1.
Xinjiang
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Xinjiang, officially the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is a provincial-level autonomous region of China in the northwest of the country. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and the 8th largest country subdivision in the world and it contains the disputed territory of Aksai Chin, which is administered by China. Xinjiang borders the countries of Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the rugged Karakoram, Kunlun, and Tian Shan mountain ranges occupy much of Xinjiangs borders, as well as its western and southern regions. Xinjiang also borders Tibet Autonomous Region and the provinces of Gansu, the most well-known route of the historical Silk Road ran through the territory from the east to its northwestern border. In recent decades, abundant oil and mineral reserves have been found in Xinjiang and it is home to a number of ethnic groups, including the Han, Kazakhs, Tajiks, Hui, Uyghur, Kyrgyz, Mongols, and Russians. More than a dozen autonomous prefectures and counties for minorities are in Xinjiang, older English-language reference works often refer to the area as Chinese Turkestan. Xinjiang is divided into the Dzungarian Basin in the north and the Tarim Basin in the south by a mountain range, only about 4. 3% of Xinjiangs land area is fit for human habitation. With a documented history of at least 2,500 years, the territory came under the rule of the Qing dynasty in the 18th century, which was later replaced by the Republic of China government. Since 1949, it has been part of the Peoples Republic of China following the Chinese Civil War, in 1954, Xinjiang Bingtuan was set up to strengthen the border defense against the Soviet Union, and also promote the local economy. In 1955, Xinjiang was turned into a region from a province. In the last decades, there have been tensions regarding Xinjiangs political status, amnesty International said that activists in Xinjiang have been arrested and tortured. Under the Han dynasty, which drove the Xiongnu empire out of the region in 60 BC, Xinjiang was previously known as Xiyu or Qurighar and this was in an effort to secure the profitable routes of the Silk Road. Dzungaria was known as Zhunbu and the Tarim Basin was known as Huijiang during the Qing dynasty before both regions were merged and became the region of Gansu Xinjiang, later simplified as Xinjiang. The name Xinjiang, which literally means New Frontier or New Borderland, was given during the Qing dynasty, according to the Chinese statesman Zuo Zongtangs report to the Emperor of Qing, Xinjiang means an old land newly returned. For instance, present-day Jinchuan County was known as Jinchuan Xinjiang, in the same manner, present-day Xinjiang was known as Xiyu Xinjiang and Gansu Xinjiang. After 1821, the Qing changed the names of the other regained regions, the name East Turkestan was created by Russian sinologist Hyacinth to replace the term Chinese Turkestan in 1829. East Turkestan was used traditionally to only refer to the Tarim Basin, in 1955, Xinjiang province was renamed Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The name that was proposed was simply Xinjiang Autonomous Region
2.
East Turkestan independence movement
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The name East Turkestan was created by the Russian sinologist Nikita Bichurin to replace the term Chinese Turkestan in 1829. East Turkestan was used traditionally to only refer to the Tarim Basin, Xinjiang before the Qing dynasty did not exist as one unit. It consisted of the two political entities of Dzungaria and the Tarim Basin. There was the Zhunbu and Huibu Dzungharia or Ili was called Zhunbu 準部 Tianshan Beilu 天山北路, Xinjiang 新疆, Dzongarie, Djoongaria, Soungaria and it was formerly the area of the Zunghar Khanate 準噶爾汗國, the land of the Dzungar Oirat Mongols. The Tarim Basin was known as Tianshan Nanlu 天山南路, Huibu 回部, Huijiang 回疆, Chinese Turkestan, Kashgaria, Little Bukharia, East Turkestan, and it was formerly the area of the Eastern Chagatai Khanate 東察合台汗國, land of the Uyghur people before being conquered by the Dzungars. The Chinese Repository said that Neither the natives nor the Chinese appear to have any name to designate the Mohammedan colonies. They are called Kashgar, Bokhára, Chinese Turkestan, &c. by foreigners and it is said to have remained in this family, with some interruptions, until conquered by the Eleuths of Soungaria in 1683. Between Jiayu Guans west and Urumchis East, an area of Xiniiang was also designated as Tianshan Donglu 天山東路, the three routes that made up Xinjiang werea Tarim Basin, Dzungaria, and the Turfan Basin. The region was called Xiyu by the Chinese, which translates to Western Regions. The Turfan Basin was ruled by the Chinese Kingdom of Gaochang, maps of the Chinese Han dynasty. On some maps the Protectorate of the Western Regions is shown in a version of the color that the Han dynasty is represented in to signify its status as a protectorate. The area was subjected to Turkification and Islamification at the hands of invading Turkic Muslims, Tang China lost control of Xinjiang after it was forced to withdraw its garrisons during the An Lushan Rebellion. The modern Uyghurs are now a hybrid of Mongoloid and Caucasian. Images of Mongoloid Buddhist and Manichean Turkic Uyghurs from the Bezeklik caves, pieces of murals were also broken off for use as fertilizer by the locals. Buddhism lost territory to Islam during the Karakhanid reign around the Kashgar area, a long war ensued between Islamic Kashgar and Buddhist Khotan which eventually ended in the conquest of Khotan by Kashgar. Iranic Saka peoples originally inhabited Yarkand and Kashgar in ancient times, the rulers of Khotan were aware of the menace they faced since they arranged for the Mogao grottoes to paint a growing number of divine figures along with themselves. The Taẕkirah is a genre of literature written about Sufi Muslim saints in Altishahr, due to the Imams deaths in battle and burial in Khotan, Altishahr, despite their foreign origins, they are viewed as local saints by the current Muslim population in the region. Muslims gouged the eyes of Buddhist murals along Silk Road caves, satuq Bughra Khan and his son directed endeavors to proselytize Islam among the Turks and engage in military conquests
3.
History of Xinjiang
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The recorded history of the area now known as Xinjiang dates to the 2nd millennium BC. Xinjiang is now a part of the Peoples Republic of China and they were governed separately until 1884. The native Uyghur name for the Tarim Basin is Altishahr, however, Qing people began to think of both areas as part of one distinct region called Xinjiang. In ancient China, the area was known as Xiyu or Western Regions, for the Uyghurs, the traditional name of the Tarim Basin in southern Xinjiang was Altishahr, which means six cities in the Uyghur language. The region of Dzungaria in northern Xinjiang was named after its native inhabitants, the name East Turkestan was created by the Russian Sinologist Nikita Bichurin to replace the term Chinese Turkestan in 1829. East Turkestan was used traditionally to only refer to the Tarim Basin, in the Uyghur language, Xinjiang is considered more center than northwestern in orientation. According to J. P. Mallory and Victor H. Mair, the Chinese describe the existence of people with long hair or the Bai people in the Shan Hai Jing. Various nomadic tribes, such as the Yuezhi, Saka, the Ordos culture in northern China east of the Yuezhi, is another example, yet skeletal remains from the Ordos culture found have been predominantly Mongoloid. The first reference to the nomadic Yuezhi was in 645 BC by Guan Zhong in his Guanzi 管子 and he described the Yuzhi 禺氏, or Niuzhi 牛氏, as a people from the north-west who supplied jade to the Chinese from the nearby mountains of Yuzhi 禺氏 at Gansu. The supply of jade from the Tarim Basin from ancient times is well documented archaeologically, all of the jade items excavated from the tomb of Fuhao of the Shang dynasty, more than 750 pieces, were from Khotan in modern Xinjiang. As early as the mid-first millennium BC the Yuezhi engaged in the jade trade, the nomadic tribes of the Yuezhi are documented in Chinese historical accounts, in particular the 2nd-1st century BC Records of the Great Historian, or Shiji, by Sima Qian. A small number of their people who were unable to make the journey west sought refuge among the Qiang barbarians in the Southern Mountains, Modern genetic analysis suggests that aboriginal inhabitants had a high proportion of DNA of European origin. In 2009, the remains of individuals found at the Xiaohe Tomb complex were analyzed for Y-DNA and mtDNA markers, the study found that while Y-DNA corresponded to West Eurasian populations, the mtDNA haplotypes were an admixture of East Asian and European origin. The geographic location of where this took place is suggested to be somewhere in Southern Siberia before these people moved into the Tarim Basin. Xiaohe is the oldest archaeological site yielding human remains discovered in the Tarim Basin to date, genetic analyses suggest West Eurasian maternal contribution to Uyghurs is 42. 6%. The estimation of European component in modern Uyghur population ranged from 30 to 60%, traversed by the Northern Silk Road, Western Regions is the Chinese name for the Tarim and Dzungaria regions of what is now northwest China. At the beginning of the Han dynasty, the region was subservient to the Xiongnu, as a result of these battles, the Chinese controlled the strategic region from the Ordos and Gansu corridor to Lop Nor. They succeeded in separating the Xiongnu from the Qiang peoples to the south, in 60 BC Han China established the Protectorate of the Western Regions at Wulei to oversee the entire region as far west as the Pamir
4.
Yuezhi
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After a major defeat by the Xiongnu, during the 2nd century BCE, the Yuezhi split into two groups, the Greater Yuezhi and Lesser Yuezhi. Following their defeat, the Greater Yuezhi initially migrated northwest into the Ili Valley and they were driven from the Ili Valley by the Wusun and migrated southward to Sogdia and later settled in Bactria, where they the defeated the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. The Greater Yuezhi have consequently often been identified with Bactrian peoples mentioned in classical European sources, like the Tókharioi, during the 1st century BCE, one of the five major Greater Yuezhi tribes in Bactria, the Kushanas, began to subsume the other tribes and neighbouring peoples. The subsequent Kushan Empire, at its peak in the 3rd century CE, the Kushanas played an important role in the development of trade on the Silk Road and the introduction of Buddhism to China. Most of the Lesser Yuezhi appear to have migrated southward into Tibet, however, some are reported to have settled among the Qiang people in Qinghai, and to have been involved in the Liangzhou Rebellion. Others are said to have founded the city state of Cumuḍa in the eastern Tarim, a fourth group of Lesser Yuezhi may have become part of the Jie people of Shanxi, who established the 4th Century CE Later Zhao state. The philosophical tract Guanzi is now believed to have been compiled around 26 BCE, based on older texts. In the Guanzi, nomadic pastoralists known as the Yúzhī 禺氏 or Niúzhī 牛氏 and they are described as supplying jade to the Chinese. The export of jade from the Tarim Basin, since at least the late 2nd Millennium BCE, is well-documented archaeologically, for example, hundreds of jade pieces found in the Tomb of Fu Hao originated from the Khotan area, on the southern rim of the Tarim Basin. According to the Guanzi, the Yúzhī/Niúzhī, unlike the neighbouring Xiongnu, in the early 4th Century BCE, the Tale of King Mu, Son of Heaven also mentions the Yúzhī 禺知. The Yi Zhou Shu makes separate references to the Yúzhī 禺氏 and Yuèdī 月氐, trading the jade and horses for Chinese silk, the Wūzhī were then selling these goods to other neighbours. The earliest detailed account of the Yuezhi is found in chapter 123 of the Records of the Great Historian by Sima Qian, essentially the same text appears in chapter 61 of the Book of Han, though Sima Qian has added occasional words and phrases to clarify the meaning. Both texts use the Chinese name Yuezhi, written with the characters yuè moon and shì clan, some scholars have argued that Dunhuang should be Dunhong, a mountain in the Tian Shan, and have placed the original homeland of the Yuezhi 1,000 km further west. The Yuezhi were so powerful that the Xiongnu monarch Touman even sent his eldest son Modu as a hostage to the Yuezhi, the Yuezhi often attacked their neighbour the Wusun to acquire slaves and pasture lands. Wusun originally lived together with the Yuezhi in the region between Dunhuang and Qilian Mountain, the Yuezhi attacked the Wusuns, killed their monarch Nandoumi and took his territory. The son of Nandoumi, Kunmo fled to the Xiongnu and was brought up by the Xiongnu monarch, gradually the Xiongnu grew stronger and war broke out between them and the Yuezhi. There were at least four wars between the Yuezhi and Xiongnu according to the Chinese accounts, the first war broke out during the reign of the Xiongnu monarch Touman who suddenly attacked the Yuezhi. The Yuezhi wanted to kill Modu, the son of the Xiongnu king Touman kept as a hostage to them and he subsequently killed his father and became ruler of the Xiongnu
5.
Han dynasty
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The Han dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period. Spanning over four centuries, the Han period is considered an age in Chinese history. To this day, Chinas majority ethnic group refers to itself as the Han people and it was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han, and briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang. This interregnum separates the Han dynasty into two periods, the Western Han or Former Han and the Eastern Han or Later Han, the emperor was at the pinnacle of Han society. He presided over the Han government but shared power with both the nobility and appointed ministers who came largely from the gentry class. The Han Empire was divided into areas controlled by the central government using an innovation inherited from the Qin known as commanderies. These kingdoms gradually lost all vestiges of their independence, particularly following the Rebellion of the Seven States, from the reign of Emperor Wu onward, the Chinese court officially sponsored Confucianism in education and court politics, synthesized with the cosmology of later scholars such as Dong Zhongshu. This policy endured until the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 AD, the Han dynasty was an age of economic prosperity and saw a significant growth of the money economy first established during the Zhou dynasty. The coinage issued by the government mint in 119 BC remained the standard coinage of China until the Tang dynasty. The period saw a number of limited institutional innovations, the Xiongnu, a nomadic steppe confederation, defeated the Han in 200 BC and forced the Han to submit as a de facto inferior partner, but continued their raids on the Han borders. Emperor Wu of Han launched several campaigns against them. The ultimate Han victory in these wars eventually forced the Xiongnu to accept vassal status as Han tributaries, the territories north of Hans borders were quickly overrun by the nomadic Xianbei confederation. Imperial authority was seriously challenged by large Daoist religious societies which instigated the Yellow Turban Rebellion. When Cao Pi, King of Wei, usurped the throne from Emperor Xian, following Liu Bangs victory in the Chu–Han Contention, the resulting Han dynasty was named after the Hanzhong fief. Chinas first imperial dynasty was the Qin dynasty, the Qin unified the Chinese Warring States by conquest, but their empire became unstable after the death of the first emperor Qin Shi Huangdi. Within four years, the authority had collapsed in the face of rebellion. Although Xiang Yu proved to be a commander, Liu Bang defeated him at Battle of Gaixia. Liu Bang assumed the title emperor at the urging of his followers and is known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu, Changan was chosen as the new capital of the reunified empire under Han
