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Xinjiang

 

The approximate extent of China proper during the late Ming Dynasty, the last Han Chinese dynasty

 

China proper refers to the historical lands of China where the Han Chinese are the majority ethnic group, in contrast with other regions that form parts of the former Chinese empires and the current People's Republic of China. Territories generally considered to be outside China proper include Xinjiang (East Turkestan), Tibet, Manchuria (Northeast China), and Inner Mongolia.

 

 

Tian Shan

 

Taklamakan Desert

 

Conquering the Desert of Death: Across the Taklamakan by Charles Blackmore

 

Kunlun Mountains

 

Major cities

• Urumqi
• Turpan
• Kashgar
• Karamay
• Yining
• Shihezi
• Qinggir

XINJIANG

Excerpts from Wikipedia.org

Xinjiang (Uyghur: شىنجاڭ; Chinese: 新疆) is an autonomous region (Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region) of the People's Republic of China. It is a large, sparsely populated area (spanning over 1.6 million sq. km) which takes up about one sixth of the country's territory. Xinjiang borders the Tibet to the south and Qinghai and Gansu provinces to the southeast, Mongolia to the east, Russia to the north, and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India to the west. It administers most of Aksai Chin, a territory formally part of Kashmir over which India claims sovereignty.

"Xinjiang" or "Ice Jecen" in Manchu, literally means "New Frontier", a name given during the Manchu Qing Dynasty in China. It is home to a number of different ethnic groups, many of them Turkic, the largest of which is the Uyghur people. Older English-language reference works often refer to the area as Chinese Turkestan, Sinkiang, East Turkestan, or Uyghuristan.

The east-west Tien Shan Mountains separate Dzungaria in the north from the Tarim Basin in the south. Dzungaria is dry steppe. The Tarim Basin is desert surrounded by oases. In the east is the Turfan Depression. In the west, the Tien Shan split, forming the Ili River valley.

 

Geography and Geology

Xinjiang is the largest political subdivision of China — it accounts for more than one sixth of China's total territory and a quarter of its boundary length. It is divided into two basins by Mount Tianshan. Dzungarian Basin is in the north, and Tarim Basin is in the south. Xinjiang's lowest point is the Turfan Depression, 155 metres below sea level (lowest point in the PRC as well). Its highest peak, K2, is 8611 metres above sea level, on the border with Kashmir.

Most of Xinjiang is young geologically, having been formed from the collision of the Indian plate with the Eurasian plate, forming the Tian Shan, Kunlun Shan, and Pamir mountain ranges. Consequently, Xinjiang is a major earthquake zone. Older geological formations occur principally in the far north where the Junggar Block is geologically part of Kazakhstan, and in the east which is part of the North China Craton.

Xinjiang has within its borders the point of land remotest from the sea, the so-called Eurasian pole of inaccessibility (Lat. 46 degrees 16.8 minutes N, Long. 86 degrees 40.2 minutes E) in the Dzoosotoyn Elisen Desert, 1,645 miles (2648 km) from the nearest coastline (straight-line distance).

The Tian Shan mountain range marks the Xinjiang-Kyrgyzstan border at the Torugart Pass (3752 m). The Karakorum highway (KKH) links Islamabad, Pakistan with Kashgar over the Khunjerab Pass.

 

Demographics

Xinjiang is home to several distinct ethnic groups of various religious traditions, however, the majority of the region's total population are adherents of Islam. Among ethnic groups who are of the Muslim faith, most notable are Muslim Turkic peoples including the Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tatars and the Kazakhs; there are also Muslim Iranian peoples including Tajiks and the Sarikolis/Wakhis (often conflated as Tajiks); and Muslim Sino-Tibetan peoples such as the Hui. Other PRC ethnic groups in the region include Han Chinese, Mongols, Russians, Xibes, and Manchus.

The percentage of ethnic Han Chinese in Xinjiang has grown from 6 percent in 1949 to an official tally of over 40 percent at present. This figure does not include military personnel or their families, or the many unregistered migrant workers. Much of this transformation can be attributed to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a semi-military organization of settlers that has built farms, towns, and cities over scattered parts of Xinjiang. The demographic transformation is held by Uyghur independence advocates as a threat to Uyghurs and other non-Han ethnicities in maintaining their culture, similar to the case of Tibet. At the same time, the minorities of Xinjiang have been exempted from the one-child policy and many Uyghur people emigrated out of Xinjiang to other parts of China, and consequently the percentage of Uyghur people in the total population of China has increased steadily.

In general, Uyghurs are the majority in western Xinjiang, including the prefectures of Kashgar, Khotan, Kizilsu, and Aksu, as well as Turpan prefecture in eastern Xinjiang. Han Chinese are the majority in eastern and northern Xinjiang, including the cities of Urumqi, Karamay, Shihezi and the prefectures of Changji, Bortala, Bayin'gholin, Ili (especially the city of Kuitun), and Kumul. Kazakhs are mostly concentrated in Ili prefecture in northern Xinjiang.

Some Uighur scholars claim descent from both the Turkic Uighurs and the pre-Turkic Tocharians (or Tokharians, whose language was Indo-European), and relatively fair-skin, hair and eyes, as well as other so-called 'Caucasoid' physical traits, are not uncommon among them. In general Uyghurs resemble those peoples who live around them in Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Pakistan (video: East Turkestan/Charchan).

 

Turkic Peoples

 

The Turkic peoples are Eurasian peoples residing in northern, central and western Eurasia who speak languages belonging to the Turkic language family. The term Turkic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people including existing societies such as the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tatar, Uyghur, Azerbaijani, Turkmen and Turkish people, as well as past civilizations such as the Xiongnu, Cumans, Avars, Bulgars, Huns, Seljuks, Khazars, Ottomans and Timurids.

Many of the Turkic peoples have their homelands in Inner Asia, where the Turkic peoples originated from, but since then Turkic languages have spread, through migrations and conquests, to other locations including present-day Turkey. While the term Turk may refer to a member of any Turkic people, the term Turkish usually refers specifically to the people and language of Turkey.

Inner Asia can refer to:

• The western frontier lands outside China proper
• Central Asia

 

 

Tarim Mummies

A Tarim Basin mummy photographed by Aurel Stein circa 1910.

The Tarim mummies are a series of mummies discovered in the Tarim Basin in present-day Xinjiang, China, which date from 1800 BC to 200 AD. Some of the mummies are frequently associated with the presence of the Indo-European Tocharian languages in the Tarim Basin although the evidence is not conclusive and many centuries separate these mummies from the first appearance of the written Tocharian languages.

The cemetery at Yanbulaq contained 29 mummies which date from 1100–500 BC, 21 of which are Mongoloid—the earliest Mongoloid mummies found in the Tarim basin—and 8 of which are of the same Caucasoid physical type found at Qäwrighul. However, more recent genetic studies painted a more complex picture (Xie et al., 2007). It showed both Caucasian and Mongoloid characteristics in the more recent mummies.

Archeological Record: At the beginning of the 20th century European explorers such as Sven Hedin, Albert von Le Coq and Sir Aurel Stein all recounted their discoveries of desiccated bodies in their search for antiquities in Central Asia. Since then many other mummies have been found and analysed, most of them now displayed in the museums of Xinjiang. Most of these mummies were found on the eastern (around the area of Lopnur, Subeshi near Turfan, Kroran, Kumul) and southern (Khotan, Niya, Qiemo) edge of the Tarim Basin.

The earliest Tarim mummies, found at Qäwrighul and dated to 1800 BC, are of a Caucasoid physical type whose closest affiliation is to the Bronze Age populations of southern Siberia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, and Lower Volga.

The cemetery at Yanbulaq contained 29 mummies which date from 1100–500 BC, 21 of which are Mongoloid—the earliest Mongoloid mummies found in the Tarim basin—and 8 of which are of the same Caucasoid physical type found at Qäwrighul.

Notable mummies are the tall, red-haired "Chärchän man" or the "Ur-David" (1000 BC); his son (1000 BC), a small 1-year-old baby with blond hair protruding from under a red and blue felt cap, and blue stones in place of the eyes; the "Hami Mummy" (c. 1400–800 BC), a "red-headed beauty" found in Qizilchoqa; and the "Witches of Subeshi" (4th or 3rd century BC), who wore two foot long black felt conical hats with a flat brim. Also found at Subeshi was a man with traces of a surgical operation on his neck, the incision is sewn up with sutures made of horsehair. Surgery was considered heretical in ancient Chinese medical tradition.

Many of the mummies have been found in very good condition, owing to the dryness of the desert, and the desiccation of the corpses it induced. The mummies share many typical Caucasoid body features (elongated bodies, angular faces, recessed eyes), and many of them have their hair physically intact, ranging in color from blond to red to deep brown, and generally long, curly and braided. It is not known whether their hair has been bleached by internment in salt. Their costumes, and especially textiles, may indicate a common origin with Indo-European neolithic clothing techniques or a common low-level textile technology. Chärchän man wore a red twill tunic and tartan leggings. Textile expert Elizabeth Wayland Barber, who examined the tartan-style cloth, claims it can be traced back to Anatolia, the Caucasus and the steppe area north of the Black Sea.

Genetic Links: DNA sequence data shows that the mummies had haplotype characteristic of western Eurasia in the area of south Russia.

A team of Chinese and American researchers working in Sweden tested DNA from 52 separate mummies, including the mummy denoted "Beauty of Loulan." By genetically mapping the mummies' origins, the researchers confirmed the theory that these mummies were of West Eurasian descent. Victor Mair, a University of Pennsylvania professor and project leader for the team that did the genetic mapping, commented that these studies were:

...extremely important because they link up eastern and western Eurasia at a formative stage of civilization (Bronze Age and early Iron Age) in a much closer way than has ever been done before.

An earlier study by Jilin University had found a mtDNA haplotype characteristic of Western Eurasian populations with Europoid genes.

In 2007 the Chinese government allowed a National Geographic team headed by Spencer Wells to examine the mummies' DNA. Wells was able to extract undegraded DNA from the internal tissues. The scientists extracted enough material to suggest the Tarim Basin was continually inhabited from 2000 BC to 300 BC and preliminary results indicate the people, rather than having a single origin, originated from Europe, Mesopotamia, India and other regions yet to be determined.

The textiles found with the mummies are of an early European textile and weave type and are similar to textiles found on the bodies of salt miners in Austria of around 1300 BC. Anthropologist Irene Good, a specialist in early Eurasian textiles, noted the woven diagonal twill pattern indicated the use of a rather sophisticated loom and, she says, the textile is "the easternmost known example of this kind of weaving technique."

Mair states that "the earliest mummies in the Tarim Basin were exclusively Caucausoid, or Europoid" with east Asian migrants arriving in the eastern portions of the Tarim Basin around 1000 BC while the Uyghur peoples arrived around the year 842. In trying to trace the origins of these populations, Victor Mair's team suggested that they may have arrived in the region by way of the forbidding Pamir Mountains about 5000 years ago.

This evidence remains controversial. It refutes the contemporary nationalist claims of the present-day Uyghur peoples who claim that they are the indigenous people of Xinjiang, rather than the Han Chinese. In comparing the DNA of the mummies to that of modern day Uyghur peoples, Mair's team found some genetic similarities with the mummies, but "no direct links".

About the controversy Mair has stated that:

The new finds are also forcing a reexamination of old Chinese books that describe historical or legendary figures of great height, with deep-set blue or green eyes, long noses, full beards, and red or blond hair. Scholars have traditionally scoffed at these accounts, but it now seems that they may be accurate.

Chinese scientists were initially hesitant to provide access to DNA samples because they were sensitive about the claims of the nationalist Uyghur who claim the Loulan Beauty as their symbol, and to prevent a pillaging of national monuments by foreigners. Chinese historian Ji Xianlin says China "supported and admired" research by foreign experts into the mummies. "However, within China a small group of ethnic separatists have styled themselves the descendants of these ancient people". Due to the "fear of fuelling separatist currents" the Xinjiang museum, regardless of dating, displays all their mummies both Tarim and Han, together.

Posited Origins: Physical anthropologists propose the movement of at least two Caucasoid physical types into the Tarim basin, which Mallory & Mair (2000) associate with the Tocharian and Iranian (Saka) branches of the Indo-European language family, respectively.

B. E. Hemphill's biodistance analysis of cranial metrics (as cited in Larsen 2002 and Schurr 2001) has questioned the identification of the Tarim Basin population as European, noting that the earlier population has close affinities to the Indus Valley population, and the later population with the Oxus River valley population. Because craniometry can produce results which make no sense at all (e.g. the close relationship between Neolithic populations in Russia and Portugal) and therefore lack any historical meaning, any putative genetic relationship must be consistent with geographical plausibility and have the support of other evidence.

Han Kangxin (as cited in Mallory & Mair 2000), who examined the skulls of 302 mummies, found the closest relatives of the earlier Tarim Basin population in the populations of the Afanasevo culture situated immediately north of the Tarim Basin and the Andronovo culture that spanned Kazakhstan and reached southwards into West Central Asia and the Altai.

It is the Afanasevo culture to which Mallory & Mair (2000) trace the earliest Bronze Age settlers of the Tarim and Turpan basins. The Afanasevo culture (c. 3500–2500 BC) displays cultural and genetic connections with the Indo-European-associated cultures of the Eurasian Steppe yet predates the specifically Indo-Iranian-associated Andronovo culture (c. 2000–900 BC) enough to isolate the Tocharian languages from Indo-Iranian linguistic innovations like satemization.

Hemphill & Mallory (2004) confirm a second Caucasoid physical type at Alwighul (700–1 BC) and Krorän (200 AD) different from the earlier one found at Qäwrighul (1800 BC) and Yanbulaq (1100–500 BC).

This study confirms the assertion of Han [1998] that the occupants of Alwighul and Krorän are not derived from proto-European steppe populations, but share closest affinities with Eastern Mediterranean populations. Further, the results demonstrate that such Eastern Mediterraneans may also be found at the urban centers of the Oxus civilization located in the north Bactrian oasis to the west. Affinities are especially close between Krorän, the latest of the Xinjiang samples, and Sapalli, the earliest of the Bactrian samples, while Alwighul and later samples from Bactria exhibit more distant phenetic affinities. This pattern may reflect a possible major shift in interregional contacts in Central Asia in the early centuries of the second millennium BC.

Mallory & Mair (2000) associate this later (700 BC–200 AD) Caucasoid physical type with the populations who introduced the Iranian Saka language to the western part of the Tarim basin.

Mair concluded (Mair etc al, 2006):

"From the evidence available, we have found that during the first 1,000 years after the Loulan Beauty, the only settlers in the Tarim Basin were Caucasoid. East Asian peoples only began showing up in the eastern portions of the Tarim Basin about 3,000 years ago, Mair said, while the Uighur peoples arrived after the collapse of the Orkon Uighur Kingdom, largely based in modern day Mongolia, around the year 842."

Roman Accounts: Pliny the Elder reports a curious description of the Seres (in the territories of northwestern China) made by an embassy from Taprobane (Ceylon) to Emperor Claudius, saying that they "exceeded the ordinary human height, had flaxen hair, and blue eyes, and made an uncouth sort of noise by way of talking", suggesting they may be referring to the ancient Caucasian populations of the Tarim Basin:

"They also informed us that the side of their island (Taprobane) which lies opposite to India is ten thousand stadia in length, and runs in a south-easterly direction--that beyond the Emodian Mountains (Himalayas) they look towards the Serve (Seres), whose acquaintance they had also made in the pursuits of commerce; that the father of Rachias (the ambassador) had frequently visited their country, and that the Seræ always came to meet them on their arrival. These people, they said, exceeded the ordinary human height, had flaxen hair, and blue eyes, and made an uncouth sort of noise by way of talking, having no language of their own for the purpose of communicating their thoughts. The rest of their information (on the Serae) was of a similar nature to that communicated by our merchants. It was to the effect that the merchandise on sale was left by them upon the opposite bank of a river on their coast, and it was then removed by the natives, if they thought proper to deal on terms of exchange. On no grounds ought luxury with greater reason to be detested by us, than if we only transport our thoughts to these scenes, and then reflect, what are its demands, to what distant spots it sends in order to satisfy them, and for how mean and how unworthy an end!"

Cultural Exchanges: The presence of Indo-European speakers in the Tarim Basin in the third or early second millennium BC suggests that cultural exchanges occurred among Indo-European and Chinese populations at a very early date. It has been suggested that such activities as chariot warfare and bronze-making may have been transmitted to the east by these Indo-European nomads.

The Chinese explorer Zhang Qian, who visited Bactria and Sogdiana in 126 BC, made the first known Chinese report on many regions to the west of China. In his accounts Parthia is named "Ānxī" (安息), a transliteration of "Arsacid", the name of the Parthian dynasty. Zhang Qian clearly identifies Parthia as an advanced urban civilization that farmed grain and grapes, made silver coins and leather goods; Zhang Qian equates the level of advancement of Parthia to the cultures of Dayuan (in Ferghana) and Daxia (in Bactria). Zhang Qian found Greek influences present in some of the kingdoms of this region.

These theories run counter to the idea that the East and West developed civilizations independently, but suggest that some form of cultural exchanges took place.

The supply of Tarim Basin jade to China from ancient times is well established, according to Liu (2001): "It is well known that ancient Chinese rulers had a strong attachment to jade. All of the jade items excavated from the tomb of Fuhao of the Shang dynasty, more than 750 pieces, were from Khotan in modern Xinjiang. As early as the mid-first millennium BC the Yuezhi engaged in the jade trade, of which the major consumers were the rulers of agricultural China."

* Caucasians Preceded East Asians in Basin by Robert J. Saiget

* Genetic Testing Reveals Awkward Truth about Xinjiang’s Famous Mummies by Khaleej Times Online

* A Meeting of Civilisations: The Mystery of China's Celtic Mummies. by Clifford Coonan

* China History Unravelled by Mummies by Benjamin Robertson

* Mitochondrial DNA Analysis of Human Remains from the Yuansha Site in Xinjiang, China by Gao ShiZhu, et al.

* New Thinking on Origin of the Silk Road by Zhang Ruimin

 

The Tarim Mummies by J. P. Mallory and Victor H. Mair

 

 

 

 

Mummies of Urumchi by Elizabeth Wayland Barber and E. J. Barber

 

 

 

 

In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth by J. P. Mallory

 

 

 

 

 

Tocharians

Asia in AD 1, showing the location of the Tocharian/Yue-Chi tribes and their neighbors

The Tocharians were the Tocharian-speaking inhabitants of the Tarim basin, making them the easternmost speakers of an Indo-European language in antiquity.

Name

The term Tocharians has a somewhat complicated history. It is based on the ethnonym Tokharoi (Greek Τόχαροι) used by Greek historians (e.g. Ptolemy VI, 11, 6). The first mention of the Tocharians appeared in the 1st century BC, when Strabo presented them as a Scythian tribe, and explained that the Tokharians — together with the Assianis, Passianis and Sakaraulis — took part in the destruction of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom in the second half of the 2nd century BC.

These Tocharians (Tokharoi) are identified with the Yuezhi and one of their major tribes, the Kushans. The geographical term Tokharistan usually refers to 1st millennium Bactria (Chinese Daxia 大夏).

Today, the term is associated with the Indo-European languages known as "Tocharian". Based on a Turkic reference to Tocharian A as twqry, these languages were associated with the Kushan ruling class, but the exact relation of the speakers of these languages and the Kushan Tokharoi is uncertain, and some consider "Tocharian languages" a misnomer. Tocharian A is also known as East Tocharian, or Turfanian (of the city of Turfan), and Tocharian B is also known as West Tocharian, or Kuchean (of the city of Kucha).

The term is so widely used, however, that this question is somewhat academic.

Tocharians in the modern sense are, then, defined as the speakers of the Tocharian languages. These were originally nomads, and lived in today's Xinjiang (Tarim basin). The native name of the historical Tocharians of the 6th to 8th centuries was, according to J. P. Mallory, possibly kuśiññe "Kuchean" (Tocharian B), "of the kingdom of Kucha and Agni", and ārśi (Tocharian A); one of the Tocharian A texts has ārśi-käntwā, "In the tongue of Arsi" (ārśi is probably cognate to argenteus, i.e. "shining, brilliant"). According to Douglas Q. Adams, the Tocharians may have called themselves ākñi, meaning "borderers, marchers".

Archaeology

The Tarim mummies suggest that precursors of these easternmost speakers of an Indo-European language may have lived in the region of the Tarim Basin from around 1800 BC until finally they were assimilated by Uyghur Turks in the 9th century AD.

There is evidence both from the mummies and Chinese writings.

A later group of Tocharians were the Kushans and maybe some Iranian tribes of the Hephthalites whose Iranian population also settled in modern Afghanistan, North-Eastern Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkestan, whereas the nomadic Turkic ones were defeated by Bahram Gur and the Gok-Turks, who pushed them over the Hindukush mountains to Sindh (Pakistan) and North-West India.

The Tarim Basin mummies (1800 BC) and the Tocharian texts and frescoes from the Tarim Basin (AD 800) have been found in the same general geographical area, and are both connected to an Indo-European origin. The mummies and the frescoes both point to White types with light eyes and hair color. However it is unknown if the frescos and Tarim Basin mummies are directly connected.

Mallory & Mair (2000: 294–296, 314–318) argue that the Tocharian languages were introduced to the Tarim and Turpan basins from the Afanasevo culture to their immediate north. The Afanasevo culture (c. 3500–2500 BC) displays cultural and genetic connections with the Indo-European-associated cultures of the European steppe yet predates the specifically Indo-Iranian-associated Andronovo culture (c. 2000–900 BC) enough to isolate the Tocharian languages from Indo-Iranian linguistic innovations like satemization. :260, 294–296, 314–318.

In 2008, the remains of a Caucasian male were discovered near Turpan, China. Thought by researchers to be a member of the Gushi, the man was buried with a number of practical and ceremonial objects, including archery equipment, a harp, and 789 grams of marijuana. Through genetic analysis and carbon dating, the burial has been dated to roughly 700 B.C. Only two of the 500 graves at the site contain marijuana, leading researchers to suggest shamanic roles for the two individuals.

Language

The Tocharians appear to have originally spoken two distinct languages of the Indo-European Tocharian family, an Eastern ("A") form and a Western ("B") form. According to some, only the Eastern ("A") form can be properly called "Tocharian", as the native name for the Western form is referred to as Kuchean (see below). Commonalities between the Tocharian languages and various other Indo-European language families (as with Celtic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic, even Italic or Greek) have been suggested, but the evidence does not support any close relationship with any other family. The only consensus is that Tocharian was already far enough removed, at an early date, from the other eastern Indo-European proto-languages (Proto-Balto-Slavic and Proto-Indo-Iranian), not to share some of the common changes that PBS and PII share, such as early palatalization of velars.

Tocharian A of the eastern regions seems to have declined in use as a popular language or mother tongue faster than did Tocharian B of the west. Tocharian A speakers probably yielded their original language to Turkic language of immigrating Turkic peoples, while Tocharian B speakers were more insulated from outside linguistic influences. It appears that Tocharian A ultimately became a liturgical language, no longer a living one, at the same time that Tocharian B was still widely spoken in daily life. Among the monasteries of the lands inhabited by Tocharian B speakers, Tocharian A seems to have been used in ritual alongside the Tocharian B of daily life.

Besides the religious Tocharian texts, the texts include monastery correspondence and accounts, commercial documents, caravan permits, medical and magical texts, and a love poem. Their manuscript fragments, of the 8th centuries, suggest that they were no longer either as nomadic or "barbarian (hu)" as the Chinese had considered them.

Historic Role

The Tocharians, living along the Silk Road, had contacts with the Chinese, Persians, Indian and Turkic tribes. They might be the same as, or were related to, the Indo-European Yuezhi who fled from their settlements in eastern Tarim Basin after attacks by the Xiongnu in the 2nd century BC (Shiji Chinese historical Chronicles, Chap. 123) and expanded south to Bactria and northern India to form the Kushan Empire.

The Tocharians who remained in the Tarim Basin adopted Buddhism, which, like their alphabet, came from northern India in the first century of the 1st millennium, through the proselytism of Kushan monks. The Kushans and the Tocharians seem to have played a part in the Silk Road transmission of Buddhism to China. Many apparently also practised some variant of Manichaeanism.

Protected by the Taklamakan Desert from steppe nomads, the Tocharian culture survived past the 7th century.

In Sanskrit Literature

Sanskrit literature in numerous instances refers to the Tocharians as Tukhāra.

The Atharavaveda-Parishishta associates them with the Sakas, Yavanas and the Bahlikas It also juxtaposes the Kambojas with the Bahlikas. This shows the Tusharas probably were neighbors to the Shakas, Bahlikas, Yavanas and the Kambojas in Transoxian region.

The Rishikas are said to be same people as the Yuezhi. The Kushanas or Kanishkas are also the same people. M. A. Stein proposed that the Tukharas are same as Yuezhi. P. C. Bagchi holds that the Yuezhi, Tocharioi and Tushara were identical. The Parama Kambojas of the Trans-Pamirs, mentioned in the Mahabharata are said to be related to the Rishikas who are placed in the Sakadvipa (or Scythia). B. N. Puri takes the Kambojas to be a branch of the Tukharas. Some scholars state that the Kambojas were a branch of the Yuezhi themselves.

Sabha Parva of Mahabharata states that the Parama Kambojas, Lohas and the Rishikas were allied tribes. Like the "Parama Kambojas" ("most distant Kambojas"), the Rishikas of the Transoxian region are similarly styled as "most distant" or "Parama Rishikas". Based on the syntactical construction of the Mahabharata verses 5.5.15 and 2.27.25, Ishwa Mishra believes that the Rishikas were a section of the Kambojas i.e. Parama Kambojas.

 

 

Yuezhi

The migrations of the Yuezhi through Central Asia, from around 176 BC to 30 AD

The Yuezhi or Rouzhi (月支, 月氏), also known as the Da Yuezhi or Da Rouzhi (大月支, "Great Yuezhi"), were an ancient Central Asian people.

They are believed by most scholars to have been an Indo-European people, and may have been the same as or closely related to the Tocharians (Τοχάριοι) of Classical sources. They were originally settled in the arid grasslands of the eastern Tarim Basin area, in what is today Xinjiang and western Gansu, in China, before they migrated to Transoxiana, Bactria and then northern South Asia, where they formed the Kushan Empire.

Name

Since the character yuè (月) can stand for the character ròu (肉) in pictograms, it may not mean "moon" here. The character seems to have derived originally from ròu, "meat", as a character component. However, if the form Yuezhi (月氏) is accepted, the name translates literally as "moon clan", from yuè (月), "moon" and shì (氏), "clan" or "race".

There are numerous theories about the derivation of the name Yuezhi and none has yet found general acceptance. According to Zhang Guang-da the name Yuezhi is a transliteration of their own name for themselves, the Visha ("the tribes"), being called the Vijaya in Tibetan.

Origins

The first known reference to the Yuezhi was made in 645 BC by the Chinese Guan Zhong in his Guanzi 管子(Guanzi Essays: 73: 78: 80: 81). The dates of this book are disputed however, and it may date to as late as 1st century BC. The book described the Yuzhi 禺氏, or Niuzhi 牛氏, as a people from the north-west who supplied jade to the Chinese from the nearby mountains of Yuzhi 禺氏 at Gansu. The supply of jade from the Tarim Basin from ancient times is indeed well documented archaeologically: "It is well known that ancient Chinese rulers had a strong attachment to jade. All of the jade items excavated from the tomb of Fuhao 妇好 of the Shang dynasty, more than 750 pieces, were from Khotan in modern Xinjiang. As early as the mid-first millennium BC the Yuezhi engaged in the jade trade, of which the major consumers were the rulers of agricultural China." (Liu (2001), pp. 267-268). The suffix "Di" or "Zhi" (氐) was generally used to describe the Di people, "Western barbarians", in Chinese annals.

The Di (氐) were an ethnic group in China. They lived in areas of present-day provinces of Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan and Shaanxi, from the 8th century BC to approximately the middle of 6th century BC. The Di were assimilated into the main Chinese population. Genetic evidence of the Di can be found in a minority of people in Sichuan.

According to former USSR scholar Zuev, there was a Queen among the large Yuezhi confederation who added to her possessions the lands of the Tochar (Daxia) on the headwaters of the Huanghe circa 3rd century BC. According him, the Chinese chronicles began referring to the queen's tribe as the Great Yuezhi (Da Yuezhi), and to call the Daxia/Tochars the Lesser Yuezhi (Pinyin: Xiao Yuezhi). Together, they were simply called Yuezhi. In the 5th century AD, a scholar and translator monk Kumarajiva, while translating texts into Chinese, used the name "Yuezhi" to translate "Tochar". In the middle of the 2nd century BC the Yuezhi conquered Bactria, and the Ancient Greek authors inform us that the conquerors of Bactria were the Asii and Tochari tribes. Bactria then in the Chinese chronicles began to be called the country of Daxia, i.e. Tocharistan and the language of Bactria/Tocharistan began to be called "Tocharian"."

Ancient cities of Bactria

Bactria (Bactriana, Bākhtar in Persian, بـلـخ (spelled: Bhalakh) and Daxia in Chinese) is a historical region of Greater Iran. Known by the ancient Greeks as "Bactriana" the region is located between the range of the Hindu Kush and the Amu Darya (Oxus); in later times, the region became known as Tokharistan. The name of the region has survived to present time in the name of Afghan province "Balkh".

Bactria was bounded on the east by the ancient region of Gandhara. The Bactrian language is an Iranian language of the Indo-Iranian sub-family of the Indo-European family.

The Bactrians are among the ancestors of the modern-day Tajiks.

The name Daxia, Ta-Hsia, or Ta-Hia (大夏) appears in Chinese from the 3rd century BC to designate a mythical kingdom to the West, possibly a consequence of the first contacts with the expansion of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, and then is used by the explorer Zhang Qian in 126 BC to designate Bactria.

The reports of Zhang Qian were put in writing in the Shiji ("Records of the Grand Historian") by Sima Qian in the 1st century BC. They describe an important urban civilization of about one million people, living in walled cities under small city kings or magistrates. Daxia was an affluent country with rich markets, trading in an incredible variety of objects, coming as far as Southern China. By the time Zhang Qian visited Daxia, there was no longer a major king, and the Bactrian were suzerains to the nomadic Yuezhi, who were settled to the north of their territory beyond the Oxus (Amu Darya). Overall Zhang Qian depicted a rather sophisticated but demoralized people who were afraid of war.

Following these reports, the Chinese emperor Wu Di was informed of the level of sophistication of the urban civilizations of Ferghana, Bactria and Parthia, and became interested in developing commercial relationship with them.

These contacts immediately led to the dispatch of multiple embassies from the Chinese, which helped to develop the Silk Road.

Tokharistan: Following the settlement of the Yuezhi (described in the West as "Tocharians"), the general area of Bactria came to be called Tokharistan. The territory of Tokharistan was identical with Kushan Bactria, including the areas of Surkhandarya, Southern Tajikistan and Northern Afghanistan.

The first literary mentions of Tokharistan appear at the end of the 4th century in Chinese Buddhist sources (the Vibhasa-sastra). However, the first mention of the Tocharians appear much sooner, in the 1st century BC, when Strabo mentions that "the Tokharians, together with the Assianis, Passianis and Sakaraulis, took part in the destruction of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom" in the second half of the 2nd century BC. Ptolemy also mentions a large Tokharian tribe in Bactria, describing the central role of the Tokharians among other tribes in Bactria.

From the 1st century AD to the 3rd century AD, Tokharistan was under the rule of the Kushans. They were followed by Sassanides (Indo-Sassanids). Later, in the 5th century, it was controlled by the Xionites and the Hephthalites. In the 7th century, after a brief rule under the Turkish Khaganats, it was conquered by the Arabs and then the Mongols and much later, by the Russians.

The Yuezhi are also documented in detail in Chinese historical accounts, in particular the 2nd-1st century BC "Records of the Great Historian", or Shiji, by Sima Qian. According to these accounts:

"The Yuezhi originally lived in the area between the Qilian or Heavenly Mountains (Tian Shan) and Dunhuang, but after they were defeated by the Xiongnu they moved far away to the west, beyond Dayuan, where they attacked and conquered the people of Daxia and set up the court of their king on the northern bank of the Gui [= Oxus] River. A small number of their people who were unable to make the journey west sought refuge among the Qiang barbarians in the Southern Mountains, where they are known as the Lesser Yuezhi.",

The Qilian and Dunhuang original homeland of the Yuezhi have recently been argued not to refer to the current locations in Gansu, but to the Tian Shan range and the Turfan region, 1,000 km to the west, Dunhuang identified with a mountain named Dunhong listed in the Shanhaijing.

The Yuezhi may have been a Caucasoid people, as indicated by the portraits of their kings on the coins they struck following their exodus to Transoxiana (2nd-1st century BC), and especially the coins they struck in India as Kushans (1st-3rd century AD). However, no direct records for the name of Yuezhi rulers are known to exist (only Chinese accounts mention the name), and some doubt on the accuracy of their first coins.

Ancient Chinese sources do describe the existence of "white people with long hair" (The Bai people of the Shan Hai Jing) beyond their northwestern border, and the very well preserved Tarim mummies with Caucasian features found at the ancient oasis on the Silk Road, Niya, often with reddish or blond hair, today displayed at the Ürümqi Museum and dated to the 3rd century BC, have been found in precisely the same area of the Tarim Basin.

The Indo-European Tocharian languages also have been attested in the same geographical area, and although the first known epigraphic evidence dates to the 6th century AD, the degree of differentiation between Tocharian A and Tocharian B, and the absence of Tocharian language remains beyond that area, tends to indicate that a common Tocharian language existed in the same area of Yuezhi settlement during the second half of the 1st millennium BC.

According to one theory, the Yuezhi were probably part of the large migration of Indo-European speaking peoples who were settled in eastern Central Asia (possibly as far as Gansu) at that time. The nomadic Ordos culture, who lived in northern China east of the Yuezhi, are another example. Also the Caucasian mummies of Pazyryk, probably Scythian in origin, are located around 1,500 kilometers north-west of the Yuezhi, and dated also to around the 3rd century BC.

According to Han accounts, the Yuezhi "were flourishing" during the time of the first great Chinese Qin emperor, but were regularly in conflict with the neighbouring tribe of the Xiongnu to the northeast.

The Yuezhi Exodus

The Yuezhi sometimes practiced the exchange of hostages with the Xiongnu, and at one time were hosts to Modu Shanyu (冒頓), son of the Xiongnu leader. Modu stole a horse and escaped when the Yuezhi tried to kill him in retaliation for an attack by his father. Modu subsequently became ruler of the Xiongnu after killing his father.

Around 177 BC, led by one of Modu's tribal chiefs, the Xiongnu invaded Yuezhi territory in the Gansu region and achieved a crushing victory. Modu boasted in a letter to the Han emperor that due to "the excellence of his fighting men, and the strength of his horses, he has succeeded in wiping out the Yuezhi, slaughtering or forcing to submission every number of the tribe". The son of Modu, Jizhu, subsequently killed the king of the Yuezhi and, in accordance with nomadic traditions, "made a drinking cup out of his skull."(Shiji 123. Watson1961:231).

Following Chinese sources, a large part of the Yuezhi people therefore fell under the domination of the Xiongnu, and these may have been the ancestors of the Tocharian speakers attested in the 6th century AD. A very small group of Yuezhi fled south to the territory of the Proto-Tibetan Qiang, and came to be known to the Chinese as the "Small Yuezhi". According to the Hanshu, they only numbered around 150 families.

Finally, a large group of the Yuezhi fled from the Tarim Basin / Gansu area towards the northwest, first settling in the Ili valley, immediately north of the Tian Shan mountains, where they confronted and defeated the Sai (Sakas or Scythians): "The Yuezhi attacked the king of the Sai who moved a considerable distance to the south and the Yuezhi then occupied his lands" (Han Shu 61 4B). The Sai undetook their own migration, which was to lead them as far as Kashmir, after travelling through a "Suspended Crossing" (probably the Khunjerab Pass between present-day Xinjiang and northern Pakistan). The Sakas ultimately established an Indo-Scythian kingdom in northern India.

After 155 BC, the Wusun, in alliance with the Xiongnu and out of revenge from an earlier conflict, managed to disloge the Yuezhi, forcing them to move south. The Yuezhi crossed the neighbouring urban civilization of the Dayuan in Ferghana, and settled on the northern bank of the Oxus, in the region of Transoxiana, in modern-day Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, just north of the Hellenistic Greco-Bactrian kingdom. The Greek city of Alexandria on the Oxus was apparently burnt to the ground by the Yuezhi around 145 BC.

Settlement in Transoxiana

The Yuezhi were visited by a Chinese mission, led by Zhang Qian in 126 BC, that was seeking an offensive alliance with the Yuezhi to counter the Xiongnu threat to the north. Although the request for an alliance was denied by the son of the slain Yuezhi king, who preferred to maintain peace in Transoxiana rather than to seek revenge, Zhang Qian made a detailed account, reported in the Shiji, that gives considerable insight into the situation in Central Asia at that time.

Zhang Qian, who spent a year with the Yuezhi and in Bactria, relates that "the Great Yuezhi live 2,000 or 3,000 li (832-1,247 kilometers) west of Dayuan (Ferghana), north of the Gui (Oxus) river. They are bordered on the south by Daxia (Bactria), on the west by Anxi (Parthia), and on the north by Kangju (beyond the middle Jaxartes). They are a nation of nomads, moving from place to place with their herds, and their customs are like those of the Xiongnu. They have some 100,000 or 200,000 archer warriors."

Although they remained north of the Oxus for a while, they apparently obtained the submission of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom to the south of the Oxus. The Yuezhi were organized into five major tribes, each led by a yabgu, or tribal chief, and known to the Chinese as Xiūmì (休密) in Western Wakhān and Zibak, Guishuang (貴霜) in Badakhshan and the adjoining territories north of the Oxus, Shuangmi (雙靡) in the region of Shughnan, Xidun (肸頓) in the region of Balk, and Dūmì (都密) in the region of Termez

A description of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom was made by Zhang Qian after the conquest by Yuezhi:

"Daxia (Greco-Bactria) is located over 2,000 li southwest of Dayuan, south of the Gui (Oxus) river. Its people cultivate the land and have cities and houses. Their customs are like those of Ta-Yuan. It has no great ruler but only a number of petty chiefs ruling the various cities. The people are poor in the use of arms and afraid of battle, but they are clever at commerce. After the Great Yuezhi moved west and attacked the lands, the entire country came under their sway. The population of the country is large, numbering some 1,000,000 or more persons. The capital is called the city of Lanshi (Bactra) (modern Balkh) and has a market where all sorts of goods are bought and sold."

In a sweeping analysis of the physical types and cultures of Central Asia that he visited in 126 BC, Zhang Qian reports that "although the states from Dayuan west to Anxi (Parthia), speak rather different languages, their customs are generally similar and their languages mutually intelligible. The men have deep-set eyes and profuse beards and whiskers. They are skilful at commerce and will haggle over a fraction of a cent. Women are held in great respect, and the men make decisions on the advice of their women."

Invasion of Bactria

In 124 BC the Yuezhi were apparently involved in a war against the Parthians, in which the Parthian king Artabanus I of Parthia was wounded and died:

"During the war against the Tokharians, he (Artabanus) was wounded in the arm and died immediately" (Justin, Epitomes, XLII,2,2: "Bello Tochariis inlato, in bracchio vulneratus statim decedit").

Some time after 124 BC, possibly disturbed by further incursions of rivals from the north, and apparently vanquished by the Parthian king Mithridates II, successor to Artabanus, the Yuezhi moved south to Bactria. Bactria had been conquered by the Macedonians under Alexander the Great in 330 BC, and since settled by the Hellenistic civilization of the Seleucids and the Greco-Bactrians for two centuries.

This event is recorded in Classical Greek sources, when Strabo presented them as a Scythian tribe, and explained that the Tokharians -- together with the Assianis, Passianis and Sakaraulis -- took part in the destruction of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom in the second half of the 2nd century BC:

"Most of the Scythians, beginning from the Caspian Sea, are called Dahae Scythae, and those situated more towards the east Massagetae and Sacae; the rest have the common appellation of Scythians, but each separate tribe has its peculiar name. All, or the greatest part of them, are nomads. The best known tribes are those who deprived the Greeks of Bactriana, the Asii, Pasiani, Tochari, and Sacarauli, who came from the country on the other side of the Jaxartes, opposite the Sacae and Sogdiani." (Strabo, 11-8-1)

The last Greco-Bactrian king Heliocles I retreated and moved his capital to the Kabul Valley. The eastern part of Bactria was occupied by Pashtun people.

As they settled in Bactria from around 125 BC, the Yuezhi became Hellenized to some degree, as suggested by their adoption of the Greek alphabet and by some remaining coins, minted in the style of the Greco-Bactrian kings, with the text in Greek. The area of Bactria they settled came to be known as Tokharistan, since the Yuezhi were called "Tocharians" by the Greeks.

Commercial relations with China also flourished, as many Chinese missions were sent throughout the 1st century BC: "The largest of these embassies to foreign states numbered several hundred persons, while even the smaller parties included over 100 members... In the course of one year anywhere from five to six to over ten parties would be sent out." (Shiji, trans. Burton Watson).

The Hou Hanshu also records the visit of Yuezhi envoys to the Chinese capital in 2 BC, who gave oral teachings on Buddhist sutras to a student, suggesting that some Yuezhi already followed the Buddhist faith during the 1st century BC (Baldev Kumar (1973)).

A later Chinese annotation in Shiji made by Zhang Shoujie during the early 8th century quoted Wan Zhen's Strange Things from the Southern Region (a now-lost text of from the Wu kingdom) describes the Kushans as living in the same general area north of India, in cities of Greco-Roman style, and with sophisticated handicraft. The quote are dubious, as Wan Zhen probably never visited the Yuezhi kingdom through the Silk Road, though he might had gathered his information from the trading ports in the coastal south. The Chinese never adopted the term "Guishuang", and continued to call them "Yuezhi":

"The Great Yuezhi [Kushans] is located about seven thousand li (about 3000 km) north of India. Their land is at a high altitude; the climate is dry; the region is remote. The king of the state calls himself "son of heaven". There are so many riding horses in that country that the number often reaches several hundred thousand. City layouts and palaces are quite similar to those of Daqin (the Roman empire). The skin of the people there is reddish white. People are skilful at horse archery. Local products, rarities, treasures, clothing, and upholstery are very good, and even India cannot compare with it."

Expansion into the Hindu-Kush

The area of the Hindu-Kush (Paropamisade) was ruled by the western Indo-Greek king until the reign of Hermaeus (reigned c. 90 BC–70 BC). After that date, no Indo-Greek kings are known in the area, which was probably overtaken by the neighbouring Yuezhi, who had been in relation with the Greeks for a long time. According to Bopearachchi, no trace of Indo-Scythians occupation (nor coins of major Indo-Scythian rulers such as Maues or Azes I) have been found in the Paropamisade and western Gandhara.

As they had done in Bactria with their copying of Greco-Bactrian coinage, the Yuezhi copied the coinage of Hermeaus on a vast scale, up to around 40 AD, when the design blends into the coinage of the Kushan king Kujula Kadphises.

The first presumed, and documented, Yuezhi prince is Sapadbizes (probably a yabgu's prince of Yuezhi confederation), who ruled around 20 BC, and minted in Greek and in the same style as the western Indo-Greek kings.

Foundation of the Kushan Empire

By the end of the 1st century BC, one of the five tribes of the Yuezhi, the Guishuang (貴霜, origin of name Kushan adopted in the West), managed to take control of the Yuezhi confederation. According to some theories, the Guishuang may have been distinct from the Yuezhi, possibly of Saka origins. From that point, the Yuezhi extended their control over the northwestern area of the Indian subcontinent, founding the Kushan Empire, which was to rule the region for several centuries. The Yuezhi came to be known as Kushan among Western civilizations, however the Chinese kept calling them Yuezhi throughout their historical records over a period of several centuries.

The Yuezhi/ Kushans expanded to the east during the 1st century AD, to found the Kushan Empire. The first Kushan emperor Kujula Kadphises ostensibly associated himself with Hermaeus on his coins, suggesting that he may have been one of his descendants by alliance, or at least wanted to claim his legacy.

The unification of the Yuezhi tribes and the rise of the Kushan is documented in the Chinese Historical chronicle Hou Hanshu:

"More than a hundred years later, the xihou (翖侯, "Allied Prince") of Guishuang (Badakhshan and the adjoining territories north of the Oxus), named Qiujiu Que (丘就卻, Kujula Kadphises) attacked and exterminated the four other xihou ("Allied Princes"). He set himself up as king of a kingdom called Guishuang (Kushan). He invaded Anxi (Parthia) and took the Gaofu (高附, Kabul) region. He also defeated the whole of the kingdoms of Puda and Jibin (罽賓, Kapiśa-Gandhāra). Qiujiu Que (Kujula Kadphises) was more than eighty years old when he died.

His son, Yan Gaozhen (閻高珍) (Vima Takto), became king in his place. He returned and defeated Tianzhu (Northwestern India) and installed a General to supervise and lead it. The Yuezhi then became extremely rich. All the kingdoms call [their king] the Guishuang (Kushan) king, but the Han call them by their original name, Da Yuezhi." (Hou Hanshu, trans. John Hill).

The Yuezhi/Kushan integrated Buddhism into a pantheon of many deities, became great promoters of Mahayana Buddhism, and their interactions with Greek civilization helped the Gandharan culture and Greco-Buddhism flourish.

During the 1st and 2nd century, the Kushan Empire expanded militarily to the north and occupied parts of the Tarim Basin, their original grounds, putting them at the center of the lucrative Central Asian commerce with the Roman Empire. When the Han Dynasty desired to advance north, Emperor Wu sent the explorer Zhang Qian to see the kingdoms to the west and to ally with the Yuezhi people, in order to fight the Xiongnu Mongol tribe. The Yuezhi continued to collaborate militarily with the Chinese against nomadic incursion, particularly with the Chinese general Ban Chao against the Sogdians in 84 AD, when the latter were trying to support a revolt by the king of Kashgar. Around 85 AD , they also assisted the Chinese general in an attack on Turfan, east of the Tarim Basin.

In recognition for their support to the Chinese, the Kushans requested, but were denied, a Han princess, even after they had sent presents to the Chinese court. In retaliation, they marched on Ban Chao in 86 AD with a force of 70,000, but, exhausted by the expedition, were finally defeated by the smaller Chinese force. The Kushans retreated and paid tribute to the Chinese Empire during the reign of the Chinese emperor Han He (89-106).

Circa 120 AD Kushan troops installed Chenpan - a prince who had been sent as a hostage to them, and had become a favorite of the Kushan Emperor - on the throne of Kashgar, thus expanding their power and influence in the Tarim Basin, and introduced the Brahmi script, the Indian Prakrit language for administration, and Greco-Buddhist art which developed into Serindian art.

Benefiting from this territorial expansion, the Yuezhi/Kushans were among the first to introduce Buddhism to northern and northeastern Asia, by direct missionary efforts and the translation of Buddhist scriptures into Chinese. Major Yuezhi missionary and translators included Lokaksema and Dharmaraksa, who went to China and established translation bureaus, thereby being at the center of the Silk Road transmission of Buddhism.

The Chinese kept referring to the Kushans as Da Yuezhi throughout the centuries. In the Sanguozhi (三國志, chap 3), it is recorded that in 229 AD "The king of the Da Yuezhi, Bodiao 波調 (Vasudeva I), sent his envoy to present tribute, and His Majesty (Emperor Cao Rui) granted him the title of "King of the Da Yuezhi Intimate with the Wei (魏)."

Presumed Yuezhi Rulers

• Sapadbizes (c. 20 BC)
• Agesiles (c. 20 BC)

 

 

Kushan Empire

The Kushan Empire (c. 1st–3rd centuries)

The Kushan Empire (c. 1st–3rd centuries) was a Bactrian state of Ancient India that at its cultural zenith, circa 105–250 AD, extended from what is now Tajikistan to Afghanistan, Pakistan and down into the Ganges river valley in northern India. The empire was created by the Kushan tribe of the Yuezhi confederation, believed to have been an Indo-European peoplefrom the eastern Tarim Basin, China, possibly related to the Tocharians. They had diplomatic contacts with Rome, Persia and China, and for several centuries were at the center of exchange between the East and the West.

Origins

Chinese sources describe the Guishuang (貴霜), i.e. the "Kushans", as one of the five aristocratic tribes of the Yuezhi, also spelled Yueh-chi, (月氏), a loose confederation of supposedly Indo-European peoples. The Yuezhi are also generally considered as the easternmost speakers of Indo-European languages, who had been living in the arid grasslands of eastern Central Asia, in modern-day Xinjiang and Gansu, possibly speaking versions of the Tocharian language, until they were driven west by the Xiongnu in 176–160 BCE. The five tribes constituting the Yuezhi are known in Chinese history as Xiūmì (休密), Guishuang (貴霜), Shuangmi (雙靡), Xidun (肸頓), and Dūmì (都密).

Historian John Keay contextualizes the movements of the Kushan within a larger setting of mass migrations taking place in the region:

Chinese sources tell of the construction of the Great Wall in the third century BC and the repulse of various marauding tribes. Forced to head west and eventually south, these tribes displaced others in an ethnic knock-on effect which lasted many decades and spread right across Central Asia. The Parthians from Iran and the Bactrian Greeks from Bactria had both been dislodged by the Shakas coming down from somewhere near the Aral Sea. But the Shakas had in turn been dislodged by the Yueh-chi who had themselves been driven west to Xinjiang by the Hiung-nu. The last, otherwise the Huns, would happily not reach India for a long time. But the Yueh-chi continued to press on the Shakas, and having forced them out of Bactria, it was sections or clans of these Yueh-chi who next began to move down into India in the second half of the first century AD."

The Yuezhi reached the Hellenic kingdom of Greco-Bactria, in the Bactrian territory (northernmost Afghanistan and Uzbekistan) around 135 BC. The displaced Greek dynasties resettled to the southeast in areas of the Hindu Kush and the Indus basin (in present day Pakistan), occupying the western part of the Indo-Greek Kingdom.

Early Kushans

Heraios

Some traces remain of the presence of the Kushan in the area of Bactria and Sogdiana. Archaeological structures are known in Takht-I-Sangin, Surkh Kotal (a monumental temple), and in the palace of Khalchayan. Various sculptures and friezes are known, representing horse-riding archers, and significantly men with artificially deformed skulls, such as the Kushan prince of Khalchayan (a practice well attested in nomadic Central Asia). On the ruins of ancient Hellenistic cities such as Ai-Khanoum, the Kushans are known to have built fortresses. The earliest documented ruler, and the first one to proclaim himself as a Kushan ruler was Heraios. He calls himself a "Tyrant" on his coins, and also exhibits skull deformation. He may have been an ally of the Greeks, and he shared the same style of coinage. Heraios may have been the father of the first Kushan emperor Kujula Kadphises.

A Multi-Cultural Empire

In the following century, the Guishuang (貴霜) gained prominence over the other Yuezhi tribes, and welded them into a tight confederation under yabgu (Commander) Kujula Kadphises. The name Guishuang was adopte in the West and modified into Kushan to designate the confederation, although the Chinese continued to call them Yuezhi.

Gradually wresting control of the area from the Scythian tribes, the Kushans expanded south into the region traditionally known as Gandhara (An area lying primarily in Pakistan's Pothowar, and Northwest Frontier Provinces region but going in an arc to include Kabul valley and part of Qandahar in Afghanistan) and established twin capitals near present-day Kabul and Peshawar then known as Kapisa and Pushklavati respectively.

The Kushans adopted elements of the Hellenistic culture of Bactria. They adapted the Greek alphabet (often corrupted) to suit their own language (with the additional development of the letter Þ "sh", as in "Kushan") and soon began minting coinage on the Greek model. On their coins they used Greek language legends combined with Pali legends (in the Kharoshthi script), until the first few years of the reign of Kanishka. After that date, they used Kushan language legends (in an adapted Greek script), combined with legends in Greek (Greek script) and legends in Pali (Kharoshthi script).

The Kushans are believed to have been predominantly Zoroastrian and later Buddhist as well. However, from the time of Wima Takto, many Kushans started adopting Hinduism. Like the Egyptians they absorbed the strong remnants of the Greek Culture of the Hellenistic Kingdoms, becoming at least partly Hellenised. The first great Kushan emperor Wima Kadphises have embraced Hinduism, as surmised by coins minted during the period. The following Kushan emperors represented a wide variety of faiths including Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism.

The rule of the Kushans linked the seagoing trade of the Indian Ocean with the commerce of the Silk Road through the long-civilized Indus Valley. At the height of the dynasty, the Kushans loosely oversaw a territory that extended to the Aral Sea through present-day Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan into northern India.

The loose unity and comparative peace of such a vast expanse encouraged long-distance trade, brought Chinese silks to Rome, and created strings of flourishing urban centers.

The Kushans and Buddhism

Cultural exchanges also flourished, encouraging the development of Greco-Buddhism, a fusion of Hellenistic and Buddhist cultural elements, that was to expand into central and northern Asia as Mahayana Buddhism.

Kanishka is renowned in Buddhist tradition for having convened a great Buddhist council in Kashmir. Kanishka also had the original Gandhari vernacular, or Prakrit, Buddhist texts translated into the language of Sanskrit. Along with the Indian emperors Ashoka and Harsha Vardhana and the Indo-Greek king Menander I (Milinda), Kanishka is considered by Buddhism as one of its greatest benefactors.

Buddhas of Bamyan

The Buddhas of Bamyan (Persian: بت های باميان - but hay-e bamiyaan) were two monumental statues of standing Buddhas carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley in the Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan, situated 230 km (143 miles) northwest of Kabul at an altitude of 2500 meters (8,202 ft). Built during the sixth century, the statues represented the classic blended style of Indo-Greek art.

They were intentionally dynamited and destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban, on orders from leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, after the Taliban government declared that they were "idols" (which are forbidden under Sharia law). International opinion strongly condemned the destruction of the Buddhas, which was viewed as an example of the intolerance of the Taliban and of fundamentalist Islam. Japan and Switzerland, among others, have pledged support for the rebuilding of the statues.

Bamyan lies on the Silk Road, a caravan route linking the markets of China with those of Western Asia. Until the eleventh century AD, Bamyan was part of the kingdom of Gandhara. It was the site of several Buddhist monasteries, and a thriving center for religion, philosophy, and Indian art. It was a Buddhist religious site from the second century up to the time of the Islamic invasion in the ninth century.

Monks at the monasteries lived as hermits in small caves carved into the side of the Bamyan cliffs. Many of these monks embellished their caves with religious statuary and elaborate, brightly-colored frescoes.

The two most prominent statues were the giant, standing Buddhas Vairocana and Sakyamuni, measuring 55 and 37 metres (180 and 121 feet) high respectively, the largest examples of standing Buddha carvings in the world. They were perhaps the most famous cultural landmarks of the region and the site was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site along with the surrounding cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the Bamyan Valley. The statues represented the immense architectural skill of the Indian civilization as well as the promotion of such arts before being destroyed by Islamic forces.

The smaller of the two statues was built in AD 507, the larger in 554. The statues are believed to have been built by the Kushans, with the guidance of local Buddhist monks, at the heyday of their empire.

The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang passed through the area around AD 630 and described Bamyan as a flourishing Buddhist center "with more than ten monasteries and more than a thousand monks". He also noted that both Buddha figures were "decorated with gold and fine jewels" (Wriggins, 1995). Xuan Zang's account is intriguing as he mentions a third, even larger, reclining statue of Buddha; although it is generally believed destroyed, some archaeological expeditions are searching for it.

A monumental sitting Buddha similar in style to those at Bamyan still exists in the Bingling Temple caves in China's Gansu province.

The destruction of the statues led to widespread anger in Europe and North America because, in part, it was an affront to many Westerners who believe that religious expression is a fundamental freedom. The destruction of the Bamyan Buddhas became a symbol of oppression and a rallying point. Despite the fact that Afghans are Muslim, they too had embraced their past and many were appalled by this destruction.

Territorial Expansion

Direct archaeological evidence of a Kushan rule of long duration is basically available in an area stretching from Surkh Kotal, Begram, the summer capital of the Kushans, Peshawar the capital under Kanishka I, Taxila and Mathura, the winter capital of the Kushans.

Other areas of probable rule include Khwarezm (Russian archaeological findings) Kausambi (excavations of the Allahabad University), Sanchi and Sarnath (inscriptions with names and dates of Kushan kings), Malwa and Maharashtra, Orissa (imitation of Kushan coins, and large Kushan hoards).

The recently discovered Rabatak inscription tends to confirm large Kushan dominions in the heartland of India. The lines 4 to 7 of the inscription describe the cities which were under the rule of Kanishka, among which six names are identifiable: Ujjain, Kundina, Saketa, Kausambi, Pataliputra, and Champa (although the text is not clear whether Champa was a possession of Kanishka or just beyond it).

Northward, in the 2nd century AD, the Kushans under Kanishka made various forays into the Tarim Basin, seemingly the original ground of their ancestors the Yuezhi, where they had various contacts with the Chinese. Both archaeological findings and literary evidence suggest Kushan rule, in Kashgar, Yarkand and Khotan.

As late as the 3rd century AD, decorated coins of Huvishka were dedicated at Bodh Gaya together with other gold offerings under the "Enlightenment Throne" of the Buddha, suggesting direct Kushan influence in the area during that period.

Main Kushan Rulers

Kujula Kadphises

Kujula Kadphises (30–80): According to the Hou Hanshu: "the prince (xihou) of Guishuang (Badakhshan and the adjoining territories north of the Oxus), named Kujula Kadphises (丘就却, "Qiujiuque") attacked and exterminated the four other princes (xihou). He set himself up as king of a kingdom called Guishuang."

He invaded Anxi (Parthia) and took the Gaofu (Kabul) region. He also defeated the whole of the kingdoms of Puda, and Jibin (Kapisha-Gandhara). Qiujiuque (Kujula Kadphises) was more than eighty years old when he died."

These conquests probably took place sometime between 45 and 60, and laid the basis for the Kushan Empire which was rapidly expanded by his descendants.

Kujula issued an extensive series of coins and fathered at least two sons, Sadaskana (who is known from only two inscriptions, especially the Rabatak inscription, and apparently never have ruled), and seemingly Vima Taktu.

Kujula Kadphises was the great grandfather of Kanishka.

Vima Taktu

Vima Taktu (80–105): Vima Takt[u] (or Tak[to], Ancient Chinese: 阎膏珍 Yangaozhen ) is not mentioned in the Rabatak inscription (Sadashkana is instead. See also the reference to Sims-William’s article below). He was the predecessor of Vima Kadphises, and Kanishka I. He expanded the Kushan Empire into the northwest of the Indian subcontinent. The Hou Hanshu says:

"His [Kujula Kadphises'] son, Yangaozhen (Vima Taktu), became king in his place. He conquered Tianzhu (Northwestern India) and installed a General to supervise and lead it. The Yuezhi then became extremely rich. All the kingdoms call [their king] the Guishuang (Kushan) king, but the Han call them by their original name, Da Yuezhi."

Vima Kadphises

Vima Kadphises (105–127): Vima Kadphises (Kushan language: Οοημο Καδφισης) was a Kushan emperor from around 90–100 AD, the son of Sadashkana and the grandson of Kujula Kadphises, and the father of Kanishka I, as detailed by the Rabatak inscription.

Vima Kadphises added to the Kushan territory by his conquests in Afghanistan and north-west India. He issued an extensive series of coins and inscriptions. He was the first to introduce gold coinage in India, in addition to the existing copper and silver coinage.

Kanishka I

Kanishka I (127–147): The rule of Kanishka, fifth Kushan king, who flourished for at least 28 years from c. 127. Upon his accession, Kanishka ruled a huge territory (virtually all of northern India), south to Ujjain and Kundina and east beyond Pataliputra, according to the Rabatak inscription: "In the year one, it has been proclaimed unto India, unto the whole realm of the governing class, including Koonadeano (Kaundinya< Kundina) and the city of Ozeno (Ozene, Ujjain) and the city of Zageda (Saketa) and the city of Kozambo (Kausambi) and the city of Palabotro (Pataliputra) and so long unto (i.e. as far as) the city of Ziri-tambo (Sri-Champa)." Rabatak inscription, Lines 4–6.

His territory was administered from two capitals: Purushapura (now Peshawar in northern Pakistan) and Mathura, in northern India. He is also credited (along with Raja Dab) for building the massive, ancient Fort at Bathinda (Qila Mubarak), in the modern city of Bathinda, Indian Punjab.

The Kushans also had a summer capital in Bagram (then known as Kapisa), where the "Begram Treasure", comprising works of art from Greece to China, has been found. According to the Rabatak inscription, Kanishka was the son of Vima Kadphises, the grandson of Sadashkana, and the great-grandson of Kujula Kadphises. Kanishka’s era is now generally accepted to have begun in 127 on the basis of Harry Falk’s ground-breaking research. Kanishka’s era was used as a calendar reference by the Kushans for about a century, until the decline of the Kushan realm.

Vāsishka: Vāsishka was a Kushan emperor, who seems to have a short reign following Kanishka. His rule is recorded as far south as Sanchi (near Vidisa), where several inscriptions in his name have been found, dated to the year 22 (The Sanchi inscription of "Vaksushana" – i. e. Vasishka Kushana) and year 28 (The Sanchi inscription of Vasaska – i. e. Vasishka) of the Kanishka era.

Huvishka

Huvishka (140–183): Huvishka (Kushan: "Ooishki") was a Kushan emperor from the death of Kanishka (assumed on the best evidence available to be in 140 AD) until the succession of Vasudeva I about forty years later. His rule was a period of retrenchment and consolidation for the Empire. In particular he devoted time and effort early in his reign to the exertion of greater control over the city of Mathura.

Vasudeva I

Vasudeva I (191–225): Vasudeva I (Kushan: Βαζοδηο "Bazodeo", Chinese: 波調 "Bodiao") was the last of the "Great Kushans." Named inscriptions dating from year 64 to 98 of Kanishka’s era suggest his reign extended from at least 191 to 225 CE. He was the last great Kushan emperor, and the end of his rule coincides with the invasion of the Sassanids as far as northwestern India, and the establishment of the Indo-Sassanids or Kushanshahs from around 240 AD.

Contacts with Rome

Several Roman sources describe the visit of ambassadors from the Kings of Bactria and India during the 2nd century, probably referring to the Kushans.

Historia Augusta, speaking of Emperor Hadrian (117–138) tells:

"Reges Bactrianorum legatos ad eum, amicitiae petendae causa, supplices miserunt"

"The kings of the Bactrians sent supplicant ambassadors to him, to seek his friendship."

Also in 138, according to Aurelius Victor (Epitome‚ XV, 4), and Appian (Praef., 7), Antoninus Pius, successor to Hadrian, received some Indian, Bactrian (Kushan) and Hyrcanian ambassadors.

The Chinese Historical Chronicle of the Hou Hanshu also describes the exchange of goods between northwestern India and the Roman Empire at that time: "To the west (Tiazhu, northwestern India) communicates with Da Qin (the Roman Empire). Precious things from Da Qin can be found there, as well as fine cotton cloths, excellent wool carpets, perfumes of all sorts, sugar loaves, pepper, ginger, and black salt."

The summer capital of the Kushan in Begram has yielded a considerable amount of goods imported from the Roman Empire, in particular various types of glassware.

Contacts with China

During the 1st and 2nd century, the Kushan Empire expanded militarily to the north and occupied parts of the Tarim Basin, their original grounds, putting them at the center of the profitable Central Asian commerce with the Roman Empire. They are related to have collaborated militarily with the Chinese against nomadic incursion, particularly when they collaborated with the Chinese general Ban Chao against the Sogdians in 84, when the latter were trying to support a revolt by the king of Kashgar. Around 85, they also assisted the Chinese general in an attack on Turfan, east of the Tarim Basin.

In recognition for their support to the Chinese, the Kushans requested, but were denied, a Han princess, even after they had sent presents to the Chinese court. In retaliation, they marched on Ban Chao in 86 with a force of 70,000, but, exhausted by the expedition, were finally defeated by the smaller Chinese force. The Yuezhi retreated and paid tribute to the Chinese Empire during the reign of the Chinese emperor Han He (89–106).

Later, around 116, the Kushans under Kanishka established a kingdom centered on Kashgar, also taking control of Khotan and Yarkand, which were Chinese dependencies in the Tarim Basin, modern Xinjiang. They introduced the Brahmi script, the Indian Prakrit language for administration, and expanded the influence of Greco-Buddhist art which developed into Serindian art.

The Kushans are again recorded to have sent presents to the Chinese court in 158–159 during the reign of the Chinese emperor Han Huan.

Following these interactions, cultural exhanges further increased, and Kushan Buddhist missionaries, such as Lokaksema, became active in the Chinese capital cities of Loyang and sometimes Nanjing, where they particularly distinguished themselves by their translation work. They were the first recorded promoters of Hinayana and Mahayana scriptures in China, greatly contributing to the Silk Road transmission of Buddhism.

Decline

After the death of Vasudeva I in 225, the Kushan empire split into western and eastern halves. The Western Kushans (in Afghanistan) were soon subjugated by the Persian Sassanid Empire and lost Bactria and other territories. In 248 they were defeated again by the Persians, who deposed the Western dynasty and replaced them with Persian vassals known as the Kushanshas (or Indo-Sassanids).

The Eastern Kushan kingdom was based in the Punjab. Around 270 their territories on the Gangetic plain became independent under local dynasties such as the Yaudheyas. Then in the mid 4th century they were subjugated by the Gupta Empire under Samudragupta.

In 360 a Kushan vassal named Kidara overthrew the old Kushan dynasty and established the Kidarite Kingdom. The Kushan style of Kidarite coins indicates they considered themselves as Kushans. The Kidarite seem to have been rather prosperous, although on a smaller scale than their Kushan predecessors.

These remnants of the Kushan empire were ultimately wiped out in the 5th century by the invasions of the White Huns, and later the expansion of Islam.

 

 

Hephthalites

Asia in 500 AD, showing the Hepthalite Khanate at its greatest extent

The Hephthalites or White Huns were a Central Asian nomadic confederation whose precise origins and composition remain obscure. They were called Ephthalites by the Greeks, and Hunas by the Indians. According to Chinese chronicles they were originally a tribe living to the north of the Great Wall and were known as Hoa or Hoa-tun. Elsewhere they were called White Huns. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, they had no cities or system of writing, lived in felt tents, and practiced polyandry, while very little is known of their language.

According to historical texts, they are related to the European Huns: Procopius: (Book I. ch. 3): "the Ephthalitae Huns, who are called White Huns... The Ephthalitae are of the stock of the Huns in fact as well as in name, however they do not mingle with any of the Huns known to us, for they occupy a land neither adjoining nor even very near to them; but their territory lies immediately to the north of Persia...", furthermore: "They are not nomads like the other Hunnic peoples, but for a long period have been established in a goodly land.", though there is no definitive evidence to this contact (because it is thought that this used to be a term which has been used by outside observers to denote very different nomadic confederations).

It seems that the Hephtalites were an agricultural people with a developed set of laws. They were first mentioned by the Chinese, who described them as living in Dzungaria around AD 125. They displaced the Scythians and conquered Sogdiana and Khorasan before 425. After that, they crossed the Syr Darya (Jaxartes) River and invaded Persia. In Persia, they were initially held off by Bahram Gur but later around AD 483–85, they succeeded in making Persia a tributary state. After a series of wars in the period around AD 503-513, they were driven out of Persia and were completely defeated in AD 557 by Khosru I though their polity came under the Gokturks thereafter. The White Huns also invaded the regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan and succeeded in extending their domain to include the Ganges valley. They temporarily overthrew the Gupta empire but were eventually driven out of India in 528 by a Hindu coalition and had to settle down in what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Origins

Many theories have been discussed regarding the origins of the Hephthalites, with the "Turkic" and "Indo-European" theories being the most prominent ones.

For many years, scholars suggested that they were possibly of Tibetan or Turkic-stock, and it seems likely that at least some groups amongst the Hephthalites were Turkic-speakers. In 1959, Kazuo Enoki put forward the hypothesis that they were probably East Indo-Iranians as some sources indicated that they were originally from Tokharestan, which is known to have been inhabited by Indo-Iranian people in antiquity. Richard Frye is cautiously accepting of Enoki's hypothesis, while at the same time stressing that the Hephthalites "were probably a mixed horde". More recently Xavier Tremblay's very detailed examination of surviving Hephthalite personal names has indicated that Enoki's hypothesis that they were East Iranian may well be correct, but the matter remains unresolved in academic circles.

According to the Encyclopaedia Iranica and Encyclopaedia of Islam, Hephthalites possibly originated in northeastern Iran and northwestern India. They apparently had no connection with the European Huns, but may have been causally related with their movement. It is noteworthy that the tribes in question deliberately called themselves "Huns" in order to frighten their enemies.

The earliest information about the Ephthalites comes from the Chinese chronicles, in which it is stated that they were originally a tribe of the great Yue-Chi, living to the north of the Great Wall, and subject to the Jwen-Jwen (Rouran), as were also the Turks at one time. Their original name was Hoa or Hoa-tun; subsequently they styled themselves Ye-tha-i-li-to (厌带夷栗陁) after the name of their royal family, or more briefly Ye-tha (嚈噠) descended from one of the 5 Yuezhi families (which included Kushan). There were various theories about their origins documented by the ancient Chinese chroniclers, as well as by Procopius of Caesarea:

Procopius claims that the Hephthalites lived in a prosperous territory, and that they were the only Huns with fair complexions. According to him, they did not live as nomads, did acknowledge a single king, observed a well-regulated constitution, and behaved justly towards neighboring states. He also describes the burial of their nobles in tumuli, accompanied by the boon-companions who had been their retainers in their lifetimes; this practice contrasts with evidence of cremation among the Chionites in Ammianus and with remains found by excavators for the European Huns and remains in some deposits ascribed to the Chionites in Central Asia. It is therefore assumed that the Hephthalites constituted a second Hunnish wave who entered Bactria early in the fifth century AD, and who seem to have driven the Kidarites into Gandhara.

Some Hephthalites may have been a prominent tribe or clan of the Chionites. According to Richard Nelson Frye:

"Just as later nomadic empires were confederations of many peoples, we may tentatively propose that the ruling groups of these invaders were, or at least included, Turkic-speaking tribesman from the east and north. Although most probably the bulk of the people in the confederation of Chionites and then Hephtalites spoke an Iranian language and this was the last time in the history of Central Asia that Iranian-speaking nomads played any role; hereafter all nomads would speak Turkic languages."

The newly-discovered ancient writings found in Afghanistan reveal that the Middle Iranian Bactrian language written in Greek script was not the native idiom of the Hephthalites but the traditional language of administration in this region from Kushan times. There is also evidence of the use of a Turkic language under the Hephthalites. The Bactrian documents also attest several Turkic royal titles (such as Khaqan), indicating an important influence of Turkic people on the Hephthalites, although these could also be explained by later Turkic infiltration south of the Oxus.

Etymology

Hepthalite is meaning of White Hun (in Turkish Ak Hun or Beyaz Hunlar). The term Hepthalite was first used by Persian writers to refer to a 6th century empire on the northern and eastern periphery of their land. The élite Hephthal clan certainly appears to be quite distinct from the Huns who ravaged Europe in the fourth century AD.

Although the Hephthalite empire was known in China, as Yanda (嚈噠), Chinese chroniclers recognized that these terms actually came from the leaders of the empire's polity - the polity which in contrast are documented as having called themselves Huá (滑) in the same sources. The name of the Hephthal ruling elite seems to have applied to one of the 5 Yuezhi families from the Kushan Empire according to some sources.

India knew the Hephthalites by the Sanskrit name Sveta-Hūna (meaning White Huns).

Armenian sources also mention a White Hun origin for the Parthian Arsaces.

According to Simokattes, they were the Alchon, who united under the Hephthal as the "vultures descended on the people" around AD 460.

The modern Chinese variation Yanda has been given various Latinised renderings such as "Yeda", although the more archaic Korean pronunciation "Yeoptal" 엽달 is more compatible with the Greek Hephthal and is certainly a more archaic form.

The term Haital means "big" or "powerful" in the dialect of Bukhara, but might also mean "seven".

Different spellings include Ephthalite, Epthalite, Ephtalite, Eptalite, Euthalite, Hepthalite, Hephtalite, and Heptalite.

According to B.A. Litvinsky, the name of Hephtalite rulers used in the Shahnameh are Iranian

According to Xavier Tremblay, one of the Heptalite ruler's name "Khingila" has the same root as the Sogdian xnγr and Wakhi xiŋgār and its meaning is "Sword". Toramāna is derived from Tarua-manah. The name Mihirakula is derived from Miθra-kula which is Iranian for Relier upon Mithra. In Sanskrit, Mihirakula would mean from the "Kul (family) of Mihir (Mithra)".

According to Janos Harmatta, the name Mihirakula is Iranian for "Mithra's Begotten".

Hephthalites in South Asia

Hepthalite coin of King Lakhana of Udyana, legend "Raja Lakhana (udaya) ditya"

In India, the Hephthalites were not distinguished from their immediate predecessors and are known by the same name Huna. The Huna had already established themselves in Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier Province of present day Pakistan by the first half of the fifth century, and the Gupta emperor Skandagupta had repelled a Hūna invasion in 455 before the Hephthal clan came along.

The Hephthalites with their capital at Bamiyan continued the pressure on South Asia's northwest frontier and broke east by the end of the fifth century, hastening the disintegration of the Gupta Empire. They made their capital at the city of Sakala, modern Sialkot under their Emperor Mihirakula.

After the sixth century, little is recorded in South Asia about the Hephthalites, and what happened to them is unclear; some historians surmise that the remaining Hephthalites were assimilated into the population of northwest India and Pakistan.

 

 

Uar

Uar (滑), was the self designation used by the dominant ethnicity of Guòlì (過利) in a confederation known to the Chinese as the Yanda (嚈噠) and to the west as the Hephthalites. It was the largest of one of the three ethnic components constituting the Hephthalite federation. Peoples with similar ethnicons had been present along the Silk Road for centuries, and several of the Central European family names actually derive from the names of such tribes. The Chinese classic Liang Zhigongtu describes them as originating in the Hua (state) (cf. Mongolia). Simokattes's term Uar is also sometimes written War or Var. The variation Huá (滑), is the name the Hephthalite polity used of themselves according to the Chinese classic Liang chih-kung-t'u.

Theophylaktos Simokattes, mentions the Hunnoi as the other major component under the Hephthal ruling elite. They are identified as the "true" Avars of the east; the true political force behind what Simokattes calls the "Pseudo-Avars" who eventually settled down in Pannonia (Pannonia is an ancient province of the Roman Empire. Pannonia was located over the territory of the present-day western half of Hungary with parts in Austria, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.) This was in response to the Göktürks who supported the Khwarezmian Uar rulers they established in Patria Onoguria as true Avars and encouraged the Byzantines to regard the "Avar"-Huns who entered Europe as Pseudo-Avars.

Origin and Migration

According to Ferdowsi their legendary ancestor was Afrasiabus. The sketch exhibited in the Portraits of Periodical Offering of Liang depicts the Uar\Huá (滑) envoy as East Asian and this along with J. Marquart's discovery of many similarities between the terms for the Hephthalites in India and words in the Mongolian language such as the term Khagan (可汗), have led scholars to believe that at least a portion of their population had to have been of proto-Mongolic origin, while some of their practices remind us of Hūsìmì (呼似密). This implies the diverse range of peoples under the Hepthalite dynasty. Like Procopius, contemporary Chinese chroniclers had their own theories about the origins of the Hephthalite and their "Uar" polity.

Throughout the 5th century, it was the Uar who managed to succeed to the Central Eurasian Hun heritage in a campaign which spread from the Tian Shan to the Carpathians. Because of the Later Zhao the Oro (deer) people were divided, half going to the Heilongjiang-Amur and half went west. By 460 the Uar had taken over much of Central Eurasia from Xinjiang to the Volga River, though very little is known about the area from the late 5th to early 6th centuries.

The Yanda & The Uar/Huá

According to the Book of Liang, the Yanda were an offshoot of the Yuezhi, supposedly Indo-European statelet situated to what is now Turpan. It mentions an envoy sent by their Yandaiyilituo/Ephthalite king from 516 to the court, at present day Nanjing. The Uar/Huá are supposed to have become a subject under the yoke of the Rouran as indicated in the sources.

Chinese chronicles recognise that the Yanda term actually only came from the name of a clan leading the Uar/Huá. Yanda in the Book of Wei, are supposed to be a variety of the Great Yuezhi while the Uar/Huá, who are also described, are possibly an offshoot of the Gaoche. The Book of Wei indicates, however, that the Yanda do not share a similar language with the Rouran or Gaoche. It is said that the Yanda language can be easily translated through the Tuyuhun, a group of peoples from the Koko Nor. Kazuo Enoki believed the Yanda to be an Iranian group like the Hazara, in which case they may have been related to the Tocharians.

Throughout the 5th century, it was the Huá who managed on succeed to the steppe heritage in a campaign which spread from the Tian Shan to the Carpathians. By around 460, the Huá had taken over much of Central Eurasia from Xinjiang to the Volga River, and founded a capital at the city of Badiyan or Pendjikent, near what is now Khujand, though very little is known about the area from the late 5th to early 6th centuries.

Uar-Hunnoi

The Kidarite dynasty which ruled the Xionites came from the Uar. As a result, the Xionites have sometimes been called Uar-Hunnoi. Simokattes calls the Uar the "real" Avars of the east and the true political force behind what he calls the "pseudo" Avars (Eurasian Avars) who eventually settled down in Transylvania.

Uar and Hunnoi are the names associated with the two biggest tribes of "Procopius's White Huns" commonly identified with the Sanskrit SvetaHuna but called Varkhon or Varkunites (OuarKhonitai) by Menander Protector. Procopius writes that these White Huns are white-skinned and have an organized kingship. According to him, their life is not wild/nomadic, and they live in cities. Around 630, Theophylaktos Simokattes wrote that the European "Avars" were initially composed of two nations, the Uar and the Hunnoi tribes. He wrote that: "...the Barsilt, the Unogurs and the Sabirs were struck with horror... and honoured the Newcomers with brilliant gifts..." when the Avars first arrived in their lands in 555AD.

The Uar and the Hunnoi are supposed to have united around 460 under the rule of one of the five Yuezhi families - the Hephthal. They were also joined near the end of the 6th century by the Zabender, Tarnach and Kotzagerek Huns and they became known as Onogurs, from whom the name Hungary derives. The Onogurs themselves were composed of three groups. See also Avars and Kabars. During the 7th century around 670 the Bulgars under Kouber and Asparukh, who were also part of their empire, revolted, the Kouber tribes moving south to the Pelasgian plain and Asparukh leading his people south of the Danube.

For more on the Uar-Hunnoi see Alchon.

 

 

"Barbarians" according to Chinese cosmology. Those in the east were called Dongyi (東夷), those in the west Xirong (西戎), those in the south Nanman (南蠻), and those in the north Beidi (北狄).

Chionites, Chionitae or Xionites (Chinese: Xiōng (匈) or Xīróng (西戎) meaning "Western Barbarians", Middle Persian: Xiyon, (Hiun/Hion), Avestan: Xiiaona) were a nomadic tribe prominent in Transoxania and Bactria.

Chionites had arrived in the mid-4th century with the wave of immigration from Central Asia into Iran in late antiquity. They had been influenced by the Kushan and Bactrian culture, and had become a threat on the northeastern frontiers of the Sassanid Empire.

Nomenclature: Red Xyon and transference to Red Huns

The name Xyon is familiar in Avestan and Pahlavi texts. In the Avestan tradition (Yts. 9.30-31, 19.87) the Xiiaona were characterized as enemies of Vishtaspa, the patron of Zoroaster. In the later Pahlavi tradition, the Red Huns and "White Huns" (Sveta-Hunas) are mentioned. The Red Huns of the Pahlavi tradition (7th A.D.) has been identified by Harold Walter Bailey as the Kermichiones or Ermechiones. According to Bailey, the name Xyon was transferred later to the Huns owing to similarity of sound, as Tur was adapted to Turk in Pahlavi tradition.

Origins

It is difficult to determine the ethnic composition of Chionites. In addition, there is no evidence that the Chionites were different from the Ephthalites. In other words, the Epthalites may have been a prominent tribe or clan of the Chionites.

According to A.S. Shahbazi (article dated 2005):

"On the northeastern front, the Chionites (q.v.), a Hunnic people who by the early fourth century had mixed with north Iranian elements in Transoxiana and adopted the Kushan-Bactrian language, threatened Persia."

According to Wolfgang Felix (article dated 1992):

"The Chionites were a tribe of probable Iranian origin that was prominent in Bactria and Transoxania in late antiquity."

According to Richard Nelson Frye (book dated 1991):

"Just as later nomadic empires were confederations of many peoples, we may tentatively propose that the ruling groups of these invaders were, or at least included, Turkic-speaking tribesman from the east and north, although most probably the bulk of the people in the confederation of Chionites and then Hephtalites spoke an Iranian language and this was the last time in the history of Central Asia that Iranian-speaking nomads played any role; hereafter all nomads would speak Turkic languages."

According to Carlile Aylmer Macartney (article dated 1944):

"We must consider briefly a third nation playing a role in our sources: the Kermichiones. Who were these people? They cannot have been the Turks-Toue-Kioue, since their embassy reached Constantinople while the Avars were still negotiating with Rome for settlement inside the frontier-probably, therefore, as early as A.D. 558, whereas the true Turks appeared there first in 568; further, their ruler's name was `Aσκήλτ or Scultor, while the Khagan of the Turks at that time was Silzabul, Dizabul, or Istämi. Neither can they have been the Juan Juan, as Marquart suggests; nor the Epthalites, who were well known to the Byzantines and would not have been described in this way. Moreover, the Epthalites were known as White Huns, and Mr. Bailey has pointed out that the word Karmir xyon, meaning Red Chyon, occurs in a Pahlavi text in juxtaposition with SpEt xyon, White Chyon. The name Chyon, originally that of some other race, was "transferred later to the Huns owing to the similarity of sound". The nation can hardly be other than that which appears in the fourth century, under the name of Chionits, in the steppes on the north-west frontier of Persia. These Chionites were probably a branch of the Huns, the other branch of which afterwards appeared in Europe, the latter appear to have attacked and conquered by the Alans, then living between Urals and the Volga about A.D.360, while the first mention of the Chionites is dated A.D.356. In the fifth century the name is replaced by that of the Kushan or of the Kidarite Huns, who are clearly identical with the Kushan."

According to Sir Harold Walter Bailey (article dated 1932):

"Xyon. This name is familiar in Pahlavi and Avestan texts. It would appear to be a name of an enemy of the Iranian people in Avestan times, transferred later to the Huns owing to similarity of sound, as Tur was adapted to Turk in Pahlavi. In the present passage (a passage from the Pahlavi book of Bahman Yasht) three divisions of this people seem to be recognized, the Xyon with the Turks, the Karmir (Red) Xyon, and the White Xyon."

Early History

In the earliest periods, Xiōng (匈) were more of a concern to the Chinese than to the Persians. They dominated the smaller Donghu nations beyond Tianshan in the East Asian steppes who were known as the Xiong (匈)'s Serfs until the Xiōng (匈)'s hold over them was broken by the Chinese by the end of the Sino-Xiongnu War. Chionitae campaigns are better documented in connection to a number of events of the political history of Central Asia particularly during the second half of the 4th century AD until the mid 5th century AD. Their most famous rulers were called the Kidarites. At the end of the 4th century AD, a new wave of Hunnic tribes (Alchoni) invaded Bactria, pushing the Kidarites into Gandhara.

Alchon

Alchon or Alχon (Uarkhon) became the new name of the Chionites in 460 when Khingila I united the Uar with the Chionites under his Hephthal ruling élite. In India the Alchon were not distinguished from their immediate White Huns predecessors and both are known as Sveta-Hunas there. Perhaps complimenting this term, Procopius (527-565) wrote that they were white skinned, had an organized kingship, and that their life was not wild/nomadic but that they lived in cities. The Alchon were called Varkhon or Varkunites (OuarKhonitai) by Menander Protector (538-582) literally referring to the Uar & Hunnoi. Around 630, Theophylact Simocatta wrote that the European "Avars" were initially composed of two nations, the Uar and the Hunnoi tribes. He wrote that: "...the Barsilt, the Unogurs and the Sabirs were struck with horror... and honoured the Newcommers with brilliant gifts..." when the Avars first arrived in their lands in 555AD.

Although the power of the Alchon in Bactria was shattered in the 560's by a combination of Sassanid and proto-Turkic forces, the last Hephthal king Narana/Narendra managed to maintain some kind of rule between 570 and 600 AD over the 'nspk' or 'napki' or 'nezak' tribes that remained after most of the Alchon had fled to the west.

Coinage

Alchon Huns refers to a tribe which minted coins in Bactria in the 5th & 6th centuries. The name Khigi on one of the coins and Narendra on another has led some scholars of the area to believe that the Hephthalite Khagans Khingila and Narana were of the AlChoNo tribe inscribed in Bactrian script on the coins in question. They imitated the earlier style of their Hephthalite predecessors, the Kidarite Hun successors to the Kushans. In particular the Alchon style imitates the coins of Kidarite Varhran I (syn. Kushan Varhran IV).

 

 

Hunni

Hunni (Pahlavi: Huna), or Yun (狁) or Xūn (獯), is the name of a tribal polity from Turan that organised themselves into Northern "Black" (beyond the Jaxartes), Southern "Red" (in Hindu Kush south of the Oxus), Eastern "Blue" (in Tianshan), and Western "White" (around Khiva) hordes. They were the Húnyí (混夷) "Mixed-Barbarians" that Chinese records mention roaming in the west.

Echoes of ancient struggles with them can be seen in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh in the conflicts with Turan. Artefacts found from the area they inhabited dating from their period indicate their totem animal seems to have been the (rein)deer. An inscription on the walls of the royal palace in Persepolis about Darius's empire calls them Hunae. It appears that a combination of both the Battle of Ikh Bayan and Ban Chao's efforts are responsible for their first appearance in the West. The Armenian historian Moses of Khorene (fifth century), in his "History of Armenia," introduces the Hunni near the Sarmatians and goes on to describe how they captured the city of Balk (Armenian "Kush") sometime between 194 and 214 explaining why the Greeks call that city Hunuk. Later, the Armenian Patriarch John (c.728) mentions an ancient town of Hunor's foundation (Hunorcerta) in the Otene region suggesting a connection to the Utigur. The Armenian Agathangelus also mentions also that there are "Huns" living amongst the peoples of the Caucasus Mtns.

Rule came from the Hū (呼) clan (originally from Afrasiab) based in Hūsìmì (呼似密). According to Sima Qian, these rulers were descendants of Chunwei (淳維), son of Jie, the final ruler of the Xia Dynasty. According to the Armenian sources their capital was at Balkh (Armenian: Kush).

They have thus often been referred to as Xiōng (匈) or Xīyung (西戎) meaning "Western Barbarians" in China and Xiyon (Hiun/Hion) in Persian. They dominated the smaller Donghu nations beyond Tianshan in the East Asian steppes who were known as the Xiong(匈)'s Serfs until the Xiong's hold over them was broken by the Chinese by the end of the the Sino-Xiongnu War.

 

 

History of Xinjiang

Early History: According to JP Mallory, the Chinese sources describe the existence of "white people with long hair" or the Bai people in the Shan Hai Jing, who lived beyond their northwestern border.

The very well preserved Tarim mummies with Caucasoid features, often with reddish or blond hair, today displayed at the Ürümqi Museum and dated to the 3rd century BC, have been found in precisely the same area of the Tarim Basin. Various nomadic tribes, such as the Yuezhi were part of the large migration of Indo-European speaking peoples who were settled in eastern Central Asia (possibly as far as Gansu) at that time. The Ordos culture situated at northern China east of the Yuezhi, are another example.

Nomadic cultures such as the Yuezhi are documented in the area of Xinjiang where the first known reference to the Yuezhi was made in 645 BC by the Chinese Guan Zhong in his Guanzi 管子(Guanzi Essays) . He described the Yuzhi 禺氏, or Niuzhi 牛氏, as a people from the north-west who supplied jade to the Chinese from the nearby mountains of Yuzhi 禺氏 at Gansu. The supply of jade from the Tarim Basin from ancient times is indeed well documented archaeologically: "It is well known that ancient Chinese rulers had a strong attachment to jade. All of the jade items excavated from the tomb of Fuhao of the Shang dynasty, more than 750 pieces, were from Khotan in modern Xinjiang. As early as the mid-first millennium BC the Yuezhi engaged in the jade trade, of which the major consumers were the rulers of agricultural China." (Liu, 2001).

The nomadic tribes of the Yuezhi are also documented in detail in Chinese historical accounts, in particular the 2nd-1st century BC "Records of the Great Historian", or Shiji, by Sima Qian, which state that they "were flourishing" but regularly in conflict with the neighbouring tribe of the Xiongnu to the northeast. According to these accounts:

The Yuezhi originally lived in the area between the Qilian or Heavenly Mountains (Tian Shan) and Dunhuang, but after they were defeated by the Xiongnu they moved far away to the west, beyond Dayuan, where they attacked and conquered the people of Daxia and set up the court of their king on the northern bank of the Gui [= Oxus] River. A small number of their people who were unable to make the journey west sought refuge among the Qiang barbarians in the Southern Mountains, where they are known as the Lesser Yuezhi

Struggle between Xiongnu and Han China: Traversed by the Northern Silk Road, Western Regions or Xinjiang is the Chinese name for the Tarim and Dzungaria regions of what is now northwest China. At the beginning of the Han Dynasty (206 BC – AD 220), the region was subservient to the Xiongnu, a powerful nomadic people based in modern Mongolia. In the 2nd century BC, Han China sent Zhang Qian as an envoy to the states in the region, beginning several decades of struggle between the Xiongnu and Han China over dominance of the region, eventually ending in Chinese success. In 60 BC Han China established the Protectorate of the Western Regions (西域都護府) at Wulei (烏壘; near modern Luntai) to oversee the entire region as far west as the Pamir.

During the usurpation of Wang Mang in China, the dependent states of the protectorate rebelled and returned to domination in AD 13. Over the next century, Han China conducted several expeditions into the region, re-establishing the protectorate from 74-76, 91-107, and from 123 onward. After the fall of the Han Dynasty, the protectorate continued to be maintained by Cao Wei (until 265) and the Western Jin Dynasty (from 265 onwards).

A Succession of Peoples: The Western Jin Dynasty succumbed to successive waves of invasions by nomads from the north at the beginning of the 4th century. The short-lived non-Han Chinese kingdoms that ruled northwestern China one after the other, including Former Liang, Former Qin, Later Liang, and Western Liáng, all attempted to maintain the protectorate, with varying extents and degrees of success. After the final reunification of northern China under the Northern Wei empire, its protectorate controlled what is now the southeastern third of Xinjiang. Local states such as Shule, Yutian, Guizi and Qiemo controlled the western half, while the central region around Turpan was controlled by Gaochang, remnants of a state (Northern Liang) that once ruled part of what is now Gansu province in northwestern China.

Asia in 800 AD, showing the Uyghur Khaganate

Tang Dynasty and the Khanates: The Tang Dynasty was established in 618, and would prove to be one of the most expansionist dynasties in Chinese history. Starting from the 620's and 630's, Tang China conducted a series of expeditions against the Turks, eventually forcing the surrender of the western Turks in 657. Xinjiang was placed under the Anxi Protectorate (安西都護府; "Protectorate Pacifying the West"). The protectorate did not outlast the decline of Tang China in the 8th century. During the devastating Anshi Rebellion, Tibet invaded Tang China on a wide front from Xinjiang to Yunnan, occupied the Tang capital Chang'an in 763 for 16 days, and taking control of southern Xinjiang by the end of the century. At the same time, the Uyghur Khaganate took control of northern Xinjiang, as well as much of the rest of Central Asia, including Mongolia.

Both Tibet and the Uyghur Khaganate declined in the mid-9th century. The Kara-Khanid Khanate, which arose from a confederation of Turkic tribes scattered after the destruction of the Uyghur empire, took control of western Xinjiang in the 10th century and the 11th century. Meanwhile, after the Uyghur khanate in Mongolia had been smashed by the Kirghiz, branches of the Uyghurs established themselves in the area around today's Turfan and Urumchi in 840. This Uyghur state would remain in eastern Xinjiang until the 13th century, though it would be subject to various overlords during that time. Some scholars have argued, that the Kara-Khanids were likewise "Uyghurs," as some of the components in the Kara-Khanid federation were likewise from the ruling clans of the Uyghur empire. The Kara-Khanids converted to Islam, whereas the Uyghur state in eastern Xinjiang remained Manicheaean, while tolerating Buddhism and Christianity.

In 1132, remnants of the Khitan Empire from Manchuria entered Xinjiang, fleeing the onslaught of the Jurchens into north China. They established an exile regime, the Kara-Khitan Khanate, which became overlord over both Kara-Khanid-held and Uyghur-held parts of the Tarim Basin for the next century.

Asia in 1200 AD, showing the Kara-Khitan Khanate

Arrival of the Mongols: After Genghis Khan had unified Mongolia and began his advance west, the Uyghur state in the Turfan-Urumchi area sensibly offered its allegiance to the Mongols in 1209, contributing taxes and troops to the Mongol imperial effort. In return, the Uyghur rulers retained control of their kingdom. By contrast, Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire conquered the Kara-Khitan in 1218. Because the Kara-Khitan had persecuted Islam, the Mongols were met as liberators in the Kashgar area. After the break-up of the Mongol Empire into smaller khanates, Xinjiang, though mostly ruled by the Chagatai Khanate, one of the successor states of the empire, in fact was fought over by Yuan Dynasty, the successor regime based in Mongolia and in China. In the 15th century the Chagatai Khanate disintegrated into separate states in Gulja, Yarkand, and Turpan.

In the 17th century, the Dzungars (Oirats, Kalmyks) established an empire over much of the region. Kalmyks controlled a vast area known as the Kalmyk Empire to Westerners, which stretched from the Great Wall of China to the present day Eastern Kazakhstan, and from the Himalayas to Siberia.

Qing Dynasty: The Qing Empire, established by the Manchus in China, gained control over eastern Xinjiang as a result of a long struggle with the Zunghars (Dzungars) that began in the seventeenth century. In 1755, the Manchu Empire attacked Ghulja, and captured the Zunghar khan. Over the next two years, the Manchus and Mongol armies of the Qing destroyed the remnants of the Zunghar khanate, and attempted to divide the Xinjiang region into four sub-khanates under four chiefs. Similarly, the Qing made members of a clan of sufi shaykhs known as the Khojas, rulers in the western Tarim Basin, south of the Tianshan Mts. In 1758-59, however, rebellions against this arrangement broke out both north and south of the Tian Shan mountains. The Qing was thus forced, contrary to its initial intent, to establish a form of direct military rule over both Zungharia (northern Xinjiang) and the Tarim Basin (southern Xinjiang). The Manchus put the whole region under the rule of a General of Ili (伊犁将军), headquartered at the fort of Huiyuan (the so-called "Manchu Kuldja", or Yili), 30 km west of Ghulja (Yining).

By the mid-19th century, the Russian Empire was encroaching upon Qing China along its entire northern frontier. The Opium Wars and Taiping and other rebellion's in China proper had severely restricted the dynasty's ability to maintain its garrisons in distant Xinjiang. In 1864 both Chinese Muslims (Hui) and Uyghurs rebelled in Xinjiang cities, following an on-going Chinese Muslim Rebellion in Gansu and Shaanxi provinces further east. Qing control of the region was swept away. In 1865, Yaqub Beg, a warlord from the neighbouring Khanate of Kokand, entered Xinjiang via Kashgar, and conquered nearly all of Xinjiang over the next six years. In 1871, Russia took advantage of the chaotic situation and seized the rich Ili River valley, including Gulja. By then, Qing China held onto only a few strongholds, including Tacheng.

Yaqub Beg's rule lasted until General Zuo Zongtang (also known as General Tso) reconquered the region between 1875 and 1877 for Qing China. In 1881, Qing China recovered the Gulja region through diplomatic negotiations (Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1881)). In 1884, Qing China established Xinjiang ("new frontier") as a province, formally applying onto it the political system of China proper.

After the Qing Dynasty: In 1912, the Qing Dynasty was replaced by the Republic of China. Yuan Dahua, the last Qing governor of Xinjiang, fled. One of his subordinates Yang Zengxin (杨增新), acceded to the Republic of China in March of the same year, and maintained control of Xinjiang until his assassination in 1928. Following insurgencies against Governor Jin Shuren (金树仁) in the early 1930s in Eastern Sinkiang, a rebellion in Kashgaria in February, 1933 led to declaring by Southern Sinkiang (94% population of which were at this time ethnic Uyghurs) on November 12, 1933 its Independence and establishment at Kashgar of the short-lived self-proclaimed Turkish Islamic Republic of Eastern Turkestan or Republic of Uyghurstan , known also as First East Turkistan Republic (1st ETA). Xinjiang was eventually brought in 1934 under the control of Sheng Shicai (盛世才), who ruled Xinjiang for the next decade with close support from the Soviet Union, many of whose ethnic and security policies Sheng instituted in Xinjiang. Sheng invited a group of Chinese Communists to Xinjiang, including Mao Zedong's brother Mao Zemin, but in 1943, fearing a conspiracy, Sheng killed all communists, including Mao Zemin, in Xinjiang. A Second East Turkistan Republic (2nd ETA, also known as the Three Districts Revolution) existed from 1944-1949 with Soviet support in what is now Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in northern Xinjiang.

The Second East Turkistan Republic came to an end when the People's Liberation Army (PLA) entered Xinjiang in 1949. According to the PRC interpretation, the 2nd ETA was Xinjiang's revolution, a positive part of the communist revolution in China; the 2nd ETA acceded to and welcomed the PLA when they entered Xinjiang, a process known as the Peaceful Liberation of Xinjiang. However, independence advocates view the ETA as an effort to establish an independent state, and the subsequent PLA entry as an invasion. The autonomous region of the PRC was established on October 1, 1955, replacing the province. The PRC's first nuclear test was carried out at Lop Nur, Xinjiang, on October 16, 1964.

Continued Tensions: There continues to be concern over tensions in the region, centering upon Uyghur cultural aspirations to independence, and resentment towards what Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch describe as repression of non-Han Chinese culture.

Conversely, many Han Chinese perceive PRC policies of ethnic autonomy as discriminatory against them (see autonomous entities of China). Independence advocates view Chinese rule in Xinjiang, and policies like the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps as Chinese imperialism. The US and the UN have labelled the East Turkestan Islamic Movement a terrorist group.

The tensions have occasionally resulted in major incidents and violent clashes during the PRC period. For example, in 1962, 60,000 Uyghur and Kazak refugees fled northern Xinjiang into the Soviet Union to escape the famine and political purges of the Great Leap Forward era; in the 1980s there was a smattering of student demonstrations and riots against police action that took on an ethnic aspect; and the Baren Township riot in April, 1990, an abortive uprising, resulted in more than 50 deaths.

A police roundup of suspected separatists during Ramadan resulted in large demonstrations that turned violent in February 1997 in an episode known as the Ghulja / Yining Incident that led to at least 9 deaths. The Urumqi bus bombs of February 25, 1997, perhaps a response to the crackdown that followed the Ghulja Incident, killed 9 and injured 68. Despite much talk of separatism and terrorism in Xinjiang, especially after the 9-11 attacks in the United States and the US invasion of Afghanistan, the situation in Xinjiang was quiet from the late nineties through mid-2006.

Then, on January 5, 2007 the Chinese Public Security Bureau raided a suspected terrorist training camp in the mountains near the Pamir Plateau in southern Xinjiang. According to the reports, 18 terrorists were killed and another 17 captured in a gun battle between the East Turkestan Independence Movement and PRC forces. One police officer was killed and "over 1,500 hand grenades... were seized."

In the runup to the Summer Olympics in Beijing, during which world attention was drawn by pro-Tibet protests along the Olympic torch relay, Uyghur separatist groups staged protests in several countries. According to the Chinese government, a suicide bombing attempt on a China Southern Airlines flight in Xinjiang was thwarted in March 2008.

On August 4, 2008, 4 days before the Beijing Olympics, 16 Chinese police officers were killed and 16 were injured by suspected ETIM members. Chinese police injured and damaged the equipment of two Japanese journalists sent to cover the story.

 

Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang by James A. Millward

 

 

 

Xinjiang: China's Muslim Far Northwest by Mike Dillon and Dillon Michael

 

 

 

Xinjiang: China's Muslim Borderland by S. Frederick Starr

 

 

 

Wild West China: The Taming of Xinjiang by Christian Tyler

 

 

 

China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia by Peter C. Perdue

 

 

 

Sinicization Beyond the Great Wall: China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region by Anwar Rahman

 

 

 

 

Western Regions

The Western Regions or Xiyu (西域) was a historical name specified in the Chinese chronicles between the 3rd century BC to 8th century that referred to the regions west of Jade Gate (玉門關), most often Central Asia.

Because of its strategic location astride the Silk Road, the Western Regions have been historically significant since at least the 3rd century BC. It was the scene of conflict between the Han Dynasty and the Xiongnu until the middle of the 2nd century.

The region became significant in later centuries as a cultural conductor between East Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Islamic World and the West. One of the most significant exports of the Western Regions was Buddhism, which was carried by traders and pilgrim monks to China. The Tang Dynasty monk Xuanzang crossed the region on his way to study in India, penning the classic Great Tang Records of the Western Regions upon his return to the Tang capital Chang'an.

In the 18th century, the Qing Dynasty conquered part of this region and put it under military administration. In 1884, the region was established as a province under the name Xinjiang.

The Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (大唐西域記) is a narrative of Xuanzang's nineteen year journey through Chang'an to India between 626 and 645. It was compiled in 646 by Bianji, a disciple of Xuanzang, who spent more than one year editing the book through Xuanzang's dictation.

The book contain about 100,000 words and is divided into twelve volumes, which describe the geography, land and maritime transportation, climate, local products, people, language, history, politics, economic life, religion, culture, and customs in 110 countries, regions and city-states from present-day Xinjiang to Sri Lanka. It has considerable historical material on India, the condition of Buddhist monasteries at the time, and has a high historical value for its descriptions of Central Asia during the early seventh century.

 

The four heroes of Journey to the West, left to right: Sūn Wùkōng, Xuánzàng, Zhū Bājiè, and Shā Wùjìng.

Journey to the West (西遊記) is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. Originally published anonymously in the 1590s during the Ming Dynasty, and even though no direct evidence of its authorship survives, it has been ascribed to the scholar Wú Chéng'ēn since the 20th century.

In western countries, the tale is also often known simply as Monkey. This was one title used for a popular, abridged translation by Arthur Waley. The Waley translation has also been published as Adventures of the Monkey God; and Monkey: [A] Folk Novel of China; and The Adventures of Monkey.

The novel is a fictionalised account of the legends around the Buddhist monk Xuánzàng's pilgrimage to India during the Táng dynasty in order to obtain Buddhist religious texts called sutras. The Bodhisattva Guānyīn, on instruction from the Buddha, gives this task to the monk and his three protectors in the form of disciples — namely Sūn Wùkōng, Zhū Bājiè and Shā Wùjìng — together with a dragon prince who acts as Xuánzàng's horse mount. These four characters have agreed to help Xuánzàng as an atonement for past sins.

Some scholars propose that the book satirises the effete Chinese government at the time. Journey to the West has a strong background in Chinese folk religion, Chinese mythology and value systems; the pantheon of Taoist immortals and Buddhist bodhisattvas is still reflective of Chinese folk religious beliefs today.

Part of the novel's enduring popularity comes from the fact that it works on multiple levels: it is an adventure story, a dispenser of spiritual insight, and an extended allegory in which the group of pilgrims journeying toward India stands for the individual journeying toward enlightenment.

 

Monkey: Folk Novel of China by Wu Ch'eng-en, Arthur Waley (Translator)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Map of Central Asia

Xinjiang borders the Tibet to the south and Qinghai and Gansu provinces to the southeast, Mongolia to the east, Russia to the north, and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India to the west.

 

 

Dzungaria and the Tarim Basin (Taklamakan) Separated by the Tien Shan Mountains

 

 

Dzungaria

Dzungaria is a geographical region in northwest China corresponding to the northern half of Xinjiang. It covers approximately 777,000 km², lying mostly within the Xinjiang, and extending into western Mongolia. Formerly the term could cover a wider area, depending on temporary political boundries (also Jungaria, Sungaria, Zungaria; 準噶爾).

The core of Dzungaria is the triangular Dzungarian Basin with its central Gurbantunggut Desert. It is bounded by the Tien Shan on the south, the Altai Mountains on the northeast and the Tarbagatai Mountains on the northwest. The three corners are relatively open. The north corner is the valley of the upper Irtysh River. The west corner is the Dzungarian Gate with its railroad (from 1990). The eastern corner leads to Gansu and the rest of China. In the south an easy pass leads from Ürümqi to the Turfan Depression. In the southwest the Borohoro branch to the Tien Shan separates the basin from the upper Ili River.

The extensive Junggar Basin is in the Uyghur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang in northwestern China. It is surrounded by mountains. The basin is located between the Mongolian Altai Mountains and Tian Shan to the south. The basin is similar to the larger Tarim Basin on the southern side of the Tian Shan Range. Only a gap in the mountains to the north allows moist air masses to provide the basin lands with enough moisture to remain semi-desert rather than becoming a true desert and allows a thin layer of vegetation to grow. This is enough to sustain populations of wild camels, jerboas, and other wild species.

The Junggar Basin is a structural basin with thick sequences of Paleozoic-Pleistocene rocks with large estimated oil reserves. The Gurbantunggut Desert, China’s second largest, is in the center of the basin. Lake Aibi is the basin's catchment center.

The cold climate of nearby Siberia influences the climate of the Junggar Basin, making the temperature colder s low as -4°F (-20°C) and providing more precipitation, ranging from 3 to 10 inches (80 to 250 mm), compared to the warmer, drier basins to the south. Runoff from the surrounding mountains into the basin supplies several lakes. The ecologically rich habitats traditionally included meadows, marshlands, and rivers. However most of the land is now used for agriculture.

It is a largely steppe and semi-desert basin surrounded by high mountains: the Tian Shan (ancient Mount Imeon) in the south and the Altay in the north. Geologically it is an extension of the Paleozoic Kazakhstan Block and was once part of an independent continent before the Altai mountains formed in the late Paleozoic. It does not contain the abundant minerals of Kazakhstania and may have been a pre-existing continental block before Kazakhstan is formed.

Urumqi, Yining and Karamai are the main cities; other smaller oasis towns dot the piedmont areas.

History: One of the earliest mentions of the Dzungaria region occurs when the Han Dynasty dispatched an explorer to investigate lands to the west. Using the North Silk Road, the northernmost Silk Road trackway of about 2600 kilometres in length, which connected the ancient Chinese capital of Xian to the west over the Wushao Ling Pass to Wuwei and emerging in Kashgar before linking to ancient Parthia. Istämi received the lands of Dzungaria as an inheritance after the death of his father in the latter half of the sixth century AD.

Dzungaria is named after a Mongolian kingdom which existed in Central Asia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It derived its name from the Dzungars, who were so called because they formed the left wing (züün, left; gar, hand) of the Mongolian army. Selfnamed as oyrats. It was raised to its highest pitch by Kaldan (also known as Galdan Boshigtu Khan) in the latter half of the 17th century, when repeatedly interfered on territory of Kazakh state, but completely destroyed by the Qing government about 1757-1759. It has played an important part in the history of Mongolia and the great migrations of Mongolian stems westward.

Since 1761, its territory fell mostly to the Qing Empire (Xinjiang - New lands), also known as Uyghurstan, and north-western Mongolia) and partly to Russian Turkestan (earlie Kazakh state provinces of Semirechye- Jetysu and Irtysh river).

Its widest limit included Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, the whole region of the Tian Shan, and in short the greater proportion of that part of Central Asia which extends from 35º to 50º N and from 72º to 97º E.

As a political or geographical term Dzungaria has practically disappeared from the map; but the range of mountains stretching north-east along the southern frontier of the Jeti-su, as the district to the south-east of Lake Balkhash preserves the name of Dzungarian Alatau.

A traveler going west from China must go either north of the Tien Shan through Dzungaria or south of the Tien Shan through the Tarim Basin. Trade usually took the south side and migrations the north. Why? The obvious answer is that the Tarim leads to the Ferghana Valley and Iran, while Dzungaria leads only to the open steppe. The difficulty with south side was the high mountains between the Tarim and Ferghana. There is also another reason. The Taklamakan is too dry to support much grass, and therefore nomads when they are not robbing caravans. Its inhabitants live mostly in oases formed where rivers run out of the mountains into the desert. These are inhabited by peasants who are unwarlike and merchants who have an interest in keeping trade running smoothly. Dzungaria has a fair amount of grass, few towns to base soldiers in and no significant mountain barriers to the west. Therefore trade went south and migrations north

 

 

Tarim Basin

The Tarim Basin (塔里木盆地) is a large endorheic basin occupying an area of more than 400,000 km². It is located in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China's far west. Its northern boundary is the Tian Shan mountain range and its southern is the Kunlun Mountains on the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. The Taklamakan Desert dominates much of the basin. The area is sparsely settled by the Uyghurs, other Turkic peoples and Tajiks.

History: The Silk Road, a series of trade routes through regions of Asia, splits into two routes: the North Silk Road along the northern edge and another along the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the basin. A middle route was deserted in the sixth century. The southern trackway includes the oasis towns of Yarkand, Niya, Pishan, Marin and Khotan. The key oasis towns along the northern route are Aksu, Korla, Turfan, Gaochang and Loulan. Other key towns include Kashgar in the South-West, Kuqa in the North, and Dunhuang in the East. Formerly the Tocharian languages were spoken in the Tarim Basin. They were the easternmost of the Indo-European languages. The Chinese name "Yuezhi" (月氏) denoted an ancient Central Asian people settled in modern eastern Tarim Basin, who, vanquished by the Xiongnu, later migrated southward in order to form the Kushan Empire, which was centred on Afghanistan/Pakistan, but also extended into northern India.

The Han Chinese managed to take control of the Tarim Basin from the Xiongnu at the end of the 1st century under the leadership of general Ban Chao (32 - 102).

The powerful Kushans expanded back into the Tarim Basin in the 1st-2nd centuries AD, where they established a kingdom in Kashgar and competed for control of the area with nomads and Chinese forces. They introduced the Brahmi script, the Indian Prakrit language for administration, and Buddhism, playing a central role in the Silk Road transmission of Buddhism to Eastern Asia.

Fresco from a stupa shrine, Miran

Archaeology: Although archaeological findings are of interest in the Tarim Basin, the prime impetus for exploration was petroleum and natural gas. Recently research developed fine-grained analysis at the ancient oasis of Niya on the Silk Road; moreover, the work led to significant findings of remains of wattle hamlets and daub structures as well as farm land, orchards, vineyards, irrigation pools and bridges. The oasis at Niya preserves the ancient landscape. Here also have been found hundreds of 3rd and 4th century wooden accounting tablets at several settlements across the oasis. These texts are in the Gāndhārī language script native to today's Pakistan and Afghanistan. The texts are legal documents such as tax lists, and contracts containing detailed information pertaining to the administration of daily affairs.

Additional excavations have unearthed tombs with mummies, tools, ceramic works, painted pottery and other artistic artifacts. Such diversity was encouraged by the cultural contacts resulting from this area's position on the Silk Road. Early Buddhist sculptures and murals excavated at Miran show artistic similarities to the traditions of Central Asia and North India and stylistic aspects of paintings found there suggest that Miran had a direct connection with the West, specifically Rome and its provinces.

* The Buried Silk Road Cities of Khotan by William Rust and Amy Cushing

 

 

Tarim Basin in the 3rd Century

Kingdoms of: Shanshan, Hotan, Kashgar, Kuqa, Karaxahr, Turfan

 

 

Shanshan

Shanshan (鄯善) is the Chinese name for a kingdom that existed roughly from 200 BC-1000 AD at the north-eastern end of the Taklamakan Desert including the great salt lake known as Lop Nur.

In 126 BC, the Chinese envoy, Zhang Qian described Loulan as a fortified city near Lop Nur.

In 77 BC the Chinese envoy Fu Jiezi stabbed Loulan's King, Chang Gui, to death. In 77 BC the kingdom became a Chinese puppet state and renamed the kingdom Shanshan. The capital was to south-west of Lop Nur near modern Ruoqiang (Charkhlik) on the Southern Silk Route between Dunhuang and Khotan.

Because of its strategic position on what became the main routes from China to the West, controlling both the Southern Route between Dunhuang and Khotan, and the main Silk Route from Dunhuang to Korla Kucha and Kashgar during the Former Han and Later Han. Control of the kingdom was regularly contested between the Chinese and the Xiongnu. The Hanshu informs us that: "it lay close to Han and confronted the White Dragon Mounds. The locality was short of water and pasture, and was regularly responsible for sending out guides, conveying water, bearing provisions and escorting or meeting Han envoys. In addition the state was frequently robbed, reprimanded or harmed by officials or conscripts and found it inexpedient to keep contact with the Han. Later the state again conducted espionage for the Hsiung-nu, often intercepting and killing Han envoys." The Xiongnu repeatedly contested the Han Chinese for control of the region until well into the 2nd century AD, and is recorded as a dependent kingdom of Shanshan in the 3rd century Weilüe.

A military colony of 1,000 men was established at Loulan in 260 AD by the Chinese General So Man. The site was abandoned in 330 AD due to lack of water when the Tarim River, which supported the settlement, changed course and the military garrison was moved 50 km south to Haitou. The fort of Yingpan to the northwest remained under Chinese control until the Tang Dynasty.

The Chinese pilgrim monk, Faxian, stayed about a month in Shanshan after a 17 day journey from Dunhuang in 399 AD. He described the country as "rugged and hilly, with a thin and barren soil. The clothes of the common people are coarse, and like those worn in our land of Han, some wearing felt and others coarse serge or hair.... The king professed (our) Law, and there might be in the country more than four thousand monks, who were all students of the Hinayāna.... (The monks)...were all students of Indian books and the Indian language (Sanskrit)."

The town of Loulan, at the northwestern corner of the salt lake known as Lop Nor, and became an important staging point for caravans travelling from Dunhuang to Kucha on the "Central Route".

Loulan silk fragment

Loulan or Kroran (樓蘭; Uyghur Language: Kroran) is an ancient oasis town founded in the second century on the north-eastern edge of the Lop Desert. Loulan, also known as Krorayina, was an ancient kingdom along China's Silk Road in Xinjiang. In 77 BC, it became known to the Chinese as Shanshan, though the town at the northwestern corner of Lop Nur retained the name of Loulan. The ruins of the town of Loulan are on what were the western banks of Lop Nur, in the Bayin'gholin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture, now completely submerged in the desert.

A 3,800-year-old female mummy (circa 1600 BC), the first of a series of mummies now known as the Tarim mummies, was discovered in Loulan in 1980 AD, indicating very early settlement of the region.

The first historical mention of Loulan was in a letter from the Chanyu of the Xiongnu to the Chinese Emperor in 126 BC in which he boasted of conquering the Yuezhi, the Wusun, Loulan, and Hujie, "as well as the twenty-six states nearby." In 126 BC, the Chinese envoy, Zhang Qian described Loulan as a fortified city near Lop Nur.

Loulan was rediscovered by Sven Hedin in 1899, who excavated some houses and found a wooden Kharosthi tablet and many Chinese manuscripts from the later Han dynasty (third century A.D.).

Aurel Stein made further excavations in 1906 and 1914, investigating the town's packed-earth and straw wall. It was over 1,000 feet (300 m) on each side, and 20 feet (6.1 m) thick at the base. Stein also recovered a wool-pile carpet fragment, some yellow silk, and Gandharan architectural wood-carvings.

Reported in the Washington Times, 2005, are discoveries made in 1979 and 1980 by a Chinese architectural team in the area. They discovered a man-made canal, 15 feet (4.6 m) deep and 55 feet (17 m) wide, running through Loulan from northwest to southeast; a 32-foot (9.8 m) high earthen dome-shaped Buddhist stupa; and a 41 feet (12 m) long by 28 feet (8.5 m) wide home apparently for a Chinese official, housing 3 rooms and supported by wooden pillars. They also collected 797 objects from the area, including vessels of wood, bronze objects, jewelry and coins, and Mesolithic stone tools.

Other reported (2003) finds in the area include additional mummies and burial grounds, ephedra sticks, a string bracelet that holds a hollowed jade stone, a leather pouch, a woolen loincloth, a wooden mask painted red and with large nose and teeth, boat-shaped coffins, a bow with arrows and a straw basket.

* Life of Aurel Stein - Web Catalog in Four Languages

 

Batik textile from Niya

Niya is an archaeological site located on the southern edge of the Tarim Basin in modern-day Xinjiang, Autonomous areas of China. Here numerous ancient archaeological artifacts have been recovered. Niya was once a major commercial center on an oasis on the southern branch of the Silk Road in the southern Taklamakan Desert. During ancient times camel caravans would cut through, carrying goods from China to Central Asia.

Official approval for joint Sino-Japanese archaeological excavations at the site was given in 1994. Researchers have now found remains of human habitation including approximately 100 dwellings, burial areas, sheds for animals, orchards, gardens, and agricultural fields. They have also found in the dwellings well-preserved tools such as iron axes and sickles, wooden clubs, pottery urns and jars of preserved crops. The human remains found there have led to speculation on the origins of these peoples. Archeological findings from the ruins of Niya are housed in the Tokyo National Museum.

 

 

Khotan

The Kingdom of Khotan is an ancient Buddhist kingdom that was located on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim basin. (The area lies in present day Xinjiang, China).

The ancient city of Khotan was the capital, now known by its modern Chinese name Hotan or Hetian (和田) — also romanized Hotan or Khotan). From the Han Dynasty until at least the Tang Dynasty it was known in Chinese as Yutian 于窴.

Built on an oasis, its mulberry groves allowed the production and export of silk and silk rugs, in addition to the city's other major products such as its famous nephrite jade and pottery.

According to legend, the foundation of Khotan occurred when Kushtana, said to be a son of the Indian Buddhist emperor Ashoka, settled there in the early 3rd century BC.

However, it is likely to have existed earlier than this as the Yuezhi (known later as the Kushans) had been trading the famous nephrite jade from the region to China for some centuries prior to this.

The kingdom became one of the major centers of Buddhism, and is primarily associated with the Mahayana branch. It differed in this respect to Kucha, a Śrāvakayāna-dominated kingdom on the opposite side of the desert. Fa-Hsien account of the city states it had fourteen large and many small Buddhist monasteries. Many foreign languages, including Chinese, Sanskrit, Prakrit and Tibetan, were used in cultural exchange.

Khotan was the first place outside of China to begin cultivating silk. The story, repeated in many sources, and illustrated in murals discovered by archaeologists, is that a Chinese princess brought silkworm eggs in her hairdo when she was sent to marry the Khotanese king. This probably took place in the first half of the 1st century AD.

It came under Muslim control in the first decade of the 11th century. Marco Polo visited Khotan between 1271 and 1275 and remarked that the people were "all followers of Mahommet."

In his Diwanu Lughat at-Turk, the 11th century Turkish scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari included a verse describing the Muslim conquest of Khotan:

Like river torrents

We flooded their cities

We destroyed their monasteries

And shat on the statues of the Buddha.

Chapter 96A of the Hanshu or 'History of the Former Han' (which covers the period from 125 BC to 23 AD) says that Yutian, or Khotan, had 3,300 households, 19,300 individuals and 2,400 people able to bear arms.

The town obviously grew very quickly after China opened the Silk Routes to the West, for the population had more than quadrupled by the time of the Later Han.

The 8th century Tibetan Buddhist history, The Prophecy of the Li Country, claims that a Khotanese king helped the famous Kushan Emperor Kanishka to conquer the key town of Saketa in Middle India. If this is correct, and if modern dating of the beginning of Kanishka's era in 127 AD, this must have happened at about this date - just before Ban Yong reasserted Chinese influence over the region.

* The Buried Silk Road Cities of Khotan by William Rust and Amy Cushing

 

Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan: Personal narrative of a journey of archaeological and geographical exploration in Chinese Turkestan by Aurel Stein

 

 

 

 

Kashgar

Kashgar or Kashi (喀什) is an oasis city in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. The earliest mention of Kashgar is when the Chinese Han Dynasty envoy traveled the Northern Silk Road to explore lands to the west. Another early mention of Kashgar is during the Former Han (also known as the Western Han Dynasty), when the Chinese conquered the Xiongnu (Hsiung-nu), Yutien (Khotan), Sulei (Kashgar), and a group of states in the Tarim basin almost up to the foot of the Tian Shan mountains. This happened in 76 BC.

Kashgar does not appear to have been known in the West at this time, but Ptolemy speaks of Scythia beyond the Imaus, which is in a Kasia Regio, possibly exhibiting the name whence Kashgar and Kashgaria (often applied to the district) are formed.

The country's people practised Zoroastrianism and Buddhism before the coming of Islam.

In the Hanshu (Book of the Former Han), which covers the period between 125 BC and 23 AD, it is recorded that there were 1,510 households, 18,647 people and 2,000 persons able to bear arms. By the time covered by the Hou Hanshu (roughly 25 to 170), it had grown to 21,000 households and had 30,000 men able to bear arms.

The Tang Dynasty: The opening of the Tang Dynasty, in 618, saw the beginning of a prolonged struggle between China and the Western Turks for control of the Tarim Basin.

In 635 the Tang Annals report an embassy from the king of Kashgar. In 639 there was a second embassy bringing products of Kashgar as a token of submission.

Xuan Zang passed through Kashgar (which he calls Ka-sha) in 644 on his return journey from India to China. The Buddhist religion, then beginning to decay in India, was active in Kashgar. Xuan Zang records that they flattened their babies heads, were ill-favoured, tattooed their bodies and had green eyes. He said they had abundant crops, fruits and flowers, wove fine woollen stuffs and rugs, their writing had been copied from India but their language was different from that of other countries. The inhabitants were sincere believers in Buddhism and there were some hundreds of monasteries with more than 10,000 followers, all members of the Sarvastivadin School.

Contemporaneously, Nestorian Christians were establishing bishoprics at Herat, Merv and Samarkand, whence they subsequently proceeded to Kashgar, and finally to China itself.

In 646, when the Turkish Kagan asked for the hand of a Chinese princess, the Emperor claimed Kucha, Khotan, Kashgar, Karashahr and Sarikol as a marriage gift, but this was not to happen. In a series of campaigns between 652 and 658, with the help of the Uyghurs, the Chinese finally defeated the Western Turk tribes and took control of all their domains, including the Tarim Basin kingdoms. In 662 a rebellion broke out in the Western Regions and a Chinese army sent to control it was badly defeated by the Tibetans south of Kashgar. After another defeat of the Chinese forces in 670, the Tibetans gained control of the whole region and completely subjugated Kashgar in 676-8 and retained possession of it until 692, when China regained control of all their former territories, and retained it for the next fifty years. In 722 Kashgar sent 4,000 troops to assist the Chinese to force the "Tibetans out of "Little Bolu" or Gilgit.

In 739, the Tangshu relates that the governor of the Chinese garrison in Kashgar, with the help of Ferghana, was interfering in the affairs of the Turgash tribes as far as Talas. In 751 the Chinese suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the Arabs in Talas; a blow from which they never fully recovered. The Tibetans cut all communication between China and the West in 766. Soon after the Chinese pilgrim monk Wukong passed through Kashgar in 753. He again reached Kashgar on his return trip from India in 786 and mentions a Chinese deputy governor as well as the local king.

The Arab Invasions: In the 8th century came the Arab invasion from the west, and we find Kashgar and Turkestan lending assistance to the reigning queen of Bokhara, to enable her to repel the enemy. But although the Muslim religion from the very commencement sustained checks, it nevertheless made its weight felt upon the independent states of Turkestan to the north and east, and thus acquired a steadily growing influence. It was not, however, till the 10th century that Islam was established at Kashgar, under the Uyghur kingdom.

The Uyghurs: Modern Uyghurs are the descendants of ancient Turkic tribes including Uyghurs and ancient Caucasian inhabitants of Tarim basin. Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan, the most celebrated prince of this line, converted to Islam late in the 10th century and the Uyghur kingdom lasted until 1120 but was distracted by complicated dynastic struggles. The Uyghurs employed an alphabet based upon the Syriac and borrowed from the Nestorian missionaries, but after converting to Islam widely used also an Arabic script. They spoke a dialect of Turkish preserved in the Kudatku Bilik, a moral treatise composed in 1065.

The Mongols: The Uyghur kingdom was destroyed by an invasion of the Kara-Khitai, another Turkish tribe pressing westwards from the Chinese frontier, who in their turn were swept away in 1219 by Genghis Khan. His invasion gave a decided check to the progress of the Muslim creed, but on his death, and during the rule of the Jagatai Khans, who became converts to that faith, it began to reassert its ascendancy.

Marco Polo visited the city, which he calls Cascar, about 1273-4 and recorded the presence of numerous Nestorian Christians, who had their own churches.

In 1389–1390 Timur ravaged Kashgar, Andijan and the intervening country. Kashgar endured a troubled time, and in 1514, on the invasion of the Khan Sultan Said, was destroyed by Mirza Ababakar, who with the aid of ten thousand men built a new fort with massive defences higher up on the banks of the Tuman river. The dynasty of the Jagatai Khans collapsed in 1572 with the division of the country among rival factions; soon after, two powerful Khoja factions, the White and Black Mountaineers (Ak Taghliq or Afaqi, and Kara Taghliq or Ishaqi), arose whose differences and war-making gestures, with the intermittent episode of the Oirats of Dzungaria, make up much of recorded history in Kashgar until 1759.

 

 

Kucha

Kucha or Kuche (also: Kuçar, Kuchar, 庫車; also romanized as Qiuzi, Qiuci, Chiu-tzu, Kiu-che, Kuei-tzu. Also known in ancient China as: 屈支 屈茨; 龜玆; 丘玆, also Po) was an ancient Buddhist kingdom located on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin and south of the Muzat River. (The area lies in present day Aksu Prefecture, Xinjiang, China; Kucha city itself is the county seat of that prefecture's Kuqa County). Its population was given as 74,632 in 1990.

History: According to the Book of Han, Kucha was the largest of the 'Thirty-six kingdoms of the Western Regions,' with a population of 81,317, including 21,076 persons able to bear arms.

Kucha was strongly influenced by Indian and Scythian thought, and Indian kings are said to have reigned there. Christopher Beckwith identifies the king of Gu-zan of the Li yul lung-btsan-pa or ‘Prophecy of the Li Country’ who went on campaign with Kanishka in the company of the king of Kucha (Kūči, Kūčā, Kushâ, Küsän). However, Chinese transcriptions are explicitly in favour of the form Küsän/Güsän/Kuxian/Quxian and not Küshän or Kushan.

For a long time Kucha was the most populous oasis in the Tarim Basin. The language, as evidenced by ancient records, was Tocharian, an Indo-European language. It was located on a crossroad of the great cultures of India, Persia, Bactria and China. The extensive ruins of this ancient capital of the Kingdom of Guici [the 'City of Subashi'] lie 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of Kucha.

Kuchan music was very popular in China during the Tang Dynasty, particularly the lute which became known in Chinese as pipa.

Francis Younghusband, who passed through the oasis in 1887 on his epic journey from Beijing to India, described the district as "probably" having some 60,000 inhabitants. The Chinese town was about 700 yards (640 m) square with a 25 ft (7.6 m) high wall, with no bastions or protection to the gateways, but a ditch about 20 ft (6 m) deep around it. It was filled with houses and "a few bad shops". The "Turk houses" ran right up to the edge of the ditch and there were remains of an old Turk city to the south-east of the Chinese one, but most of the shops and houses were outside of it. About 800 yards (732 m) north of the Chinese city were barracks for 500 soldiers out of a garrison he estimated to total about 1500 men, who were armed with old Enfield rifles "with the Tower mark."

Buddhism was introduced to Kucha before the end of the 1st century, however it was not until the 3rd century that the kingdom became a major center of Buddhism, primarily the Śrāvakayāna branch but also Mahāyāna. (In this respect it differed from Khotan, a Mahāyāna-dominated kingdom on the southern side of the desert.)

According to the Chinese Book of Jin, during the third century there were nearly one thousand Buddhist stupas and temples in Kucha. At this time, Kuchanese monks began to travel to China. The fourth century saw yet further growth for Buddhism within the kingdom. The palace was said to resemble a Buddhist monastery, displaying carved stone Buddhas, and monasteries around the city were numerous.

 

The Heart of a Continent: A Narrative of Travels in Manchuria, across the Gobi Desert, through the Himalayas, the Pamirs, and Chitral, 1884-1894 by Francis Edward Younghusband

 

 

 

 

Karasahr

Karasahr or Yanqi (also Karashahr, meaning 'black city' in Uyghur languages. Turkish Karasehir. Sanskrit Agnideśa; 焉耆), the Buddhist Sanskrit name was 'Agni' or 'Fire.' The present name of the main town is Yanqi. The area lies in present day Xinjiang, China.

It was an ancient Buddhist kingdom located on the branch of the Silk Route that ran along the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin. During the Han dynasty it was an important kingdom.

The modern town of Yanqi is situated about 24 km west of the shallow Baghrash Kul or Bagragh Lake (Bositeng Hu in Pinyin). The lake is about 81 km east to west and 48 km north to south with a surface area of about 1,000 sq. km., making it the largest lake in Central Asia. It has been noted since Han times for its abundance of fish. The lake is fed by the Kaidu River and the Konche ('Peacock') River flows out of it past Korla and across the Taklamakan Desert to Lop Nur. There are numerous other small lakes in the region.

"The whole of this district round Kara-shahr and Korla is, from a geographical and political point of view, both interesting and important ; for whilst all other parts of Chinese Turkestan can only be reached either by climbing high and difficult passes – the lowest of which has the same elevation as Mont Blanc – or traversing extensive and dangerous waterless deserts of sand-hills, here we find the one and only convenient approach to the land through the valleys of several rivers in the neighbourhood of Ili, where plentiful water abounds in the mountain streams on all sides, and where a rich vegetation makes life possible for wandering tribes. Such Kalmuck tribes still come from the north-west to Tal. They are Torgut nomads who pitch their yurts round about Kara-shahr and live a hard life with their herds. . . .

Just as these Mongols wander about here at the present day, so the nomadic tribes of an earlier period must have used this district as their entrance and exit gate. The Tochari (Yuezhi), on their way from China, undoubtedly at that time passed through this gate to get into the Ili valley. . . ."

Francis Younghusband, briefly visited Karasahr in 1887 on his overland journey from Beijing to India. He described it as being "like all the towns hereabouts, is surrounded by a mud wall, and the gateways are surmounted by the usual pagoda-like towers. There is a musketry wall round outside the main wall, but it is now almost in ruins. Inside the wall are some yamens, but only a few houses. Outside, to the south, are a few shops and inns."

 

 

Turfan

A possible European person and Asian trader (left) with an Asian buddhist monk, Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves

Turfan or Tulufan (Uyghur: تۇرپان‎, Turpan, Turpan, Turkish: Turfan, 吐魯番) is an oasis city in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China.

Turfan has long been the centre of a fertile oasis (with water provided by karez) and an important trade centre. It was historically located along the Silk Road's northern route, at which time it was adjacent to the kingdoms of Korla and Karashahr to the southwest and the town of Qarakhoja (Gaochang) to the southeast.

In the early 2nd century BC the Yuezhi were defeated by the Xiongnu and fled eastward to Bactria, later founding the Kushan Empire. Later on the city came under control of the Chinese Han Dynasty and, in 60 BC, became part of the Protectorate of the Western Regions. During Later Han times the city changed hands between the Xiongnu and the Han interspersed with short periods of independence. After the fall of the Han Dynasty, the region was virtually independent but tributary to various dynasties.

From 487 to 541 AD Turfan was an independent Kingdom ruled by a Turkish tribe known to the Chinese as the Gaoche. The Rouran Khaganate defeated the Gaoche and subjucated Turfan, but soon afterwards the Rouran were destroyed by the Göktürks. In the mid 7th century the Tarim Basin was reoccupied by the Chinese, now under the Tang Dynasty. During the 7th, 8th, and early 9th centuries the whole region was fought over by the Tang, the Empire of Tibet, and the Turks.

The Uyghurs established a Khanate in Turfan (known as the Kara-Khanids that lasted from 856 to 1369 AD, surviving as a vassal of the Mongol Empire. This Khanate was established after the fall of the Uyghur Empire to the Kyrgyz Turks.

Francis Younghusband, visited Turfan in 1887 on his overland journey from Beijing to India. He said it consisted of two walled towns, a Chinese one with a population of no more than 5,000 and, about a mile (1.6 km) to the west, a Turk town of "probably" 12,000 to 15,000 inhabitants. The town (presumably the "Turk town") had four gateways, one for each of the cardinal directions, of solid brickwork and massive wooden doors plated with iron and covered by a semicircular bastion. The well-kept walls were of mud and about 35 ft (10.7 m) tall and 20 to 30 feet (6 to 9 m) thick, with loopholes at the top. There was a level space about 15 yards (14 m) wide outside the main walls surrounded by a musketry wall about 8 ft (2.4 m) high, with a ditch around it some 12 ft (3.7 m) deep and 20 ft (6 m) wide). There were drumtowers over the gateways, small square towers at the corners and two small square bastions between the corners and the gateways, "two to each front." Wheat, cotton, poppies, melons and grapes were grown in the surrounding fields.

Gaochang ruins

Gaochang (高昌) is the site of an ancient oasis city built on the northern rim of the inhospitable Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang, China. A busy trading center, it was a stopping point for merchant traders traveling on the Silk Route. The ruins are located 30 km southeast of modern Turpan

Gaochang was built in the 1st century BC. It was an important site along the Silk Road. It was burnt down in wars in the 14th century. Old palace ruins and inside and outside cities can still be seen today.

Gao Chang (Pronounced Qara-hoja (قئارئاهوجئا) in Uyghur) played a key role as a transportation hub in western China. There is not much documented history surviving today, only stories passed on through oral tradition exist to detail the history. The archaeological remains are just outside the town at a place originally called Idykut-schari or Idikutschari by local residents. Artistic monuments of the city have been published by Albert von Le Coq.

In 439, remnants of the Northern Liang fled to Gaochang led by Juqu Wuhui and Juqu Anzhou where they would hold onto power until 460 when they were conquered by the Rouran. There were more than ten thousand Han Chinese households in Gaochang, and the Rouran appointed a Han named Kan Bozhou as their vassal King of Gaochang in 460.

At this time the Gaoche (高車) was rising to challenge power of the Rouran in the Tarim Basin. The Gaoche king Afuzhiluo (阿伏至羅) killed Kan Shougui and appointed a Han from Dunhuang, named Zhang Mengming (張孟明), as his own vassal King of Gaochang. Gaochang thus passed under Gaoche rule.

Later, Zhang Mengming was killed in an uprising by the people of Gaochang and replaced by Ma Ru (馬儒). In 501, Ma Ru himself was overthrown and killed, and the people of Gaochang appointed Qu Jia (麴嘉) of Jincheng (in Gansu) as their king. Qu Jia at first pledged allegiance to the Rouran, but the Rouran khaghan was soon killed by the Gaoche, and he had to submit to Gaoche overlordship. Later, when the Göktürks emerged as the supreme power in the region, the Qu dynasty of Gaochang became vassals of the Göktürks. In 640, Gaochang was annexed by the Chinese Tang dynasty and renamed Xizhou (西州).

From the mid fifth century until the mid seventh century there existed four independent kingdoms in the narrow Turpan basin. These are known as the Kan Family, Zhang Family, Ma Family, and Qu family. In the second year of Tang Zhen Guan (628 AD), the famous monk Xuanzang passed through Gaochang. In the 13th year of Tang Zhen Guan (640 AD), Gaochang county was established. According to documents from the Yuan and Ming dynasties, Qara-hoja referred to Gao Chang as "Halahezhuo" (哈拉和卓) and Huozhou

Buddhism spread to China from India along the northern branch of the Silk Route predominantly in the 4th and 5th centuries AD at the same time as the beginning of the Northern Wei Dynasty. The building of Buddhist grottos probably began during this period There are clusters close to Gaochang, the largest being the Bezeklik grottos.

Asia in 500AD, showing the Juan-Juan Empire and its neighbors.

Rouran (柔然), Ruanruan/Ruru (蠕蠕/茹茹) also known as Tan Tan (檀檀; literally "Tartar") and Juan Juan, was the name of a confederation of nomadic tribes on the northern borders of China Proper from the late 4th century until the late 6th century. It has sometimes been hypothesized that the Rouran are identical to the Eurasian Avars who later appeared in Europe. The term Rouran is a Mandarin Chinese transcription of the pronunciation of the name the confederacy used to refer to itself. Ruanruan and Ruru remained in modern usage despite once being derogatory. They derived from orders given by the Emperor Taiwu of Northern Wei, who waged war against the Rouran and intended to intimidate the confederacy. The power of the Rouran was broken by an alliance of Göktürks, the Chinese Northern Qi and Northern Zhou dynasties and tribes in Central Asia in 552.

The Rouran were confederation of Xianbei people who remained in Mongolian steppes after most Xianbei migrated south to Northern China and set up various kingdoms. They were first noted as having defeated the Gaoche and establishing an empire extending all the way to the Hulun, at the eastern Inner Mongolia. To the west of the Rouran was a horde known in the west as the Hephthalites who originally, until the 5th century, were a vassal horde of the Rouran. The Rouran controlled the area of Mongolia from the Manchurian border to Turpan and, perhaps, the east coast of Lake Balkhash, and from the Orkhon River to the China Proper. Their ancestor Mugulu is said to have been originally a slave of the Toba tribes, situated at the north banks of Yellow River Bend. Mugulu's descendant Shelun is said to be the first chieftain who was able to unify the Rouran tribes and to found the power of the Rouran by defeating the Gaoche and Xianbei. Shelun was also the first of the steppe peoples to adopt the title of khagan (可汗) in 402, originally a title of Xianbei nobility.

The Rouran and the Hephthalites had a falling out and problems within their confederation were encouraged by Chinese agents. In 508, the Gaoche, then operating under the name Tiele, defeated the Rouran in battle. In 516, the Rouran defeated the Tiele. Within the Rouran confederation was a Turkic tribe noted in Chinese annals as the Tujue. After a marriage proposal to the Rouran was rebuffed, the Tujue joined with the Western Wei, successor state to the Northern Wei, and revolted against the Rouran. In 555, they beheaded 3,000 Rouran. European history books commonly claim that the Rouran then fled west across the steppes and became the Avars, though this is probably a mistake. The remainder of the Rouran fled into China, were absorbed into the border guards, and disappeared forever as an entity. The last Rouran khagan fled to the court of Western Wei, but at the demand of Tujue, Western Wei executed him and the nobles that accompanied him.

Little is known of the Rouran ruling elite, which the Book of Wei cited as an offshoot of the Xianbei. The Rouran subdued modern regions of Xinjiang, Mongolia, Central Asia and parts of Siberia and Manchuria from the late 4th century. Their frequent interventions and invasions profoundly affected neighboring countries. Though they admitted the Ashina of Göktürks into their federation, the power of the Rouran was broken by an alliance of Göktürks, the Chinese Northern Qi and Northern Zhou dynasties and tribes in Central Asia in 552. The Northern Wei, for instance, established the Six Garrisons bordering the Rouran, which later became the foci of several major mutinies in the early 6th century.

 

Map showing the location of Avar Khaganate, c. 600 AD

The Avars were a highly organized and powerful multi-ethnic tribal confederation, with a Turkic core of aristocratic nomads, governed by a central ruler (khagan). They appeared in Central and Eastern Europe in the 6th century. Avar rule persisted over much of the Pannonian plain up to the early 9th century.

According to the research of historian András Róna-Tas, the Avars formed in central Asia through a fusion of several tribal elements, in the classical age. Róna-Tas suggests that Turkic Oghurs migrated to the Kazakh steppe, possibly moving south to inhabit the lands vacated by the Huns (another tribal amalgam of Oghurs speaking Hunnic). Here they interacted with a body of Indo-European-speaking Iranians – forming the Xionites (Hunas). Sometime during the 460s, they were subordinated by the Mongolic Ruanruan. The Ruanruan imposed their own rulers - referred to as Uar - at the head of the confederacy. Being a highly cultured people, the Oghurs rose to prominence within the tribal confederacy. The 6th century historian Menander Protector noted that the language of the Avars (which he called Ouarkhonitai "Vakonites") was the same as (possibly meaning similar to) that of the Huns. If language is an indicator of origin, this supports the theory that they might have been an Oghuric Turkic people. The connection with the Rouran has prompted some scholars to suggest that the European Avars’ ruling core was Mongolic, although this has been disputed by others.

Early in the sixth century, the confederacy was conquered by the Göktürk empire (the Göktürks were previously yet another vassal tribal element under Ruanruan supremacy). In his History of the World, Theophylact Simocatta noted that the (Gök)Türks “enslaved the Ohgur tribe, which was one of the most powerful, .. and was accomplished in the art of war”. One body of people, perhaps wishing to evade Göktürk rule, escaped and migrated to the northern Caucasus region c. 555 AD. According to Simocatta, their new neighbours believed them to be the true Avars. They established diplomatic contact with the Byzantines, and the other nomadic tribes of the steppes lavished them with gifts. However, the Göktürks later persuaded the Byzantines that these nomads were not the real Avars, but were instead a group of "fugitive Scythians" who had fled from the Göktürks and stolen the prestigious name of Avar. Hence they have subsequently been called pseudo-Avars.

For all the theories, historian Walter Pohl asserted in 1998, instancing the detailed attempts made by H. W. Haussig in 1953 and K. Czeglèdy in 1983 and his own methodological objections: "It is pointless to ask who exactly the forefathers of the European Avars were. We only know that they carried an ancient, very prestigious name (our first hints to it date back to the times of Herodotus); and we may assume that they were a very mixed group of warriors who wanted to escape domination by the Göktürks." If the Avars were ever a distinct ethnic group, that distinction does not seem to have survived their centuries in Europe. Being an 'Avar' seems to have meant being part of the Avar state (in a similar way that being 'Roman' ceased to have any ethnic meaning). What is certain, by the time they arrived in Europe, the Avars were a heterogeneous, polyethnic people. Modern research shows that each of the large confederations of steppe warriors (such as the Scythians, Xiongnu, Huns, Avars, Khazars, Cumans, Mongols, etc.) were not ethnically homogeneous, but rather unions of multiple ethnicities.

Whatever the origin of the initial group of nomadic warriors, the Avars rapidly intermixed with the Slavic population on the lower Danube basin and Pannonian plain. Slavic was likely used as a lingua franca within the khaganate amongst the disperate peoples. Anthropological research has only revealed few skeletons with Mongoloid-type features, although there was a continuing cultural influence from the Eurasian nomadic steppe.

The Avars arrived upon the northern region of Caucasia in 557, after which time they sent an embassy to Constantinople, marking their first contact with the Byzantine Empire. In exchange for gold, they agreed to subjegate the "unruly gentes" on behalf of the Byzantines. They defeated and incorporated the various nomadic tribes- Kutrigurs, Sabirs, Antes and Onogurs, and by 562 controlled the vast steppes of Ukraine and the lower Danube basin. By their arrival into the Balkans, the Avars were a heterogeneous group of c.20,000 horsemen. Having been bought off by the Eastern Emperor Justinian I, they pushed north into Germany (as Attila the Hun had done a century before), eventually reaching as far north as the Baltic. However, further expansion into Germania was halted by stern Frankish opposition and the harsh conditions of western Europe.

Seeking rich pastoral lands, they initially demanded land south of the Danube river (in present-day Bulgaria), but this was denied them by the Byzantines, who used their contacts with the Göktürks as a threat against Avar aggression. They thus turned their attention to the Carpathian plain, and the natural defenses it afforded. However, the Carpathian basin was occupied by the Gepids at this time. In 567, the Avars signed an alliance with the Lombards, who were the enemies of the Gepids, and together they destroyed much of the Gepid Kingdom. They then in turn 'persuaded' the Lombards to move into northern Italy, an invasion that marked the last Germanic mass movement in the Migration Period.

Continuing their successful policy of turning the various barbarians against each other, the Byzantines then convinced the Avars to attack the Sclavenes in Scythia Minor - for their land was rich with booty and had never been conquered before. After "devastating" much of the Sclavenes' land, the Avars returned to Pannonia, but not before many of the khagan's subjects deserted to the Byzantine Emperor.

By 600 AD, the Avars had established a nomadic empire stretching from Austria in the west to the Pontic steppes in the east, ruling over a multitude of peoples.

The Carpathian basin was the centre of the Avar power base. The Avars re-settled captives from the peripheries of their empire to more central regions. Avar material culture is found south to Macedonia. However, to the east of the Carpathians, there are next to no Avar archaeological finds, suggesting that they were mainly in the western Balkans. Scholars propose that a highly structured and heirarchical Avar society existed, having complex interations with other 'barbarian' groups. The khagan was the paramount figure, surrounded by a minority of nomadic aristocracy. A few expectionally rich burials have been uncovered, confirming that power was limited to the khagan and a close-knit class of 'elite warriors'. Apart from hoards of gold coins, they were often buried with symbols of rank, such as decorated belts, weapons, stirrups resembling those found in central Asia, as well as their horse. The Avar army itself was composed from numerous other groups - Slavic, Gepidic and Bulgar military units - who did the bulk of the fighting for little reward. Initially, the Avars and their subjects lived separately, except for Slavic and Germanic women that were married by Avar men. Eventually, the Germanic and Slavic peoples were included in the Avaric social order and culture – which itself was Persian-Byzantine in fashion

 

Xianbei belt buckles, 3-4th century AD

The Xianbei (鮮卑) were a significant nomadic people residing in Manchuria and eastern Mongolia, or Xianbei Shan. They were descendants of Donghu (Eastern Hu) before migrating into areas of the modern Chinese provinces of Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, and Liaoning. Possibly some tribes of these people also lived in ancient Eastern Heilongjiang or Hulun Manchu Imperial province, currently Khabarovsk and Amur regions in the Russian Far East.

The Xianbei people actually consisted of a federation of sizeable non-Han groups of which the most important was the Tuoba (拓跋). They first became a significant part of Chinese culture during the Han Dynasty, where they occupied the steppes in Mongolia, Hebei and Liaodong. After the fall of the Han dynasty, the Xianbei formed a number of empires of their own, including the Yan Dynasty, Western Qin, Southern Liang and most significantly, the Northern Wei (see Sixteen Kingdoms). By the time of the Tang dynasty they had largely merged with Han populace by adopting its customs, administration and language. The emperors Yang Guang of the Sui Dynasty and Li Yuan of the Tang Dynasty were born of Xianbei mothers and therefore half-Xianbei.

A Xianbei ruler was recorded as having had fair hair as were later some Tatars from the same area, as well as some other Tungusic peoples.

Mongol and Khitan may have descended from Xianbei according to Chinese historical records.

The Xibe people believed themselves to be descendants of the Xianbei. The name of Russia's Siberia may be a direct phonetic translation of "Xianbei". There is a city wall in Siberia today that remains from the Xianbei tribe.

 

 

History of Silk

A picture from the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert, showing the different steps in sericulture and the manufacture of silk.

According to Chinese tradition, the history of silk begins in the 27th century BC. Its use was confined to China until the Silk Road opened at some point during the latter half of the first millennium BC. China maintained its virtual monopoly over silk for another thousand years. Not confined to clothing, silk was also used for a number of other applications, including writing, and the colour of silk worn was an important indicator of social class during the Tang Dynasty.

Silk cultivation spread to Japan in around 300 AD, and by 522 the Byzantines managed to obtain silkworm eggs and were able to begin silkworm cultivation. The Arabs also began to manufacture silk during this same time. As a result of the spread of sericulture, Chinese silk exports became less important, although they still maintained dominance over the luxury silk market. The Crusades brought silk production to Western Europe, in particular to many Italian states, which saw an economic boom exporting silk to the rest of Europe. Changes in manufacturing techniques also began to take place during the Middle Ages, with devices such as the spinning wheel first appearing. During the 16th century France joined Italy in developing a successful silk trade, though the efforts of most other nations to develop a silk industry of their own were unsuccessful.

Allusions to the fabric in the Old Testament show that it was known in western Asia in biblical times. Scholars believe that starting in the 2nd century BC the Chinese established a commercial network aimed at exporting silk to the West. Silk was used, for example, by the Persian court and its king, Darius III, when Alexander the Great conquered the empire. Even though silk spread rapidly across Eurasia, with the possible exception of Japan its production remained exclusively Chinese for three millennia.

The wealth that silk brought to China stirred up envy in neighbouring peoples. Beginning in the 2nd century BC the Xiongnu, regularly pillaged the provinces of the Han Chinese for around 250 years. Silk was a common offering by the emperor to these tribes in exchange for peace. For more than a millennium, silk remained the principal diplomatic gift of the emperor of China to his neighbours or to his vassals.

Silk would eventually leave China in the hair of a princess promised to a prince of Khotan. This probably occurred in the early 1st century AD. The princess, refusing to go without the fabric she loved, would finally break the imperial ban on silk worm exportation.

A number of archaeological discoveries showed that silk had become a luxury material appreciated in foreign countries well before the opening of the Silk Road by the Chinese. For example, silk has been found in the Valley of Kings in a tomb of a mummy dating from 1070 BC. First the Greeks, then the Romans began to speak of the Seres (people of silk).

The silk road toward the west was opened by the Chinese in the 2nd century AD. The main road left from Beijing, going either to the north or south of the Taklamakan desert, one of the most arid in the world, before crossing the Pamir Mountains. The caravans that employed this method to exchange silk with other merchants were generally quite large, including from 100 to 500 people as well as camels and yaks carrying around 140 kg (300 lb) of merchandise. They linked to Antioch and the coasts of the Mediterranean, about one year's travel from Beijing. In the South, a second route went by Yemen, Burma, and India before rejoining the northern route.

Not long after the conquest of Egypt in 30 BC regular commerce began between the Romans and Asia, marked by the Roman appetite for silk cloth coming from the Far East, which was then resold to the Romans by the Parthians. The Roman Senate tried in vain to prohibit the wearing of silk, for economic reasons as well as moral ones. The import of Chinese silk resulted in vast amounts of gold leaving Rome, to such an extent that silk clothing was perceived as a sign of decadence and immorality.

Hellenistic Greece appreciated the high quality of the Chinese goods and made efforts to plant mulberry trees and breed silkworms in the Mediterranean basin. Sassanid Persia controlled the trade of silk destined for Europe and Byzantium.

It was not until 552 AD that the Byzantine emperor Justinian obtained the first silkworm eggs. He had sent two Nestorian monks to Central Asia, and they were able to smuggle silkworm eggs to him hidden in rods of bamboo.

The Arabs, with their widening conquests, spread sericulture across the shores of the Mediterranean. Included in these were Africa, Spain and Sicily, all of which developed an important silk industry.

 

 

The Silk Road

The Silk Road, or Silk Route, is a series of trade and cultural transmission routes that were central to cultural interaction through regions of the Asian continent connecting East and West by linking traders, merchants, pilgrims, monks, soldiers, nomads and urban dwellers from China to the Mediterranean Sea during various periods of time. The trade route was initiated around 114 BC by the Han Dynasty (114 BC), although earlier trade across the continents had already existed. Geographically, The Silk Road or Silk Route is an interconnected series of ancient trade routes connecting Chang'an (today's Xi'an) in China, with Asia Minor and the Mediterranean, extending over 8,000 km (5,000 miles) on land and sea. Trade on the Silk Road was a significant factor in the development of the great civilizations of China, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Indian subcontinent, and Rome, and helped to lay the foundations for the modern world.

As it extends westwards from the commercial centers of North China, the continental Silk Road divides into north and south routes to avoid the Tibetan Plateau.

The Northern Route travels northwest through the Chinese province of Gansu, and splits into three further routes, two of them passing north and south of the Taklamakan Desert (through modern day Kyrgyzstan and Xinjiang) to rejoin at Kashgar; and the other going north of the Tien Shan mountains through Turfan, Talgar and Almaty (in what is now southeast Kazakhstan).

All routes join up at Kokand in the Fergana Valley, and the roads continue west across the Karakum Desert towards Merv, joining the northern route briefly.

One of these routes turns northwest along the Amu Darya (river) including Bukhara and Samarkand the center of Silk Road trade to the Aral Sea, through ancient civilizations under the present site of Astrakhan, and on to the Crimean peninsula. From there it crosses the Black Sea, Marmara Sea and the Balkans to Venice; another crosses the Caspian Sea and across the Caucasus to the Black Sea in Georgia, thence to Constantinople.

The Southern Route is mainly a single route running through northern India, then the Turkestan–Khorasan region into Mesopotamia and Anatolia; having southward spurs enabling the journey to be completed by sea from various points. It runs south through the Sichuan Basin in China and crosses the high mountains into northeast India, probably via the Ancient tea route. It then travels west along the Brahmaputra and Ganges river plains, possibly joining the Grand Trunk Road west of Varanasi. It runs through northern Pakistan and over the Hindu Kush mountains to rejoin the northern route briefly near Merv

It then follows a nearly straight line west through mountainous northern Iran and the northern tip of the Syrian Desert to the Levant. From there, Mediterranean trading ships plied regular routes to Italy, and land routes went either north through Anatolia or south to North Africa.

Marco Polo (videos - Marco Polo in Xinjiang: 1, 2, 3): The Venetian explorer Marco Polo became one of the first Europeans to travel the Silk Road to China, and his tales, documented in Il Milione, opened Western eyes to some of the customs of the Far East. He was not the first to bring back stories, but he was one of the widest-read.

 

 

Cities Along the Silk Road

From Yazd, Iran to Turpan, China: Merv (Turkmenistan), Urgench (Turkmenistan), Bukhara (Uzbekistan), Samarkand (Uzbekistan), Khujand (Tajikistan), Istaravshan (Tajikistan), Shahrisabz (Uzbekistan), Hazrat-e Turkestan (Kazakhstan), Ürümqi (Xinjiang).

From Yazd, Iran to Kashi, China: Herat (Afghanistan), Bamyan (Afghanistan), Kabul (Afghanistan), Peshawar (Pakistan), Ahmedabad (India), Mumbai (India), Kashi (or Kashgar, Xinjiang).

The Northern Route Along the Taklamakan Desert from Kashi, Xinjiang to Anxi, Gansu: Li Jien. (An ancient, possibly Roman settlement), Aksu (Xinjiang), Kuqa or Kucha (Xinjiang), Korla (Xinjiang), Jiaohe, Loulan (Xinjiang), Turpan or Turfan (Xinjiang), Gaochang (Xinjiang), Kumul/Hami (Xinjiang).

The Southern Route Along the Taklamakan Desert from Kashi, China to Anxi, China: Hotan or Khotan (Xinjiang), Minfeng (Xinjiang), Niya (Xinjiang), Miran (Xinjiang), Dunhuang (Gansu).

 

 

Karakoram Highway route map

The Karakoram Highway (KKH) is the highest paved international road in the world. It connects China and Pakistan across the Karakoram mountain range, through the Khunjerab Pass. It connects China's Xinjiang region with Pakistan's Northern Areas and also serves as a popular tourist attraction. It is also referred to as National Highway 35 or N35. Due to its high elevation and the difficult conditions in which it was constructed, it is also referred to as the "Ninth Wonder of the World."

The Karakoram Highway, also known as the Friendship Highway in China, was built by the governments of Pakistan and China, and was completed in 1986, after 20 years of construction. 810 Pakistani and 82 Chinese workers lost their lives, mostly in landslides and falls, while building the highway. The route of the KKH traces one of the many paths of the ancient Silk Road.

There are more than 20,000 pieces of rock art and petroglyphs all along the highway that are concentrated at ten major sites between Hunza and Shatial. The carvings were left by various invaders, traders and pilgrims who passed along the trade route, as well as by locals. The earliest date back to between 5000 and 1000 BC, showing single animals, triangular men and hunting scenes in which the animals are larger than the hunters. These carvings were pecked into the rock with stone tools and are covered with a thick patina that proves their age.

The highway, connecting the Northern Areas of Pakistan to the ancient Silk Road, runs approximately 1,300 km from Kashgar, a city in the Xinjiang region of China, to Havelian, located in the Abbottabad District of Pakistan. An extension of the highway meets the Grand Trunk Road at Hasan Abdal, west of Islamabad, Pakistan.

The highway cuts through the collision zone between the Asian and Indian continents, where China, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India come within 250km of each other. Owing largely to the extremely sensitive state of the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan, the Karakoram highway has strategic and military importance.

 

 

Prehistory of the Silk Road

Iranian and Scythian Connections: The expansion of Scythian Iranian cultures stretching from the Hungarian plain and the Carpathians to the Chinese Kansu Corridor and linking Iran, and the Middle East with Northern India and the Punjab, undoubtedly played an important role in the development of the Silk Road. Scythians accompanied the Assyrian Esarhaddon on his invasion of Egypt, and their distinctive triangular arrowheads have been found as far south as Aswan. These nomadic peoples were dependent upon neighbouring settled populations for a number of important technologies, and in addition to raiding vulnerable settlements for these commodities, also encouraged long distance merchants as a source of income through the enforced payment of tariffs. Soghdian Scythian merchants played a vital role in later periods in the development of the Silk Road.

Chinese and Central Asian Contacts: From the 2nd millennium BC nephrite jade was being traded from mines in the region of Yarkand and Khotan to China. Significantly, these mines were not very far from the lapis lazuli and spinel ("Balas Ruby") mines in Badakhshan and, although separated by the formidable Pamir Mountains, routes across them were, apparently, in use from very early times.

The Tarim mummies, Chinese mummies of non-Mongoloid, apparently Caucasoid, individuals, have been found in the Tarim Basin, in the area of Loulan located along the Silk Road 200 km east of Yingpan, dating to as early as 1600 BC and suggesting very ancient contacts between East and West. It has been suggested that these mummified remains may have been of people related to the Tocharians whose Indo-European language remained in use in the Tarim Basin (modern day Xinjiang) of China until the 8th century.

Some remnants of what was probably Chinese silk have been found in Ancient Egypt from 1070 BC. Though the originating source seems sufficiently reliable, silk unfortunately degrades very rapidly and we cannot double-check for accuracy whether it was actually cultivated silk (which would almost certainly have come from China) that was discovered or a type of "wild silk," which might have come from the Mediterranean region or the Middle East.

Following contacts of metropolitan China with nomadic western border territories in the 8th century BC, gold was introduced from Central Asia, and Chinese jade carvers began to make imitation designs of the steppes, adopting the Scythian-style animal art of the steppes (descriptions of animals locked in combat). This style is particularly reflected in the rectangular belt plaques made of gold and bronze with alternate versions in jade and steatite.

Persian Royal Road: By the time of Herodotus (c. 475 BC) the Persian Royal Road ran some 2,857 km from the city of Susa on the lower Tigris to the port of Smyrna (modern İzmir in Turkey) on the Aegean Sea. It was maintained and protected by the Achaemenid Empire (c.500–330 BC) and had postal stations and relays at regular intervals. By having fresh horses and riders ready at each relay, royal couriers could carry messages the entire distance in 9 days, though normal travellers took about three months. This Royal Road linked into many other routes. Some of these, such as the routes to India and Central Asia, were also protected by the Achaemenids, encouraging regular contact between India, Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean. There are accounts in Esther of dispatches being sent from Susa to provinces as far out as India and Cush during the reign of Xerxes (485–465 BC).

 

The Prehistory of the Silk Road by E. E. Kuzmina

 

 

 

 

On Ancient Central Asian Tracks by Aurel Stein

 

 

 

 

The Silk Road: Ten Thousand Miles through Central Asia by Sven Hedin

 

 

 

 

 

History of the Silk Road

Hellenistic Era: The first major step in opening the Silk Road between the East and the West came with the expansion of Alexander the Great's empire into Central Asia. In August 329 BC, at the mouth of the Fergana Valley in Tajikistan he founded the city of Alexandria Eschate or "Alexandria The Furthest". This later became a major staging point on the northern Silk Route.

In 323 BC, Alexander the Great’s successors, the Ptolemaic dynasty, took control of Egypt. They actively promoted trade with Mesopotamia, India, and East Africa through their Red Sea ports and over land. This was assisted by a number of intermediaries, especially the Nabataeans and other Arabs.

The Greeks remained in Central Asia for the next three centuries, first through the administration of the Seleucid Empire, and then with the establishment of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom in Bactria. They continued to expand eastward, especially during the reign of Euthydemus (230–200 BC) who extended his control beyond Alexandria Eschate to Sogdiana. There are indications that he may have led expeditions as far as Kashgar in Chinese Turkestan (Xinjiang), leading to the first known contacts between China and the West around 200 BC. The Greek historian Strabo writes "they extended their empire even as far as the Seres (China) and the Phryni."

Chinese Exploration of Central Asia: The next step came around 130 BC, with the embassies of the Han Dynasty to Central Asia, following the reports of the ambassador Zhang Qian (who was originally sent to obtain an alliance with the Yuezhi against the Xiongnu). The Chinese Emperor Wu Di became interested in developing commercial relationship with the sophisticated urban civilizations of Ferghana, Bactria and Parthia: "The Son of Heaven on hearing all this reasoned thus: Ferghana (Dayuan) and the possessions of Bactria (Ta-Hsia) and Parthia (Anxi) are large countries, full of rare things, with a population living in fixed abodes and given to occupations somewhat identical with those of the Chinese people, but with weak armies, and placing great value on the rich produce of China" (Hou Hanshu, Later Han History).

The Chinese were also strongly attracted by the tall and powerful horses in the possession of the Dayuan (named "Heavenly horses"), which were of capital importance in fighting the nomadic Xiongnu. The Chinese subsequently sent numerous embassies, around ten every year, to these countries and as far as Seleucid Syria. "Thus more embassies were dispatched to Anxi [Parthia], Yancai [who later joined the Alans ], Lijian [Syria under the Seleucids], Tiaozhi [Chaldea], and Tianzhu [northwestern India]… As a rule, rather more than ten such missions went forward in the course of a year, and at the least five or six." (Hou Hanshu, Later Han History). The Chinese campaigned in Central Asia on several occasions, and direct encounters between Han troops and Roman legionaries (probably captured or recruited as mercenaries by the Xiong Nu) are recorded, particularly in the 36 BC battle of Sogdiana (Joseph Needham, Sidney Shapiro). It has been suggested that the Chinese crossbow was transmitted to the Roman world on such occasions, although the Greek gastraphetes provides an alternative origin. R. Ernest Dupuy and Trevor N. Dupuy suggest that in 36 B.C., a "Han expedition into central Asia, west of Jaxartes River, apparently encountered and defeated a contingent of Roman legionaries. The Romans may have been part of Antony's army invading Parthia. Sogdiana (modern Bukhara), east of the Oxus River, on the Polytimetus River, was apparently the most easterly penetration ever made by Roman forces in Asia. The margin of Chinese victory appears to have been their crossbows, whose bolts and darts seem easily to have penetrated Roman shields and armor."

The Roman historian Florus also describes the visit of numerous envoys, included Seres (Chinese), to the first Roman Emperor Augustus, who reigned between 27 BC and 14:

"Even the rest of the nations of the world which were not subject to the imperial sway were sensible of its grandeur, and looked with reverence to the Roman people, the great conqueror of nations. Thus even Scythians and Sarmatians sent envoys to seek the friendship of Rome. Nay, the Seres came likewise, and the Indians who dwelt beneath the vertical sun, bringing presents of precious stones and pearls and elephants, but thinking all of less moment than the vastness of the journey which they had undertaken, and which they said had occupied four years. In truth it needed but to look at their complexion to see that they were people of another world than ours." ("Cathay and the way thither", Henry Yule).

The "Silk Road" essentially came into being from the 1st century BC, following these efforts by China to consolidate a road to the Western world and India, both through direct settlements in the area of the Tarim Basin and diplomatic relations with the countries of the Dayuan, Parthians and Bactrians further west. The Han Dynasty Chinese army regularly policed the trade route against nomadic bandit forces generally identified as the Xiongnu/Huns. Han general Ban Chao led an army of 70,000 mounted infantry and light cavalry troops in the 1st century AD to secure the trade routes, reaching far west across central Asia to the doorstep of Europe, and setting up base on the shores of the Caspian Sea in cooperation with the Parthian Kingdom under Pacorus II of Parthia.

A maritime "Silk Route" opened up between Chinese-controlled Jiaozhi (centred in modern Vietnam, near Hanoi) probably by the 1st century. It extended, via ports on the coasts of India and Sri Lanka, all the way to Roman-controlled ports in Egypt and the Nabataean territories on the northeastern coast of the Red Sea.

The Roman Empire: Soon after the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC, regular communications and trade between India, Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka, China, the Middle East, Africa and Europe blossomed on an unprecedented scale. The party of Maës Titianus became the travellers who penetrated farthest east along the Silk Road from the Mediterranean world, probably with the aim of regularizing contacts and reducing the role of middlemen, during one of the lulls in Rome's intermittent wars with Parthia, which repeatedly obstructed movement along the Silk Road. Land and maritime routes were closely linked, and novel products, technologies and ideas began to spread across the continents of Europe, Asia and Africa. Intercontinental trade and communication became regular, organized, and protected by the 'Great Powers.' Intense trade with the Roman Empire followed soon, confirmed by the Roman craze for Chinese silk (supplied through the Parthians), even though the Romans thought silk was obtained from trees. This belief was affirmed by Seneca the Younger in his Phaedra and by Virgil in his Georgics. Notably, Pliny the Elder knew better. Speaking of the bombyx or silk moth, he wrote in his Natural Histories "They weave webs, like spiders, that become a luxurious clothing material for women, called silk."

The Senate issued, in vain, several edicts to prohibit the wearing of silk, on economic and moral grounds: the importation of Chinese silk caused a huge outflow of gold, and silk clothes were considered to be decadent and immoral:

"I can see clothes of silk, if materials that do not hide the body, nor even one's decency, can be called clothes… Wretched flocks of maids labour so that the adulteress may be visible through her thin dress, so that her husband has no more acquaintance than any outsider or foreigner with his wife's body" (Seneca the Younger (c.3 BC–65, Declamations Vol. I).

The Hou Hanshu records that the first Roman envoy arrived in China by this maritime route in 166, initiating a series of Roman embassies to China.

Medieval Period: The main traders during Antiquity were the Indian and Bactrian traders, then from the 5th to the 8th century AD the Sogdian traders, then afterward the Persian traders.

The unification of Central Asia and Northern India within Kushan empire in the first to third centuries reinforced the role of the powerful merchants from Bactria and Taxila. They fostered multi-cultural interaction as indicated by their 2nd century treasure hoards filled with products from the Greco-Roman world, China and India, such as in the archeological site of Begram.

The heyday of the Silk Road corresponds, on its west end, to the Byzantine Empire, Sassanid Empire Period to Il Khanate Period in the Nile-Oxus section and Three Kingdoms to Yuan Dynasty in the Sinitic zone in its east end. Trade between East and West also developed on the sea, between Alexandria in Egypt and Guangzhou in China, fostering across the Indian Ocean. The Silk Road represents an early phenomenon of political and cultural integration due to inter-regional trade. In its heyday, the Silk Road sustained an international culture that strung together groups as diverse as the Magyars, Armenians, and Chinese.

Under its strong integrating dynamics on the one hand and the impacts of change it transmitted on the other, tribal societies previously living in isolation along the Silk Road or pastoralists who were of barbarian cultural development were drawn to the riches and opportunities of the civilizations connected by the Silk Road, taking on the trades of marauders or mercenaries. Many barbarian tribes became skilled warriors able to conquer rich cities and fertile lands, and forge strong military empires.

The Sogdians dominated the East-West trade after the 4th century CE up to the 8th century CE, with Suyab and Talas ranking among their main centers in the north. They were the main caravan merchants of Central Asia. Their commercial interests were protected by the resurgent military power of the Göktürks, whose empire has been described as "the joint enterprise of the Ashina clan and the Soghdians". Their trades with some interruptions continued in the 9th century within the framework of the Uighur Empire, which until 840 extended across northern Central Asia and obtained from China enormous deliveries of silk in exchange for horses. At this time caravans of Sogdians traveling to Upper Mongolia are mentioned in Chinese sources. They played an equally important religious and cultural role. Part of the data about eastern Asia provided by Muslim geographers of the 10th century actually goes back to Sogdian data of the period 750-840 and thus shows the survival of links between east and west. However, after the end of the Uighur Empire, Sogdian trade went through a crisis. What mainly issued from Muslim Central Asia was the trade of the Samanids, which resumed the northwestern road leading to the Khazars and the Urals and the northeastern one toward the nearby Turkic tribes.

The Silk Road gave rise to the clusters of military states of nomadic origins in North China, invited the Nestorian, Manichaean, Buddhist, and later Islamic religions into Central Asia and China, created the influential Khazar Federation and at the end of its glory, brought about the largest continental empire ever: the Mongol Empire, with its political centers strung along the Silk Road (Beijing in North China, Karakorum in central Mongolia, Sarmakhand in Transoxiana, Tabriz in Northern Iran, Sarai and Astrakhan in lower Volga, Solkhat in Crimea, Kazan in Central Russia, Erzurum in eastern Anatolia), realizing the political unification of zones previously loosely and intermittently connected by material and cultural goods.

The Roman Empire, and its demand for sophisticated Asian products, crumbled in the West around the 5th century. In Central Asia, Islam expanded from the 7th century onward, bringing a stop to Chinese westward expansion at the Battle of Talas in 751. Further expansion of the Islamic Turks in Central Asia from the 10th century finished disrupting trade in that part of the world, and Buddhism almost disappeared. For much of the Middle Ages, the Islamic Caliphate in Persia often had a monopoly over much of the trade conducted across the Old World (see Muslim age of discovery for more details).

Mongol Era: The Mongol expansion throughout the Asian continent from around 1215 to 1360 helped bring political stability and re-establish the Silk Road (via Karakorum). The Chinese Mongol diplomat Rabban Bar Sauma visited the courts of Europe in 1287-1288 and provided a detailed written report back to the Mongols. Around the same time, the Venetian explorer Marco Polo became one of the first Europeans to travel the Silk Road to China, and his tales, documented in Ptolemaic dynasty, opened Western eyes to some of the customs of the Far East. He was not the first to bring back stories, but he was one of the widest-read. He had been preceded by numerous Christian missionaries to the East, such as William of Rubruck, Benedykt Polak, Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, and Andrew of Longjumeau. Later envoys included Odoric of Pordenone, Giovanni de' Marignolli, John of Montecorvino, Niccolò Da Conti, or Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan Muslim traveller, who passed through the present-day Middle East and across the Silk Road from Tabriz, between 1325-1354.

The 13th century also saw attempts at a Franco-Mongol alliance, with exchange of ambassadors and (failed) attempts at military collaboration in the Holy Land during the later Crusades, though eventually the Mongols in the Ilkhanate, after they had destroyed the Abbasid and Ayyubid dynasties, eventually themselves converted to Islam, and signed the 1323 Treaty of Aleppo with the surviving Muslim power, the Egyptian Mamluks.

Disintegration: However, with the disintegration of the Mongol Empire also came discontinuation of the Silk Road's political, cultural and economic unity. Turkmeni marching lords seized the western part of the Silk Road — the decaying Byzantine Empire. After the Mongol Empire, the great political powers along the Silk Road became economically and culturally separated. Accompanying the crystallization of regional states was the decline of nomad power, partly due to the devastation of the Black Death and partly due to the encroachment of sedentary civilizations equipped with gunpowder.

The effect of gunpowder and early modernity on Europe was the integration of territorial states and increasing mercantilism; whereas on the Silk Road, gunpowder and early modernity had the opposite impact: the level of integration of the Mongol Empire could not be maintained, and trade declined (though partly due to an increase in European maritime exchanges).

The Silk Road stopped serving as a shipping route for silk around 1400.

 

 

Bactrian Camel

A Western on a Bactrian Camel, a sancai glazed figurine from the Tang Dynasty

The Bactrian Camel (Camelus bactrianus) is a large even-toed ungulate native to the steppes of north eastern Asia. It is one of the two surviving species of camel. The Bactrian Camel has two humps on its back, in contrast to the single-humped Dromedary Camel.

Nearly all of the estimated 1.4 million Bactrian Camels alive today are domesticated, but in October 2002 the estimated 950 remaining in the wild in northwest China and Mongolia were placed on the critically endangered species list.

It is thought that the Bactrian Camel was domesticated (independently from the dromedary) sometime before 2500 BC, probably in northern Iran, Northeast Afghanistan, or southwestern Turkestan. The dromedary is believed to have been domesticated between 4000 BC and 2000 BC in Arabia. The wild population of Bactrian Camels was first described by Nikolai Przhevalsky in the late 19th century.

Bactrian Camels have been the focus of artwork throughout history. For example, western foreigners from the Tarim Basin and elsewhere were depicted in numerous ceramic figurines of the Chinese Tang Dynasty (618–907).

There is some evidence that the Bactrian Camel can be divided up into different subspecies. In particular, it has been discovered that a population of wild Bactrian Camel lives within a part of the Gashun Gobi region of the Gobi Desert. This population is distinct from domesticated herds both in genetic makeup and in behavior.

There are possibly as many as three regions in the genetic makeup that are distinctly different from domesticated camels and there is up to a 3% difference in the base genetic code. However, with so few wild camels, it is unclear what the natural genetic diversity within a population would have been.

Canadian researcher William Sommers found that these wild camels had the ability to drink saltwater slush, although it is not yet certain the camel can extract useful water from it. Domesticated camels do not attempt to drink salt water, though the reason is unknown.

The Bactrian Camel was identified as one of the top-10 "focal species" in 2007 by the Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) project. EDGE identifies species that are evolutionarily distinct and need better protection to prevent extinction. The Bactrian Camel was placed in the top-10 along with Golden-rumped Elephant Shrew, Sir David's Long-beaked Echidna, Hispaniolan Solenodon, Yangtze River dolphin, Slender loris, Hirola, Pygmy Hippo, Bumblebee bat, and the Long-eared Jerboa. There are only hundreds of them in the wild and the population is decreasing, but a large captive population had been kept.

 

 

Seres

Detail of Asia in the Ptolemy world map. Gulf of the Ganges left, Southeast Asian peninsula in the center, China Sea right, with "Sinae" and "Serica" to the North.

Seres (Gr. Σῆρες, Lat. Sērēs) was the ancient Greek and Roman name for the inhabitants of the northwestern part of modern China, (in other words modern Xinjiang or Eastern Turkestan). It meant "of silk," or people of the "land where silk comes from." The name is thought to derive from the Chinese word for silk, "si" (絲). It is itself at the origin of the Latin for "silk", sērĭcă.

Serica, the land of the Seres, was the name by which the Ancient Greco-Romans referred to a country in Eastern Asia. The Ancients' knowledge of this nation was indistinct and often distorted by the wildest fables and myths, though Ptolemy and Pliny the Elder present a description which is tolerable in its scope and detail. Serica was explained by Ptolemy as bordering Scythia extra Imaum or "India beyond the Himalayas" on the West, Terra Incognita to the North-East, the Sinae or Chinese to the East and by India to the South. India in Antiquity, as for all of Western history until the Early Twentieth Century, was a broad geographic toponym which embraced all of the Indian subcontinent, Indochina and the Malay Archipelago. Most modern geographers assert that the position of Serica would nowadays be situated in the North-Western section of the People's Republic of China in Xinjiang province.

Before we hear of the country Serica, many ancient authors mention the people the Seres, the manufacturers and distributors of the precious material silk. Some geographers believe that the Greco-Romans denominated the Chinese when approached from the Pacific Ocean as Sinae, whereas when reached from the Asiatic steppes they were called Seres. Others contend however, that the Sinae were the Ancient Chinese while the Seres were an assimilated melange of Indo-European and perhaps Turkic people who had formed a loose confederacy and dealt with the Indians, the Chinese and through the Parthians and later the Sassanid Persians, the Romans as well. The descriptive accounts inscribed by Pliny do intimate to us that the Seres were indeed a "Caucasoid" people and whereas some tribes did cohabit with them, they did not constitute the distinguishing strain of the nation. This opinion is substantiated by the portrayal of the Sericans written by Pausanias, which assorts them as being the mixed offspring of the Scythians and the Indians, both Indo-European peoples. Further, in the early 19th Century the celebrated German explorer, cosmographer and natural philosopher Alexander von Humboldt postulated from his researches that, as with the present (both his and ours), Central Asia contained a mixed population of doubtful origin. He specifically cited the Massegetae tribe north of the Oxus River as a Mongolic people cohabiting with the Indo-European Sogdians, Bactrians and Indians (See: Fragments de géologie et de climatologie asiatiques (2 vols. 8vo, 1831), and in central Asia (3 vols. 8vo, 1843). The Serican physiognomy is described as being of extraordinary size, with blue eyes, red hair, a rough voice and a body quite unfamiliar with infirmity or contagion. The final characteristic, most likely the wistful hyperbole of the Mediterranean writer, is probably drawn from the fame of the region's salubrious climate. Once again it is tempting for the modern geographer or ethnologist to correspond the Seres with any number of patently Indo-European tribes with fair complexion enumerated and described by the Ancient Chinese authors. That the description of the Mediterranean authors pertains to an Indo-European people is evident, though the precise extent of Mongolic admixture into the nation has yet to be satisfactorily ascertained or theorized.

The Greco-Roman writers have preserved the names of over a dozen tribes and fifteen cities of the Seres. From reading their portrayals, it is evident that not all are of the same ethnicity, though they share a common national appellative. The capital of the Seres is denominated Sera, a city whose ruins are more likely to be located in the Xinjiang plains of modern China rather than closer to Beijing . possible candidates include Kashgar, a major mart of Central Asian trade and transnational interaction, and Yarkand, a place of some regional importance. Issedon, the metropolis of the principal Serican nation the Issedones, is thought to have been situated on the eastern declivity of the Pamirs or even the Altai.

The Issedones were an ancient people of Central Asia at the end of the trade route leading north-east from Scythia, described in the lost Arimaspeia of Aristeas, by Herodotus in his History and by Ptolemy in his Geography. Like the Massagetae to the west, the Issedones are described by Herodotus as similar to, yet distinct from, the Scythians.

The exact location of their country in Central Asia is unknown; the Issedones are "placed by some in Western Siberia and by others in Chinese Turkestan," according to E. D. Phillips. Herodotus (who allegedly got his information through both Greek and Scythian sources) describes them as living east of Scythia and north of the Massagetae, while the geographer Ptolemy appears to place the trading stations of Issedon Scythica and Issedon Serica in the Tarim Basin. They may have been identical with the people described in Chinese sources as Wu-sun, situated around Lake Balkash. J.D.P. Bolton places them further north east, on the south-western slopes of the Altay mountains.

The Wusun (烏孫), were a nomadic, Turkic speaking people who, according to the Chinese histories, originally lived to the northwest of China near the Yuezhi people but fled circa 176 BCE to the region of the Ili river and (lake) Issyk Kul and formed a powerful force there after being defeated by the Xiongnu where they remained for at least five centuries. The last reference to the Wusun in the Chinese historical sources is in 436 AD, when a Chinese envoy was sent to their country and the Wusun reciprocated.

Their later fate is connected with the Turkic Kaganates and the sudden reversals of fortune that fell on Central Asia and, specifically, the Jeti-su area. Considerable remains of their traces and their impact on the events and surrounding peoples were left in the Persian, Muslim, Turkic, and Russian sources extending from the 6th century AD to the present (see Uysyn).

According to Chinese archaeologists the excavated skeletal remains of the presumed Wusun people are short-headed Europoid type of the Central Asian, Transoxanian type. Wusun women were first described by Jiao Yanshou as "ugly and dark colored people with deep eye sockets", who probably resembled Indians, as suggested from the skin complexion. The Wusun was also described later in the Chinese historical annals as having "green [or blue] eyes and red beard [or hair], and are like a macaque." (This commentary was added by Yan Shigu in the 7th century to Hanshu, in which he describes the racial characteristics of the Wusun of his time), i.e., of Caucasoid appearance, though no actual description of the Yuezhi was given.

Uysyn is a name of one of the largest tribes of the Senior Juz in the Republic of Kazakhstan. The Uysyn history is traced from the 3rd century BC. P.Pelliot and L.Ηambis determined a commonality of the origin of the ancient Usuns (Wusun) with the Sary-Uysuns between Kirgiz, Uzbek Ushuns and Uyshuns, and also with the Uysuns of the Kazakh Senior Juz.

The first historical records about Usuns already name them as separate and distinct tribe of the Huns (Ch. 匈奴 Xiongnu, Hsiung-nu, etc), living in the territory of the modern Gansu province of the PRC, in the valley of the Ushui-he (Ch. Raven-river) river. It is not clear if the river was named after the name of the Usun tribe, or the other way around. Early in their known history, Usuns migrated in three stages, lasting near two hundred years. The first exodus from Shaanxi to Tsilyan-shan ca 410 BC was forced by military intervention of As-Tochar coalition (Ch. Yuezhi 月氏), who moved into the area vacated by Hunno-Usun tribes. In the interim period between 410 and 177 BC, Usuns with the Huns were vassals of the Yuezhi As-Tochar coalition. The second migration ca. 178 BC, connected with a campagn of Maodun (Mode)-Shanyu's Western Tuki (prince) aganst Yuezhi, was a reconquest by Usuns of their Sichen homeland. The third migration ca. 160 BC was a deliberate displacement by the Usuns of the defeated Ases-Tochars from their temporary stop-over in the Jeti-su. In 160 BC, after a death of the Hun's supreme shanyu Laoshan (173-161), Usuns separated from the Hun Empire, migrated to the region of the Ili river and lake Issyk Kul, established their independence, and formed a powerful state in the Jeti-su area.

 

Approximate extent of Scythia and the Scythian languages (orange) in the 1st century BC

The Scythians or Scyths (Greek: Σκύθες, Σκύθοι) were an Iranian speaking people of horse-riding nomadic pastoralists who dominated the Pontic steppe throughout Classical Antiquity. By Late Antiquity the closely-related Sarmatians came to dominate the Scyths in this area. Much of the surviving information about the Scyths comes from the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 440 BC) in his Histories, and archaeologically from the exquisite goldwork found in Scythian burial mounds in Ukraine and Southern Russia.

The name "Scythian" has also been used to refer to various peoples seen as similar to the Scythians, or who lived anywhere in a vast area covering present-day Ukraine, Russia and Central Asia — known until medieval times as Scythia. The name was also used among early scholars studying the Proto Indo-Europeans, and within the framework of the Kurgan hypothesis the Scythians are considered a reasonable analogue for their Proto Indo-European ancestors.

Scholars generally classify the Scythian language as a member of the Eastern Iranian languages, and the Scythians as a branch of the ancient Iranian peoples expanding into the steppe regions north of Greater Iran from around 1000 BC.

Asians, especially Persians, knew the Scythians in Asia as Sakas. The Indo-Scythians had the name "Shaka" in South Asia, an extension on the name "Saka".

Ruled by small numbers of closely-allied élites, Scythians had a reputation for their archers, and many gained employment as mercenaries. Scythian élites had kurgan tombs.

In Late Antiquity the notion of a Scythian ethnicity grew more vague, and outsiders might dub any people inhabiting the Pontic-Caspian steppe as "Scythians", regardless of their language. Thus, Priscus, a Byzantine emissary to Attila, repeatedly referred to the latter's followers as "Scythians". In Attila's regime Edekon was the king of Scythians.

The Goths had displaced the Sarmatians in the 2nd century from most areas near the Roman frontier, and by early medieval times, the Turkic migration marginalized East Iranian dialects, and assimilated the Saka linguistically.

The Sarmatians, Sarmatae or Sauromatae (Old Iranian Sarumatah 'archer') were a people of Iranic origin. Mentioned by classical authors, they migrated from Central Asia to the Ural Mountains around fifth century B.C. and eventually settled in most of southern European Russia, Ukraine, and the eastern Balkans.

The numerous Iranian personal names in the Greek inscriptions from the Black Sea Coast indicate that the Sarmatians there spoke a north-eastern Iranian dialect related to Sogdian and Ossetic. Like the Scythians, Sarmatians were of Caucasian appearance; before the arrival of the Huns it is thought that few of the western steppe peoples had Asiatic or Turco-Mongol features

Ancient DNA of 13 Sarmatian remains from Pokrovka and Meirmagul kurgans was extracted for comparative analysis. Most of the genetic traits determined were of western Eurasian origin, while only a few were of central/east Asian origin.

World-wide spreading of Haplotypes which are identical with Pr11 and Pr6 from DNA Report: Pokrovka Warrior Women Compared to Meiramgul

 

 

Central Asia

Map of Central Asia

Central Asia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern Pakistan in the south. It is also sometimes known as Middle Asia or Inner Asia, and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent. Though various definitions of its exact composition exist, no one definition is universally accepted. Despite this uncertainty in defining borders, it does have some important overall characteristics. For one, Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road. As a result, it has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, and ideas between Europe, Western Asia, South Asia, and East Asia.

Central Asia is largely coextensive with Turkestan. In modern context, Central Asia consists of the five former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The nations of Afghanistan and Mongolia may also be included in Central Asia, as well as northeastern Iran and the western Chinese provinces of Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Qinghai and Tibet.

In ancient Chinese history records, the term Western Regions was used to describe the lands to the west of China.

The idea of Central Asia as a distinct region of the world was introduced in 1843 by the geographer Alexander von Humboldt. The borders of Central Asia are subject to multiple definitions. Many text books still refer to this area as Turkestan, which was the name used prior to Stalin's rule.

The UNESCO general history of Central Asia, written just before the collapse of the USSR, defines the region based on climate and uses far larger borders. According to it, Central Asia includes Mongolia, Western China (including Tibet), northern India (Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, and Punjab states), northeast Iran (Golestan, North Khorasan, and Razavi provinces), Afghanistan, northern Pakistan (Punjab, Northern Areas, and N.W.F.P. provinces), central-east Russia south of the Taiga, and the former Central Asian Soviet Republics (the five "Stans" of the former Soviet Union). An alternative method is to define the region based on ethnicity, and in particular, areas populated by Eastern Turkic, Eastern Iranian, or Mongolian peoples. These areas include Xinjiang, the Turkic/Muslim regions of southern Siberia, the five republics, and Afghan Turkestan, northern Pakistan and Afghans. The Tibetans are also included. Insofar, the mentioned peoples are considered the "indigenous" peoples of the vast region.

The Republic of Tuva (now part of the Russian Federation) is claimed to be located at the geographical center of Asia that has a location 200 miles (320 km) North of Urumqi.

The history of Central Asia is defined by the area's climate and geography. The aridness of the region made agriculture difficult and its distance from the sea cut it off from much trade. Thus few major cities developed in the region, instead the area was for millennia dominated by the nomadic horse peoples of the steppe.

Relations between the steppe nomads and the settled people in and around Central Asia were long marked by conflict. The nomadic lifestyle was well suited to warfare and the steppe horse riders became some of the most militarily potent peoples in the world, only limited by their lack of internal unity. Any internal unity that was achieved, was most probably due to the influence of the Silk Road, which traveled along Central Asia. Periodically great leaders or changing conditions would organize several tribes into to one force, and create an almost unstoppable power. These included the Hun invasion of Europe, the Wu Hu attacks on China and most notably the Mongol conquest of much of Eurasia.

The dominance of the nomads ended in the 16th century, as firearms allowed settled peoples to gain control of the region. Russia, China, and other powers expanded into the region and had captured the bulk of Central Asia by the end of the nineteenth century. After the Russian Revolution the Central Asian regions were incorporated into the Soviet Union. Mongolia remained independent but became a Soviet satellite state. The Soviet areas of Central Asia saw much industrialization and construction of infrastructure, but also the suppression of local cultures, hundreds of thousands of deaths from failed collectivization programs, and a lasting legacy of ethnic tensions and environmental problems.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union five countries gained independence. In nearly all the new states former Communist Party officials retained power as local strongmen. None of the new republics could be considered functional democracies, although it appears Kyrgyzstan may achieve this. Other parts of Central Asia remain part of China or Russia.

The languages of the majority of the inhabitants of the former Soviet Central Asian Republics come from the Turkic language group. Turkmen, closely related to Turkish (they are both members of the Oghuz group of Turkic), is mainly spoken in Turkmenistan and into Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Turkey. Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Tatar are related languages of the Kypchak group of Turkic languages, and are spoken throughout Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and into Afghanistan, Xinjiang and Qinghai. Uzbek and Uyghur are spoken in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Xinjiang.

Russian, as well as being spoken by around six million ethnic Russians and Ukrainians of Central Asia, is a lingua franca throughout the former Soviet Central Asian Republics. Mandarin Chinese has an equally dominant presence in Inner Mongolia, Qinghai and Xinjiang.

The Turkic languages belong to the much larger Altaic language family, which includes Mongolian. Mongolian is spoken throughout the region of Mongolia and into Inner Mongolia, Qinghai and Xinjiang.

Iranian languages were once spoken throughout Central Asia, but the once prominent Sogdian,Chorasmian, Bactrian and Scythian languages are now extinct. However, the Persian language is still spoken in the region, locally known as Dari or Tajik. Pashto is spoken in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Bukhori is a Persian dialect spoken by the Bukharian Jews.

The Tibetan language is spoken by around six million people across the Tibetan Plateau and into Qinghai and Sichuan.

 

 

History of Central Asia

The history of Central Asia has been determined primarily by the area's climate and geography. The aridity of the region makes agriculture difficult, and its distance from the sea cut it off from much trade. Thus, few major cities developed in the region. Nomadic horse peoples of the steppe dominated the area for millennia.

Relations between the steppe nomads and the settled people in and around Central Asia were marked by conflict. The nomadic lifestyle was well suited to warfare, and the steppe horse riders became some of the most militarily potent people in the world, due to the devastating techniques and ability of their horse archers. Periodically, tribal leaders or changing conditions would organize several tribes into a single military force. A few of these tribal coalitions included the Huns' invasion of Europe, Turkic migrations into Transoxiana, the Wu Hu attacks on China and most notably the Mongol conquest of much of Eurasia.

The dominance of the nomads ended in the 16th century as firearms allowed settled people to gain control of the region. The Russian Empire, the Qing Dynasty of China, and other powers expanded into the area and seized the bulk of Central Asia by the end of the 19th century. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Soviet Union incorporated most of Central Asia; only Mongolia and Afghanistan remained nominally independent, although Mongolia existed as a Soviet satellite state and Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in the late 20th century. The Soviet areas of Central Asia saw much industrialisation and construction of infrastructure, but also the suppression of local cultures and a lasting legacy of ethnic tensions and environmental problems.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, five Central Asian countries gained independence. In all of the new states, former Communist party officials retained power as local strongmen.

Prehistor: Recent genetic studies have concluded that humans arrived in the region 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, making the region one of the oldest known sites of human habitation. The archaeological evidence of population in this region is sparse, whereas evidence of human habitation in Africa and Australia prior to that of Central Asia is well-known. Some studies have also identified this region as the likeliest source of the populations who later inhabited Europe, Siberia, and North America. The region is also often considered to be the source of the root of the Indo-European languages.

As early as 4500 BC, small communities had developed permaneant settlements and began to engage in agricultural practices as well as herding. Around this time, some of these communities began the domestication of the horse. Initially, the horses were bred solely for their meat, as a source of food. However, by 4000 BC it is believed that they were used for transportation purposes; wheeled wagons began making an appearance during this time. Once the utility of the horse as a means of transportation became clear the horses (actually ponies) began being bred for strength, and by the 3rd millennium BC they were strong enough to pull chariots. By 2000 BC, war chariots had spoked wheels, thus being made more manoeuverable, and dominated the battlefields. The growing use of the horse, combined with the failure, roughly around 2000 BC, of the always precarious irrigation systems that had allowed for extensive agriculture in the region, gave rise and dominance of pastoral nomadism by 1000 BC, a way of life that would dominate the region for the next several millennia.

Scattered nomadic groups maintained herds of sheep, goats, horses, and camels, and conducted annual migrations to find new pastures (a practice known as transhumance). The people lived in yurts (or gers) - tents made of hides and wood that could be disassembled and transported. Each group had several yurts, each accommodating about five people.

While the semi-arid plains were dominated by the nomads, small city-states and sedentary agrarian societies arose in the more humid areas of Central Asia. The Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex of the early 2nd millennium BC was the first sedentary civilization of the region, practicing irrigation farming of wheat and barley and possibly a form of writing. Bactria-Margiana probably interacted with the contemporary Bronze Age nomads of the Andronovo culture, the originators of the spoke-wheeled chariot, who lived to their north in western Siberia, Russia, and parts of Kazakhstan, and survived as a culture until the 1st millennium BC. These cultures, particularly Bactria-Margiana, have been posited as possible representatives of the hypothetical Aryan culture ancestral to the speakers of the Indo-Iranian languages (see Indo-Iranians), and possibly the Uralic and Altaic cultures as well.

Later the strongest of Sogdian city states of the Fergana Valley rose to prominence. After the 1st century BC, these cities became home to the traders of the Silk Road and grew wealthy from this trade. The steppe nomads were dependent on these settled people for a wide array of goods that were impossible for transient populations to produce. The nomads traded for these when they could, but because they generally did not produce goods of interest to sedentary people, the popular alternative was to carry out raids.

A wide variety of people came to populate the steppes. Nomadic groups in Central Asia included the Huns and other Turks, the Tocharians, Persians, Scythians and other Indo-Europeans, and a number of Mongol groups. Despite these ethnic and linguistic differences, the steppe lifestyle led to the adoption of very similar culture across the region.

External Influences: In the 2nd and 1st millennia BC, a series of large and powerful states developed on the southern periphery of Central Asia (the Ancient Near East). These empires launched several attempts to conquer the steppe people, but met with only mixed success. The Median Empire and Achaemenid Empire both ruled parts of Central Asia. Xiongnu Empire maybe seen as the first central Asian empire which set an example for later Tujue and Mongol empire. Following the success of Sino-Xiongnu War, Chinese states would also regularly strive to extend their power westwards. Despite their military might, these states found it difficult to conquer the whole region. When faced by a stronger force, the nomads could simply retreat deep into the steppe and wait for the invaders to leave. With no cities and little wealth other than the herds they brought with them the nomads had nothing they could be forced to defend. An example of this is given by Herodotus's detailed account of the futile Persian campaigns against the Scythians. The Scythians, like most nomad empires, had permanent settlements of various sizes, representing various degrees of civilization. The vast fortified settlement of Kamenka on the Dnieper River, settled since the end of the 5th century BC, became the centre of the Scythian kingdom ruled by Ateas, who lost his life in a battle against Philip II of Macedon in 339 BC.

Some empires, such as the Persian and Macedonian empires, did make deep inroads into Central Asia by founding cities and gaining control of the trading centres. Alexander the Great's conquests spread Hellenistic civilization all the way to Alexandria Eschate (Lit. “Alexandria the Furthest”), established in 329 BC in modern Tajikistan. After Alexander's death in 323 BC, his Central Asian territory fell to the Seleucid Empire during the Wars of the Diadochi. In 250 BC, the Central Asian portion of the empire (Bactria) seceded as the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, which had extensive contacts with India and China till its end in 125 BC. The Indo-Greek Kingdom, mostly based in the Punjab but controlling a fair part of Afghanistan, pioneered the development of Greco-Buddhism. The Kushan Kingdom thrived across a wide swath of the region from the Second Century BC to the Fourth Century AD, and continued Hellenistic and Buddhist traditions. These states prospered from their position on the Silk Road linking China and Europe. Later, external powers such as Sassanid Empire would come to dominate this trade.

One of those powers, the Parthian Empire was of Central Asian origin, but adopted Persian cultural traditions. This is an early example of a recurring theme of Central Asian history: occasionally nomads of Central Asian origin would conquer the kingdoms and empires surrounding the region, but quickly merge into the culture of their conquered peoples.

At this time Central Asia was a heterogeneous region with a mixture of cultures and religions. Buddhism remained the largest religion, but was concentrated in the east. Around Persia, Zoroastrianism became important. Nestorian Christianity entered the area, but was never more than a minority faith. More successful was Manichaeism, which became the third largest faith. Many Central Asians practiced more than one faith, and almost all of the local religions were infused with local shamanistic traditions.

Turkic expansion began in the 6th century, and following the Göktürk emipre, Turkic tribes quickly spread westward across all of Central Asia. The Turkic speaking Uyghurs were one of many distinct cultural groups brought together by the trade of the Silk Route at Turfan in Chinese Central Asia. The Uyghurs, primarily pastoral nomads, observed a number of religions including Manichaeism, Buddhism, and Nestorian Christianity. Many of the artifacts from this period were found in the 19th century in this remote desert region of China.

In the eighth century, Islam began to penetrate the region and soon became the sole faith of most of the population, though Buddhism remained strong in the east. The desert nomads of Arabia could militarily match the nomads of the steppe, and the early Arab Empire gained control over parts of Central Asia. The Arab invasion also saw Chinese influence expelled from western Central Asia. At the Battle of Talas an Arab army decisively defeated a Tang Dynasty force and for the next several centuries Middle Eastern influences would dominate the region.

Return of Indigenous Rule:Over time, as new technologies were introduced, the nomadic horsemen grew in power. The Scythians developed the saddle, and by the time of the Alans the use of the stirrup had begun. Horses continued to grow larger and sturdier so that chariots were no longer needed as the horses could carry men with ease. This greatly increased the mobility of the nomads; it also freed their hands, allowing them to use the bow from horseback. Using small but powerful composite bows, the steppe people gradually became the most powerful military force in the world. From a young age, almost the entire male population was trained in riding and archery, both of which were necessary skills for survival on the steppe. By adulthood, these activities were second nature. These mounted archers were more mobile than any other force at the time, being able to travel forty miles a day with ease.

The steppe peoples quickly came to dominate Central Asia, forcing the scattered city states and kingdoms to pay them tribute or face annihilation. The martial ability of the steppe peoples was limited, however, by the lack of political structure within the tribes. Confederations of various groups would sometimes form under a ruler known as a khan. When large numbers of nomads acted in unison they could be devastating, as when the Huns arrived in Western Europe. However, tradition dictated that any dominion conquered in such wars should be divided among all of the khan's sons, so these empires often declined as quickly as they formed.

Once the foreign powers were expelled, several indigenous empires formed in Central Asia. The Hephthalites were the most powerful of these nomad groups in the sixth and seventh century and controlled much of the region. In the tenth and eleventh centuries the region was divided between several powerful states including the Samanid dynasty, that of the Seljuk Turks, and the Khwarezmid Empire.

The most spectacular power to rise out of Central Asia developed when Genghis Khan united the tribes of Mongolia. Using superior military techniques, the Mongol Empire spread to comprise almost all of Central Asia, as well as large parts of China, Russia, and the Middle East. After Genghis Khan died in 1227, most of Central Asia continued to be dominated by the successor Chagatai Khanate. This state proved to be short lived, as in 1369 Timur, a Turkic leader in the Mongol military tradition, conquered most of the region.

Even harder than keeping a steppe empire together was governing conquered lands outside the region. While the steppe peoples of Central Asia found conquest of these areas easy, they found governing almost impossible. The diffuse political structure of the steppe confederacies was maladapted to the complex states of the settled peoples. Moreover, the armies of the nomads were based upon large numbers of horses, generally three or four for each warrior. Maintaining these forces required large stretches of grazing land, not present outside the steppe. Any extended time away from the homeland would thus cause the steppe armies to gradually disintegrate. To govern settled peoples the steppe peoples were forced to rely on the local bureaucracy, a factor that would lead to the rapid assimilation of the nomads into the culture of those they had conquered. Another important limit was that the armies, for the most part, were unable to penetrate the forested regions to the north; thus, such states as Novgorod and Muscovy began to grow in power.

In the fourteenth century much of Central Asia, and many areas beyond it, were conquered by Timur (1336-1405) who is known in the west as Tamerlane. It was during Timur’s reign that the nomadic steppe culture of Central Asia fused with the settled culture of Iran. One of its consequences was an entirely new visual language that glorified Timur and subsequent Timurid rulers. This visual language was also used to articulate their commitment to Islam. Timur's large empire collapsed soon after his death, however. The region then became divided among a series of smaller Khanates, including the Khanate of Khiva, the Khanate of Bukhara, the Khanate of Kokand, and the Khanate of Kashgar.

Conquest of the Steppes: The lifestyle that had existed largely unchanged since 500 BC began to disappear after 1500. An important change in the world economy in the fourteenth and fifteenth century was brought about by the development of nautical technology. Ocean trade routes were pioneered by the Europeans, who were cut off from the Silk Road by the Muslim states that controlled its western termini. The trade between East Asia, India, Europe, and the Middle East began to move over the seas and not through Central Asia. The disunity of the region after the end of the Mongol Empire also made trade and travel far more difficult and the Silk Road went into steep decline.

An even more important development was the introduction of gunpowder-based weapons. The gunpowder revolution allowed settled peoples to defeat the steppe horsemen in open battle for the first time. Construction of these weapons required the infrastructure and economies of large societies and were thus impractical for nomadic peoples to produce. The domain of the nomads began to shrink as, beginning in the fifteenth century, the settled powers gradually began to conquer Central Asia.

The last steppe empire to emerge was that of the Dzungars who conquered much of East Turkestan and Mongolia. However in a sign of the changed times they proved unable to match the Chinese and were decisively defeated by the forces of Qing Dynasty. In the eighteenth century the Qing emperors, themselves originally from the far east edge of the steppe, campaigned in the west and in Mongolia with the Qianlong Emperor taking control of Xinjiang in 1758. The Mongol threat was overcome and much of Inner Mongolia was annexed to China. The Chinese dominions stretched into the heart of Central Asia and included the Khanate of Kokand, which paid tribute to Peking. Outer Mongolia and Xinjiang did not become provinces of the Chinese empire, but rather were directly administered by the Qing dynasty. The fact that there was no provincial governor meant that the local rulers retained most of their powers and this special status also prevented emigration from the rest of China into the region. Persia also began to expand north, especially under the rule of Nadir Shah who extended Persian dominion far past the Oxus. After his death, however, the Persian empire slowly crumbled and was annexed by Britain and Russia.

The Russians also expanded south, first with the transformation of the Ukrainian steppe into an agricultural heartland, and subsequently onto the fringe of the Kazakh steppes, beginning with the foundation of the fortress of Orenburg. The slow Russian conquest of the heart of Central Asia began in the early nineteenth century, although Peter the Great had sent a failed expedition under Prince Bekovitch-Cherkassky against Khiva as early as the 1720s. By the 1800s, the locals could do little to resist the Russian advance, although the Kazakhs of the Great Horde under Kenesary Kasimov rose in rebellion from 1837 - 46. Until the 1870s, for the most part, Russian interference was minimal, leaving native ways of life intact and local government structures in place. With the conquest of Turkestan after 1865 and the consequent securing of the frontier, the Russians gradually expropriated large parts of the steppe and gave these lands to Russian farmers, who began to arrive in large numbers. This process was initially limited to the northern fringes of the steppe and it was only in the 1890s that significant numbers of Russians began to settle farther south, especially in Zhetysu (Semirechye).

* History of Central Asia

 

The Role of Migration in the History of the Eurasian Steppe: Sedentary Civilization vs. 'Barbarian' and Nomad by Andrew Bell-Fialkoff (Editor)

 

 

 

The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia by Rene Grousset

 

 

 

 

Warriors of the Steppe: A Military History of Central Asia, 500 B.C. to A.D. 1700 by Erik Hildinger

 

 

 

The Lost Heart of Asia by Colin Thubron

 

 

 

 

Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 by Janet L. Abu-Lughod

 

 

 

 

Everyday Life in Central Asia: Past and Present by Jeff Sahadeo (Editor), Russell Zanca (Editor)

 

 

 

Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski

E-book: The History of Herodotus by Herodotus — Volume 1, volume 2

 

 

 

Central Asia and Non-Chinese Peoples of Ancient China by Edwin G. Pulleyblank

 

 

 

 

 

 

Demographics of Xinjiang

Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tatars, Kazakhs, Tajiks (Sarikolis/Wakhis), Hui, Han Chinese, Mongols, Russians, Xibes, and Manchus

 

Uyghur People

The Uyghur (also spelled Uygur, Uighur, Uigur, Uyghur: ئۇيغۇر; 維吾爾) are a Turkic people of Central Asia. Today Uyghurs live primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (also known by its controversial name Uyghurstan or East Turkistan) in the People's Republic of China.

Historically the term "Uyghur" was applied to a group of Turkic-speaking tribes that lived in the Altay Mountains. Along with the Göktürks (Kokturks), the Uyghurs were one of the largest and most enduring Turkic peoples living in Central Asia.

In the literature, the term Uyghur has a number of differing spellings, including Uigur, Uygur, and Uighur. The word means "Confederation of Nine Tribes" and is synonymous with the name Tokuz-Oguz. In Turkic inscriptions, the name Tokuz-Oguz is used for the subdued Uigurs, and the resisting are called Uigurs, pointing to semantical nuances between the two names.

The earliest use of the term "Uyghur" (Weihu) was during the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534 AD), in China. At that time, the Uyghur were part of the Gaoche (English: "High Wheels"), a group of Turkic tribes, which Chinese later called Tele people, from the Turkic word, "tele" the "Nine-Family Tele" association, i.e., Tokuz-Oguzes) for "wheelwagon". This group included tribes such as Syr-Tardush (Chinese: Xueyantuo), Basmyl (Chinese: Baximi), Oguz (Chinese: Wuhu), Khazar (Chinese: Hesan), Alans (Chinese: A-lans), Kyrgyz (Chinese: Hegu), Tuva (Chinese: Duva) and Yakut (Chinese: Guligan) from the Lake Baikal Region. The forebears of the Tele belonged to those of Hun (Chinese: Xiongnu) descendants. According to Chinese Turkic scholars Ma Changshou and Cen Zhongmian, the Chinese word Tiele originates from the Turkic word "Türkler" (Turks), which is a plural form of "Türk" (Turk) and the Chinese word "Tujue" comes from the Turkic word "Türküt" which is a singular form of Türk. The origin of Gaoche can be traced back to the Dingling peoples of about 200 BC, contemporary with the Chinese Han Dynasty.

The first use of "Uyghur" as a reference to a political nation occurred during the interim period between the First and Second Göktürk Kaganates (630-684 AD). After the collapse of the Uyghur Empire in 840 AD, Uyghur resettled to the Tarim Basin

In modern usage, "Uyghur" refers to settled Turkic urban-dwellers and farmers of Kashgaria or Uyghurstan who follow traditional settled pastoriaslist Central Asian practices, as distinguished from nomadic Turkic populations in Central Asia. The Bolsheviks reintroduced the term "Uyghur" to replace the previously used Turki.

Today, Uyghurs live mainly in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China, where they are the largest ethnic group. "Xinjiang", meaning "New Frontier", is the Chinese name of the Autonomous Region.

Modern Uyghur: Today one can still see Uyghurs with light-colored skin and hair. The genetic studies show that the Uyghur (UIG) population, presenting a typical admixture of Eastern and Western anthropometric traits, results showed that UIG was formed by two-way admixture, with 60% European ancestry and 40% East Asian (Turkic-Hun) ancestry. Overall linkage disequilibrium (LD) in UIG was similar to that in its parental populations represented in East Asia and Europe with regard to common alleles, and UIG manifested. Both the magnitude of LD and fragmentary ancestral chromosome segments indicated a long history of Uyghur. Under the assumption of a hybrid isolation (HI) model, it was estimated that the admixture event of UIG occurred about 126 [107, 146] generations ago, or 2520 [2140, 2920] years ago assuming 20 years per generation.

A haplotype of R1b, with DYS393=12, has been referenced in the literature as Haplotype 35, or ht35. They can be found in high numbers in Southeastern Europe (Balkans) and Western Asia. The members of this haplotype are thought to be descended from early R1b's who found shelter in Anatolia (Turkey) during the Last Glacial Maximum instead of in Iberia. Descendants can be found in high numbers in the Armenian Highland (Most of the Armenian Highland is in Turkey's Eastern Anatolia Region, and also includes northwestern Iran, all of Armenia, southern Georgia and western Azerbaijan.) and Armenia with smaller numbers throughout the Middle East, in Jewish populations, in Southeastern Europe, and in the Caucasus Mountains. There is also a sizable pocket of ht35 in Uyghur populations in western China, which is theorized to be a remnant of the Tocharians, an Indo-European speaking people that inhabited the Tarim Basin in Central Asia until later being absorbed by various Turkic peoples.

* Analysis of Genomic Admixture in Uyghur and Its Implication in Mapping Strategy by Shuhua Xu, et al.

* Sample Profile - Uyghur (Western China) by DNA Tribes

Native Population Match: Uyghur (Xinjiang, Chinese Turkestan), Kazakh (Northwest Xinjiang, Chinese Turkestan), Afghanistan, Uyghur (Chinese Turkestan), Kirgiz (Xinjiang, Chinese Turkestan), Uzbek (Xinjiang, Chinese Turkestan), Gujarat, India, Kathmandu, Nepal, Afghanistan, Bengali (Bangladesh), Khandayat (India), Nepal, Uyghur (Xinjiang, Chinese Turkestan), Pakistan, Bangladeshi (Dhaka, Bangladesh), Jat Sikh (Punjab, India), Uyghur (China), Bashkir (Russian Federation), Csango (Romania), Yadav (Bihar, India)

 

The Fragrant Concubine by Giuseppe Castiglione

The Fragrant Concubine (香妃; Uyghur: ئىپارخان / Iparxan / Ипархан) is a figure in Chinese legend who was taken as a consort by the Qianlong Emperor during the 17th century. Although the stories about her are believed to be mythical, they may have been based on an actual concubine from western China who entered the harem of the emperor in 1760 and who carried the court title of Rong Fei. Some people insist, however, that Imperial Consort Rong (whose original name may have been Maimur Azum) and Imperial Consort Xiang were different women. Han Chinese and Uyghur tellings of the legend of the Fragrant Concubine diverge greatly, and her experience represents a powerful symbol for both peoples. The story became greatly popular during the early 20th century and has since been adopted into several plays, films, and books.

The Legend of the Fragrant Concubine: Although accounts vary as to some details, the basic story amongst Han Chinese recounts the discovery by the Qianlong Emperor of an Uyghur girl named Iparhan, granddaughter of Apak Khoja, a local leader in the oasis city of Kashgar. Even more remarkable than her beauty was the scent her body naturally produced; captivated, the Emperor sought her as an Imperial Consort for his harem. She was given as a gift to the Emperor and carefully escorted all the way to Beijing, washing every day along the road in camel's milk to preserve her mysterious fragrance.

Upon her arrival to the imperial palace, the Fragrant Concubine, was gifted with a garden and a luxurious room of her own as a sign of the Emperor's devotion. Homesick and distraught, she remained disconsolate as the Emperor made ever-increasing efforts to recreate her distant village, building her a mosque, miniature oasis, and bazaar outside her windows in an effort to bring her happiness. Finally she relented and came to love him when he sent messengers to Kashgar to return with an jujube tree bearing golden fruit, and the Fragrant Concubine became the emperor's cherished consort until her death. An enduring symbol of national unity and reconciliation, her body was borne back to her home of Kashgar, where she is now entombed, in a procession of 120 bearers in a journey that took over three years.

The Legend of Iparhan: Contemporary Uyghur renditions of the legend are considerably less romantic. Stolen from her husband, a Muslim leader who had resisted the army of the Qing, and spirited away to Beijing, Iparhan arms herself with daggers up her sleeves, on guard against the hated advances of the Emperor. Some accounts cast her even more explicitly as a nationalist resistance figure who had rose during Uch Turpan Rebellion (1765) as one of the national leaders but was soon captured by Qing troops and delivered to Emperor. It was suggested that in addition to maintaining her purity Iparhan planned to kill the Emperor in revenge for his conquest of her homeland of East Turkestan (Xinjiang). The Emperor, besotted, cannot resist the allure of her beauty, and in the end his mother the Empress Dowager arranges for her murder at the hands of loyal palace eunuchs in the face of Iparhan's unyielding resistance and the threat posed to her son.

 

 

Xibe

"Sibo military colonists", picture drawn by Henry Lansdell during his visit to today's Qapqal Xibe County in 1882

The Xibe ( Sibe; 錫伯) are an ethnic group living mostly in northeast China and Xinjiang. They form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China.

The Xibe originally lived on the Nonni and Songhua river valleys in central Manchuria. They are known as one of the nine states that were defeated by Nurhaci in the Battle of Gure in 1593. They were under loose domination of the Khorchin Mongols even after the Khorchin came under the control of the Manchu Qing Dynasty.

The Xibe started to make direct contact with the Qing Dynasty when it conducted military campaigns against Russia. They provided logistical support to the Qing. In 1692, the Khorchin dedicated the Xibe, the Gūwalca and the Daur to the Kangxi Emperor in exchange for silver. The Xibe was incorporated into the Eight Banners and were stationed in Qiqihar and other cities in Manchuria.

After conquering Eastern Turkestan, the Qianlong Emperor garrisoned part of the Xibe there in 1764 to defend the new frontier. They formed a community in the Qapqal region south of the Ili River.

The traditional dress of the Xibe was similar to the traditional dress of the Manchus. Nowadays almost all the Xibe wear Western clothing and the traditional clothing is worn by elders during festivals.

Traditionally, the Xibe were divided into hala, clans consisting of people who shared the same surname. Until modern times, the dwellings of the Xibe housed up to three different generations from a same family, since it was believed that while the father was alive no son could break the family clan and to leave the house.

Their cultures're also similar to Xianbei.

• The Xibe believe that they are descendants of the Xianbei.
• Dr. Pamela Kyle Crossley, Professor of History at Dartmouth College, asserts that the Russians named Siberia after the Sibe/Xibe.

Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County (察布查尔錫伯自治县; Xibe: Cabcal Sibe Zijysiyan, also transliterated as Chapchal) in Ili Kazak Autonomous Prefecture in northern Xinjiang is the only Xibe autonomous county of the People's Republic of China. It has an area of 4,430 square kilometers and a population 160,000 (2000). Qapqal means "the granary" in the Xibe language.

 

 

Manchus

The Manchu people (滿族) are a Tungusic people who originated in Manchuria (today's Northeastern China). During their rise in the seventeenth century, along with the help of Ming rebels (such as general Wu Sangui), they conquered the Ming Dynasty and founded the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China until its abolition in 1911 after the Xinhai Revolution, which established a republican government in its place.

The Manchu ethnicity have largely been assimilated with the Han Chinese. The Manchu language is almost extinct, now spoken only among a small number of elderly in remote rural areas of northeastern China and a few scholars; there are around ten thousand speakers of Sibe (Xibo), a Manchu dialect spoken in the Ili region of Xinjiang. In recent years, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in Manchu culture among both ethnic Manchus and Han. The number of Chinese today with some Manchu ancestry is quite large, and the adoption of favorable policies towards ethnic minorities (such as preferential university admission and government employment opportunities) has encouraged some people with mixed-Han and Manchu ancestry to re-identify themselves as Manchu.

Some recent scholarship in ethnic identity emphasizes that ethnic categories are often not static, objective category, but rather fluid, subjective ones. This may apply to the notion of a Manchu ethnicity which some recent scholarship suggests was strengthened in the early 19th century to distinguish members of the Qing military elites from the peoples they ruled.

Ancestors of the Manchu were the peoples of the Mongolian steppes. The first ancestors of the Manchu were the Sushen, a people who lived during the second and first millennia BC. They were followed by the Yilou people, who were active from AD 202 to 220 . The Wuji followed in the fifth century and the tribes of the Mohe in the sixth century. One of the tribes of the Mohe, the Heishui (Black Water) tribe, eventually became the ancestors of the Jurchens. The Manchus were related to the Jurchens, who had conquered a vast area in northeastern Asia in the twelfth century and established the Jin Dynasty (literally Golden Dynasty) under the Wanyan clan that ruled over northern half of China and rivaled the Song Dynasty in southern part of China until being conquered and destroyed by the Mongols under Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan’s descendants eventually established the Yuan Dynasty, ruling all of China and was followed by the Ming Dynasty in the historiography of Chinese history. Nurhaci's son Hong Taiji decided the Jurchens would call themselves Manju (Manchus) and prohibited the use of the name Jurchen.

Tungusic peoples are peoples speaking a Tungusic language. The largest of the Tungusic peoples are Manchu numbering 10,000,000. They are originally from Northeast China (Manchuria), but since they conquered China in the 1600s, and especially during the 1900s, they have almost totally assimilated into the main Han Chinese population of China, though still living often in northern China. Evenks live in Evenk Autonomous Okrug of Russia.

Tungusic peoples are: Evenks, Evens, Jurchens, Manchu, Negidals, Nanai, Oroch, Orok, Oroqen, Udege, Ulchs, Xibe.

 

 

Uzbek

Uzbeks of Afghanistan in 1841

The Uzbeks are a Turkic people of Central Asia. They comprise the majority population of Uzbekistan, and large populations can also be found in Afghanistan, Tajikstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China.

Although Altaic infiltration into Central Asia had started early, as late as the 13th century AD when Turkic and Mongol armies finally conquered the entire region, the majority of Central Asia's peoples were Iranic peoples such as Sogdians, Bactrians and, more ancient, the Saka–Massagetae tribes. It is generally believed that these ancient Indo-European-speaking peoples were linguistically assimilated by smaller but dominant Turkic-speaking groups while the sedentary population finally adopted the Persian language, the traditional lingua franca of the eastern Islamic lands. The language-shift from Middle Iranian to Turkic and New Persian was predominantly the result of an elite dominance process. This process was dramatically boosted during the Mongol conquest when millions were either killed or pushed further south to the Pamir region.

The modern Uzbek language is largely derived from the Chagatai language, an Eastern Turkic language which gained prominence in the Mongol Timurid Empire. The position of Chagatai (and later Uzbek) was further strengthened after the fall of the highly Persianized Timurids and the rise of the Shaybanid Uzbek Khaqanate that finally shaped the Turkic language and identity of modern Uzbeks, while the unique grammatical and phonetical features of the Uzbek language as well as the modern Uzbek culture reflect the more ancient Iranic roots of the Uzbek people

The modern Uzbek population represents varying degrees of diversity derived from the high traffic invasion routes through Central Asia. Once populated by Iranian tribes and other Indo-European people, Central Asia experienced numerous invasions emanating out of Mongolia that would drastically impact the region. According to recent Genetic genealogy testing from a University of Chicago study, the Uzbeks cluster somewhere between the Mongols and the Iranian peoples.

The Uzbek population, according to this study, shows substantial Caucasoid admixture. The Uzbeks display a much closer genetic relationship with Turkic roots traits than with Iranic populations to the south and west. Another study out of Uzbekistan corroborates this genetic evidence as to the origins of the modern Uzbeks and other regional Turk peoples:

These migrations are reflected in the DNA, too, and it is clear that despite the majority of modern Central Asians speaking Turkic languages, they derive much of their genetic heritage from the conquering Mongol warriors of Genghis Khan.

The Turkic people as a whole share common languages and many common cultural traits, but do not have common origins. The Uzbeks are descended to a large degree from Turkic invaders whose invasions span literally millennia from the first millennium AD with the early migrations of the Göktürks to later invasions by the Uzbeks themselves during the early and mid period of the 2nd millennium. Throughout the centuries, these migrating Altaic peoples began to outnumber the native Iranian people of Central Asia and appear to have assimilated the vast majority through intermarriage, while mainly the Tajiks survived albeit with some Turk intermingling as well. Thus, in the case of Uzbekistan and most other Central Asian states, it was not only a process of language replacement, such as what took place in Turkey and Azerbaijan, but also a mass migration and population replacement that helped to shape the modern Turk people of Uzbekistan and other Central Asian states.

 

 

“Tajiks” in China

“Tajiks” in China (塔吉克族) are one of the 56 nationalities officially recognized by the People's Republic of China.

This group, with a population of 41,028 (2000), is located mainly in China's western Xinjiang region with 60% living in Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County; some researchers view them as a collection of over a dozen small East Iranian ethnic groups that are related to, but distinct from, the Tajiks of Tajikistan. The Ethnologue claims that they are actually Shugni and Wakhi. Aurel Stein and other writers from his time referred to them simply as Sarikoli. Some have referred to them simply as "Mountain Tajiks." Robert Shaw considered them Sarikolis and Wakhis, referring to them collectively as Ghalchah.

In China, the languages of the “Tajiks” have no official written form. The great majority of Chinese “Tajik” speakers speak the Sarikoli language and use Uyghur, Kyrgyz or Chinese to communicate with people of other nationalities in the area. A small proportion of Chinese “Tajik” speakers speak Wakhi.

The Iranian people are a collection of ethnic groups, defined along linguistic lines as speaking Iranian languages. They are spread across the Iranian plateau, stretching from the Hindu Kush to central Anatolia and from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf - a region that is sometimes termed Greater Iran. Speakers of Iranian languages, however, were once found throughout Eurasia, from the Balkans to western China (Xinjiang). As Iranian peoples are not confined to the borders of the current state of Iran, the term Iranic peoples is sometimes used to avoid confusion with the citizens of Iran.

The series of ethnic groups which comprise the Iranian peoples are traced to a branch of the ancient Indo-European Aryans known as the Iranians or Proto-Iranians. Archaeological finds in Russia, Central Asia and the Middle East have elucidated some scant information about the way of life of these early peoples. The Iranian peoples have played an important role throughout history: the Achaemenid Persians established one of the world's first multi-national states and the Scythian-Sarmatian nomads dominated the vast expanses of Russia and western Siberia for centuries with a group of Sarmatian warrior women possibly being the inspiration for the Greek legend of the Amazons. In addition, the various religions of the Iranian peoples, including Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, are believed by some scholars to be important early philosophical influences on Judeo-Christianity. Early Iranian tribes are the ancestors of many modern peoples, including Persians, Kurds, Pashtuns and many other groups.

Having descended from the Proto-Indo-Iranians, the Proto-Iranians separated from the Indo-Aryans, Dards (variously considered as Indo-Iranian or within the Indo-Aryan branch), and the Nuristanis in the early 2nd millennium BC, in Central Asia. The area between northern Afghanistan, the Aral Sea and the Urals is hypothesized to have been the region where the Proto-Iranians first emerged, following the separation of the Indo-Iranians, in the area of the previous, non-Indo-European Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, a Bronze Age culture of Central Asia.

By the early 1st millennium, Ancient Iranian peoples such as Medes, Persians, Bactrians and Parthians populated the Iranian plateau, while others such as the Scythians, Cimmerians, Sarmatians and Alans populated the steppes north of the Black Sea. The Saka and Scythian tribes spread as far west as the Balkans and as far east as Xinjiang.

Eastern Iranians: While the Iranian tribes of the south are better known through their texts and modern counterparts, the tribes which remained largely in the vast Eurasian expanse are known through the references made to them by the ancient Greeks, Persians, Indo-Aryans as well as by archaeological finds. Many ancient Sanskrit texts make references to tribes like Sakas, Paradas, Kambojas, Bahlikas, Uttaramadras, Madras, Lohas, Parama Kambojas, Rishikas, Tukharas or Tusharas etc and locate them in the (Uttarapatha) (north-west) division, in Central Asia, around Hindukush range. The Greek chronicler, Herodotus (5th century BC) makes references to a nomadic people, the Scythians; he describes as having dwelt in what is today southern Russia.

It is believed that these Scythians were conquered by their eastern cousins, the Sarmatians,