A report on Tarim Basin, Xinjiang and Kucha

The southern stretches of the Silk Road, from Khotan (Xinjiang) to Eastern China, were first used for jade and not silk, as long as 5000 BCE, and is still in use for this purpose.

The Tarim mummies, mummies of non-Mongoloid, apparently Caucasoid, individuals, have been found in the Tarim Basin, in the area of Loulan located along the Silk Road 200 km east of Yingpan, dating to as early as 1600 BCE and suggesting very ancient contacts between East and West.

Past its inception, the Chinese continued to dominate the Silk Roads, a process which was accelerated when "China snatched control of the Silk Road from the Hsiung-nu" and the Chinese general Cheng Ki "installed himself as protector of the Tarim at Wu-lei, situated between Kara Shahr and Kucha."

Karasahr or Karashar (قاراشەھەر), which was originally known, in the Tocharian languages as Ārśi (or Arshi) and Agni or the Chinese derivative Yanqi, is an ancient town on the Silk Road and the capital of Yanqi Hui Autonomous County in the Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang.

The city, referred to in classical Chinese sources as Yanqi, was located on the branch of the Silk Route that ran along the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin.

Ārśi was bordered by related Tocharian cultures, many of which also spoke related languages: Kuča (or Kucha), Gumo (later Aksu) to the west, Turfan (Turpan) to the east and to the south, Krorän (Loulan).

Under Emperor Taizong, campaigns were dispatched in the Western Regions against Gaochang in 640, Karasahr in 644 and 648, and Kucha in 648.

There was a long string of conflicts with Tibet over territories in the Tarim Basin between 670 and 692, and in 763 the Tibetans even captured the capital of China, Chang'an, for fifteen days during the An Shi Rebellion.

In fact, it was during this rebellion that the Tang withdrew its western garrisons stationed in what is now Gansu and Qinghai, which the Tibetans then occupied along with the territory of what is now Xinjiang.

Kashgar (قەشقەر) or Kashi is an oasis city in the Tarim Basin region of Southern Xinjiang.

Chapter 30 of the Records of the Three Kingdoms says that after the beginning of the Wei Dynasty (220) the states of the Western Regions did not arrive as before, except for the larger ones such as Kucha, Khotan, Kangju, Wusun, Kashgar, Yuezhi, Shanshan and Turpan, who are said to have come to present tribute every year, as in Han times.

The Tocharians, or Tokharians ( US : or ; UK : ), were speakers of Tocharian languages, Indo-European languages known from around 7600 documents from around 400 to 1200 AD, found on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin (modern Xinjiang, China).

Their actual ethnic name is unknown, although they may have referred to themselves as Agni, Kuči and Krorän, or Agniya, Kuchiya as known from Sanskrit texts.

The Taklamakan Desert (, Xiao'erjing: تَاكْلامَاقًا شَاموْ, ; تەكلىماكان قۇملۇقى, Täklimakan qumluqi; also spelled Taklimakan and Teklimakan) is a desert in Southwestern Xinjiang in Northwest China.

The desert is part of the Tarim Basin, which is 1000 km long and 400 km wide.

The key oasis towns, watered by rainfall from the mountains, were Kashgar, Miran, Niya, Yarkand, and Khotan (Hetian) to the south, Kuqa and Turpan in the north, and Loulan and Dunhuang in the east.

Turpan (also known as Turfan or Tulufan,, تۇرپان) is a prefecture-level city located in the east of the autonomous region of Xinjiang, China.

Historically, many settlements in the Tarim Basin have been given a number of different names.

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 Xiongnu were also active in areas now part of Siberia, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Xinjiang.

In the southern part of that territory -i.e. the Tarim basin's eastern edge- the Tarim mummies are discovered and dated to circa 2000 BC; recent studies (Li et al., 2010; Zhang et al.; 2021) indicate that the prehistoric inhabitants of the Tarim Basin arose from the admixture between locals of Ancient North Eurasian and Northeast Asians descent.

According to the fifth-century Book of Wei, the remnants of Northern Chanyu's tribe settled as Yueban (悅般), near Kucha and subjugated the Wusun; while the rest fled across the Altai mountains towards Kangju in Transoxania.

Aksu is a city in and the seat of Aksu Prefecture, Xinjiang, lying at the northern edge of the Tarim Basin.

Xuanzang reported that the "native products, climate, temperament of the people, customs, written language and law are the same as in the country of Kuci or modern Kucha", some 300 km to the east, "but the spoken language is somewhat different" from the Kuchean language, which is also known as Tocharian B and West Tocharian.

In the years following Tang Taizong's subjugation of the Eastern Turkic Khaganate, the emperor began to exert his military power toward the oasis city-states of the Tarim Basin (part of the area known in Chinese histories as the Western Regions).

In 648, the ethnically Turkic Tang general Ashina She'er who was the second son of Shibi Khan, attacked both Karasahr and Kucha in the northern Tarim, conquering both.

Qu Wentai also entered into an alliance with Ashina Bobu against a Tang ally, Yiwu (伊吾), in modern Hami, Xinjiang), as well as Yanqi.