A report on Xinjiang, Tarim Basin, Uyghurs and Silk Road

Hotan (also known as Gosthana, Gaustana, Godana, Godaniya, Khotan, Hetian, Hotien) is a major oasis town in southwestern Xinjiang, an autonomous region in Western China.

With a population of 408,900 (2018 census), Hotan is situated in the Tarim Basin some 1500 km southwest of the regional capital, Ürümqi.

The town, located southeast of Yarkant County and populated almost exclusively by Uyghurs, is a minor agricultural center.

An important station on the southern branch of the historic Silk Road, Hotan has always depended on two strong rivers—the Karakash River and the White Jade River to provide the water needed to survive on the southwestern edge of the vast Taklamakan Desert.

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

With a population of over 500,000, Kashgar has served as a trading post and strategically important city on the Silk Road between China, the Middle East and Europe for over 2,000 years, making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the World.

The 36th division General Ma Fuyuan led a Chinese Muslim army to storm Kashgar on 6 February 1934, attacking the Uighur and Kyrgyz rebels of the First East Turkestan Republic.

Yarkant County, also Shache County, also transliterated from Uyghur as Yakan County, is a county in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China, located on the southern rim of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin.

The county, usually referred to as Yarkand in English, was the seat of an ancient Buddhist kingdom on the southern branch of the Silk Road and the Yarkand Khanate.

Today, Yarkant is a predominantly Uyghur settlement.

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.

it had a population of 29,000, growing to 31,773 persons in 2006; 16,032 persons of which were Han, 7781 people Hui, 7,154 people Uygur, 628 Mongol and 178 other ethnicities and an agricultural population of 1078 people.

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.

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.

It is crossed at its northern and at its southern edge by two branches of the Silk Road, by which travellers sought to avoid the arid wasteland.

The present population consists largely of Turkic Uyghur people and ethnic Han people.

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.

It was historically located along the Silk Road.

In 803, the Uyghurs of the Uyghur Khaganate seized Turfan from the Tibetans.

From its numerous subjects, the dynasty raised professional and conscripted armies of hundreds of thousands of troops to contend with nomadic powers for control of Inner Asia and the lucrative trade-routes along the Silk Road.

The Uyghur khan Moyanchur was greatly excited at this prospect, and married his own daughter to the Chinese diplomatic envoy once he arrived, receiving in turn a Chinese princess as his bride.

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.

The subsequent Kushan Empire, at its peak in the 3rd century AD, stretched from Turfan in the Tarim Basin in the north to Pataliputra on the Gangetic plain of India in the south.

The Kushanas played an important role in the development of trade on the Silk Road and the introduction of Buddhism to China.

They have thus placed the original homeland of the Yuezhi 1,000 km further northwest in the grasslands to the north of the Tian Shan (in the northern part of modern Xinjiang).

Whatever their fate may have been, the Xiao Yuezhi ceased to be identifiable by that name and appear to have been subsumed by other ethnicities, including Tibetans, Uyghurs and Han.

Ürümqi ( also spelled Ürümchi or without umlauts), formerly known as Dihua (also spelled Tihwa), is the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the far northwest of the People's Republic of China.

Although Ürümqi is situated near the northern route of the Silk Road, the present city is relatively new.

After the Tang retreated from the Western Regions, the region came under the control of the Uyghurs of the Khaganate and Gaochang / Qocho.

The Uyghurs were introduced into the Ürümqi area in the 18th century by the Dzungars who moved them from the west Tarim region to be taranchis or farmers in Ürümqi.

After expansion by Turkic peoples, Central Asia also became the homeland for the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tatars, Turkmen, Kyrgyz, and Uyghurs; Turkic languages largely replaced the Iranian languages spoken in the area, with the exception of Tajikistan and areas where Tajik is spoken.

Central Asia was historically closely tied to the Silk Road trade routes, acting as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, and ideas between Europe and the Far East.

The Russian geographer Nikolaĭ Khanykov questioned the latitudinal definition of Central Asia and preferred a physical one of all countries located in the region landlocked from water, including Afghanistan, Khorasan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uyghuristan (Xinjiang), and Uzbekistan.

Tocharian, another Indo-European language group, which was once predominant in oases on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin of Xinjiang, is now extinct.