History of the Uyghur people
Some Uyghur nationalists claim descent from the Xiongnu (as well as being related to the White Huns); however, this view is contested by modern Chinese scholars.
[14][15] Many historians trace the ancestry of modern Uyghur people to the Altaic pastoralists called Tiele, who lived in the valleys south of Lake Baikal and around the Yenisei River.
The Tiele first appear in history in AD 357, under the Chinese ethnonym Gaoche, referring to the ox-drawn carts with distinctive high wheels used for yurt transportation.
The Tiele practiced some agriculture and were highly developed metalsmiths due to the abundance of easily available iron ore in the Yenisei River.
In AD 603, the alliance dissolved in the aftermath of Tardu Khan's defeat, but three tribes came under Uyghur control: Bugu, Tongra, and Bayirqu.
In AD 744, the Uyghurs, with their Basmyl and Qarluq allies, under the command of Qutlugh Bilge Köl, with Chinese general Wang Zhongsi (王忠嗣), defeated the Göktürks.
[30] In AD 840, following a famine and civil war, the Uyghur Khaganate was overrun by an alliance of Tang-dynasty China and the Kirghiz, another Turkic people.
The Yenisei Kyrgyz Khaganate of the Are family bolstered his ties and alliance to the Tang dynasty imperial family against the Uyghur Khaganate by claiming descent from the Han-dynasty Han Chinese general Li Ling, who had defected to the Xiongnu and married a Xiongnu princess, daughter of Qiedihou Chanyu, and was sent to govern the Jiankun (Ch'ien-K'un) region, which later became Yenisei.
[31] The Yenisei Kyrgyz and Tang dynasty launched a victorious successful war between 840 and 848 to destroy the Uyghur Khaganate in Mongolia and its centre at the Orkhon valley, using their claimed familial ties as justification for an alliance.
In 1209, the Kara-Khoja ruler Idiqut Barchuq declared his allegiance to the Mongols under Genghis Khan and the kingdom existed as a vassal state until 1335.
Most Uyghur inhabitants of the Besh Balik and Turpan regions did not convert to Islam until the 15th-century expansion of the Yarkand Khanate, a Turko-Mongol successor state based in western Tarim.
Starting from the 1270s, the Mongol princes Qaidu and Duwa from Central Asia repeatedly launched raids into Uighurstan to take control from the Yuan.
Chagatai's ulus, or hereditary territory, consisted of the part of the Mongol Empire that extended from the Ili River (today in eastern Kazakhstan) and Kashgaria (in the western Tarim Basin) to Transoxiana (modern Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan).
[49] After the death of the Chagatayid ruler Qazan Khan in 1346, the Chagatai Khanate was divided into western (Transoxiana) and eastern (Moghulistan/Uyghuristan) halves, which was later known as "Kashgar and Uyghurstan", according to Balkh historian Makhmud ibn Vali (Sea of Mysteries, 1640).
[citation needed] Kashgar historian Muhammad Imin Sadr Kashgari recorded Uyghurstan in his book Traces of Invasion (Asar al-futuh) in 1780.
Tīmur-e Lang (Timur the Lame), or Tamerlane, a Muslim native of Transoxiana who claimed descent from Genghis Khan, desired control of the khanate for himself and opposed Amir Husayn.
For over three decades, Timur used the Chagatai lands as the base for extensive conquests, conquering the rulers of Herat in Afghanistan, Shiraz in Persia, Baghdad in Iraq, Delhi in India, and Damascus in Syria.
Until the 17th century, all the remaining Chagatai domains fell under the theocratic regime of Uyghur Apak Khoja and his descendants, the Khojijans, who ruled Altishahr in the Tarim Basin.
Both the Tarim Basin as well as Transoxiana (in modern-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) became known as Moghulistan or Mughalistan, after the ruling class of Chagatay and Timurid states descended from the "Moghol" tribe of Doghlat.
All Chagatai-speaking Muslims, regardless of whether they lived in Turpan or Kashgar, became known by their occupations as Moghols (ruling class), Sarts (merchants and townspeople), and Taranchis (farmers).
The Chagatay prince Mirza Haidar Kurgan escaped his war-torn homeland of Kashgar in the early 16th century to Timurid Tashkent, only to be evicted by the invading Shaybanids.
Escaping to the protection of his Mughal Timurid cousins, then rulers of Delhi, he gained his final post as governor of Kashmir and wrote the famous Tarikh-i-Rashidi, widely acclaimed as the most comprehensive work on the Uyghur civilization during the East Turkestani Chagatay reign.
The other Muslim in his court, a Central Asian called Yu Yung, sent Uighur women dancers to the emperor's quarters for sexual purposes.
[59] After the invasion of Kashgar by Jahangir Khoja, Turkistani Muslim begs and officials in Xinjiang eagerly fought for the "privilege" of wearing a queue to show their steadfast loyalty to the Empire.
[61] The Uyghur Muslim Sayyid and Naqshbandi Sufi rebel of the Afaqi suborder, Jahangir Khoja, was sliced to death in 1828 by the Manchus for leading a rebellion against the Qing.
Meanwhile, the "Great Game" between Russia and Britain was underway in Central Asia, with former ethnic cultures from Afghanistan through Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to Uyghurstan being divided.
Throughout the Qing dynasty, the sedentary Uyghur inhabitants of the oases around the Tarim, speaking Qarluq/Old Uyghur-Chagatay dialects, were largely known as Taranchi and Sart, ruled by the Moghuls of Khojijan.
Turpan poet Abdulhaliq, having spent his early years in Semipalatinsk (modern Semey) and the Jadid intellectual centres in Uzbekistan, returned to Sinkiang with a pen name that he later styled as a surname: "Uyghur".
Mao turned the Second East Turkistan Republic into the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture and appointed Azizi as the region's first Communist Party governor.
[79][80][81][82][83][84] On 24 October 2018, the BBC released details of an extensive investigation into China's "hidden camps" and the extent to which the People's Republic goes to maintain so-called "correct thought".
