Taranchi is a term denoting the Turkic-speaking, Muslim, sedentary population living in oases around the Tarim Basin in today's Xinjiang, China, whose native language is Turkic Karluk and whose ancestral heritages include Tocharians, Iranic peoples such as Sakas and Sogdians, and the later Turkic peoples such as the Uyghurs, Karluks, Yaghmas, Chigils, Basmyls, Tuhsis and lastly, the Mongolic tribes of the Chagatai Khanate.

Although the Tarim Basin (with such oases as Kashgar, Kumul, Khotan and Turpan) is the agrarian Taranchis' traditional homeland, they have during the Qing period on China, migrated to regions that are now Urumqi and Ili.

Many Taranchis were encouraged to settle in the Ili valley alongside sedentary Xibe garrisons and the nomadic Kyrgyz by the Qing military governors after the conquest of the Dzungars by the Chinese.

In the multiethnic Muslim culture of Xinjiang, the term Taranchi is considered contradistinctive to Sart, which denotes towns dwelling traders and craftsmen.

However, from a modern perspective, Taranchi, Sart and Moghol Dolans cannot be considered three distinctive ethnic groups, but rather three different classes or castes in the same cultural-linguistic zone that was Chagatay-Timurid.

While most Sarts of oases or Ili Valley towns became part of the Uyghur nationality, those with particularly strong ties to regions west of Xinjiang became Uzbeks.

The Naqshbandi Sufi Khojas, descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, had replaced the Chagatayid Khans as the ruling authority of the Tarim Basin in the early 17th century.

[9] Taranchi was the name for Turki agriculturalists who were resettled in Dzungaria from the Tarim Basin oases ("East Turkestani cities") by the Qing dynasty, along with Manchus, Xibo (Xibe), Solons, Han and other ethnic groups.