The site was a major religious center along the northern route of the Silk Road in the second half of the first millennium CE.

The archaeologist Albert Grünwedel who worked at the site during the third German Turfan expedition (1905–1907) referred to the site as "Šorčuq"[2](derived from the Uyghur name Xorqu), this name is also sometimes spelled as Shorchuk,[3][4] "Chorchuk",[5] or "Shorchuq"[6] and may refer to salt deposits in the surrounding steppes.

Ārśi is believed to have been the homeland of an extinct Indo-European language known as "Tocharian A", or Agnean, and was significant in the introduction of Buddhism to China.

As late as the 6th century CE, Buddhist works and official documents were being written in Tocharian A. Ārśi was mentioned in Chinese sources, as early as the Han dynasty, as the Kingdom of Yanqi (Chinese: 焉耆; pinyin: Yanqi or Yen-ch'i – a derivative of Ārśi/Agni).

Aurel Stein hypothesized that the Buddhist temples of Qigexing were burned during an iconoclasm after Islam became the state religion of the Kara-Khanid Khanate.