A report on Uyghurs, Xinjiang and Tang dynasty

Located in China's Xinjiang region, it is sometimes used synonymously to refer to the southern half of the province, or Nanjiang, as opposed to the northern half of the province known as Dzungaria or Beijiang.

At the time of the Qing conquest in 1759, Dzungaria was inhabited by steppe dwelling, nomadic Mongolic speaking, Tibetan Buddhist Dzungars, while the Tarim Basin (Altishahr) was inhabited by sedentary, oasis dwelling, Turkic speaking Muslim farmers, now known as the Uyghur people.

During the Tang Dynasty, a series of military expeditions were conducted against the oasis states of the Tarim Basin, then vassals of the Western Turkic Khaganate.

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

The founding of the Tang dynasty in 618 saw the beginning of a prolonged struggle between China and the Western Turks for control of the Tarim Basin.

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.

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.

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

The main historical sources are to be found in the Chinese histories (particularly detailed during the Han and early Tang dynasties) when China was interested in control of the Western Regions, the accounts of several Chinese pilgrim monks, a few Buddhist histories of Hotan that have survived in Classical Tibetan and a large number of documents in the Iranian Saka language and other languages discovered, for the most part, early this century at various sites in the Tarim Basin and from the hidden library at the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang.

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.

Both the Old Book of Tang and New Book of Tang, covering the history of the Chinese Tang dynasty (618–907), record that a new state called Fu-lin (拂菻; i.e. Byzantine Empire) was virtually identical to the previous Daqin (大秦; i.e. Roman Empire).

The Uyghur Nestorian Christian diplomat Rabban Bar Sauma, who set out from his Chinese home in Khanbaliq (Beijing) and acted as a representative for Arghun (a grandnephew of Kublai Khan), traveled throughout Europe and attempted to secure military alliances with Edward I of England, Philip IV of France, Pope Nicholas IV, as well as the Byzantine ruler Andronikos II Palaiologos.

Some of the most notable modern Turkic-speaking ethnic groups include the Turkish people, Azerbaijanis, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Uyghurs, Turkmens, Volga Tatars, Kyrgyz people and Yakuts.

Chinese Turkestan remained part of the People's Republic of China.

The Tang historian Yan Shigu described the Hu people of his day as "blue-eyed and red bearded" descendants of the Wusun, whereas "no comparable depiction of the Kök Türks or Tiele is found in the official Chinese histories."

Dzungaria (also transliterated as Zungaria; Dzungharia or Zungharia; Dzhungaria or Zhungaria; Djungaria or Jungaria; or literally züüngar, Mongolian for "left hand") is a geographical subregion in Northwest China that corresponds to the northern half of Xinjiang—hence it is also known as Beijiang.

At the time of the Qing conquest in 1759, Dzungaria was inhabited by steppe-dwelling, nomadic Tibetan-Buddhist Dzungar people, while the Tarim Basin was inhabited by sedentary, oasis-dwelling, Turkic-speaking Muslim farmers, now known as the Uyghur people.

Before the 21st century, all or part of the region has been ruled or controlled by the Xiongnu Empire, Han dynasty, Xianbei state, Rouran Khaganate, Turkic Khaganate, Tang Dynasty, Uyghur Khaganate, Yenisei Kyrgyz Khaganate, Liao dynasty, Kara-Khitan Khanate, Mongol Empire, Yuan Dynasty, Chagatai Khanate, Moghulistan, Qara Del, Northern Yuan, Four Oirat, Dzungar Khanate, Qing Dynasty, and the Republic of China; since 1950, it has been under the control of the People's Republic of China.

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).

For several centuries, the Tarim basin was ruled by the Xiongnu, the Han Dynasty, the Tibetan Empire and the Tang Dynasty.

A Buddhist work in Old Turkic (Uighur), included a colophon stating that the text had been translated from Sanskrit via toxrï tyly (Tωγry tyly, "The language of the Togari").

Famed for their woven carpets in the pre-Muslim era, they were considered a vassal state by the Tang Dynasty after the final conquest of the Transoxania regions by the Chinese in 739.

The name Khāqāniyya was given to the Qarluks who inhabited Kāshghar and Bālāsāghūn, the inhabitants were not Uighur however their language has been retroactively labelled as Uighur by scholars.

They then conquered Kankali and subdued Xinjiang.

There are 76 officially-recognised minority or indigenous ethnic groups in East Asia; 55 native to mainland China (including Hui, Manchus, Chinese Mongols, Tibetans, Uyghurs and Zhuang in the frontier regions), 16 native to the island of Taiwan (collectively known as Taiwanese indigenous peoples), one native to the major Japanese island of Hokkaido (the Ainu) and four native to Mongolia (Turkic peoples).

During the Tang dynasty, China exerted its greatest influence on East Asia as various aspects of Chinese culture spread to Japan and Korea.

Xinjiang (East Turkestan) and Tibet are sometimes seen as part of Central Asia.

Among some southern Han Chinese varieties such as Cantonese, Hakka and Minnan, a different term exists – Tang Chinese (, literally "the people of Tang"), derived from the later Tang dynasty, regarded as another zenith of Chinese civilization.

Han Chinese are almost the majority in every Chinese province, municipality, and autonomous region except for the autonomous regions of Xinjiang (38% or 40% in 2010) and Tibet Autonomous Region (8% in 2014), where Uighurs and Tibetans are the majority, respectively.