A report on Tian Shan and Tarim Basin

The rugged Karakoram, Kunlun and Tian Shan mountain ranges occupy much of Xinjiang's borders, as well as its western and southern regions.

Xinjiang is divided into the Dzungarian Basin in the north and the Tarim Basin in the south by a mountain range, and only about 9.7% of Xinjiang's land area is fit for human habitation.

Steppe peoples had used the location, the pass between the Bogda Shan to the east and the Tian Shan to the west, connecting the Dzungar Basin to the north and the Turpan Depression to the south.

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.

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.

The northern route travelled northwest through the Chinese province of Gansu from Shaanxi Province and split into three further routes, two of them following the mountain ranges to the north and south of the Taklamakan Desert to rejoin at Kashgar, and the other going north of the Tian Shan mountains through Turpan, Talgar, and Almaty (in what is now southeast Kazakhstan).

Bounded by the Tian Shan mountain range to the south and the Altai Mountains to the north, it covers approximately 777000 km2, extending into Western Mongolia and Eastern Kazakhstan.

Although geographically, historically, and ethnically distinct from the Turkic-speaking Tarim Basin area, the Manchu-led Qing dynasty and subsequent Chinese governments integrated both areas into one province, Xinjiang.

It is bounded by the Kunlun Mountains to the south, the Pamir Mountains to the west, the Tian Shan range to the north, and the Gobi Desert to the east.

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

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.

Some scholars have argued that "Dunhuang" should be Dunhong, a mountain in the Tian Shan, and that Qilian should be interpreted as a name for the Tian Shan.

The river originates from the Tekes and Künes rivers in Eastern Tian Shan.

The upper Ili Valley is separated from the Dzungarian Basin in the north (by the Borohoro Mountains), and from the Tarim Basin in the south (by the Tian Shan).

It is the principal river of the Tarim Basin, a desert region of Central Asia between the Tian Shan and Kunlun Mountains.

Central Asia is a region of varied geography, including high passes and mountains (Tian Shan), vast deserts (Kyzyl Kum, Taklamakan), and especially treeless, grassy steppes.

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.

The Fergana Valley is an intermountain depression in Central Asia, between the mountain systems of the Tien Shan in the north and the Alay in the south.

Fergana, on the route to Tarim Basin from the west, remained at the boundaries of a number of classical era empires.