Kashgar, Xinjiang

Kashgar ( ug, قەشقەر, Qeshqer) or Kashi ( zh, c=喀什) is an oasis city in the Tarim Basin region of Southern Xinjiang. It is one of the westernmost cities of China, near the border with Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Pakistan. With a population of over 500,000, Kashgar has served as a trading post and strategically important city on the Silk Road between China, the Middle East and Europe for over 2,000 years, making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the World.

At the convergence point of widely varying cultures and empires, Kashgar has been under the rule of the Chinese, Turkic, Mongol and Tibetan empires. The city has also been the site of a number of battles between various groups of people on the steppes.

Now administered as a county-level unit, Kashgar is the administrative center of Kashgar Prefecture, which has an area of and a population of approximately 4 million as of 2010. The city itself has a population of 506,640, and its urban area covers , though its administrative area extends over . The city was made into a Special Economic Zone in 2010, the only city in western China with this distinction. Kashgar also forms a terminus of the Karakoram Highway, the reconstruction of which is considered a major part of the multibillion-dollar China–Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Name

The modern Chinese name is (), a shortened form of the longer and less-frequently used (''Kāshígá'ěr''). Ptolemy (AD 90–168), in his ''Geography'', Chapter 15.3A, refers to Kashgar as “Kasi”. Its western and probably indigenous name is the ''Kāš'' ("rock"), to which the East Iranian ''-γar'' ("mountain") and Middle Persian ''gar/ġar'', from Old Persian/Pahlavi ''girīwa'' ("hill; ridge (of a mountain)") was attached. Alternative historical Romanizations for "Kashgar" include ''Cascar''
and ''Cashgar''.

Other names for the city, such as the old Chinese name Shule and Tibetan ''Śu-lig'' may have originated as an attempts to transcribe the Sanskrit name for Kashgar, ''Śrīkrīrāti'' ("fortunate hospitality").

Transliterations of the official Uyghur () include: K̂äxk̂är ( SASM/GNC strict) or Kaxkar (SASM/GNC broad). Transliterations of the other Uyghur name () include: Kaxĝär (SASM/GNC strict) or Kaxgar (SASM/GNC broad).

History

Kashgar is located at the convergence point of widely varying cultures and empires, it has been under the rule of the historically Chinese, Turkic, Mongol, and Tibetan empires. The city has also been the site of a number of battles between various groups of people on the steppes.

Han dynasty

The earliest mention of Kashgar occurs when a Chinese Han dynasty envoy traveled the Northern Silk Road to explore lands to the west.

Another early mention of Kashgar is during the Former Han (also known as the Western Han dynasty), when in 76 BCE the Chinese conquered the Xiongnu, Yutian (Khotan), Sulei (Kashgar) and a group of states in the Tarim Basin almost up to the foot of the Tian Shan range.

Ptolemy speaks of Scythia beyond the Imaus, which is in a “Kasia Regio”, probably exhibiting the name from which Kashgar and Kashgaria (often applied to the district) are formed. The country's people practised Zoroastrianism and Buddhism before the coming of Islam.

In the ''Book of Han'', which covers the period between 125 BCE and 23 CE, it is recorded that there were 1,510 households, 18,647 people and 2,000 persons able to bear arms. By the time covered by the ''Book of the Later Han'' (roughly 25 to 170 CE), it had grown to 21,000 households and had 3,000 men able to bear arms.

The ''Book of the Later Han'' provides a wealth of detail on developments in the region:

More particularly, in reference to Kashgar itself, is the following record:

The Kushans

The ''Book of the Later Han'' also gives the only extant historical record of Yuezhi or Kushan involvement in the Kashgar oasis:

However, it was not very long before the Chinese began to reassert their authority in the region:

From an earlier part of the same text comes the following addition:

The first passage continues:

Three Kingdoms to the Sui dynasty

These centuries are marked by a general silence in sources on Kashgar and the Tarim Basin.

The ''Weilüe'', composed in the second third of the 3rd century, mentions a number of states as dependencies of Kashgar: the kingdom of Zhenzhong (Arach?), the kingdom of Suoju (Yarkand), the kingdom of Jieshi, the kingdom of Qusha, the kingdom of Xiye (Khargalik), the kingdom of Yinai (Tashkurghan), the kingdom of Manli (modern Karasul), the kingdom of Yire (Mazar − also known as Tágh Nák and Tokanak), the kingdom of Yuling, the kingdom of Juandu (‘Tax Control’ − near modern Irkeshtam), the kingdom of Xiuxiu (‘Excellent Rest Stop’ − near Karakavak), and the kingdom of Qin.

However, much of the information on the Western Regions contained in the ''Weilüe'' seems to have ended roughly about (170), near the end of Han power. So, we cannot be sure that this is a reference to the state of affairs during the Cao Wei (220-265), or whether it refers to the situation before the civil war during the Later Han when China lost touch with most foreign countries and came to be divided into three separate kingdoms.

Chapter 30 of the ''Records of the Three Kingdoms'' says that after the beginning of the Wei Dynasty (220) the states of the Western Regions did not arrive as before, except for the larger ones such as Kucha, Khotan, Kangju