Chinese Tatars ( zh, s=塔塔尔族, t=塔塔爾族, p=Tǎtǎ'ěrzú; tt-Cyrl, Кытай татарлары, translit=Qıtay tatarları) form one of the 56
ethnic groups officially recognized by the
People's Republic of China.
The number of Chinese Tatars stood at 3,556 as of the year 2010 and they live mainly in the cities of
Yining,
Tacheng and
Ürümqi in Xinjiang. Their titular homeland is the Daquan Tatar Ethnic Township in
Qitai County of
Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture, which sits on the edge of the
Gurbantünggüt Desert.
Culture
Tatars traditionally acted as mediators in the relations between
Russians and the native Muslim peoples of Xinjiang. The first wave of permanent Tatar settlement in Xinjiang began in 1851, primarily in cities such as
Ghulja. Tatars brought progressive ideas and new institutions into Xinjiang, where they cemented themselves in the cultural and political fabric of the region.
Jadid
The Jadids were Muslim modernist reformers within the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century. They normally referred to themselves by the Turkic terms ''Taraqqiparvarlar'' ('progressives'), ''Ziyalilar'' ('intellectuals') or simpl ...
schools (including institutions for girls), mosques, and libraries catering to the Tatar community were opened in the second half of the 19th-century and in the first decades of the 20th-century. During this period, many intellectuals were brought from
Tatarstan to staff the schools and colleges.
Chinese Tatars speak an archaic variant of the
Tatar language
Tatar ( or ) is a Turkic languages, Turkic language spoken by Volga Tatars, Tatars mainly located in modern Tatarstan (European Russia), as well as Siberia. It should not be confused with Crimean Tatar language, Crimean Tatar or Siberian Tat ...
, free from 20th-century loanwords and use the
Arabic variant of the Tatar alphabet, which
declined in the USSR in the 1930s. Being surrounded by speakers of other Turkic languages, Chinese Tatar partially reverses the Tatar high vowel inversion.
Chinese Tatars are
Sunni Muslims
Sunni Islam () is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word '' Sunnah'', referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a disagr ...
. Most Tatars can speak Uyghur and often utlize the
Uyghur Arabic script for writing.
Notable people
*
Burhan Shahidi (1894–1989), political leader,
*
Xabib Yunich (1905–1945), journalist and politician
*
Margub Ishakov (1923–1992), military officer,
Shàojiàng in the
People's Liberation Army
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the principal military force of the People's Republic of China and the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The PLA consists of five service branches: the Ground Force, Navy, Air Force, ...
*
Aisihaiti (disappeared 1968), politician, delegate to the
National People's Congress
*
Soyüngül Chanisheff, Chinese-Australian author and political activist of the
East Turkestan People's Revolutionary Party
See also
*
Tatars
*
Volga Tatars
The Volga Tatars or simply Tatars ( tt-Cyrl, татарлар, tatarlar) are a Turkic ethnic group native to the Volga-Ural region of Russia. They are subdivided into various subgroups. Volga Tatars are Russia's second-largest ethnicity after t ...
References
Citations
Sources
* Paul and Bernice Noll's Window on the World
''List of ethnic groups in China and their population sizes''
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*Chinese
Xinjiang
Ethnic groups officially recognized by China
Muslim communities of China
Volga Tatars
Volga Tatar diaspora