According to the latest census, held in 2010, about 4,000 Uyghurs live in Russia. Basically, their ancestors came to our country at the end of the 19th - the first half of the 20th century under very dramatic circumstances.

They were forced to flee from their native land to neighboring states. These people turned out to be a bargaining chip in the great geopolitical game being played by two superpowers on the Eurasian continent: Russia and China. All attempts by the Uyghurs to build their own future on their own were broken against the interests of more influential states.

Who are they?

The Uyghurs are a Turkic-speaking people, most of whom live in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China. This territory, located in the west of the PRC, is also called East Turkestan (Western Turkestan was formerly called Central Asia).

According to official figures, there are about 11 million Uyghurs in China. Another 400 thousand representatives of this people inhabit other states. Of these, about 238 thousand people live in Kazakhstan, another 50 thousand - in Kyrgyzstan. They are in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Uyghurs are national minorities in all of the above countries. But it was not always so. During its long history, this ancient people created ten states, one of which - the Uygur Kaganate (VIII-IX centuries) - occupied a huge territory stretching from the steppes of modern Kazakhstan to Korea.

The ethnonym "Uyghur" has been found in various historical monuments since the beginning of our era. This people was formed as a result of the mixing and assimilation of various Turkic and Mongolian tribes who settled in the oases of the Taklamakan desert.

Ancient history could not but be reflected in the culture. Already in the 6th century, the Uighurs had their own script, which was borrowed by many neighboring Turkic tribes, as well as the Mongols and Manchus. It was the Uyghur alphabet that was used in the Golden Horde when compiling various documents, and so did the Timurid state.

Initially, the religion of the Uyghurs was shamanism, then Manichaeism, a syncretic teaching that combines the traditions of early Christianity and Zoroastrianism, spread among them. Some representatives of this people adopted Buddhism from their neighbors, but in the 10th century Islam began to spread among the Uighurs, which quickly supplanted all other religions.

Uyghur arts and traditions

Living in the oases of the Taklamakan Desert, through which the Great Silk Road from China to Europe passed, the Uyghurs were engaged in trade, agriculture and animal husbandry. Despite the fact that representatives of this people created monumental architectural monuments, talented literary works, and contributed to the musical culture of Asia, the traditional miniature painting of the Uighurs is of particular interest.

This unique technique of fine art was adopted by many neighboring ethnic groups. Even the Tabriz School of Miniature, located in Iran, originated from traditional Uyghur painting.

Difficult living conditions in the desert forced people to create a kind of community called "ottuz ogul", which translates as "thirty horsemen". There are not necessarily 30 of them. It was just that initially about the same number of families lived in each oasis. Members of such a community should take care of each other, help and support in any situation.

On long autumn and winter evenings, the ottuz ogul participants traditionally gathered together at relaxation evenings called myashryap. People were having fun, singing, dancing. Such a joint pastime brought together the members of the community.

After the tragic events of 1997 in Gulja, the Chinese authorities officially banned the holding of massacres, as they suspected the participants in these meetings of separatism.

Hostages of the "big game"

Almost the entire history of the Uighurs is a confrontation with formidable neighbors, the most belligerent of which were the Chinese, Manchus and Mongols. Two thousand years ago, representatives of the Han Empire seized the territory of East Turkestan in order to ensure the safety of their caravans heading along the Great Silk Road.

Chinese garrisons in the Taklamakan oases appeared in the 1st century AD. And at present, the Uighurs are striving to gain state independence, they are not satisfied with the status of autonomy within the PRC.

However, most states, not wanting to quarrel with China, prefer not to mention this problem. It is not excluded that the Uyghur issue is being deliberately raised by the Western media in order to embroil Russia with its influential eastern neighbor. This will extremely harm the geopolitical interests of our country in Asia, especially if we take into account the importance attached to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, created in 2001.

In the process of the struggle, the Uighurs either gained independence or lost it again. In 1760, the territory of East Turkestan was captured by the troops of the Qing Empire. They created the province of Xinjiang here, which was constantly disturbed by popular riots and unrest. Official Beijing not only sent impressive troops to the lands of the rebellious Uighurs, but also actively encouraged the resettlement of Chinese, as well as Solon and representatives of the Sibo people, tribes related to the Manchu, to Xinjiang.

The tactics of the Chinese government is simple: the PRC authorities seek to assimilate the Uyghurs, eventually turning them into a part of a large ethnic group of the Celestial Empire, which has united many peoples. Realizing this, the indigenous people of East Turkestan desperately cling to their religion and traditions - everything that distinguishes them from the Chinese. Therefore, marriages with non-believers among the Uyghurs are often condemned in the 21st century as well.

They fled to Central Asia and Russia

Another anti-Chinese uprising broke out in Xinjiang in 1864. For the next 10 years, the Islamic state of Yettishar existed on the territory of the province, the people of which declared national sovereignty. Britain and Turkey, active participants in the great geopolitical game that unfolded in the vastness of Eurasia in the 18th-19th centuries, supported the Uyghurs in their quest for independence.

However, Russia, which fought with Britain for influence in Asia in every possible way, decided that good relations with China were more important than the national self-determination of the Uyghur tribes. The Russians even supplied the advancing troops of General Zuo Zongtang with grain, thereby helping the Chinese to make the difficult transition through the desert lands.

The army of the Celestial Empire severely punished the Uyghur rioters, massacring them with whole families. Some rebels were able to escape to the neighboring states of Central Asia and Russia, fleeing the Chinese. So, at the end of the 19th century, the first Uighurs ended up in our country.

But this people did not give up trying to fight for independence. In 1932, an uprising broke out in Xinjiang again, as a result of which the East Turkestan Islamic Republic was created. The Soviet authorities even planned to officially recognize this state, but again geopolitical interests prevailed. And the Chinese managed to regain control of the rebellious province.

Another attempt to gain independence was the East Turkestan Revolutionary Republic, which arose in 1944. The Chinese were even forced to recognize the autonomy of the Uyghurs under pressure from the world community. After the establishment of the Communist Party in Xinjiang, Moscow planned to support like-minded people in their quest for national self-determination. But everything changed in 1949, when the victory of the communists in the struggle for power in the Celestial Empire became obvious to everyone. The Soviet authorities once again decided that an alliance with China is more important.

In the first half of the 20th century, many Uighurs were also forced to flee their homes, fleeing persecution. Some of them ended up in Russia.

The Uyghurs are China's most famous ethnic minority outside of China. Along with the Kurds and Tuaregs, they are among the three largest peoples that do not have their own state.

The Uyghurs are considered a minority only on the scale of a billion Chinese - over ten million Uyghur citizens now live in the PRC. For comparison, this is two times more than all Tatars living in Russia, the largest non-Slavic national minority.

The overwhelming majority of China's Uyghurs - over eight million - inhabit their historical homeland, now officially called Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) PRC. Xinjiang, which means "new frontier" in Chinese, is a huge quadrangle in the far northwest of the PRC, between Mongolia, the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, Afghanistan and Tibet. Two thousand kilometers from east to west, slightly less from north to south. Arid plains and deserts with oases, cut by high mountain ranges, along which the famous "Silk Road" ran in ancient times.

The ethnicity of the Uyghurs was largely generated by the Great Silk Road from China to the Mediterranean, the main economic artery of ancient Eurasia. Therefore, among the ancestors of modern Uighurs, there is a historical cocktail of the disappeared Turkic and Mongol peoples, mixed with the ancient population of the Takla-Makan oases, one of the largest sandy deserts in the world.

Modern Xinjiang is one sixth of the entire territory of China in area, which will fit three France. XUAR borders on Kazakhstan (1,718 km), Kyrgyzstan (1,000 km), Tajikistan (450 km), Russia (55 km), Mongolia (1,400 km), as well as Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. The total length of the state border of the XUAR of the PRC is over 5600 kilometers. Every third Chinese border guard serves here.

Xinjiang - this area is also called Dzungaria and East Turkestan - has long been inhabited by many tribes and nationalities, mainly Turkic-speaking Uighurs, as well as other peoples professing Islam - Dungans (descendants of Chinese Muslims), Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tajiks, Uzbeks.

Dzungaria was the last nomadic empire in the world, which in the 18th century, in a bloody, decades-long war, was crushed by the Chinese Qing empire. The troops of the Peking emperor slaughtered almost 90% of the Dzungars (Western Mongols), the unfinished ones fled west to the Volga, where they became Russian Kalmyks. By the beginning of the 19th century, the borders of the Chinese Qing Empire covered both modern Xinjiang and modern Kyrgyzstan and the southern part of modern Kazakhstan up to Lake Balkhash.

East Turkestan is already the Russian name for the homeland of the Uighurs, which arose in the 19th century. It became eastern because there was Western Turkestan - a region of settlement of the Turkic-speaking peoples, which fell into the sphere of influence of Russia. Now this includes the former Central Asian republics of the USSR.

Uyghurs invented by Russians

An amazing historical fact, but it was Russia that gave the modern ethnic name to the Uighurs - in 1921, a congress (kurultai) of representatives of the Uyghur intelligentsia was held in Tashkent. There, at the suggestion of the professor-orientalist from Kazan, Sergei Efimovich Malov, the ancient name "Uigur" was restored as the ethnonym-self-name of the sedentary Turkic-speaking population of East Turkestan. Prior to that, the inhabitants of the Uyghur oases called themselves according to their place of residence - “Kashgarians”, “Ili people”, “Turfans”, “Taranches”. But to oppose the Chinese, all together they called themselves "yarlik" - literally "fellow countrymen" or "local".

For the first time, the Chinese captured the territory of modern XUAR two thousand years ago during the era of the Han Empire, when the ancient Chinese tried to establish diplomatic contacts with the Roman emperor Titus Flavius. In the first century AD, Chinese garrisons and the first settlers appeared here to control the "Great Silk Road". In fact, today the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party only continues the traditions of the Han empire in this region - the coincidence is even more surprising if we remember that both the PRC and the Han dynasty were founded by the leaders of the victorious peasant uprisings, Mao Zedong and Liu Bang.

The last two thousand years of Xinjiang's history are a continuous series of victories and defeats of local statehood in the struggle against the claims of Chinese emperors - from the descendants of Liu Bang to the "descendants" of Mao.In the first millennium AD, there were three Uyghur kaganates, large early feudal states. The so-called "Third Uyghur Kaganate", a contemporary of the legendary Rurik, stretched from the steppes of Kazakhstan to Korea.The Uyghurs were then practicing Manichaeism, an unusual religion that grew out of a mixture of early Christianity and Zoroastrianism.

The convenient geographical location of the Uyghurs contributed to both the development of a fairly high culture, where Chinese and Mediterranean influences were mixed, and the spread of new religions. The Uyghurs were successively Buddhists, Manichaeans, and in the first three to four centuries of the second millennium AD they converted to Islam.

The Russians first got acquainted with the Uyghurs during the Mongol invasion - the orders of Batu and his heirs, labels and paizi that came to Russia, were written in the “Uyghur letter”. The Uyghur alphabet by order of Genghis Khan was officially adopted in the Mongol Empire from the first years of its inception. In science, this Uyghur alphabet is now called "Old Uygur" - it arose on the Great Silk Road at the beginning of the first millennium AD, taking as a basis the alphabet of ancient Sogdiana, which in turn, through the Aramaic script, ascended to the first Phoenician alphabet in the history of mankind ...

War with China as a national identity

After the Manchus crushed the Dzungar Khanate in the 18th century, almost destroying the Buddhist Western Mongols-Oirats, the province of Xinjiang, created on the remains of the killed khanate, remained one of the most restless in the Qing Empire. Here, uprisings and rebellions of the local Muslim, i.e. of the Uyghur population - in 1816, in 1825, in 1830, 1847 and 1857.

To pacify the rebellious province, the Peking authorities kept Manchu and Chinese garrisons here, encouraged the resettlement of immigrants from the central provinces of China to Xinjiang. Special military settlements were created from the Sibo and Solon tribes, related to the Manchus, who were resettled by the Qing authorities from the Far East to Central Asia.

Despite all these activities, in 1864, an anti-Beijing uprising of the Uighurs and Dungans (Muslim Chinese) broke out here. For more than ten years, almost the entire territory of Xinjiang was an independent Islamic state of Yettishar, separated from China, headed by Yakub Bek, who united several rebel khanates and sultanates. The new khan, who received the title "Defender of the Faith", was a Tajik by nationality, a former military leader in the Kokand and Khiva khanates. This fact clearly emphasizes the close family ties of the Uighurs with Central (Central) Asia.

Tajik Yakub Bek created a powerful enough army in anti-Chinese Xinjiang to resist the troops of the Chinese emperor, relying on mountains and deserts. But another empire, Russia, advancing from the north, which just in those years conquered the Central Asian khanates and emirates, was not at all eager to have an aggressive Muslim state on its new Asian borders. After all, Yakub Bek, striving to find allies against China, openly focused his foreign policy on Turkey and the British Empire, which was then trying to gain a foothold in Afghanistan from the Indian colonies.

Within the framework of this “big game” between Russia and Britain for Central Asia, it was decided in St. Petersburg that, in order to calm West Turkestan, which had already become Russian, it would be better to return the distant and then relatively weak Beijing to nominal power. The main problem for the Chinese armies in the return of Xinjiang was communications, more precisely, the supply of troops during a thousand-kilometer campaign in desert and mountainous terrain. This problem was solved for Beijing by Russia - the first governor of Russian Turkestan, the Russian German Kaufman conducted a whole special operation to supply the advancing troops of the Chinese General Zuo Zongtang with grain. The Chinese bought this grain from the Russians at the most speculative prices, paying over 10 million rubles in silver for it.

Having thus solved the problems with logistics, the troops of the Chinese emperor began to slaughter the Uyghur and Dungan rebels along with their families. The remnants of the rebels fled to territory controlled by Russia. Here The accommodation and treatment of these refugees was handled by Doctor Vasily Frunze, the father of Mikhail Frunze, the same one who, four decades later, in the course of our civil war, will return the entire West Turkestan to Russia.

All Uyghur classical literature arose out of this national liberation struggle against China. Thus, Nazim Bilal, a poet and writer, the most famous Uyghur literary classic, not only himself participated in anti-Chinese uprisings, but also devoted most of his works to this very struggle. Almost all the heroes and heroines of the Uyghur literature of that time are struggling with the Chinese expansion.

Chronic victims of geopolitics

Already in the 20th century, Uyghur states, breakaway from China, will appear twice on the territory of Xinjiang. During the anti-Chinese uprisings in 1932, the Khotan Emirate appeared, and the following year - the whole East Turkestan Islamic Republic, headed by the Uyghur Khoja Niyaz, who assumed the quite modern title of “President”. Prior to these events, President Niyaz managed to take part in the Russian civil war on the side of the Bolsheviks, being an activist of the "Revolutionary Union of Kashgar-Dzhungar Workers".

The Uyghur uprising began with an attempt by a Chinese officer in the local garrison to marry a Uyghur girl. A fact that clearly underlines the degree of hatred and alienation of politically active Uighurs from China. The newly independent state had chances of success as long as the USSR remained hostile to the nationalists from the Kuomintang party, ruling in China. But in the second half of the 30s, the Soviet communists and Chinese nationalists had a common dangerous enemy - samurai Japan, which began an active expansion on the Asian continent. Fearing its excessive strengthening, the USSR supported official China, including helping the Chinese regain control of Xinjiang.

Here, Soviet troops, including aviation, have already directly participated in the battles on the return of the new Chinese governor Shen Shitsai to Xinjiang. At the same time, Soviet units were disguised as White Guards who had previously fled to China - graduates of the NKVD border schools were sent to Xinjiang, where by order of the People's Commissar they were required to wear pre-revolutionary shoulder straps and call each other "Your Honor".

The new Chinese governor-general of Xinjiang in the late 1930s was guided by the Stalinist USSR more than by the central government of Kuomintang China. In 1939, he even secretly asked the Soviet consul to accept him as a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) - it is noteworthy that the Chinese governor's membership card was issued and secretly transferred to the capital of Xinjiang. By that time, the Soviet Union controlled key facilities for the extraction of raw materials on the territory of East Turkestan, it was then that Soviet specialists first discovered uranium deposits here.

But after the start of the war with Nazi Germany, General Sheng Shitsai too hastily concluded that the days of the USSR were numbered. He fired Soviet advisers and began shooting Uyghur and Chinese communists. Among those executed was the younger brother of Mao Zedong, the future ruler of red China.

In the summer of 1944, Governor Sheng finally realized that he had made the wrong choice and hastily fled from his post to central China. By that time, the cessation of trade with the USSR caused a real economic crisis in Xinjiang and spurred new Uyghur uprisings. In the fall of 1944, the East Turkestan Revolutionary Republic emerged. It is interesting that this next anti-Chinese uprising was led by Uyghur, Kazakh, Kalmyk and Tatar(the diaspora of the Kazan Tatars has always played a key role in the bustling trade between Russia-USSR and Xinjiang).

Uyghur Akhmedzhan Kasymov becomes the President of the East Turkestan Republic, a man with an exemplary biography - he graduated from school in Soviet Alma-Ata, received a pedagogical education at the Soviet University of Tashkent, and defended his doctoral dissertation on the history of the Uyghurs at the Moscow Institute of Oriental Languages ​​as a full-time employee of the Comintern. Soviet Major General of the NKVD Ivan Polinov became the commander-in-chief of the army of the new Uyghur republic, and the former White Guard general who served in Dutov's army, the Cossack Old Believer Varsonofiy Mozharov, was appointed chief of staff.

In September 1945, under pressure from Soviet diplomats and the military successes of the Xinjiang rebels, the central government of China recognized the "autonomy" of the Uyghurs. In Moscow at this time, in the Stalinist Politburo, they very seriously considered the proposal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Kazakh SSR (there has long been a large Uyghur diaspora in Kazakhstan) to create the Communist Party of Xinjiang. As the Kazakh communists wrote - "in order to consolidate the political and economic gains of Muslims who rebelled against the Chinese in the northern districts of Xinjiang, and the further development of the national liberation movement of non-Chinese masses in this province."

But the factor of the great Russian-Chinese politics again intervened in the fate of the Uyghur statehood. In 1949, it became finally clear that the Chinese communists were winning in the protracted civil war that had been going on in China since 1911. And in Moscow they considered that the alliance with the big red China is much more important than the tangled relationship with the Uighurs.

As a result, the government of the East Turkestan Revolutionary Republic, which flew from Xinjiang on a Soviet plane to Beijing for negotiations with Mao, did not fly anywhere. According to the official version, the plane crashed somewhere between Irkutsk and Chita. The armed forces of the Uyghur republic, created with the help of the USSR, officially became the 5th corps of the Communist People's Liberation Army of China. For many years, right up to the quarrel between Khrushchev and Mao Zedong, this corps was commanded by the Chinese Lieutenant General of the Russian Old Believers Fotii Ivanovich Leskin.

As we can see, the Uyghur separatists, who have had many chances of success in their anti-Chinese struggle over the past two centuries, are simply chronically unlucky to be victims of geopolitical combinations and compromises of major planetary players, primarily Moscow and Beijing. In other scenarios, we could see a very large Turkic Islamic state in the very center of the Asian continent, immediately north of Tibet.

Uyghurs - oldest people, whose history is rooted in the distant past.

The ancestors of the Uyghurs were the inhabitants of East Turkestan, and the first mention of the Uyghurs found in the chronicles dates back to the 1st century AD.

According to the results of numerous studies, the racial identity of this people is ambiguous, and represents a mixture of European and Mongoloid races in approximately equal proportions.

By the 5th century, the Uyghur people had created a fairly rich cultural heritage and their own written language. The main occupations of the Uighurs at the dawn of their inception were: agriculture, nomadic cattle breeding, fishing, hunting, as well as household crafts, but at the same time, like in any other people, there were talented people who made a contribution to history and cultural prosperity.

They wrote music, literary works, were engaged in the creation of architectural structures and studied various sciences. They did not have strict rules regarding religion, therefore one and the same people were at the same time an adherent of Buddhism, shamanism, Manichaeism, Mazdakism and other teachings.

The ancient Uyghurs looked like representatives of the Mongoloid race, but today their face oval and skin color closer to European while maintaining the dark color of the hair and eyes. These changes indicate the incest of the Uyghur people with other nationalities.

By the way, formation of Mongolian culture owes much to the Uyghurs, a more developed neighbor. Some historians even believe that the main achievements of the Mongols in writing, architecture, literature, their traditions and religious views, were completely borrowed from the Uyghur people.

Until the 18th century, the Uighurs occupied own prosperous territory until their state was captured by the rulers of China. After the seizure, until the middle of the 20th century, this people was subjected to oppression and all kinds of deprivation, and only in 1955, China gave the Uyghurs a territory now called Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and tried in every possible way to help new members of society to assimilate in their state.

Today, the population of the Uyghurs is small - less than 11 million people, while more than 10 million live in China and profess Sunni Islam, brought sometime from Central Asia during the period of Islamization.

The rest are located in the neighboring states: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Turkmenistan. Uyghur language that refers to the Turkic language group, still exists, but it has changed significantly during the difficult history of this people and acquired a couple of dozen dialects and dialects, therefore, mainly modern representatives of the Uyghurs speak the language of the country in which they live.

Until now, among the Uighurs, "Men's unions"... This tradition represents the selection of a certain number of men, the most powerful and courageous, who subsequently lead the community and help the rest of its members in whatever way they can. By the way, some representatives of this people still carry national edged weapons with them - just as their ancestors did many centuries ago.

Only the families of gunsmiths, who have been doing this for many centuries, are allowed to make this weapon, and each generation teaches its heirs the family craft. And another interesting tradition says that the youngest or only son must certainly stay in the parents' house, while the eldest must leave his father's house after marriage. Uighurs can marry only with their fellow believers.

Over such a long history, the Uyghur people have created about ten states, many architectural monuments, literary works, arts, miniature painting and other achievements, the history of which has survived to this day and causes genuine admiration for everyone who is interested in it.

Some sources say that the ancient Uyghurs created more than 60 musical instruments that the world had never seen before, and their folklore, poetry and prose were very popular at all times.

Today in China the Uyghurs appreciated in show business and modeling, and the directors are happy to invite them to the shooting, because they can easily play the role of Europeans, while speaking pure Chinese.

But, confrontation between the Chinese government and the Uyghurs is still the case. Cases of oppression of this ancient people now and then seep into the press and have a rather resonant opinion on the part of other members of society. And I would like to end this story with a quote from a famous pacifist from the cartoon: "Guys, let's live together!"

The Uighurs are quite ancient people. They are the indigenous population of East Turkestan, now the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China. They speak their own - Uyghur language, religion - Sunni Islam. Refers to Caucasians with a slight Mongoloid admixture.

The Uighurs are one of the most ancient Turkic-speaking peoples of Central Asia with a long history and rich original culture, which played an important role in its historical destinies.

The genealogy of this people goes back centuries and millennia. The first mentions of the Uighurs are found in ancient Türkic inscriptions, in ancient Chinese chronicles long before our era under the name “Oikhords”, “Huns”, “Huigu”, “Gavgyuy” (BSEM, 1956, v. 44, p. 59).

The ancestors of the Uighurs were the nomadic tribes of East Turkestan, in the III century. BC e. - III-IV centuries. n. e. played an important role in the tribal union of the Huns. The first mentions of the Uighurs in written sources date back to the 3rd century AD.

Settlement in the modern world and numbers

The total number is now about 10 million people. Of these, more than 9 million live in East Turkestan / XUAR, as well as in major cities in eastern China. A small enclave of Uighurs, numbering about 7 thousand people, also exists in the Hunan province, in the southeast of the PRC, where they have been living for several centuries.

The Uyghur community, abroad, with a total number of about 500 thousand, is represented in many countries, but the main part lives in the republics of Central Asia, the number of the Central Asian community is approximately ~ 350 thousand. Of these, in the Republic of Kazakhstan ~ 250 thousand, in the Kyrgyz Republic ~ 60 thousand, in Uzbekistan ~ 50 thousand, in Turkmenistan ~ 3 thousand.

A large Uyghur diaspora exists in the Republic of Turkey, numbering about 40 thousand, as well as in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ~ 30 thousand. There are also Uyghur communities in Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Sweden, Canada, USA, Japan, Australia. Uyghur enclaves can be found in such cities of the world as Sydney, Beijing, Shanghai, Mecca, Almaty, Bishkek, Munich.

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Uyghur communities are characterized by traditional self-organization in the form of malla, headed by elective foremen of the Zhigit-beshi. Usually all communities are members of Uyghur public organizations, the uniting organization of which, in turn, is the World Uyghur Congress.

Story

In the III-IV centuries. The Uyghurs were part of an association, which in the Chinese dynastic chronicles was called gaogyu (literally, "tall carts"). In the V century. in Chinese sources a new name for this union appears - tele (tegreg "carriages"). A significant group of Tele tribes migrated westward to the steppes of Kazakhstan and Southeastern Europe. Those who remained in the Central Asian steppes were subordinated to the Turks and became part of their state.

The main lands of the body were then in Dzungaria and Semirechye. But in 605, after the treacherous beating of several hundred Tele leaders by the Western Turkic Churyn Kagan, the leader of the Uighurs took the tribes to the Khangai Mountains, where they created a separate group called by Chinese historiographers "nine tribes" (Tokuz-Oguzes).

Since 630, after the fall of the first Türkic Kaganate, the Tokuz-Oguzes act as a significant political force, the leadership within which was established for ten Uyghur tribes led by the Yaglakar clan. In the V-VIII centuries. the Uighurs were part of the Kaganate of the Jujans and then of the Türkic Kaganate.

The process of ethnic consolidation of the Uighurs ended in the 8th century. after the collapse of the Turkic Kaganate and the formation of the Uygur early feudal state (Uygur Kaganate) on the river. Orkhon. At the head of the kaganate were kagans from the Uyghur clan Yaglakar (Chinese Yao-luo-ko; 745-795). It was at this moment that Manichaeism was recognized as the official religion. In 795 the Ediz tribe came to power (795-840), which also took the name of the Yaglakar.

Gumilev considers this episode the coming to power of the Manichean theocracy: ... in 795, the adopted son of one of the nobles, Kutlug, was elevated to the throne, under the conditions of restricting power.

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"The nobles, officials and others reported: 'You, heavenly king, sit slipshod on the precious throne, and you must receive an assistant who has the ability to control the measure of the sea and the mountain: ... laws and commands must be given: we must hope for heavenly mercy and favor" ... In other words, the executive and judicial powers were taken away from the khan, and politics was taken under the control of heavenly mercy, ”that is, the Manichaeans. The tribal union became a theocracy.

In 840, power in the kaganate returned to the Yaglakar tribe for 7 years. In the 840s, due to complex internal political and economic reasons, as well as the external invasion of the ancient Kyrgyz, the Uyghur state collapsed.

Division of the previously united

Part of the Uighurs moved to East Turkestan and the western part of Gansu, where three independent states were created - with centers in Gansu near the modern city of Zhangye, in the Turfan oasis and Kashgar.

The Karakhanid state in Kashgar and the Uyghur state of the Turfan Idykuts, Kochov Turfan, existed for over 400 years.

Here the Uyghurs gradually assimilated the local, mainly Iranian-Itoharian-speaking population, passing on their language and culture to it and, in turn, adopting the traditions of oasis agriculture and some types of crafts. During this period, Buddhism spread among the Uighurs of Turfan and Komul, whose religion was Manichaeism and Shamanism, and then Christianity (Nestorianism). In the same historical period, starting from the 10th century, Islam spread among the Uighurs of Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, by the 16th century. displaced other religions throughout the territory of East Turkestan.

With the adoption of Islam, the Arabic script was supplanted by the Old Uigur script.

The formation of the modern Uyghur ethnos with the New Uyghur language dates back to this time. Political and administrative disunity during the 15-16th centuries. as well as a number of other reasons led to the fact that the ethnonym "Uyghur" began to be little used, and was soon supplanted by religious consciousness. The Uighurs called themselves primarily "Muslims", and also by region of origin - kashkarlyk (kashgarets), hotanlyk (khotan), etc., or by occupation - taranchi (farmer).

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In the XVII-XVIII centuries. in East Turkestan there was a Uighur state, which in 1760 was captured by the Manchu rulers of China. National oppression and brutal exploitation provoked numerous uprisings of the Uighurs against the Manchu-Qing, and later the Kuomintang, oppressors. In 1921, at a congress of Uyghur representatives in Tashkent, the ancient self-name “Uyghur” was restored as a nationwide one.

With the destruction of the last Uyghur statehood in 1949 and the formation of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in 1955, the PRC authorities are pursuing a targeted policy of assimilation of the Uyghurs, primarily through the mass resettlement of ethnic Han people to the XUAR and artificial limitation of the birth rate of the indigenous Uyghur population.

In general, advances in education and health, cultural development, are complicated by the demographic, ethnic and religious policies of the Chinese government. A big problem is the growth of Islamic extremism among the Uighurs and the brutality of repression by the state. Not only in China, the Uighurs are disliked by the indigenous population of Kazakhstan.

I quote Seven:

Are you stamped or something ?! You issue the same text, only change the names. Why do you think you know more Kazakhs and tell them their story ?! Googled before writing nonsense. For example: Ancient cities of Kazakhstan. History of Kazakhstan. The Great Silk Road passed through our territory and the city of Otrar already had a sewage system in those centuries. These displaced persons, both displaced and not, built houses for themselves. Now these gray typical Khrushchevs with dampness are overlapped by normal buildings. Astana is one of the most beautiful capitals in the world and by UNESCO's decision bears the title of "Cities of the World". Turkestan - Hajj is counted as a Hajj to Mecca. Well, the listed nationalities did not have a hand in these cities, otherwise the coils dragged on for another decades.
Kazakh Khanate 1465, if Kazakstan confuses you. Before - Ak Orda, even before - Altyn Orda, even earlier Desht-i-Kypchak ...... and In 1918. the khanate is divided into khanates.
Kazaktar (Cossack singular) in Russian sources were mentioned under their own name until 1734. From 1715 to 1734 in parallel, there were two terms - Cossack and Kirghiz-Kaisak, or simply Kirghiz. Since 1734 the second term, which is fundamentally wrong, is already being mistakenly used. He was the first to write about the fact that it is not necessary to confuse the Kyrgyz with the Kazakhs in 1750. academician G.F. Miller. In 1771. traveler H. Bardanes, who called his work "Kyrgyz or Kazakh chorography" where he paid special attention to the fact that the so-called "Kyrgyz" themselves never call themselves "Kyrgyz-Kaisaks", but they say "Men Cossack" - "I am a Cossack" ... The classic work "Description of Kyrgyz-Cossack or Kyrgyz-Kaysak hordes and steppes" by A.I. Levshina- "Kirghiz-Kaisak are given an alien name, which neither they themselves, nor their neighbors, excluding the Russians, call ... Kirghiz is the name of a completely different people ... The name of the Cossack belongs to the Kirghiz-Kaisak hordes from the beginning of their existence, they themselves are different do not call .. "
All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Council of People's Commissars dated 05/25/1925 "On the renaming of the Kirghiz ASSR into the Kazak ASSR and the renaming of the Kara-Kirghiz AO into the Kirghiz AO". Although in 1925. clear distinctions appeared, but in some sources Kazakhs are again referred to as Kyrgyz.
For especially "gifted"! Kazaktar (Cossack) is a union of tribes and clans, the origin of which dates back to the time interval from BC, the first centuries AD. and a little later, at the time of the unification they spoke the same language. Before the migration, the term Uzbek-Cossack was used. The annexation of the tribes continued. The Bashkirs, Nogais, Karakalpaks, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Crimean Tatars have the same name tribes.
P.S. Information for thought. In the Turkic monument of the 8th century, found on the Yenisei, there is the phrase “kazgak coal”. In the IX - X centuries. three Karluk tribes living on the lands of Semirechye and South Kazakhstan had a common name - "Hasaki". In the Arab documents dating back to the X-XI centuries, it is said about the city of Kasag in the northeast of the Black Sea, about the country of the Kasagh. The emperor of Byzantium, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who ruled in the 10th century, reported that in the north-west of the Caucasus there is a "country of the Kasakhs", indicated on the map as "Kasakhia". German scientist Klaproth designated this ethnonym as "Kazakhia". The Sherkes clan is part of the Kazakh ethnos. One of the earliest mentions of the word Kazakh in Muslim written sources is found in the Turkic-Arabic dictionary. The dictionary is known from a manuscript of 1245 and published in Leiden in 1894. Here the word Kazakh means “homeless”, “homeless”, “wanderer”, “exile”, “free”. This was the name for groups of people who separated from their clan, tribe and began to live according to their own laws.

Agree! information is comprehensive!