The Land of Tajiks

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Kashqar Area

A Tajik baby girl	Tajik women	Silk weaving	Tajik women	Typical Tajik Necklace

Kashgar , Kashqar (Kashi or Kaxar), once a key centre of the ancient silk road, visited  by merchants and famed travellers such as Marco Polo , lies in western China, in Xinjiang Uygur  Autonomous Region, situated in a fertile oasis at the foot of the Pamirs near the Tajikistan  borders.        Kashgar has a history of more than 2'000 years. The earlist reference appeared in Persian documents referring to an alliance of Tushlan tribes, who founded their capital here. In the second century AD, Hinayana Buddhism flourished here and continued to do so until the ninth or tenth century. During this period Persian and Indian cultural influences were strong. Ruined cities show a quite different culture from today, where Indo-European and Altaic peoples worshipped at Buddhist, Manichaeist or Nestorian Christian temples, expressing themselves in art that blended Kashmiri, Tibetan, Indian, Persian and Greek styles. The Tajik people (=Persians) who had lived in various areas, of today western China, have had Kashgar as their major cultural town. Tajiks are one of the main population in Kashgar (10-15 percent) but there are even Kazaks, Kyrgyz, Chinese and Uighur here.

It is the place where the ancient Tajik ethnic group has lived generation after generation. Beside Kashgar and Tash korgan, Shache, Zepu, Yecheng and Pishan are some of the places where Tajiks live in compact communities in. Tajik population in western China estimate to be at least 90,000. Tashkurgan (3600m), is a predominately Tajik town, where ruins of a 600 year old fort overlook green pastures that are surrounded by snow topped, desert mountains. The main  place of worship, the Id Kah Mosque (built  in 1442 and   enlarged  in the 18th century), is surrounded by colourful bazaar streets  in the center  of town. A large statue of Mao adjacent to Kashgar's central   square, one of the tallest in all China, has come to symbolize the government's role  in the region.The military presence is also much stronger than elsewhere in the region.

The ancient tomb of Xiang Bao Bao, found through archaeological  excavation in recent years in Tashkurgan , is a cultural relic ever discovered  in the western most part of the country. Many burial objects found in this  3,000-year-old tomb and funeral rites they revealed show that the Tajik ethnic group has been a member of the big family of ethnic groups in, today western China, since ancient times. Marco Polo documented its existence in 1275AD. Silk was the most important of many goods carried by traders who traveled the  routes from  Xian, China, through the Tarim basin and Central Asia to Persia and to the  Middle East. Some goods were carried all the way to Rome. The Silk Road also served as a conduit   for the spread of various religions in China  including,  Buddhism, Manicheism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Islam .

After a long history of warfare and domination by neighboring nations, the Tajiks were again subjugated by the Communists around 1950. The Chinese subsequently sent in a large military force to keep order. Each   year since then the ratio of Chinese to non-Chinese has increased in favor of the Chinese. The policy of the government is to move enough ethnic Chinese into an area so that they constitute the majority. Despite the improvements and limited autonomy proffered by the Chinese, there still seems to be some resentment towards Chinese rule throughout West China. Water  from wells and from the Kashgar River supports crops of cotton, grain, beans,  and  fruit; hides and wool are produced in nearby semiarid grazing lands.  Traditional handcrafted cotton and silk textiles, rugs, leather goods, and  jewelry, produced for centuries for the overland caravan routes, remain the  basis of the economy.  Uygur (Uighur)s constitute a majority of the largely Muslim population.

W hen the Tang (618-907)  withdrew,  it  was ruled for long   periods by  Mongols and  Central Asian  empires  before  returning  once more to Chinese control  in 1760.   From 1865 to 1877 Kashgar was the capital of an independent  Muslim state  established in the Tarim    Pendi by Yakub Beg. Population  (1991)  174,570   . More

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