Uyghur Scholar Kahar Barat

Wang Lixiong

The Chinese government uses frequently-lampooned language when it comes to official rhetoric on Xinjiang’s historical relationship with the rest of China proper. As with Tibet, the CCP asserts that Xinjiang has been a part of a Chinese polity or “nation” constantly and for a very long period time, almost invariably traced in official histories back to the embassy of Zhang Qian through Xinjiang to the Yuezhi in the 2nd century BC. Interestingly, by choosing Zhang Qian as a marker for the beginning of Xinjiang’s “Chineseness,” the party is obliquely saying that Xinjiang’s essential belonging-ness to China is predicated on Han presence in the region.

Is it really that simple, however? In this second installment of a conversation on Xinjiang history between Uyghur historian Kahar Barat and Chinese dissident and intellectual Wang Lixiong, Barat takes a historically informed but uncompromising view on the myth of unbroken Han presence in Xinjiang. Xinjiang history, Barat argues, demonstrably is a checkerboard of political, cultural, and religious influences both emerging locally and coming in – from all directions. Han participation in that exchange of wars, ideas, cultures, religions, and writing systems was only one facet, and even the most clear instances of Chinese involvement of the region could be accused of being only temporary, limited, or not even Han at all – the Tang imperial family itself belonging to a migration of pastoral nomads of the north filling in the vacuum left by the bloody Three Kingdoms period.

Delightfully, Barat ends this phase of the discussion with some fiery counter-rhetoric, implying that “Chineseness” is an artificial outgrowth of a monopoly that Chinese writing had on “culture” in the area up until the introduction of newer writing systems from the West – a delineation that marks today’s Uyghurs as belonging to a different cultural sphere than the Chinese. This, of course, isn’t the only controversial assertion Barat makes in this section, or the previous one, so I invite all readers to share any thoughts in the comments section!

Wang Lixiong: About how many significant expansions or colonizing activities have been carried out by Han Chinese in Xinjiang throughout history?

Kahar: Zhang Qian was an envoy of the Western Han, on his first journey he brought 100 men, on his second, 300 men. The frontier commandery he established lasted 70 years. Ban Chao was an envoy of the Eastern Han, on his first trip he brought 36 men; later, he brought reinforcements numbering 1800 men. Ban Chao was skilled at making local alliances and managed a standoff against the Xiongnu for 30 years. The Tang Dynasty dispatched large armies to Xinjiang. The Four Western Region Protectorates they established lasted 150 years.

Wang Lixiong: How long did the Qu Clan of the Gaochang last?

Kahar: About two centuries. The Tang Emperor Taizong would later take the entire Qu Clan nobility and send them to Henan under escort. They constituted an obstacle to Emperor Taizong’s ongoing conquest of the Western Regions. Emperor Taizong himself came from a clan similar to the Qu clan. It’s a very complicated situation, with layers upon layers.

Wang Lixiong: Was Emperor Taizong from this specific clan?

Kahar: No, he wasn’t from this exact tribe, but he did belong to another group of Sinicized Xianbei. Their surname, “Li” was actually created for themselves after the fact. After the Li clan established the Tang dynasty they still maintained their Altaic traditions and culture to a considerable degree. For example, first, from the Xiongnu up to the Gaochang Huihu Uyghurs and the Karakhanid Kingdom there was this custom of establishing two capitals, the Tang Dynasty of the Li clan did the same using Chang’an and Luoyang as their capitals. Second, traditionally our Khans had honorific titles, with some reaching up to 20 characters long. Chinese dynasties always strictly observed a naming format of regnal title, temple name, and posthumous name, but starting from the the Tang dynasty new honorifics were added. Third, our affinal relationships were always between royal and noble tribes, not just any woman from some random tribe could be married in and become Empress. When you investigate you see that a great deal of Tang dynasty Empresses came from other Xianbei clans. On these three points there are differences with traditional Chinese dynastic systems, proving that the Tang dynasty was an Altaic dynasty.

Wang Lixiong: Can Zhang Qian, who served only as an envoy and brought 180 men, really be considered an example of Han expansion into Xinjiang?

Kahar: His fame comes from the fact that he was an envoy, his mission was to reconnoiter the situation of the Xiongnu. Back in those times the Emperors were foolish in the same way good old Mao was with this backyard furnaces. On hearing that the Ferghana valley was home to a breed of “blood-sweating horses,” the Han emperor ordered Li Guangli to lead tens of thousands of troops into the deserts and snow-capped mountains to seek out this horse. Very few returned alive, leading along just a few dozen horses. Sitting in Chang’an and giving orders is easy. Think about it, in those days passing through Gansu alone would heap up fatalities. Going from Dunhuang to Hami, from Hami to Turpan, from Turpan to Kashgar, all of it is endless desert, and then on top of that, one must pass through the snow-capped Pamir mountains to reach the Ferghana Valley, which is today in Uzbekistan, that’s enough to make several tens of thousands of soldiers tire to death on the route.

Wang Lixiong: During the Han dynasty, other than these military actions, did any colonizing occur? Was it just coming back after snatching up a few horses, or did anyone get left behind to start cultivating land?

Kahar: It wasn’t that simple, there still was the problem of the Xiongnu. They (the Han dynasty) were unable to fully vanquish the Xiongnu, it was quite an annoyance, right when their troops were prepared to pursue, the Xiongnu would fall back. After investigating this this they discovered that after dispatching their troops to the battlefield logistics was not a cause for concern among the Xiongnu, because they (the Xiongnu) were able to order the local city-states to prepare provisions that the troops were able to use anywhere at leisure, and consequently without cutting off the supplies between the Xiongnu and those city states, Xiongnu reinforcements were essentially limitless, and the Han would be incapable of destroying the enemy at their roots. Therefore the Han dynasty dispatched troops specifically to occupy these city-states located in Xinjiang, and the Han troops themselves set up tuntian ¹, causing the Xiongnu to lose their source of provisions and ultimately bringing about the defeat of the Xiongnu.

Wang Lixiong: And so what, then, is the connection between Uyghurs and the Xiongnu?

Kahar: Both belong to the Altaic language system. Göktürks were a large sub-component within the Xiongnu, the Xiongnu weren’t limited just to Göktürks, within the Xiongnu there were several other races. Of the ten largest tribal communities within the Xiongnu, the Göktürks were a relatively large group. Now, whether or not the Göktürks comprised, say, 50% or 60% of the Xiongnu, that we can’t clearly determine. Today Mongolians are saying they are the descendants of the Xiongnu, that is incorrect. They originated with the Donghu, who were the enemies of the Xiongnu.

Wang Lixiong: Can the city-states and small nations of those times be considered Uyghur? Or had the Uyghur race yet to form?

Kahar: At that time Uyghurs weren’t an independent tribe, they were a tribe within the Göktürks.

Wang Lixiong: Other than the Turks, such as the Uyghurs, that succeeded the the Xiongnu, where did the other peoples comprising the Xiongnu end up?

Kahar: The Xiongnu dispersed, their troops forming their own respective banners. This happened after the Han dynasty and so there’s no written record. Tribes migrated, becoming their own kingdoms, this is an issue that remains very hazy. These would later become a part of the history of the Göktürks, the Rouran, the Xianbei, et cetera. In the fourth and fifth centuries one branch under the leadership of Attila came close to conquering all of Europe.

Wang Lixiong: During that period of time how long did the Han presence in Xinjiang last?

Kahar: Probably not even a full century, after the Xiongnu were defeated the Han dynasty itself also disappeared, there really was no Western Region to speak of during the Three Kingdoms period.

Wang Lixiong: Right, during the Three Kingdoms civil war there really was no ability to manage the frontier. But during the Tang dynasty was Han expansion into Xinjiang considerable?

Kahar: During the Tang Dynasty the primary concern was war with the Western Göktürks and the Qu clan of Gaochang. Of the tens of thousands of troops dispatched by the Tang a good number of them surrendered to the contemporaneous Turkic tribes and the city states located in the western regions. We don’t know how many of these were Han. In China, the Three Kingdoms period was a bloodbath, some estimates say that over half the population was exterminated. The common people were scattered in all directions, and many fled into the forests and valleys of the south. The central plains of China were left in ruins, infested with bandits, leaving no way to plant crops or build buildings. As a result, the pastoral-nomads of the north migrated down in batches, and eventually settled. The central plains became the geographical foundation of the “Sixteen Kingdoms of the Five Barbaric Tribes.” The settled nomads studied Chinese writing. For a culture without a writing system, the discovering of writing is revolutionary, an exciting thing. As a result there was a revolution in the culture of the central plains, everyone studied Chinese, and not just the writing, but even more importantly the language of Buddhism. Buddhism was extremely instrumental in spreading the Chinese language. In the south, they encountered both Han culture and Buddhism. If you want to be able to read Buddhist texts, you had to study Chinese, you know?

During that time, the language that Kumarajiva² spoke was Tocharian. Tocharian is unique in that it’s a type of European language, roughly similar to today’s Lithuanian language. The royal courts of that area would spend manpower and money to translate Buddhist texts; Kumarajiva would stand and speak, and then several dozen people would record his translations. Buddhism was unable to persuade Han followers of Confucius and Lao Tze, but thoroughly penetrated the barbarian believers of Shamanistic religions. During the Northern Wei period Buddhism entered a Golden Age.

Wang Lixiong: At that time were many peoples already using Han writing? Perhaps established practices in teaching and translating Han writing lead to Chinese becoming the primary language of transmission for Buddhism.

Kahar: That’s correct, when the Xianbei arrived a translation of Buddhist texts into Chinese had long ago been completed in the central plains. In fact, Chinese characters were really what brought about the Han ethnicity, without these characters there would be no Han ethnicity. The Han ethnicity really is just over a hundred peoples assimilated into one body. This process is still continuing. China had 56 ethnicities, after the past 50 years there’s probably only 6 left. In fact, over half probably exist entirely in name only.

Wang Lixiong: Did Uyghur writing already exist at that time? Why didn’t Uyghur adopt Chinese characters? Is it because there were too few Uyghurs?

Kahar: It’s like this, Chinese writing managed to go beyond so many high mountains and wild forests, going as far as Vietnam, even jumping over the ocean to Japan, however, it never managed to climb over that wall right next to it – over Great Wall, to where we Turks live. By the time Turkic peoples needed writing, they had already studied phonetic scripts coming from the West. Those scripts were much simpler, 40 characters, much more convenient thatn Chinese. Having tasted a sample of a phonetic script, who would then go and study Chinese?

Wang Lixiong: In that case, why didn’t the sixteen kingdoms of the five barbaric tribes go and study Turkic writing?

Kahar: Turkic script appeared in the 8th century, the Xianbei existed in the 5th century. With the sudden rise of the Turkic Huihu Uyghurs, all Turkic Huihu Uyghur inscriptions refer to the Tang as Tabghac, the “Tuoba people” and the “Tuoba language.” The Tuoba clan aws a branch of the Altaic Xianbei peoples, speakers of a Turkic language. The Chuvash people living in Russia today may well be the direct descendants of the Tuoba. Histories written in Chinese simply have no way of capturing the linguistic and cultural background of the times. It’s similar as to what happened with the Manchu peoples, later. After just three generations they had completely forgotten their original script. It had to do with the fact that materials in their language were so scarce.

The Tuoba peoples went south early, the rise of the Turkic races came later. The Tuoba settled in the Yellow River basin, abandoned their nomadic lifestyle, and gradually became a settled people, became Han.

Wang Lixiong: There have always been people who say that assimilative abilities of Chinese culture are quite significant, taking other cultures and absorbing them, do you think this is because Chinese characters appeared early and were adopted as a tool by other ethnicities, that assimilation occurred mainly through Chinese writing?

Kahar: Chinese writing is just one aspect, it’s also because Buddhist scriptures were first translated into Chinese. Writing in and of itself is advantageous, its better than not having writing, that goes without saying. Chinese characters have recorded many valuable things. If I were a tribesman of that day, I’d definitely want to study a writing system, but during that time there simply was no choice, just Chinese characters. Naturally, Han characters are quite backwards compared to phonetic writing systems. Chinese writing is what made China, just as the Chinese people created by Chinese characters don’t mesh with the rest of the world, wherever they go, they make Chinatowns.

[2]:^ Kumarajiva was a Buddhist monk from Kucha whose mastery of several languages, including Sanskrit, enabled him to make many vital translations of religious texts. See his article at Wikipedia for more information.

Uyghur Scholar Kahar Barat

Wang Lixiong

Two extremely compelling and intriguing voices on Xinjiang issues today are those of Wang Lixiong and Kahar Barat. Married to Woeser, an outspoken Tibetan blogger and rights advocate, Wang Lixiong himself is extremely well versed in Tibet issues and one of the most (if not the most) sympathetic Han Chinese voices speaking out on ethnic issues, both pertaining to Tibet and Xinjiang, where his views were particularly enriched and deepened by conversations he had with a Uyghur cellmate during a stint in prison for photocopying “secret” Bingtuan documents – an experience documented in his 2007 book, My East Land, Your West Country . Kahar Barat is a Uyghur scholar and intellectual widely known throughout the Uyghur diaspora for his prolific writings on Uyghur history, culture, linguistics, as well as on modern Xinjiang issues. A favorite of mine, written in Uyghur and titled “Maymaq Uyghurlar,” or “Warped Uyghurs,” is a piercing commentary on how Uyghur artists themselves willingly package Uyghur culture for consumption by the more developed Han by uncritically embracing the image of the oblivious singing-and-dancing stereotype. “Maymaq Uyghurlar” will be translated into English here soon, but for now, here is a translation from Mandarin into English of part one of an interesting and illuminating interview of Kahar Barat by Wang Lixiong, conducted in Virginia not long after the riots last year.

In part one, Barat covers the considerable period of time from the Xiongnu up to the conversion of the region to Islam. Though a serious and clearly well-informed scholar, Barat doesn’t hesitate to make clear his opinions on the relative contributions Buddhism and its successor, Islam, made to the peoples and cultural legacies of the region. Barat further discusses at length the frequently controversial issue of “continuity” between the Uyghurs of the Uyghur Khanate in the 8th and 9th century and the people who have adopted the name “Uyghur” today, placing both within the framework of the gradual and inexorable Turkicization of the sprawl of grasslands stretching from Europe to Mongolia. Barat also shares some fascinating insights on the linguistic evolution of the term “Uyghur” and the complicated and obfuscating relationship the word had with the changing Chinese characters and dialects that recorded the word in the written record. There’s something fascinating to learn from this interview for historians, geographers, linguists, and anybody who can appreciate some good old fashioned Silk Road history. Translations of Parts 2 and 3 of the interview will follow shortly.

This is part of an interview that took place at the home of Kahar Barat of Virginia University in August of 2009, not long after the 7/5 Urumqi riots. This version of the the interview text has been proofread by Dr. Kahar Barat himself.

Kahar Barat is a historian, linguist, and expert on Central Asian history and culture. He is Uyghur, was born in Yili in 1950, earned a Master’s in Turkology from Central Minzu University, and received his doctorate in 1993 at Harvard after doing dissertation research on Central Asia and Altai. Having already taught and conducted academic research at Xinjiang University, at Harvard, Yale, and Indiana University in the US, and at Foguang University in Taiwan, Barat has now become involved in studying Middle and Early Chinese linguistics, Buddhism, phonetics, and other academic areas.

Religious Conversions

Wang Lixiong: Your doctoral dissertation at Harvard was titled “The [Huihu] Uygur¹ Xuanzang Biography Volume 9,” and we know that Xinjiang, which is primarily Muslim today, had for a period in history been predominantly Buddhist. Could you please tell us how long the Buddhist age of Xinjiang lasted?

Kahar: Over fifteen hundred years. The earliest Buddhist clerics and translators in China were all from Xinjiang, and the most ancient Thousand-Buddha Grottoes are also in Xinjiang, not in Dunhuang. The ones at Dunhuang are younger than ours by several centuries. The most ancient Thousand-Buddha Grottoes of ours were made in the 4th century. Buddhism’s entrance into China was through Central Asia. Now, Chinese scholars are saying Buddhism came in the 1st century AD. Where did it come from? Not through Xinjiang? We don’t have a solid basis for claims that Buddhism came in the first century, however, there is a record in the form of Buddhist relics and writings from the 3rd and 4th century.

Wang Lixiong: Buddhism existed in Xinjiang until what point?

Kahar: The 18th century. In the past I’ve investigated Badashi Valley in Hami Prefecture, and there Buddhism endured among the Uyghurs until the 18th century. According to folklore the King of Hami at that time was very angry, and said that the whole world had submitted to Allah, how are there still people worshiping Buddha? He dispatched mullahs to go over the mountains to build mosques and make them convert to Islam.

Wang Lixiong: Which King of Hami was that?

Kahar: I’m not sure which one. There were Kings in Hami from 1697 up to 1930. When I say 18th century that’s a conservative estimate, it’s even possible that Buddhism in Xinjiang continued up to the 19th century. A copy of the “Golden Light Sutra” from the Kangxi Era written in Huihu Uyghur script was excavated in Gansu, this isn’t strange at all. According to my research, the Buddhism among the mountain villages was not the Huihu Uyghur Buddhism that came from Turpan, but rather was the Lama Buddhism practiced by Mongols and Tibetans. Local people told me that during the daytime they would worship at the mosque but after going home would secretly worship their own little Buddhist images. Later the mullahs (dispatched by the King of Hami) were gradually shooed away by the local people. Villagers even brought me to see the ruins of a mosque on a hill near the entrance of the village. Typical historical texts maintain that Xinjiang Buddhism ended in the 15th century, and that’s correct regarding the larger cities, but in the villages tucked away among the mountain valleys, it continued on as before for several centuries.

Historically speaking the stable eras in Xinjiang were quite long lasting. During the Buddhist period there were no wars, and according to Xuanzang’s written accounts, everyone was doing quite well. The King gave alms to the poor year after year, and several thousand people would be able to eat food donated to Buddhist monks as alms. Buddhism is a very benign religion, and as a result the crime rate among society was very low.”

Wang Lixiong: How did the conversion from Buddhism to Islam occur?

Kahar: Buddhism is a benign religion. Explorers have excavated monastic Buddhist clothing with bloodstains in Turpan coming from that period in history. Also, poems eulogizing Islamic holy war proudly write, “We destroyed the infidel temples of the Huihu Uyghurs, we shat and pissed on their shrines.”

Wang Lixiong: So you’re saying that the religious conversion relied on violence to be achieved?

Kahar: Yes. Islam first came through Kashgar via peaceful methods, through arriving missionaries, later, when expanding from Kasghar to Khotan, Turpan, and other places it was spread through holy war, brought with the sword.

Wang Lixiong: Which came first, the entrance of Islam into Xinjiang or the Mongol conquest of Xinjiang?

Kahar: The Islamic conquest came first. Islam arrived at Kashgar in the 10th century AD, but at this time it never went beyond the area from Kashgar to Khotan, and primarily existed in southern Xinjiang. After Islam had established a stable foundation in Kashgar, Kashgar dispatched troops to make war with Khotan, and they fought for 40 years. There weren’t any Mongols during that period. After being vanquished by Kashgar, Khotan’s millennia-old Buddhist dynasty was annihilated. However, Turpan remained a Buddhist state. Then the Khitan arrived, ruling over Xinjiang for 80 years, and after that, the Mongols. All those regions became part of Mongolian domains, however, the Mongols were also gradually assimilated by the local Turkic peoples.

Wang Lixiong: Did Islam continue to spread under Mongolian rule?

Kahar: After a century or two of Mongol rule, the upper strata of urban Mongol society gradually became Turkicized. They were the ones who brought soldiers to kill the Buddhist monks of Turpan and spread Islam to Turpan.

Wang Lixiong: In your view, was this religious conversion benificial or harmful?

Kahar: Islam arrived just as the Silk Road began disintegrated and as civilization was entering a dark age. Nevertheless, Islamicization strengthened the ethnic and cultural unity of the Uyghurs and made Uyghurs become a member of a powerful religious community.

Ancient Xinjiang Dynasties

Wang Lixiong: For many Han Chinese today the history of Xinjiang is entirely a blank space, they know it only as a region, and at most know a little about Zhang Qian and Ban Chao… from a territorial standpoint, did ancient Xinjiang exist as a single, intact unit, or was it rather divided into different countries? What approximately was the scope of its territory?

Kahar: Xinjiang existed in a divided state for two thousand years. High mountains, deserts, and poor transportation allowed several city-state polities to endure for several centuries, even a millennium. In 552, when the Western capital of the Göktürks² was established in Yanqi, the ultimate Turkicized fate of the Xinjiang area was sealed. By the 10th century, all of Xinjiang had already completely Turkicized, or Uyghur-ized if you will. Later, even the Mongol invasion was unable to transform the Uyghur and Muslim aspects of Xinjiang society.

The Huihu Uyghurs were a branch of the Göktürks. After the Göktürks, in 744 the Huihu Uyghurs carried on the great grassland empire for another century. After the Uyghur Huihu Khanate was destroyed in 846, the Turkic people would never again unite into a single great Khanate. However, practically speaking the grasslands from Mongolia to Eastern Europe had all fallen into the hands of Turkic peoples.

Wang Lixiong: After the Huihu Uyghur Khanate, would Xinjiang itself ever again be fully united under a single kingdom?

Kahar: Two major powers emerged in Xinjiang after the Huihu Uyghur Khanate. The first was the Gaochang Huihu Khanate based in Turpan. As several historical documents attest, its territory reached north to Balasagun, which is in Kyrgyzstan, and south to Shazhou, which is Dunhuang. Also, there was the Qarakhanid dynasty of Kashgar, which stretched to Turkmenistan. With a century or two of the Mongol invasion, the upper class of the local Mongols had completely Islamicized and Uyghur-icized. They established the Yarkand Khanate. Turpan was the older brother, Yarkand was the younger brother, they belonged to one family. There were both Islamic powers. There is a phenomenon particular to Central Asia significant to world history that has been neglected by the historian community: in the two millenia from the Xiongnu to the Manchu, pastoral-nomadic powers of the grasslands and settled city-state powers existed in parallel. Two types of culture, two types of societies prospered and existed together. For the most part, the horseback peoples were the colonizers and the settled city-states were permitted self-rule. This is the dual nature of Central Asian history. This is very infrequently seen in throughout the world.”

Wang Lixiong: Where was the heart of the Huihu Uyghur Khanate located?

Kahar: The center of the Huihu Uyghur Khanate was Kharabalghasun, located at Karakorum in outer Mongolia. The Huihu Uyghur Khanate founded five cities, adopted Manichaeism as the state religion, and also began opening up land for cultivation, setting it apart from the Turkic Khanates that came before and after it and illustrating a move towards a settled lifestyle. Recently twenty, thirty fortresses established by Huihu Uyghurs were discovered in Tuvan regions of southern Siberia. It’s possible that Tuvans are descended from the men under General Julumohe who fled north in 840 seeking asylum among the Kyrgyz. At that time the center of the Huihu Uyghurs was the Yenisaitula river area. “Tuva” is a inflexion of “tula.” Mongols today still call it the Tuva River.

Wang Lixiong: How are today’s Uyghurs and the Huihu Uyghurs related?

Kahar: The words Huihu and Huihe are Old Chinese, Uyghur is the modern word. Huihu represents the Buddhist era, Uyghur represents the Muslim era, these are differences in the wording of the Chinese characters. These really are one people, one thing. There are two reasons its written this way, first, during the Yuan Dynasty a new northern Mandarin appeared and began to replace medieval pronunciations from the Tang dynasty, and many things had to be transliterated once again. The two characters “Huihu,” used during the Tang Dynasty, were written in the Yuan dynasty using the three characters “Weiwuer,” and consequently it was the Chinese language and pronunciation itself that changed.

Wang Lixiong: In that case, did the name Uyghurs used to refer to themselves also undergo changes?

Kahar: There were some changes. It appears that in medieval times “Uyghur” had a glottal consonant and a labiodental: “Hudghur.” We don’t know when exactly the glottal consonant turned into a vowel, but judging from the change in Chinese characters from “Hui” to “Wei” it occurred at least sometime before the Yuan dynasty. The change in the labiodental “d” to the semivowel “y” happened after the 10th century. For example, the change from “adaq” to “ayaq” for the word “foot,” and the change from “adiq” to “ayiq” for the word “bear”, et cetera. The “Yugur”³ ethnicity is simply a Han Chinese mispelling. The “Yugurs” are Uyghur, and local Han Chinese represented their ethonym through the two Chinese characters “Yugu.”

Wang Lixiong: Were the ancient cities of Gaochang and Jiaohe Uyghur, or did they belong to outsiders?

Kahar: At their earliest stages Gaochang and Jiaohe weren’t Uyghur, they were founded by local aboriginals, they’re very ancient city states, two millenia old. Apparently their most ancient names involved the sounds *KU and *CHI, which probably is related to the later terms Guizi and Cheshi. “Gaochang” also is a transliteration of this. Later the Rouran and Gaoche would fight over this area. The Rouran most likely were an Altaic people. Many scholars assert a link between the Gaoche and the Huihu Uyghurs. After the Rouran defeated the Gaochang, they set up the Qu clan, half-Sinicized barbarians, as the Kings of Gaochang. They used Chinese characters but had their own spoken language. The Book of Zhou says this. Consequently Chinese texts and documents excavated in Turpan have soom extremely strange characters and sentences, and we suppose that they used Chinese to write, but the local language to read. Later it would all gradually Turkicize.

Wang Lixiong: Ah, that then explains how Jiaohe and Gaochang weren’t founded by Han Chinese, the Chinese texts excavated there actually were created and used by local barbarians…

Kahar: Correct. When the Qu clan migrated from Lanzhou they used Chinese characters but maintained a number of their own cultural characteristics. That being said, how much can they really have said to have “Sinicized”? We don’t know, because during the North and South dynasties, the Sinicization of the north was a process that continued over the course of several centuries.

After the Three Kingdoms, very few Han remained in northern China, and the Xianbei began to shift southwards towards the central plains of China, leading to the Sixteen States period, converting to Buddhism and the use of Chinese characters. Buddhism furthered their Sinicization and caused many tribes to abandon their own language. We don’t know what language they originally spoke, most likely it was similar to the Tuoba language. Tuoba belongs to the Altaic Turkic languages.

[1]:^ A note on how I’ve translated 回鹘: this may be a cause for confusion, particularly for our readers who are less familiar with Xinjiang history. These Chinese characters can simply be transliterated as Huihu, or they can be rendered as Uyghur, and both would be correct since these are the both words used to refer to the Uyghur Khanate, a political entity that existed in the 8th and 9th centuries. Nevertheless, I believe that in this interview to render it purely as “Huihu” would be to neglect the important ties with modern day Uyghurs being discussed, and to render it simply as “Uyghur” would cause a confusing overlap between references to the historical entity and references to Uyghurs of today. Therefore, the awkward convention I’ve decided to go with is the Huihu Uyghur (Khanate).

[2]:^ Another potential source of confusion: in Mandarin, both the broader concept of “Turkic” [peoples] and a specific Central Asian polity that existed from the 6th to 8th century, the Göktürks, are referred to with the characters 突厥, Tujue. These terms are very much related, and the Turkic peoples of history and today can be considered to have derived their ethonym from the Göktürks and their predecessors in a sense similar to how today’s “Han” collectively derive their ethonym from the Han Dynasty. Nevertheless, in Mandarin discussions it can get confusing separating references to “Turkic-ness” in general and the Göktürk Khanate. Here, I’ve translated direct references to the historical entity as “Göktürk.” There’s a bit of editorial liberty being taken here by doing so.

[3]:^ Barat is referring to the roughly fifteen thousand “Yugur” people that reside today in Gansu province. These Yugurs, also known in many Western texts as the “Yellow Uyghurs,” are the descendants of the Uyghurs who fled southeast after the fall of the Uyghur Khanate to the Kyrgyz. They’ve retained both their Turkic language, which has diverged from the Uyghur language in Xinjiang over the past millennium, and their Buddhist beliefs.

Mullā Bilāl’s lengthy text, which is mostly verse and partly prose, is a remarkable source for the history of the Ili Valley in the 1860s and 1870s. This was a source for Ho-dong Kim’s excellent book Holy war in China: the Muslim rebellion and state in Chinese Central Asia, 1864-1877, a must-read for anyone interested in Xinjiang.

But I’ll let Pantusov do the talking. (Note that his introduction is inaccurate in places and displays the prejudices of a Russian orientalist of the 19 c. The New Dominion does not necessarily share any of the opinions presented below.)

The Muslim war against the Chinese

A text in the Taranchi dialect

published by N. N. Pantusov

Volume One

Kazan’

1880

Permitted by the censor, St. Petersburg, 22 August 1878

Preface

The title Kitab-i ghazat dar mulk-i chin (“religious war in the Chinese state”) refers to this essay on this history of the Ili region, presently of the area of Kul’dja [FN: The Kul’dja region is subordinated to the Military Governor of Semirechie Province, who lives in city of Verny, where there is under him a special consul for Kul’djanese affairs.], formerly a Chinese province and then of the Kul’dja Sultanate, the end of the existence of which was on account of political behavior and animosity towards us on the part of the Sultanate government in June of 1871.

This book is written in the Taranchi dialect, which differs quite little from that of Kashgar-Sart. The author is a Taranchi from the city of Kul’dja, Mulla Bilal son of Mulla Yusuf, nicknamed Nazym [ناضیم], or “poet.” Mulla Bilal, who indeed took part in the fight with the Chinese and the clash with the Russian army, who had seized the Ili region, is still at present hale and healthy, having lived over 54 years. Today, he holds the responsibilities of an imam at one of the mosques of the city of Kul’dja, while, in his time free from such service, he is a copyist of various writings and – the profession of a mulla – a scribe.

Mulla Bilal begins his defter (book) [FN: This book was found in Kul’dja in October 1876. Located in the first leaves of the book are variants borrowed from unfinished draft copies of this composition, preserved by Bilal.] in the ordinary way, with Muslim writers’ glorification of God, then of Muhammad, and of the other prophets and askhab. The following chapter talks about the author of the book the circumstances of the coming into being thereof.

The history of the Ili border region of the past one hundred or so years and following the war begin the chapter: “The narrative of from which khan to which khan passed the cities of Ili, in the time of which khans they flourished, and during the time of which khans they were destroyed.” In this chapter, the particulars of the history of the border region begins with the time of the Emperor [khakan] Qianlong (or, in the Muslim transliteration…) under whose government was constituted the migration of Kashgarian Sarts – subsequently Taranchis – into the Ili Valley from the different cities of Altishahar nearly 120 years beforehand. [FN: Today Yettishahar, under the power of the Kashgar bedaulet [Yaq’ūb Beg], conquered in December 1877 by the Da Ching [Great Qing] army.]

Mulla Bilal takes the history of the region up to the time of the conquest of the Sultanate by Russian arms.

This narrative was written in 1292 of the Hijra [1875], “in the year of the snow leopard” by the Ili reckoning, in verse and, to a lesser degree, prose, and was completed in 1293 [1876].

This narrative is written in the Turkic Taranchi dialect.

The Taranchi dialect, differentiated from the Kashgar-Sart idiom by its content of a great number of Mongol and Chinese words in its lexical composition, is remarkable in regard to its phonetics in the softness of sounds in the pronunciation of words, constrained by which the author often sins in orthography. Thus, owing to this fact, we encounter in his writing soft [qäsim] instead of hard [qasïm], [yetib] instead of [yatïb].

In the spelling of other words, however, the softness of the tongue does not appear. For example, علی will be said [eli], باسلكان [basylgan] pronounced [besilgan], اتی [aty] said [ety]…

The softness of the tongue in connection with idiosyncratic stress – which contravenes the general grammatical rule of stress on the final syllable – makes the Taranchi dialect so little understood to those who know a Turkic language that it requires a significant period of time to learn the ways and forms of communicating in the language, even though a Taranchi speaks the same Turkish language as the Kashgarian Sarts, inhabitants of the Taranchi cradle.

To the Taranchis, under the Sultanate’s rule, the overthrow of the Chinese served as an epoch for the beginning of a new era. This is called “Islam” (تاریخ اسلام). The conquest by Russian arms took place in the seventh year of Islam; 1877 is the thirteenth year of Islam.

On the model of the Kashgar dialect, there is also found in Taranchi a replacement of the letters ب and پ with ف, although, in pronunciation, the letters پ and ب are heard in the initial position. Instead of تاپيب, تافيب is met; instead of پارە, فارە.

The isolation of the Taranchi people in the Ili Valley, under the odious yoke and oppression of Chinese rule, oppressed and uprooted as a consequence of exorbitant taxes and corvees, allowed the possibility neither of the development of the popular spirit nor of the language. The latter, isolated from mutual lexical exchange and borrowings from other kindred Turkic dialects, could not develop, but rather weakened and spoiled from the admixture of surrounding neighbors from the Mongol and Chinese peoples, as well as the accumulation of some of the features of the Chinese language in certain relations. The former was expressed in the composition of the lexicon of the language, into which entered Chinese, Kalmyk, and Mongol words; the latter in its omission, for example, in conformity with the shortcomings of Chinese pronunciation, the letter ر in several words and grammatical forms. For example, the Taranchis say [baza] for [bazar], [bizlaga] for [bizlarga]… Probably for this reason, in the verbal suffix دور, the final [r] is discarded. For example, instead of ديدور, they say ديدو [deɪdu], for بولادور
بولادو [buladu].

The Taranchi dialect, adjoining to, of the Turkic dialects, the Kyrgyz dialect, the popular Taranchi language assimilated, in part, the special phonetic features of this dialect: substituting the sound [l] with the sound [d], [j] with [zh] (i.e. softer that [dzh]). For example, for ايزلاب, the Taranchis say and writes ازداب, for مونكلاشدى
مونكداشتى, and the words يغيب and يكرمە the Taranchis pronounce [zhigyb] and [zhigarma]…

Here are two of his poems. The translations are unrhyming but otherwise accurate. Where I have felt the need to make stylistic choices, I have done so.

From Alip Tékin, Ibrahim. Memtili Ependi Shéirliri [The Poems of Memtili Ependi]. Ürümchi: Shinjang Xelq Neshriyati, 1998, p. 1:

[2]^ Tewpiq (تەۋپىق) comes from the Arabic tawfīq, a Muslim theological term referring to God’s grace or guidance. In Uyghur, it is often rendered as the “correct road” toghra yol. Memtili took this as his pseudonym, apparently from an early age.

Memtili composed this poem at the age of about 19, around the time of the departure of his teacher and mentor, the Ottoman educator and Pan-Turkist Ahmed Kemal.

From the same source, pp. 13-14:

[4]^ Thus, the speaker, to his Senem/senem, is just an improvised meshrep dance, but also represents, perhaps, the social power of the meshrep gathering.

[5]^ Ghérib is the tragic lover of Senem.

Memtili most likely wrote this poem in Istanbul, where he had arrived some years before. During his work and education there, he joined a group of young Turkestani exiles, some of whom returned with him to Kashgar in 1934 in hopes of building a new Turkic state. The poem suggests that he, as the speaker, has just learned about the uprising that led to the formation of the Turkic Islamic Republic of East Turkestan (1933-1934).

What you see below is the 新疆總圖 or “General Map of Xinjiang.” This particular version is from the work 欽定新疆識略 Imperially-Commissioned Outline of Xinjiang, produced in 1821 by Song-yun, published again in 1894 as a typeset and annotated edition, and reproduced from that version by lithograph in 1962 in Taiwan. By the magic of modern digital technology, I have arranged the two halves of the map, previously printed conveniently on either side of a single page, into a complete image for your edification and mine.

"General Map of Xinjiang" - Click to enlarge!

The map was made by imperial decree in 1755 and completed four years later along with several other maps of the region. Although the map’s production apparently involved Jesuit missionaries under the leadership of an imperial censor, it does not resemble later maps that the Jesuits produced for the Qing court.

First of all, it’s oriented with south on top, as in older Chinese maps. Check out the place names. Along the top, from left to right, we have… Lop Nor (羅布淖爾, with all of the little circles). Then, in the middle, there’s Khotan (here 和闐), and, above it, a pass to Tibet. Heading down and to the right, we pass through Yarkand (葉爾羌), a place name now used for the nearby town of Qarghiliq, while Yarkand itself is translated as 莎車. You will see the latter name nearby, marking an ancient kingdom recorded in Chinese texts. Then come Yengisar (英吉沙爾) and Kashgar (喀什噶爾), both of which’s names were “corrected” by this text. East of these is Badakhshan and, if you look southeast/down and to the right, you will find Andijan (安集延), which seems to have been contemporary Chinese writers’ main point of reference for the Ferghana Valley and much of Central Asia. Turning down and to the left, we pass through Ush-Turfan, Aksu, and Kucha. West/left of there is Qarashahr, marked here next to Ancient Yanqi (焉耆), as it is known in Chinese today. Crossing the mountains to the north/down, there’s Urumqi, and, to the east/right, Ili! This puts us just over the mountains from Lake Balkhash (巴勒喀什), which is a short ways east across the plains from Tarbaghatai (塔爾巴哈台), now known also as 塔城 and, in Uyghur, Chöchäk. You will notice that, north/down of here, some areas are marked with names of peoples, such as Kazakh (哈薩克) and Khalkha (喀爾喀). Anyway, if you go back to Urumqi and follow the road east/left, you will wander through Turpan (吐魯番), Qumul (哈密), and even Ancient Loulan (古樓蘭) before arriving at Dunhuang (敦煌).

Besides being oriented to south, rather than north, as later maps increasingly were, as well as having mountains that are artistic more than they are accurate, this map also lacks lines of longitude and latitude. Instead, in the Outline, it is preceded by several pages of very tedious explanatory notes detailing distances between the places marked on the map (pp. 169-175).

In any case, for an especially good discussion of mapmaking in the Qing Dynasty, specifically in the context of Xinjiang, I recommend Peter C. Perdue’s China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia, pp. 442-257.

In the 1980s, after Mr. Boursicot brought Shi Peipu and Shi Dudu to Paris, the former lovers were arrested under charges of espionage. In the process, it was revealed that Shi Peipu was, in fact, a man and that his “son” Shi Dudu was, by his own account, a Uyghur whom Shi Peipu had purchased from a poor family.

Shi Dudu, who remained devoted to Shi Peipu, lives in Paris, where he has three children.

Why do all the myriad ways of strange and shadowy people’s lives always seem to land up in Xinjiang? Various accounts assert, simply, that Shi Peipu selected a Uyghur or a “mixed-race” child from Xinjiang with blue eyes to stand in for the child of a European and a Han. I wonder how Shi Peipu, an individual with decidedly singular ideas about his or her own gender, came to the conclusion that Shi Dudu would be a convincing match for a child half in one world and half in another, Shi Peipu’s own bridge to a separate realm. The exotice internal Other of the Chinese world patterns all too well with the exotic outsider. I wonder how Shi Peipu came across Shi Dudu, where, and how. And I wonder if Shi Dudu’s assertion – “It was not that my mother did not love me. We were starving.” – is the belief of a very small boy, maybe one of the many half-Russian children of Xinjiang, sold as much out of shame as out of need.

Source:

3 July 2009, The New York Times: Shi Pei Pu, Singer, Spy and ‘M. Butterfly,’ Dies at 70 (and others)

They almost had me convinced, of course, and then today word got out that He Weifang, a renowned legal scholar at Beijing University Law School, has been essentially exiled to Xinjiang in what clearly is a punishment for "dissident activities."

He Weifang is acclaimed (or notorious, depending on your point of view) for being a lead signatory of Charter 08, a forceful manifesto released in December calling for further democratization and liberalization. Charter 08′s unequivocal demands attracted a lot of attention (but not signatures, sadly, for evident reasons) both domestically and abroad, enough to prompt the Chinese authorities to track down and "talk with" the scholars and intellectuals responsible for the charter’s conception, Professor He included. Even before his involvement with Charter 08, He was known for giving speeches and writing papers calling for sweeping legal and judicial reforms. Now, in what many analysts and acquaintances of He are calling a politically motivated punishment, He has been transferred to Xinjiang, far from China’s political heart, where he will teach for two years at Shihezi University. So despite the protestations coming from Xinhua, Xinjiang is not that nice of a place…

Xinjiang actually has a long and decorated history of being the final destination for disgraced officials, intellectuals, and rogues.

Of course, it’s not that Xinjiang really is that bad, but it has much more to do with the fact that Xinjiang was often the most "non-Chinese" part under Chinese dominion – a vast wasteland beyond the Great Wall’s final pass in Gansu, where the creature comforts of the civilized interior would be much harder to come by. This harsh reality bore down so heavily on those exiled to Xinjiang that they would often compose melancholic poems on the utter desolation that came with exile.

Hong Liangji was an official for the Qing Dynasty during the reign of the Jiaqing Emperor who eventually mustered the audacity to criticize the Emperor for his failure to weed out corruption and initiate bureaucratic reforms. Initially he was sentenced to be decapitated but eventually was given the slightly lesser punishment of banishment to Xinjiang. While in Xinjiang, he mused:

For half a lifetime, never one idle stride.
Scaling the Five Peaks left my temples hoary white.
But now, oustide the wall, for ten thousand li,
East, west, north, south — Heaven’s Mountains all I see.

Similarly, Lin Zexu, a civil servant under the next emperor, Daoguang, was exiled to Xinjiang after he orchestrated the destruction of opium brought in by British merchants and was made a scapegoat when Jiangsu and Zhejiang fell to retaliatory British forces (Lin had successfully warded off the attacks on his province of Liangguang; he sent warnings to the governors of Jiangsu and Zhejiang which were duly ignored). On reaching Jiayuguan, the fortress guarding the Western extreme of the Great Wall and the cultural "point of no return," Lin was said to have etched a poem on the wall capturing his sentiment:

Where the fortress scrapes the clouds
With its powerful battlements,
I rein up my horse by the border wall
And gaze back on the road I traversed.

The practice of exiling undesirables to Xinjiang continued even after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, which was essentially the principle behind the founding of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, also known as the XPCC or simply the bingtuan. Faced with the problem of dealing with tens of thousands of former guomindang soldiers, Muslim soldiers who formerly served the ill-fated East Turkestan Republic , and other political personas non grata, the CCP rounded everyone up, dubbed them the XPCC, and sent them off to industrialize and civilize Xinjiang. Like Hong Liangji they were allowed to live but at the cost of having to live out the rest of their lives in *duh dun duuuuh!* the Western borderlands. Anyway, I’m obligated to add that the children and grandchildren of these unfortunate exiles inherited the reins of what is now Xinjiang’s largest and almost completely autonomous political and economic unit, and actually are living pretty comfortably relative to the local population. Among the people swept up and dispatched to Xinjiang was Ai Qing, a revolutionary poet who feel victim to the Anti-Rightist campaign in the 60s.

There’s also Mao Zemin, Mao Zedong’s younger brother who was sent to Xinjiang to do work on behalf of the communists and was eventually executed by the ruling warlord, Sheng Shicai. Though as far as I can tell no records indicate that Mao Zemin’s dispatch to Xinjiang was anything more than a typical assignment for a Communist operative, one can’t help but wonder of Chairman Mao had any feelings of sibling rivalry to vent on his little brother when the decision was made.

While I find it disheartening that such an outspoken dissident like Professor He is being punished by being forcefully sent to a region that I am quite endeared to, I still hope that a lot of good can come out of this. After all, Lin Zexu, while in Xinjiang, did some research on the Muslim population and made improvements to the prevailing conception that the locals were a bunch of savage mystical barbarians. We can hope that He has not been entirely cowed by intimidation and authorities and may spread his legal reform message to Xinjiang where it is sorely, sorely needed. Anyway, to conclude, what was the downcast, evocative poem sighed by He as he prepared to depart to the Western Regions?

It’s okay, is not that bad there. I can go experience the life and culture there in Xinjiang."

Okay, so He’s parting gasps are pretty contrived. Nonetheless, I wish the best for Professor He and hope his time in Xinjiang will be as formative to his worldview as my time there was.