Turpan (Uyghur: تۇرپان) or Turfan (Chinese: 吐鲁番) is a prefecture-level city located in the east of the autonomous region of Xinjiang, China.

[2] Historically, many settlements in the Tarim Basin, being situated between Chinese, Turkic, Mongolian, and Persian language users, have a number of cognate names.

[5][6] Along with city-states such as Krorän (Loulan) and Kucha, Turpan has been inhabited by people speaking the Indo-European Tocharian languages up to at least the 8th century AD.[7].

Manuscripts from the 5th to the 8th century AD shows that the Tocharian A (Turfanian, Agnean, or East Tocharian; natively ārśi) of Qarašähär (ancient Agni, Chinese Yanqi and Sanskrit Agni) and Turpan (ancient Turfan and Xočo) was used in the region for administration and religious texts[8].

The city changed hands several times between the Xiongnu and the Han, interspersed with short periods of independence.

Until the 5th century AD, the capital of this kingdom was Jiaohe (modern Yarghul 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) west of Turpan).

In 501, Ma Ru himself was overthrown and killed, and the people of Gaochang appointed Qu Jia (麴嘉) from Jincheng Commandery as their king.

[25] While the material civilization of Kucha to its west in this period remained chiefly Indo-Iranian in character, in Gaochang it gradually merged into the Tang aesthetics.

The Turpan region was renamed Xi Prefecture (西州) when the Tang conquered it in 640 AD,[27] had a history of commerce and trade along the Silk Road already centuries old; it had many inns catering to merchants and other travelers, while numerous brothels are recorded in Kucha and Khotan.

[28] According to Valerie Hansen, even before the Tang conquest, Han ethnic presence was already so extensive that the cultural alignment of the city led to Turpan's name in the Sogdian language becoming known as "Chinatown" or "Town of the Chinese".

[34] Five men swore that the girl was never free before enslavement, since the Tang Code forbade commoners to be sold as slaves.

[27] The Tang dynasty became weakened considerably due to the An Lushan Rebellion, and the Tibetans took the opportunity to expand into Gansu and the Western Regions.

Clothing for corpses was made out of discarded, used paper in Turfan which is why the Astana graveyard is a source of a plethora of texts.

The last Idikut left Turpan area in 1284 for Kumul and then Gansu to seek protection of the Yuan dynasty, but local Uyghur Buddhist rulers still held power until the invasion by the Moghul Khizr Khoja in 1389.

A whole series of Sogdian Buddhist scriptures were found in Turpan (and also in Dunhuang), but these date from the Tang dynasty (618–907) and are translations from Chinese.

Many of the Uyghur documents and fragments of Buddhist scriptures edited to date include didactic texts (sutras) and philosophical works (the abhidharma).

In contrast to the other Buddhist contents, the monastic discipline texts (the vinaya) did not seem to be translated, but rather taught and studied in Sanskrit.

[47][48] As late as 1420, the Timurid envoy Ghiyāth al-dīn Naqqāsh, who passed through Turpan on the way from Herat to Beijing, reported that many of the city's residents were "infidels".

He visited a "very large and beautiful" temple with a statue of Shakyamuni; in one of the versions of his account it was also claimed that many Turpanians "worshipped the cross".

[49] The Moghul ruler of Turpan Yunus Khan, also known as Ḥājjī 'Ali (ruled 1462–1478), unified Moghulistan (roughly corresponding to today's Eastern Xinjiang) under his authority in 1472.

Around that time, a conflict with the Ming China started over the issues of tribute trade: Turpanians benefited from sending "tribute missions" to China, which allowed them to receive valuable gifts from the Ming emperors and to do plenty of trading on the side; the Chinese, however, felt that receiving and entertaining these missions was just too expensive.

Accordingly, in 1473 he went to war against China, and succeeded in capturing Hami in 1473 from the Oirat Mongol Henshen and holding it for a while, until Ali was repulsed by the Ming dynasty into Turfan.

In response, the Ming dynasty imposed an economic blockade on Turfan and kicked out all the Uyghurs from Gansu.

Several times, after occupying Hami, Mansur tried to attack China in 1524 with 20,000 men, but was beaten by Chinese forces.

The Turpan kingdom under Mansur, in alliance with Oirat Mongols, tried to raid Suzhou in Gansu in 1528, but were severely defeated by Ming Chinese forces and suffered heavy casualties.

The 19th-century Russian explorer Grigory Grum-Grshimailo, thought the local raisins may be "the best in the world" and noted the buildings of a "perfectly peculiar design" used for drying them called chunche.

[66] However, the high heat and dryness of the summer, when combined with the area's ancient system of irrigation, allows the countryside around Turpan to produce great quantities of high-quality fruit.

[75][76] Turpan is an agricultural economy growing vegetables, cotton, and especially grapes being China's largest raisin producing area.

[77] The local government has coordinated improvements in raisin distribution, offered preferential loans for grape cultivation, and free management training to growers.

5The claimed province of Taiwan no longer have any internal division announced by Ministry of Civil Affairs of PRC, due to lack of actual jurisdiction.