr person), yerlik (local), Turki, and Musulmān (Muslim), the term Musulmān in this situation did not signify religious connotations, because the Altishahris would exclude other Muslim peoples like the Kirghiz when referring to themselves as Musulmān.[54][55] Dr. Laura J Newby has also noted that the sedentary Altishahri Turkic people felt themselves as a separate group from other Turkic Muslims since at least the 19th century.[56]
The name "Uyghur" reappeared after the Soviet Union took the 9th-century ethnonym from the Uyghur Khaganate and reapplied it to all non-nomadic Turkic Muslims of Xinjiang,[57] following western European orientalists like Julius Klaproth in the 19th century who revived the name and spread the use of the term to local Turkic intellectuals,[58] and a 19th-century proposal from Russian historians that modern-day Uyghurs were descended from the Kingdom of Qocho and Kara-Khanid Khanate, which had formed after the dissolution of the Uyghur Khaganate.[59] Historians generally agree that the adoption of the term "Uyghur" is based on a decision from a 1921 conference in Tashkent, which was attended by Turkic Muslims from the Tarim Basin (Xinjiang).[57][60][61][62] There, "Uyghur" was chosen by them as the name of their own ethnic group, although the delegates noted that the modern groups referred to as "Uyghur" were distinct from the old Uyghur Khaganate.[40][63] According to Linda Benson, the Soviets and their client Sheng Shicai intended to foster a Uyghur nationality to divide the Muslim population of Xinjiang, whereas the various Turkic Muslim peoples themselves preferred to identify as "Turki", "East Turkestani", or "Muslim".[40]
On the other hand, the ruling regime of China at that time, the Kuomintang, grouped all Muslims, including the Turkic-speaking people of Xinjiang, into the "Hui nationality".[64][65] The Qing dynasty and the Kuomintang generally referred to the sedentary, oasis dwelling Turkic Muslims of Xinjiang as "turban-headed Hui" to differentiate them from other Muslim ethnic groups in China.[40][66][67] Foreigners traveling in Xinjiang in the 1930s, like George W. Hunter, Peter Fleming, Ella Maillart, and Sven Hedin, all referred to the Turkic Muslims of the region as "Turki" in their books. Use of the term Uyghur was unknown in Xinjiang until 1934, when the governor, Sheng Shicai, came to power in there. Sheng adopted the Soviets' ethnographic classification rather than that of the Kuomintang and became the first to promulgate the official use of the term "Uyghur" to describe the Turkic Muslims of Xinjiang.[40][59][68] "Uyghur" replaced "rag-head".[69]After the Communist victory, the Communist Party of China under Mao Zedong continued the Soviet classification, using the term "Uyghur" to describe the modern ethnic group.[40]
Another ethnic group, the Tibetan Buddhist Western Yugur of Gansu, have consistently been called by themselves and others the "Yellow Uyghur" (Sarïq Uyghur).[70] Some scholars say that the Yugur's culture, language, and religion are closer to the original culture of the original Uyghur Karakorum state than is the culture of the modern Uyghur people of Xinjiang.[71] Linguist and ethnographer S. Robert Ramsey has argued for inclusion of both the Eastern and Western Yugur and the Salar as subgroups of the Uyghur based on similar historical roots for the Yugur and on perceived linguistic similarities for the Salar. These groups are recognized as separate ethnic groups, though, by the Chinese government.[72]
Pan-Turkist Jadids and East Turkestan independence activists Muhammad Amin Bughra (Mehmet Emin) and Masud Sabri rejected the Soviet imposition of the name "Uyghur" upon the Turkic people of Xinjiang. They wanted instead the name "Turkic ethnicity" to be applied to their people. Masud Sabri also viewed the Hui people as Muslim Han Chinese and separate from his own people.[73] The names "Türk" or "Türki" in particular were demanded by Bughra as the real name for his people. He criticized Sheng Shicai for his designation of Turkic Muslims into different ethnicities which could sow disunion among Turkic Muslims.[74] "Turki" and "Turk" were demanded as ethnonyms instead of Uyghur by Turki intellectuals who opposed Sheng Shicai's introduction of the "Uighur" name.[75]
In current usage, Uyghur refers to settled Turkic urban dwellers and farmers of the Tarim Basin and Ili who follow traditional Central Asian sedentary practices, as distinguished from nomadic Turkic populations in Central Asia. However, the Chinese government has also designated as "Uyghur" certain peoples with significantly divergent histories and ancestries from the main group. These include the Lopliks of Ruoqiang County and the Dolan people, who are thought to be closer to the Oirat Mongols and the Kyrgyz.[76][77] The use of the term Uyghur has led to anachronisms when describing the history of the people.[78] In one of his books the term Uyghur was deliberately not used by James Millward.[79]
"Turkistani" is used as an alternate ethnonym for "Uyghur" by some Uyghurs,[80] for example the Uyghur diaspora in Saudi Arabia have adopted the identity "Turkistani".[81][82] Some Uyghurs in Saudi Arabia adopted the Arabic nisba of their home city, such as Al Kashgarifrom Kashgar. Saudi born Uyghur Hamza Kashgari's family originated from Kashgar. Uyghurs who migrated from the Tarim Basin to Ürümqi and Dzungaria in the northern portion of Xinjiang during the Qing dynasty were known as Taranchi meaning "farmer".
We never call each other Uyghur, but only refer to ourselves as East Turkestanis, or Kashgarlik, Turpanlik, or even Turks.- according to some Uyghurs born in Turkey.[83][84]
History[edit]
Main article: History of the Uyghur people
Uyghur princes from Cave 9 of the Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves, Xinjiang, China, 8th to 9th century AD, wall painting
The history of the Uyghur people, as with the ethnic origin of the people, is a matter of contention between Uyghur nationalists and the Chinese authority.[85] Uyghur historians viewed the Uyghurs as the original inhabitants of Xinjiang with a long history. Uyghur politician and historian Muhemmed Imin Bughra wrote in his book A history of East Turkestan, stressing the Turkic aspects of his people, that the Turks have a 9000-year history, while historian Turghun Almasincorporated discoveries of Tarim mummies to conclude that Uyghurs have over 6400 years of history,[86] and the World Uyghur Congress claimed a 4,000-year history in East Turkestan.[87]However, official Chinese view asserts that the Uyghurs in Xinjiang originated from the Tiele tribes and only became the main social and political force in Xinjiang during the ninth century when they migrated to Xinjiang from Mongolia after the collapse of the Uyghur Khaganate, replacing the Han Chinese they claimed were there since the Han Dynasty.[86] Many contemporary Western scholars, however, do not consider the modern Uyghurs to be of direct linear descent from the old Uyghur Khaganate of Mongolia. Rather, they consider them to be descendants of a number of peoples, one of them the ancient Uyghurs.[34][88][89][90]
Early history[edit]
Discovery of well-preserved Tarim mummies of a people European in appearance indicates the migration of an Indo-European people into the Tarim area at the beginning of the Bronze age around 2,000 BCE. These people probably spoke Tocharian languages and were suggested by some to be the Yuezhi mentioned in ancient Chinese texts.[91][92] However, Uyghur activists claimed these mummies to be of Uyghur origin, based partly on a word, which they argued to be Uyghur, found in written scripts associated with these mummies, although other linguists suggest it to be a Sogdian word later absorbed into Uyghur.[93] Later migrations brought peoples from the west and northwest to the Xinjiang region, probably speakers of various Iranian languages such as the Saka tribes. Other people in the region mentioned in ancient Chinese texts include the Dingling as well as the Xiongnu who fought for supremacy in the region against the Chinese for several hundred years. Some Uyghur nationalists also claimed descent from the Xiongnu (according to the Chinese historical text the Book of Wei, the founder of the Uyghurs was descended from a Xiongnu ruler),[27] but the view is contested by modern Chinese scholars.[86]
The Yuezhi were driven away by the Xiongnu, but founded the Kushan Empire, which exerted some influence in the Tarim Basin where Kharosthi texts have been found in Loulan, Niya and Khotan. Loulan and Khotan were some of the many city states that existed in the Xinjiang region during the Han Dynasty, others include Kucha, Turfan, Karasahr and Kashgar. The settled population of these cities later merged with incoming Turkic people such as the Uyghurs of Uyghur Khaganate to form the modern Uyghurs.
Uyghur Khaganate[edit]
An 8th-century Uyghur Khagan
The Uyghurs of the Uyghur Khaganate were part of a Turkic confederation called the Tiele,[94]who lived in the valleys south of Lake Baikal and around the Yenisei River. They overthrew the Turkic Khaganate and established the Uyghur Khaganate.
The Uyghur Khaganate stretched from the Caspian Sea to Manchuria and lasted from 744 to 840.[34] It was administered from the imperial capital Ordu-Baliq, one of the biggest ancient cities built in Mongolia. In 840, following a famine and civil war, the Uyghur Khaganate was overrun by the Yenisei Kirghiz, another Turkic people. As a result, the majority of tribal groups formerly under Uyghur control dispersed and moved out of Mongolia.
Uyghur kingdoms[edit]
Uyghur king of the Turfan region attended by servants. Mogao Caves, 409, 11th-13th century.
According to the New Book of Tang, the Uyghurs who founded the Uyghur Khaganate dispersed after the fall of the Khaganate; some went to live amongst the Karluks, and some moved to Turpan and Gansu.[95] These Uyghurs soon founded two kingdoms and the easternmost state was the Ganzhou Kingdom (870–1036), with its capital near present-day Zhangye, Gansu, China. The modern Yugurs are believed to be descendants of these Uyghurs. Ganzhou was absorbed by the Western Xia in 1036.
The second Uyghur kingdom, the Kingdom of Qocho, also known as Uyghuristan in its later period, was founded in the Turpan area with its capital in Qocho (modern Gaochang) and Beshbalik. The Kingdom of Qocho lasted from the ninth to the fourteenth century and proved to be longer-lasting than any power in the region, before or since.[34] The Uyghurs were originally Manichaean, but converted to Buddhism during this period. Qocho accepted the Qara Khitai as its overlord in 1130s, and in 1209 submitted voluntarily to the rising Mongol Empire. The Uyghurs of Kingdom of Qocho were allowed significant autonomy and played an important role as civil servants to the Mongol Empire, but was finally destroyed by the Chagatai Khanate by the end of the 14th century.[34][96]
Islamization[edit]
Main article: Islamicisation and Turkicisation of Xinjiang
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In the tenth century, the Karluks, Yagmas, Chigils and other Turkic tribes founded the Kara-Khanid Khanate in Semirechye, Western Tian Shan, and Kashgaria, and later conquered Transoxiana. The Karakhanid rulers were likely to be Yaghmas who were associated with the Toquz Oghuz, and some historians therefore see this as a link between the Karakhanid and the Uyghurs of the Uyghur Khaganate, although this connection is disputed by others.[97]
The Karakhanids converted to Islam in the tenth century beginning with Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan, the first Turkic dynasty to do so.[98] Modern Uyghurs see the Muslim Karakhanids as an important part of their history, however, Islamization of the people of the Tarim Basin was a gradual process. The Indo-European Saka Buddhist Kingdom of Khotanwas conquered by the Turkic Muslim Karakhanids from Kashgar in the early 11th century, but Uyghur Qocho remained mainly Buddhist until the 15th century, and the conversion of the Uyghur people to Islam was not completed until the 17th century.
Chagatai Khanate (Moghulistan) in 1490
Note: This map is compressed in vertical direction. Please, expand it about 1.3 times to see it undistorted.
The 12th and 13th century saw the domination by non-Muslim powers: first the Kara-Khitans in the 12th century, followed by the Mongols in the 13th century. After the death of Genghis Khan in 1227, Transoxiana and Kashgar became the domain of his second son, Chagatai Khan. The Chagatai Khanate split into two in the 1340s, and the area of the Chagatai Khanate where the modern Uyghurs live became part of Moghulistan, which meant "land of the Mongols". In the 14th century, a Chagatayid khan Tughluq Temür converted to Islam. His son Khizr Khoja conquered Qocho and Turfan (the core of Uyghuristan) in the 1390s, and the Uyghurs there became largely Muslim by the beginning of the 16th century.[99] After being converted to Islam, the descendants of the previously Buddhist Uyghurs in Turfan failed to retain memory of their ancestral legacy and falsely believed that the "infidel Kalmuks" (Dzungars) were the ones who built Buddhist structures in their area.[100]
From the late 14th through 17th centuries the Xinjiang region became further subdivided into Moghulistan in the north, Altishahr (Kashgar and the Tarim Basin), and the Turfan area, each often ruled separately by competing Chagatayid descendants, the Dughlats, and later the Khojas.[97]
Islam was also spread by the Sufis, and branches of its Naqshbandi order were the Khojas who seized control of political and military affairs in the Tarim Basin and Turfan in the 17th century. The Khojas however split into two rival factions, the Aqtaghlik Khojas (also called the Afaqiyya) and the Qarataghlik Khojas (the Ishaqiyya). The legacy of the Khojas lasted until the 19th century. The Qarataghlik Khojas seized power in Yarkand where the Chagatai Khans ruled in the Yarkent Khanate, forcing the Aqtaghlik Afaqi Khoja into exile.
Qing rule[edit]
In the 17th century, the Buddhist Dzungar Khanate grew in power in Dzungaria. The Dzungar conquest of Altishahr ended the last independent Chagatai Khanate, the Yarkent Khanate, after the Aqtaghlik Afaq Khoja attempt to gain aid from the 5th Dalai Lama and his Dzungar Buddhist followers to help him in his struggle against the Qarataghlik Khojas. The Aqtaghlik Khojas in the Tarim Basin then became vassals to the Dzungars, who extracted heavy taxes and tribute from the Tarim Basin cities.
The expansion of the Dzungars into Khalkha Mongol territory in Mongolia brought them into direct conflict with Qing China in the late 17th century, and in the process also brought Chinese presence back into the region a thousand years after Tang China lost control of the Western Regions.[101]
The Dzungar–Qing War lasted a decade. During the Dzungar conflict, two Aqtaghlik brothers, the so-called "Younger Khoja" (Chinese: 霍集占), also known as Khwāja-i Jahān, and his sibling, the Elder Khoja (Chinese: 波羅尼都), also known as Burhān al-Dīn, after being appointed as vassals in the Tarim Basin by the Dzungars, first joined the Qing and rebelled against Dzungar rule until the final Qing victory over the Dzungars, then they rebelled against the Qing, an action which prompted the invasion and conquest of the Tarim Basin by the Qing in 1759. The Uyghurs of Turfan and Hami such as Emin Khoja were allies of the Qing in this conflict, and these Uyghurs also helped the Qing to rule the Altishahr Uyghurs in the Tarim Basin.[102][103]
The final campaign against the Dzungars in the 1750s ended with the Dzungar genocide. The Qing "final solution" of genocide to solve the problem of the Dzungar Mongols created a land devoid of Dzungars, which was followed by the Qing sponsored settlement of millions of other people in Dzungaria.[104][105] In northern Xinjiang, the Qing brought in Han, Hui, Uyghur, Xibe, Daurs, Solons, Turkic Muslim Taranchis and Kazakh colonists, with one third of Xinjiang's total population consisting of Hui and Han in the northern area, while around two thirds were Uyghurs in southern Xinjiang's Tarim Basin.[106] In Dzungaria, the Qing established new cities like Ürümqi and Yining.[107]The Dzungarian basin itself is now inhabited by many Kazakhs.[108] The Qing therefore unified Xinjiang and changed its demographic composition as well.[109] The crushing of the Buddhist Dzungars by the Qing led to the empowerment of the Muslim Begs in southern Xinjiang, migration of Muslim Taranchis to northern Xinjiang, and increasing Turkic Muslim power, with Turkic Muslim culture and identity was tolerated or even promoted by the Qing.[110] It was therefore argued by Henry Schwarz that "the Qing victory was, in a certain sense, a victory for Islam".[111]
In Beijing, a community of Uyghurs was clustered around the mosque near the Forbidden City, having moved to Beijing in the 18th century.[112]
During the Dungan Revolt (1862–77), Andijani Uzbeks from the Khanate of Kokand under Buzurg Khan and Yaqub Beg expelled Qing officials from parts of southern Xinjiang and founded an independent Kashgarian kingdom called Yettishar "Country of Seven Cities". Under the leadership of Yaqub Beg, it included Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, Aksu, Kucha, Korla, and Turpan.[citation needed]
Large Qing dynasty forces under Chinese General Zuo Zongtang attacked Yettishar in 1876. After this invasion, the two regions of Dzungaria, which had been known as the Dzungar region or the Northern marches of the Tian Shan,[113][114] and the Tarim Basin, which had been known as "Muslim land" or southern marches of the Tian Shan,[115] were reorganized into a province named Xinjiang meaning "New Territory".[116][117]
Modern era[edit]
In 1912, the Qing Dynasty was replaced by the Republic of China. By 1920, Pan-Turkic Jadidist Islamists had become a challenge to Chinese warlord Yang Zengxin who controlled Xinjiang. Uyghurs staged several uprisings against Chinese rule. Twice, in 1933 and 1944, the Uyghurs successfully gained their independence (backed by the Soviet Communist leader Joseph Stalin): the First East Turkestan Republic was a short-lived attempt at independence around Kashghar, and it was destroyed during the Kumul Rebellion by Chinese Muslim army under General Ma Zhancang and Ma Fuyuan at the Battle of Kashgar (1934). The Second East Turkestan Republic was a Soviet puppet Communist state that existed from 1944 to 1949 in the three districts of what is now Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefectureduring the Ili Rebellion while the majority of Xinjiang was under the control of the Republic of China. Religious Uyghur separatists from the First East Turkestan Republic like Isa Yusuf Alptekin and Muhammad Amin Bughra opposed the Soviet Communist backed Uyghur separatists of the Second East Turkestan Republic under Ehmetjan Qasim and they supported the Republic of China during the Ili Rebellion.
Map showing the distribution of ethnicities in Xinjiang according to census figures from 2000, the prefectures with Uyghur majorities are in blue.
Mao declared the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949. He turned the Second East Turkistan Republic into the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture, and appointed Saifuddin Azizi as the region's first Communist Party governor. Many Republican loyalists fled into exile in Turkey and Western countries. The name Xinjiang was changed to Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where Uyghurs are the largest ethnic group, mostly concentrated in the southwestern Xinjiang.[118] (see map, right) The Xinjiang conflict is an ongoing separatist conflict in China's far-west province of Xinjiang, whose northern region is known as Dzungaria and whose southern region (the Tarim Basin) is known as East Turkestan. Uyghur separatists and independence movements claim that the region is not a part of China, but that the Second East Turkestan Republic was illegally incorporated by the PRC in 1949 and has since been under Chinese occupation. Uyghur identity remains fragmented, as some support a Pan-Islamic vision, exemplified by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, while others support a Pan-Turkic vision, such as the East Turkestan Liberation Organization. A third group would like a "Uyghurstan" state, such as the East Turkestan independence movement. As a result, "[n]o Uyghur or East Turkestan group speaks for all Uyghurs, although it might claim to", and Uyghurs in each of these camps have committed violence against other Uyghurs who they think are too assimilated to Chinese or Russian society or are not religious enough.[119] Mindful not to take sides, Uyghur "leaders" such as Rebiya Kadeer mainly try to garner international support for the "rights and interests of the Uyghurs", including the right to demonstrate, although the Chinese government has accused her of orchestrating the deadly July 2009 Ürümqi riots.[120]
Eric Enno Tamm's 2011 book states that, "Authorities have censored Uyghur writers and 'lavished funds' on official histories that depict Chinese territorial expansion into ethnic borderlands as 'unifications (tongyi), never as conquests (zhengfu) or annexations (tunbing)' "[121]
Uyghurs of Taoyuan, Hunan[edit]
Around 5,000 Uyghurs live around Taoyuan County and other parts of Changde in Hunan province.[122][123] They are descended from Hala Bashi, a Uyghur leader from Turpan (Kingdom of Qocho), and his Uyghur soldiers sent to Hunan by the Ming Emperor in the 14th century to crush the Miao rebels during the Miao Rebellions in the Ming Dynasty.[17][124] The 1982 census records 4,000 Uyghurs in Hunan.[125] They have genealogies which survive 600 years later to the present day. Genealogy keeping is a Han Chinese custom which the Hunan Uyghurs adopted. These Uyghurs were given the surname Jian by the Emperor.[126] There is some confusion as to whether they practice Islam or not. Some say that they have assimilated with the Han and do not practice Islam anymore, and only their genealogies indicate their Uyghur ancestry.[127] Chinese news sources report that they are Muslim.[17]
The Uyghur troops led by Hala were ordered by the Ming Emperor to crush Miao rebellions and were given titles by him. Jian is the predominant surname among the Uyghur in Changde, Hunan. Another group of Uyghur have the surname Sai. Hui and Uyghur have intermarried in the Hunan area.[128] The Hui are descendants of Arabs and Han Chinese who intermarried, and they share the Islamic religion with the Uyghur in Hunan.[128] It is reported that they now number around 10,000 people. The Uyghurs in Changde are not very religious, and eat pork.[128] Older Uyghurs disapprove of this, especially elders at the mosques in Changde, and they seek to draw them back to Islamic customs.[128]
In addition to eating pork, the Uyghurs of Changde Hunan practice other Han Chinese customs, like ancestor worship at graves. Some Uyghurs from Xinjiang visit the Hunan Uyghurs out of curiosity or interest.[128] Also, the Uyghurs of Hunan do not speak the Uyghur language, instead, they speak Chinese as their native language, and Arabic for religious reasons at the mosque.[128]
Genetics[edit]
Variations among Uyghur people
Uyghurs in Kashgar
A young Uyghur girl in Turpan, Xinjiang, China
Group of boys in Hotan
The Uyghurs are a Eurasian population with Eastern and Western Eurasian anthropometric and genetic traits. Uyghurs are thus one of the many populations of Central Eurasia that can be considered to be genetically related to European and East Asian populations. However, various scientific studies differ on the size of each component.[129] One study, using samples from Hetian (Hotan) only, found that Uyghurs have 60% European ancestry and 40% East Asian ancestry.[130] A further study showed slightly greater European component (52% European) in the Uyghur population in southern Xinjiang, but slightly greater East Asian component (47% European) in the northern Uyghur population.[131] Another study used a larger sample of individuals from a wider area, and found only about 30% European component to the admixture.[132] A study on mitochondrial DNA (therefore the matrilineal genetic contribution) found the frequency of western Eurasian-specific haplogroup in Uyghurs to be 42.6%, and east-Asian haplogroup to be 57.4%[133] A further study shows that the western-Eurasian patrilineal Y-DNA haplogroup in Uyghurs is around 65% to 70%, and east-Asian Y-DNA haplogroup around 30% to 35%.[134]
The admixture may be the result of a continuous gene flow from populations of European and Asian descent, or may have been formed by a single event of admixture during a short period of time (the hybrid isolation model). If a hybrid isolation model is assumed, it can be estimated that the hypothetical admixture event occurred about 126 generations ago, or 2,520 years ago assuming 20 years per generation.[130][135]
According to the paper by Li et al.:
... the western East Asians are more closely related to Uyghurs than the eastern East Asians. ... STRUCTURE cannot distinguish recent admixture from a cline of other origin, and these analyses cannot prove admixture in the Uyghurs; however, historical records indicate that the present Uyghurs were formed by admixture between Tocharians from the west and Orkhon Uyghurs (Wugusi-Huihu, according to present Chinese pronunciation) from the east in the 8th century AD. The Uyghur Empire was originally located in Mongolia and conquered the Tocharian tribes in Xinjiang. Tocharians such as Kroran have been shown by archaeological findings to appear phenotypically similar to northern and central Europeans, whereas the Orkhon Uyghur people were clearly Mongolians. The two groups of people subsequently mixed in Xinjiang to become one population, the present Uyghurs. We do not know the genetic constitution of the Tocharians, but if they were similar to western Siberians, such as the Khanty, admixture would already be biased toward similarity with East Asian populations.
— [132]
The paper further concludes:
... that the Uyghurs' genetic structure is more similar to East Asians than to Europeans, in contrast to the reports by Xu and Jin, whose work may have been affected by their sparse population coverage. The median line of the Eurasian genetic landscape appears to lie to the west of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. When we have collected more data on these 34 populations, we should be able to refine these estimates.
— [132]
Culture[edit]
Religion[edit]
A Uyghur mosque in Khotan.
The ancient Uyghurs believed in Shamanism and Tengrism, then Manichaeism, Buddhism and Church of the East.[136][137] People in the western Tarim Basin region began to convert to Islam in significant number early in the Kara-Khanid Khanate period.[98] Modern Uyghurs are now primarily Muslim, and they are the second largest Muslim ethnic group in China after the Hui.[138]
The majority of modern Uyghurs are Sunnis, although conflicts exist between Sufi and non-Sufi religious orders.[138] While modern Uyghurs consider Islam to be part of their identity, religious observance varies between different regions. In general, Muslims in the southern region, Kashgar in particular, are more conservative.[139] For example, women wearing the full veil (brown cloth covering the head completely) are more common in Kashgar but may not be found in some other cities.[140] There is also a general split between the Uyghurs and the Hui Muslims in Xinjiang, and they normally worship in different mosques.[141] There had been Christian conversions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries but these were suppressed.[142][143][144]
Language[edit]
Main article: Uyghur language
Map of languages in Xinjiang
The ancient people of the Tarim Basin originally spoke different languages such as Saka(Khotanese), Tocharian and Gandhari. The Turkic people who moved into region in the 9th century brought with them their languages which slowly supplanted the original tongues of the local inhabitants. By the 11th century, it was noted by Mahmud al-Kashgari that the Uyghurs (of Qocho) spoke a pure Turkic language, but they also still spoke another language among themselves and have two different scripts. He also noted that the people of Khotan did not know Turkic well, and have their own language and script (Khotanese).[145] Writers of the Karakhanid period, al-Kashgari and Yusuf Balasagun, referred to their Turkic language as Khāqāniyya(meaning royal), or the "language of Kashgar", or simply Turkic.[146][147]
The modern Uyghur language is classed under to the Karluk branch of the Turkic language family. It is closely related to Äynu, Lop, Ili Turki, and Chagatay (the East Karluk languages), and slightly less closely to Uzbek (which is West Karluk). The Uyghur language is an agglutinative language and has a subject-object-verb word order. It has vowel harmony like other Turkic languages, and has noun and verb cases, but lacks distinction of gender forms.[148]
Modern Uyghurs have adopted a number of scripts for their language. The Arabic script, known as the Chagatay alphabet, was adopted along with Islam. This alphabet is known as Kona Yëziq (old script). Political changes in the 20th century led to numerous reforms of the writing scripts, for example the Cyrillic-based Uyghur Cyrillic alphabet, a Latin Uyghur New Script, and later a reformed Uyghur Arabic alphabet which represents all vowels unlike Kona Yëziq. A new Latin version, the Uyghur Latin alphabet, was also devised in the 21st century.
Literature[edit]
The literary works of the ancient Uyghurs were mostly translations of Buddhist and Manichaean religious texts,[149] but there were also narrative, poetic, and epic works apparently original to the Uyghurs. However, it is the literature of Kara-Khanid period that is considered by modern Uyghurs to be the important part of their literary traditions. Amongst these are Islamic religious texts and histories of Turkic peoples, and important works surviving from that era are Kutadgu Bilig "Wisdom of Royal Glory" by Yusuf Khass Hajib (1069–70), Mahmud al-Kashgari's Dīwānu l-Luġat al-Turk "A Dictionary of Turkic Dialects" (1072), and Ehmed Yükneki's Etebetulheqayiq. Modern Uyghur religious literature includes the Taẕkirah, biographies of Islamic religious figures and saints.[150][151] Robert Barkley Shawtranslated extracts from the Tazkiratu'l-Bughra which was about the Muslim Turkic conquest of the "infidel" Khotan.[152] The Turki-language Tadhkirah i Khwajagan was written by M. Sadiq Kashghari.[153] Between the 1600s and 1900s many Turki language tazkirah manuscripts devoted to stories of local sultans, martyrs and saints were written.[154] Perhaps the most famous and best-loved pieces of modern Uyghur literature are Abdurehim Ötkür's Iz, Oyghanghan Zimin, Zordun Sabir's Anayurt and Ziya Samedi's novels Mayimkhanand Mystery of the years.[citation needed]
Music[edit]
Uyghur folk music with modern influence