Kashgar or Kashi is a city in the Tarim Basin region of southern Xinjiang, China. It is one of the westernmost cities of China, located near the country's border with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. For over 2,000 years, Kashgar was a strategically important oasis on the Silk Road between China, the Middle East, and Europe. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and has a population of 711,300 people. Kashgar's urban area covers 15 km2 (5.8 sq mi), although its administrative area extends over 555 km2 (214 sq mi).

Uyghur or Uighur is a Turkic language written in a Uyghur Perso-Arabic script with 8–13 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Apart from Xinjiang, significant communities of Uyghur speakers are also located in Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, and various other countries have Uyghur-speaking expatriate communities. Uyghur is an official language of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; it is widely used in both social and official spheres, as well as in print, television, and radio. Other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang also use Uyghur as a common language.