Photograph by Rev. Claude L. Pickens

 

 

Links to Articles

* Salar People by Turkmen.com

*  Stone Camels and Clear Springs: The Salar's Samarkand Origins by Jianzhong Ma, et al.

* Exiled by Definition: The Salar of Northwest China by David S G Goodman

* Northwest China: the Salar and Economic Activism  by David Goodman

* The Muslim Nations of the North-west by Anthony Garnaut

* China’s Vulnerability to Minority Separatism by June Teufel Dreyer

* Islam in China: Accommodation or Separatism? By Dru C. Gladney 

* Physical Anthropology and Ethnicity in Asia: The Transition from
Anthropometry to Genome-based Studies
by A. H. Bittles, et al.

* Genetic Polymorphisms of 15 STR in Chinese Salar Ethnic Minority Group by J. Zhu, et al.

* Evolution and Migration History of the Chinese Population Inferred from Chinese Y-Chromosome Evidence by Wei Deng, et al. 

* Molecular Evidence for the Temporal Stratification of Chinese Genetic Diversity by M. Black, et al.

* The Origins and Genetic Structure of Three Co-resident Chinese Muslim Populations: the Salar, Bo'an and Dongxiang by Wei Wang, et al.

 

The Salar language has two large dialect groups. The divergence is due to the fact that one branch was influenced by the Tibetan and Chinese languages, and the other branch by the Uyghur and Kazakh languages. Salar is not a written language. There are reported similarities with Turkmen. (Turkmen is the national language of Turkmenistan.). Amazingly, speakers of Salar and Turkish can generally understand each other to a large degree, even though one ethnic group lives in Central China and the other in Anatolia, thousands of miles away. Linguistic evidence points to a possible western Turkic, Oghuz origin of the Salar.

 

Turkmenistan is a Turkic country in Central Asia. The name Turkmenistan is derived from Persian, meaning "land of the Turkmen". The name of its capital, Ashgabat, is derived from Persian as well, loosely translating as "the city of loveliness".

 

The Koran
(in English)

 

* Chinese Mosques

* Chinese Islamic Cuisine

* Muslim Chinese Martial Arts

* Xiao'erjing (小兒經)

 

Flag of Great Seljuq Empire

 

The Oghuz were a group of loosely linked nomadic Turkic peoples. A clan of this nation, the Seljuks, embraced Islam and in the eleventh century invaded Persia, where it founded the Great Seljuk Empire. The Ottoman dynasty, who gradually took over Anatolia after the fall of the Seljuks, toward the end of the thirteenth century, led an army that was also predominantly Oghuz. The name Oghuz is derived from the word ok, which means "arrow" or "tribe". The depiction of an archer shooting an arrow was the flag of the Seljuk Empire, founded by the Oghuz Turks in the 10th century.

 

A Seljuk Prince

 

The Art of the Seljuq Period in Anatolia (1081–1307) by MetMuseum.org

 

 

Xinjiang

 

Xinjiang is home to several Muslim Turkic groups including the Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tatars, Salars and the Kazakhs, and a few Indo-European Iranic groups, such as the Tajiks and the Sarikolis/Wakhis (often mis-identified as Tajiks). Other PRC minority ethnic groups include Hui Chinese, the Mongols, the Russians, the Xibes, and the Manchus.

* Xinjiang: China Pre- and Post-Modern Crossroad by Dru Gladney

 

 

Qinghai

 

Qinghai was only relatively recently made a province of China. The area, historically called Kokonor in English until the early 20th century, lies outside of China proper and has been an ethnic melting pot for centuries, mixing Han Chinese, Mongol, Tibetan, and Turkic influences.

* Xunhua Salar Autonomous County

 

 

Gansu

 

Situated along the Silk Road, Gansu was an economically important province, and a cultural transmission path as well. Temples and Buddhist grottoes such as those at Mogao Caves ('Caves of the Thousand Buddhas') and Maijishan Caves contain artistically and historically revealing murals. Many parts of the province saw heavy fighting during the Muslim Rebellion of 1862-77.

 

 

SALAR

Excerpts from Wikipedia.org

The Salar people (撒拉族) are one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. They numbered 104,503 people in the last census of 2000 and live mostly in Qinghai (in Xunhua Salar Autonomous County 循化撒拉族自治縣 and Hualong Autonomous County of the Hui Nationality 化隆回族自治縣), in Gansu (in Jishishan Autonomous County of the Bonan, Dongxiang and Salar Nationalities 積石山保安族東鄉族撒拉族自治縣) and in Xinjiang (in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture 伊犁哈薩克自治州).

Their ancestors were migrating Oghuz Turks who intermarried with the Tibetans, Han Chinese, and Hui. They are a patriarchal agricultural society and Muslims.

 

History

The Salar people had resided in China's Qinghai Province since the beginning of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty during the early 13th century. During the time of Genghis Khan's conquest, they were known as the Salyr tribe of Khorasan. One Salyr chief agreed to submit his lieutenants Aqman and Qaraman as mercenaries to the Mongol army. In this way, these Turkmen Salyrs were spared the destruction which was brought upon the Khwarezmian Empire by the Mongol army. Forty years after Genghis Khan's conquest of Khwarezm, the Salyr lietenants Aqman and Qaraman also joined the Mongols in the Seige of Diaoyu in Sichuan, a Song Dynasty stronghold. Afterwards, Qaraman and his folowers left Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan and settled in the region of Qinghai in what is known today as the Xunhua County. His followers still retained their Turkic language which is now known as the Salar language.

 

Tilla-Kari Medressa in Samarkand

 

According to Salar tradition, during the fourteenth and fifthteenth centuries their ancestors, possibly from an Oghuz tribe of the Seljuk Turk, left Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan and eventually settled in their present location in Gansu province. Over the course of their history, the ancestors of the Salar are believed to have merged with Tibetans, Han Chinese and Mongolians to form the present-day Salar.

In 1781, Qing armies crushed a Salar uprising with the results being disastrous for the Salar. As much as 40% of their entire population was killed in the revolt.

 

The Muslim Rebellion

The Dungan Revolt was a religious war. It also known as the Hui Minorities' War and the Muslim Rebellion. The term is sometimes used to refer to the Panthay Rebellion in Yunnan as well. It was an uprising by members of the Hui and other Muslim ethnic groups in China's Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia provinces, as well as in Xinjiang, between 1862 and 1877.

The purpose of this uprising was to develop a Muslim country in the western bank of Yellow River (Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia excluding the Xinjing province). Some people say it was directed against the Qing Dynasty, but there is no evidence at all showing they intent to attack the capital of Beijing. The uprising was actively encouraged by the leaders of the Taiping Rebellion. When it failed, it instigated immigration of some of the Dungan people into Imperial Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Before the war, the population of Shaaxi province was about 13 million, minimum 1,750,000 are Dungan (Hui). After the war, the population dropped to 7 million, 150,000 fled, left to between 50,000, the rest are died in ten years. Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi province, was the Holy city of Dungan (Hui) in China before the revolt. But once-flourishing Chinese Muslim communities fell 93% in the revolt in Shaaxi province. Between 1648 and 1878, around twelve million Hui and Han Chinese were killed in ten unsuccessful uprisings.

 

Salar Culture

The typical clothing of the Salar very similar to other Muslim peoples in the region. The men are commonly bearded and dress in white shirts and white or black skullcaps.

The young single women are accustomed to dressing in Chinese dress of bright colors. The married women utilize the traditional veil in white or black colors.

They have a musical instrument called the Kouxuan. It is a string instrument manufactured in silver or in copper and only played by the women.

The Salars have been in Qinghai Province, China since the Mongol Yuan period. For centuries they've maintained their Oghuz language remarkably similar to the Turkmen language spoken in the Qaraqum.

However, culturally they have strictly conformed to the Naqshbandi ways of their Hui coreligionists. Therefore many nomadic Turkmen traditions have been lost, and Turkmen music was forbidden. More secular minded Salars have resorted to appropriating Tibetan or Moghol (a Qinghai Mongolic Muslim group) music as their own.

Since the early 2000s, a Turkist revival has been gaining some awareness throughout the 300,000 strong Salar community in Qinghai. They have re-surrected the Dede Korkut Destani, Oghuz Han Destani as their own national narrative, and also translated the late Turkmenbashi's work "Ruhnama" into both Salar and Chinese.

 

The Book of Dede Korkut

The Book of Dede Korkut (e-book) is the most famous epic story of the Oghuz Turks (also known as Turkmens or Turcomans). The book's mythic narrative is part of the cultural heritage of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, as well as to a lesser degree Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

Dede Korkut is a heroic dastan (legend) which starts out in Central Asia, continues in Anatolia and Iran, and centers most of its action in the Azerbaijani Caucasus.

For the Turkic peoples, especially people who self-identify as Oghuz, it is the principal repository of ethnic identity, history, customs and the value systems of the Turkic peoples throughout history. It commemorates struggles for freedom at a time when the Oghuz Turks were a herding people. the term 'Oghuz' was gradually supplanted among the Turks themselves as Turkmen, 'Turcoman', from the mid tenth century on.

 

The Book of Dede Korkut by Anonymous, Geoffrey Lewis (Translator)