Kashgar or Kashi (Uyghur: قەشقەر, ULY: Qeshqer, UPNY: K̡ǝxk̡ǝr?, Chinese: 喀什 pinyin: Kāshí, Persian, Urdu, Hindustani: کاشغر / कशगार) is an oasis city with approximately 350,000 residents in the western part of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. Kashgar is the administrative centre of Kashgar Prefecture which has an area of 162,000 km² and a population of approximately 3.5 million.[2]
The city covers an area of 15 km². The altitude averages 1,289.5 m/4,282 ft. above sea level. The city is located in the western extreme of China.
The Arab Caliphate
In the 8th century came the Arab rule from the west, and we find Kashgar and Turkestan lending assistance to the reigning queen of Bokhara, to enable her to repel the enemy. But although the Muslim religion from the very commencement sustained checks, it nevertheless made its weight felt upon the independent states of Turkestan to the north and east, and thus acquired a steadily growing influence. It was not, however, till the 10th century that Islam was established at Kashgar, under the Uyghur kingdom.
The Uyghurs islam
An Uyghur naan baker.
Modern Uyghurs are the descendants of ancient Turkic tribes including Uyghurs and ancient Caucasian inhabitants of Tarim basin. Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan, the most celebrated prince of this line, converted to Islam late in the 10th century and the Uyghur kingdom lasted until 1120 but was distracted by complicated dynastic struggles. The Uyghurs employed an alphabet based upon the Syriac and borrowed from the Nestorian missionaries, but after converting to Islam widely used also an Arabic script. They spoke a dialect of Turkish preserved in the Kudatku Bilik, a moral treatise composed in 1065
The Mongols
The Uyghur kingdom was destroyed by an invasion of the Kara-Khitai, another Turkish tribe pressing westwards from the Chinese frontier, who in their turn were swept away in 1219 by Genghis Khan. His invasion gave a decided check to the progress of the Muslim creed, but on his death, and during the rule of the Chagatai Khans, who became converts to that faith, it began to reassert its ascendancy.
Marco Polo visited the city, which he calls Cascar, about 1273-4 and recorded the presence of numerous Nestorian Christians, who had their own churches.
In 1389–1390 Timur ravaged Kashgar, Andijan and the intervening country. Kashgar endured a troubled time, and in 1514, on the invasion of the Khan Sultan Said, was destroyed by Mirza Ababakar, who with the aid of ten thousand men built a new fort with massive defences higher up on the banks of the Tuman river. The dynasty of the Jagatai Khans collapsed in 1572 with the division of the country among rival factions; soon after, two powerful Khoja factions, the White and Black Mountaineers (Ak Taghliq or Afaqi, and Kara Taghliq or Ishaqi), arose whose differences and war-making gestures, with the intermittent episode of the Oirats of Dzungaria, make up much of recorded history in Kashgar until 1759.
Qing Reconquest
In 1759, a Qing army from Ili (Kulja) invaded Turkistan and consolidated their authority by settling other ethnics emigrants in the vicinity of a Manchu garrison.
The Qing had thoughts of pushing their conquests towards Transoxiana and Samarkand, the chiefs of which sent to ask assistance of the Afghan king Ahmed Shah Abdali. This monarch dispatched an ambassador to Beijing to demand the restitution of the Muslim states of Central Asia, but the representative was not well received, and Ahmed Shah was too busy fighting off the Sikhs to attempt to enforce his demands by arms. The Qing continued to hold Kashgar with occasional interruptions from Muslim-centered groups. One of the most serious of these occurred in 1827, when the city was taken by Jahanghir Khoja; Chang-lung, however, the Qing general of Ili, regained possession of Kashgar and the other rebellious cities in 1828. When Jahangir Khoja, with the support of Tajiks, Kirghiz, and White Mountain fighters seized Kashgar in 1826 he captured several hundred Chinese merchants, who were taken to Kokand. Tajiks bought two Chinese slaves from Shaanxi, they enslaved for a year before being returned by the Tajik Beg Ku-bu-te to China.[35] All Chinese captured, both merchants and the 300 soldiers Janhangir captured in Kashgar had their queues cut off when brought to Kokand and Central Asia as prisoners.[36][37] It was reported that many of the Chinese captives became slaves, accounts of Chinese slaves in Central Asia increased.[38][39] The queues were removed from Chinese prisoners and then sold or given to various owners, one of them, Nian, ended up as a slave to Prince Batur Khan of Bukhara, Omar Khan ended up possessing Liu Qifeng and Wu Erqi, the others, Zhu, Tian Li, and Ma Tianxi ended up in various owners but plotted an escape.[40] The Russians record an incident where they rescued these Chinese merchants who escaped, after they were sold by Jahangir's Army in Central Asia, and sent them back to China.[41] The Kokand Khanate raided Kashgar several times. A revolt in 1829 under Mahommed Ali Khan and Yusuf, brother of Jahanghir resulted in the concession of several important trade privileges to the Muslims of the district of Alty Shahr (the “six cities”), as it was then called.
The area then enjoyed relative calm until 1846 under the rule of Zahir-ud-din, the local Uyghur governor, but in that year a new Khoja revolt under Kath Tora led to his accession to rulership of the city as an authoritarian ruler. His reign, however, was brief, for at the end of seventy-five days, on the approach of the Chinese, he fled back to Khokand amid the jeers of the inhabitants. The last of the Khoja revolts (1857) was of about equal duration, and took place under Wali-Khan, who murdered the famous traveler Adolf Schlagintweit.
The 1862 revolt by Chinese Hui(islam)
Night interview with Yakub Beg, King of Kashgaria, 1868
The great Tungani (Dungani) revolt, or insurrection of the Hui people, which broke out in 1862 in Gansu, spread rapidly to Dzungaria and through the line of towns in the Tarim Basin.
The Tungani troops in Yarkand rose, and in August 1864 massacred some seven thousand Chinese, while the inhabitants of Kashgar, rising in their turn against their masters, invoked the aid of Sadik Beg, a Kyrgyz chief, who was reinforced by Buzurg Khan, the heir of Jahanghir, and his general Yakub Beg (surnamed the Atalik Ghazi), these being dispatched at Sadik’s request by the ruler of Khokand to raise what troops they could to aid his Muslim friends in Kashgar.
Sadik Beg soon repented of having asked for a Khoja, and eventually marched against Kashgar, which by this time had succumbed to Buzurg Khan and Yakub Beg, but was defeated and driven back to Khokand. Buzurg Khan delivered himself up to indolence and debauchery, but Yakub Beg, with singular energy and perseverance, made himself master of Yangi Shahr, Yangi-Hissar, Yarkand and other towns, and eventually became sole master of the country, Buzurg Khan proving himself totally unfit for the post of ruler.
With the overthrow of Chinese rule in 1865 by Yakub Beg (1820–1877), the manufacturing industries of Kashgar are supposed to have declined.
Kashgar and the other cities of the Tarim Basin remained under Yakub Beg’s rule until May 1877, when he died at Korla and Kashgaria was reconquered by the forces of the Qing general Zuo Zongtang.
First East Turkestan Republic
Kashgar was the scene of continual battles from 1933-1934. Ma Shaowu, a Chinese muslim, was the Tao-yin of Kashgar, and he fought against Uyghur rebels. He was joined by another Chinese muslim general, Ma Zhancang.
Battle of Kashgar (1933)
Uighur and Kirghiz forces, led by the Bughra brothers and Tawfiq Bay, attempted to take the New City of Kashgar from Chinese Muslim troops under General Ma Zhancang. They were defeated.
Tawfiq Bey, a Syrian arab traveler, who held the title Sayyid ( descendent of prophet Muhammed) and arrived at Kashgar on August 26, 1933, was shot in the stomach by the Chinese muslim troops in September. Previously Ma Zhancang arranged to have the Uighur leader Timur Beg killed and beheaded on August 9, 1933, displaying his head outside of Id Kah Mosque.
Han chinese troops commanded by Brigadier Yang were absorbed into Ma Zhancang's army. A number of Han chinese officers were spotted wearing the green uniforms of Ma Zhancang's unit of the 36th division, presumably they had converted to Islam.[42]
]Battle of Kashgar (1934)
36th division General Ma Fuyuan led a Chinese Muslim army to storm Kashgar on February 6, 1934, and attacked the Uighur and Kirghiz rebels of the First East Turkestan Republic. He freed another 36th division general, Ma Zhancang, who was trapped with his Chinese Muslim and Han chinese troops in Kashgar New City by the Uighurs and Kirghizs since May 22, 1933. In January, 1934, Ma Zhancang's Chinese Muslim troops repulsed six Uighur attacks, launched by Khoja Niyaz, who arrived at the city on January 13, 1934, inflicting massive casualties on the Uighur forces.[43] From 2,000 to 8,000 uighur civilians in Kashgar Old City were massacred by Tungans in February, 1934, in revenge for the Kizil massacre, after retreating of Uighur forces from the city to Yengi Hisar. The chinese Muslim and 36th division Chief General Ma Zhongying, who arrived at Kashgar on April 7, 1934, gave a speech at Idgah mosque in April, reminding the Uighurs to be loyal to the Republic of China government at Nanjing. Several British citizens at the British consulate were killed by the 36th division.[44][45][46][47]
Development of Kashgar's Old Town
As of 2009, an effort was under way to redevelop the majority of the Old City of Kashgar and construct new buildings in its place.
The old town of Kashgar, deemed overcrowded and unsafe for its residents (nearly half of the city's population lives within the old town),[48] will have at least 85% of its structures demolished. Demolitions have already begun, with many of its former denizens moved to newer, safer and modern buildings. The city administration plans to build high-rise apartments, plazas, and reproductions of Islamic architecture.[49]
The Chinese government claims that redevelopment is necessary in the interests of earthquake safety; the city’s older buildings, many of which are built from mud and straw, are considered to be vulnerable to collapse in a seismic event.[50] However, Kashgar is considered a "breeding ground" for Uighur separatists who Beijing claims have ties to Islamic terrorism.[50] Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have criticized the plans, claiming that they will destroy cultural history and eliminate Kashgar’s main tourist attraction.[50][51]
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