Between Central Asia and China

Uyghurs are the largest group of Turkic people living in China‘s westernmost province of Xinjiang. In 2020, Uyghurs made up 12 million people out of the population of more than 25 million in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Because of their language and culture, they are close to the Turkic peoples of neighboring Central Asian countries, which also have Uyghur communities. Uyghurs mainly confess Sunni Islam of the Ḥanafī ethic–legal school. The formation of Uyghurs as a distinct ethnic group was determined not only by their Central Asian origin but also by their geographical proximity to China.¹ In early periods of history, the homeland of Uyghurs was part of many Central Asian states and known under different names, such as Serindia, Kashgaria, Moghulistan, Altishahr, and East or Chinese Turkistan. Since its conquest by the Qing Empire in 1759, the homeland of Uyghurs has been developing within Chinese statehood. The Qing government united Zungharia and Kashgaria, setting up a new administrative unit called Xinjiang (lit., “new dominion”), which in 1884 was recognized as a province of China; after the Communist takeover, in 1955, it acquired a status of one of the five autonomous regions.² Uyghur statelessness, location between China and Central Asia, as well as involvement in the struggle between great powers known as the “great game” determined the controversial nature of Uyghur historiography.

The Uyghur ethnonational vision of history came into being in the early 20th century in Russian Central Asia following the spread of a national discourse, when local communities started imagining themselves as “nations.” The name “Uyghur“ was adopted in the 1920s in Russian Central Asia as a common name for East Turkistanians, and in the 1930s Uyghurs were recognized as a nationality by the Xinjiang government.³ The history of Uyghurs was written in different countries involved in relations with their homeland, primarily China, Russia (Soviet Union), Central Asian countries, and Turkey. The narratives dominating in these countries framed the process of writing the history of Uyghurs. Discussion of Uyghur historiography thus implies looking at this process through the lens of different, sometimes conflicting narratives.

Origin of Uyghurs

Analysis of Uyghur historiography gets complicated by the obscurity of the ethnic name “Uyghur,“ which is used in two different meanings. The first one implies ”ancient“ or ”historical“ Uyghurs, a Turkic people who, according to earliest records, can be found in the texts of the 4th century. Two periods are distinguished in the history of “ancient” Uyghurs: (a) a period of the early nomadic states or Kaghanates (Turk El) on the territory of present-day Mongolia and Zungharia; and (b) a period of formation and existence of sedentary Uyghur states in the Tarim basin (of today‘s Xinjiang and Gansu provinces of China) between the 9th and 13th centuries.⁴ Uyghur power declined in the post-Mongol period, and the name “Uyghur“ gradually ceased to be used. Another meaning of the ethnonym ”Uyghur“ relates to the present-day sedentary population of Xinjiang; this meaning came into use only in the early 20th century. Continuity between the “ancient” and “modern” Uyghurs is not only an issue of academic disputes, but also a basis of various opposing and even conflicting narratives, which reflect politics of history and memory of particular countries. Examination of these narratives should be preceded by discussion of the main stages of the ethnic history of the Tarim basin.

Of great significance in the ethnic history of Central Asia was the period of Mongol domination, when a common political space established by Mongol rule on the vast territory of Eurasia created favorable conditions for intensive interactions between peoples speaking different languages and following different forms of economic life (sedentary and nomadic). The breakup of previous nomadic tribal unions and the emergence of new ones, the processes of assimilation and acculturation, and the free exchange of goods and ideas between different cultures during the Mongol period led to crucial changes in the ethnic map of Central Eurasia, the main of which was the formation of contemporary ethnic groups. These processes in the Tarim basin helped shape the distinct features of the local sedentary Turkic population, which did not have a common name but was distinguished by its oases (qäshqärlïq, turpanlïq, hotänlik, and so on). Since the Qing conquest of the region in 1759, further consolidation of the Turkic population of the oases occurred due to political separation of this region from western Central Asia, which soon fell under the control of the Russian Empire.⁵ The split of Central Asia into Russian and Chinese domains did not terminate the intensive interactions between the peoples of the areas, which since the 19th century have been known as “Russian” (West) and “Chinese” (East) Turkestan (Greater Turkistan also included parts of other countries, such as Afghanistan). It is not by accident that national discourse reached Xinjiang, not from China proper, but from the territory of the Russian Empire. The Taranchi Turks of Semirech‘e, the main part of whom migrated to the Russian Empire from the Ili district of Xinjiang, were pioneers of the Uyghur national idea, which was later supported by the Bolsheviks in the course of implementation of national policy in the 1920s and by the Xinjiang government in the 1930s.⁶

The origin of Uyghurs is a complex process of both a biological (genetic) and social nature, and it is differently approached in various academic traditions. Although sociobiological and genetic explanations of ethnogenesis have not vanished at all in Western scholarship, they are no longer popular: social scientists are inclined to expose a constructivist approach to ethnicity.⁷ Soviet scholars looked at the genesis of ethnic groups from the perspective of genetic and cultural links between members of the ethnic community and their ancestors. In the meantime, the Chinese works on ethnicity are dominated by strong Sinocentrism taking roots in imperial ideology: modern authors take account of Chinese historical works of the imperial period based on a Sinocentric vision of the world at face value, using them without criticism.

Discussion of the ethnic and cultural development of the Tarim basin, which resulted finally in the formation of modern Uyghurs, should take into consideration at least the following historical facts: (a) in ancient times, the area was a part of the Indo-Iranian world; (b) Turkicization of the region began with the rise of the Huns (in Chinese, xiongnu) in the 3rd century bce and finished by the time of the Mongol Empire; (c) conversion to Islam of the population in the post-Mongol period occurred between the 15th and 16th centuries; and (d) the Qing Empire conquered the Tarim basin in the 18th century.⁸

Commonality of the Uyghurs with Central Asian peoples such as the Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz originates from the shared early periods of history. From 1980 to the 2000s a group of Russian experts of ancient languages and civilizations conducted a project on the history of the interactions between Central Asia and East Turkistan under the supervision of Boris Litvinskiy. The project resulted in the publication of four volumes devoted to different aspects of ancient history and culture of two neighboring regions, with a focus on history (1988), on ethnicity, language, and religion (1992), on economy and material culture (1995), and on architecture, arts, and costume (2000).⁹ These volumes were preceded with two earlier volumes on East Turkistan and Central Asia, published in 1984 and 1986.¹⁰ Conceptualizing a main approach to the discussion of interactions between the two regions, Boris Litvinskiy concluded, “ethno-cultural and historical commonality with Central Asia was a dominating constant of history of East Turkistan since ancient times until modernity. Central Asia–East Turkistan ethno-cultural region was formed and existed in ancient and medieval ages.”¹¹ Later he continued saying that “ancient historical destinies” of East Turkistan and Central Asia “were closely tied with common roots and structural components of ethnogenesis, inclusion in the structure of the same polities, with close economic, cultural and ethnic interactions.”¹² Indeed, the Tarim basin was controlled by the same states which ruled in Mawarannahr and Semirech‘e (Kushans, Turks, Karakhanids, Kara-Kitais, Mongols, and their descendants Chagatai ulus and Moghulistan).

The earliest ethnic substrata shaping ethnic features of present-day Uyghurs were Indo-Iranian and Turkic peoples. Indo-Iranians consisted of Tokharians, who were the most ancient inhabitants of the Tarim basin, Saka, Sogdians, and others. Turkic component of the Uyghur ethnogenesis was represented by the Huns, Avars, Tegreg tribes (Oguz, Chinese “tiele”), Turks, closely related to them Uyghurs and Qarluqs, who have dominated on this territory since 9th century. Two polities represented these tribal unions: the Uyghur Qočo Kingdom (c. 850–1250) in the east, and the first Turkic Muslim state called the Karakhanid state (840–1212) in the west.¹³ Significance of these polities in the ethnic history is, among others, that the name Uyghurs was restored by sedentary population of the Tarim basin, while Qarluq dialect determined particularities of the new Uyghur language. Process of ethnogenesis continued in the 20th century, when local groups, such as Dolanis and Lobluqs, were absorbed by Uyghurs.

Discovery and Romantization of Uyghurs in European Scholarship

Interest in Central Asia in European scholarship increased in the 19th century, in the course of the Anglo-Russian struggle for domination in the region commonly known as the “great game.” European academia was inspired by the discovery of archeological monuments, artefacts, and manuscripts in the Indo-European languages in Central Asia. Major discoveries have been made in the Tarim basin. Studies on antique Central Asia were conducted in several directions: (a) research of sources on the region in various languages (Arabic, Persian, Chinese, and Greek, for example); (b) decryption of ancient scripts; and (c) ethnographic description of local peoples. Translations of the Chinese accounts on Central Asia into main European languages allowed scholars to reconstruct the early history of the peoples and countries neighboring China.¹⁴ The French and Russian sinologists, such as Joseph de Guignes, Claude de Visdelou, Stanislas Julien, Iakinth Bichurin, and Dmitriy Pozdneyev, pioneered the translation of the Chinese accounts on the Huns, Turks, Uyghurs, and states of the Western region (Ch. Xiyu), making them accessible to readers. Initially scholars were not sure of ethnic origin of most of the ancient peoples. For example, Iakinth Bichurin believed in the Mongol origin of Turks and Uyghurs, calling them Dulga and Oihor (he also examined contemporary situation in Zungharia and Kashgaria).¹⁵ The history of the Turks, Uyghurs, and other clans was advanced very much due to the publication of the Turkic runic inscriptions at the end of the 19th century. Studies of Uyghurs developed thanks to the research by Russian academician of German origin Vasiliy Radloff (1837–1918) who published his translations of the texts in runic and Uyghur scripts and provided the first essay on the history of nomadic Uyghurs. More systematic discussion of Uyghur history based exclusively on Chinese sources was given by Dmitriy Pozdneyev in his Essays on history of Uyghurs.¹⁶ The history of Uyghurs who set up their empire in 8th–9th centuries in Inner Asia, and later had a developed culture in the Turfan area, became most discussed theme in Turkology. Uyghurs became a symbol of Turkic civilization, a romantic image of whom encouraged early Turkic nationalism. At the same time, only few scholars made assumptions that Uyghurs were ancestors of the population of Xinjiang. Russian scholar of Kazakh origin Choqan Valikhanov (1835–1865) believed that “indigenous inhabitants of this country speak special dialect of the Turkic language, which is known to orientalists as Uyghur and consists of three groups: (a) descendants of ancient Uyghurs (Hami, Turfan, Lob Nur), (b) Dolons, and (c) Nyugheyt.“¹⁷ The knowledge of Uyghurs accumulated in European scholarship became very important at the turn of the 20th century, when national discourse reached East Turkistanian (Taranchi and Kashgari) communities of Russian Semirech‘e and imagining as a united nation required a common name.

Birth of the Uyghur National History

The Uyghur national movement underwent the same phases similar to the ones of other Central Asian peoples. A concept of three main phases of a national movement worked out by Eric J. Hobsbawm can be applied to the emergence of the Uyghur case: (a) cultural, literary, and folkloric materials are collected by scholars; (b) “a body of pioneers and militants begins political campaigning for ‘national idea’”; (c) nationalist programs acquire mass support.¹⁸ Indeed, earlier phases of the Uyghur national movement occurred in the Russian Empire: the first of them implied the generation of academic knowledge on “ancient” Uyghurs and Xinjiang province; in the second phase the Taranchi intellectuals of Russian Semirech‘e served as militants of the Uyghur national idea; finally in the 1920 and the 1930s this idea acquired mass support in Soviet Central Asia and then in Xinjiang.

The pioneers of the Uyghur national idea, the Taranchi intellectuals from Semirech‘e, first discussed their ideas in the Tatar periodicals of Kazan and Orenburg. According to Mirqasïm Usmanov (1934–2010), between 1908 and 1917 the magazine Shura alone published more than ninety articles on Taranchi and Altishahr Turks, which related various issues, including the idea of “millät” (nation). Näzärğoja Abdusemätov (d. 1951), from Ğaljat in Semirech‘e, was one of those who proposed the idea of a “Uyghur nation“ which would replace other commonly used names such as ”Muslims“ and ”Sarts.“ He accepted a pen name ”Uyghur balisi“ (son of Uyghur) after his travel to Altishahr in 1914.¹⁹ The Uyghur national idea promoted by Taranchi intellectuals found support of the Bolsheviks during the implementation of the national policy in Central Asia. As Sean Roberts and David Brophy showed, initially the name “Uyghur“ had no ethnic meaning, but rather a political one, and referred to the three main groups of East Turkistanians who lived on the territory of Russian Turkistan, namely the Taranchis, Kashgaris, and Dungans.²⁰ The land of Uyghurs—Uyghurstan—was seen as an alternative for Chinese “Xinjiang,” similarly to “Uzbekistan” that was initially deemed as a synonym of “Turkistan” and “Turan.” The Congress of the Revolutionary Union of Altishahri–Zunghar Workers, held in Tashkent in 1921, legitimized the adoption of “Uyghur“ as a common name for all émigrés from Xinjiang. However, shortly after the Chinese-speaking Dungans (Hui) left the ”Uyghur union,“ its use was confined only to the Turkic population of East Turkistan.²¹

Näzärğoja Abdusemätov is also known as the author of the first sample of the Uyghur national history. He raised the issue of national history in his publications in the Tatar periodicals, where he substantiated the significance of writing national history of Sarts of Chinese Turkistan considering them as a part of a Turkic nation.²² He understood the aim of a national history in enlightening people, taking them away from darkness, and helping build up successful lives. Later he linked national history exclusively to the Uyghurs. With the establishment of the Soviet power, he took active part in debates on Uyghur nation in a capacity of the Head of the Section on science of the Uyghur Bureau of the Communist party. When the Bureau initiated a compilation of the Uyghur national history, the task was imposed on Abdusemätov and another prominent Communist leader, Abdulla Rozibakiev (1897–1938). Näzärğoja Abdusemätov was supposed to cover early periods of history and Abdulla Rozibakiev was to write the history of the revolutionary years. “Uyghur balisi“ published his contribution in 1922 in Alma-Ata under the title Ili Taranchi Turks History, while Rozibakiev never accomplished his part, although he discussed some issues and episodes in his articles.²³

In his forty-eight-page-long book Näzärğoja Abdusemätov developed his ideas of a single nation of East Turkistan and the significance of its history. As other early samples of national histories in Central Asia, this work shared many common traits with similar Kazakh and Kyrgyz national histories written respectively by Shäkärim Qudaiberdy-uly (1858–1931) and Osmonaaly Sydykov (1889–1938).²⁴ Ethnocentric vision of the emerging national histories differed from the previous Muslim historiography, a narration which was centered on the lives of supreme and local rulers, dynasties, saints, and other prominent figures. Early samples of national histories of Central Asian peoples did not have clear vision on the boundaries of the nations: if Shäkärim compiled an integral history of the Kazakhs, Kyrgyzs, and Kara-kalpaks, Abdusemätov confined his narration to the past of a transregional group of the Taranchis of the Ili valley (Ghulja and Semirech‘e). At the same time, all those authors demonstrated knowledge of European scholarship in their particular fields. Main principles of the early samples of national histories were elaborated and shaped in official histories of the Soviet Republics, which were compiled regularly since the 1920s territorial–administrative delimitation under supervision of the Communist party. In contrast to them, the Soviet government considered Uyghurs as émigrés from China, even though the Russian imperial authorities recognized Taranchis and Dungans as “tuzemtsi” (locals) in 1899.²⁵ Nevertheless, the Soviet scholarship greatly contributed to developing the main principals of the Uyghur national history for another reason, that is, their involvement in the political development in Xinjiang.

Chinese Historiography on Uyghurs

The history of Central Asia was recorded in Chinese chronicles in a systematic way since the compilation of Shiji (historical records) by Sima Qian (94 bce). Since that time, placing special chapters on nomads of the north and sedentary peoples of the western region became “a tradition” in all standard dynastic histories (Chinese, zhengshu) which represented a Sinocentric vision of the world. When the Qing Empire conquered the Tarim basin, the court called it “Muslim territory,” treating local Turkic population simply as Muslims.²⁶ The Qing scholars‘ descriptions of them followed principles of geographic continuity and ethnographic similarity.²⁷ Unlike Europe, the discourse of “Turkic-speaking peoples” was not in use in China. Therefore, nomadic Uyghurs were linked by the Qing scholars not to the Turks, but to the Chinese-speaking Muslims—the Hui, known locally as “Tungans/Dungans.” These links were grounded also on similarity to the Chinese terms for Muslims and Uyghurs—Huihu.

A Chinese vision of the history of Xinjiang in the Republican period (1912–1949) and during the People‘s Republic of China (PRC; since 1949) was framed by the concept of Chinese nation (Chinese, zhonghua minzu), formulated first by a father of Chinese democracy Sun Yatsen (1866–1925) modified by the Nationalist government of Chiang Kaishek (1887–1975) and then the Communists. Sun Yetsen‘s perception of the Chinese nation evolved from seeing it as a union of five nationalities (Hans, Manchus, Mongols, Muslims, and Tibetans) to the idea of its equation with the Hans only, who were supposed to assimilate other nationalities. Chiang Kaishek believed that the Chinese nation consisting of five “clans” had existed for 5,000 years and promoted the doctrine of eternal unity of China.

The history of Xinjiang attracted more interests in the 1930s not only due to the official recognition of the Uyghur nationality by provincial government, but also because of the threat of a Soviet conquest of Xinjiang. For example, in 1936 Zeng Wenwu, in his three-volume History of China‘s management of the Western Regions, gave a chronology of the “governance” of the region, from the Han Empire to the Qing Empire. In the third volume, he discussed the Republican policies in the province and expressed his concerns about Russian influence in Xinjiang, referring to the sporadic nature of the control established here by China-based dynasties in the past and a possibility of losing control over the region.²⁸ Along with such macro-historical discussions, some scholars started examining accounts of the Tang sources on ancient dwellers of Inner Asia and Xinjiang. One of them was Wang Riwei, who studied some issues of the history of nomadic Uyghurs, especially their migrations after the 840s, a focus made apparently under the European scholarship influence and recognition of the Uyghur nationality by the Xinjiang government.²⁹

Along with accepting the idea on continuity between the Uyghur nationality (Ch. weiwuer zu) and the “historical” Uyghurs (Ch. Huihu), Chinese historians have drawn clear-cut differences between the Uyghurs and the Turks, rejecting any continuity between them. Two views on the relationship of Uyghurs with Turks reflected opposing visions of the roots of the modern Uyghurs. Chinese scholars such as Li Dongfang refused Turkicness of the Uyghurs, referring to Chinese historical accounts. Representing Uyghurs as a separate clan, which did not have kin relations with the Turks (Ch. Tujue), was in line with the political agenda: this argument was raised in disputes with leaders of the East Turkistan Republic (ETR; 1944–1949), which existed on a territory of the three westernmost districts of Ili, Tarbaghatai, and Altai, in the 1940s, when the chairman of the provincial government, Zhang Zhizhong, repeatedly claimed that Uyghurs were not indigenous to Xinjiang.³⁰

With the Communist takeover, history writing became severely controlled by the government, which breached new life into the concepts developed in the Republican period. The PRC historiography elaborated on all arguments of the Guomindang historians, but in contrast to them, did not tolerate any alternative visions or interpretations. The revived concept of Chinese nation had the following modifications: (a) all nationalities of China comprise a single Chinese nation; (b) China was a “united multi-national state” since times immemorial; (c) ethnic minorities are part of the Chinese nation and they never set up states independent from China. The identification of the sedentary population of Xinjiang with historical Uyghurs perfectly fits this concept. The principles of the Communist historiography were articulated in Brief Historical materials on the Uyghurs, compiled in 1956 for internal circulation by Feng Jiasheng, Cheng Suluo, and Mu Guangwen (the second volume was published for wider audience in 1958).³¹ In 1956 the authors shared some of their views in the article on periodization of the Uyghur history: based on the Marxist class theory and the works of the Soviet scholars, the Uyghur history from early times to the end of the 19th century was divided into two stages: (a) primitive communal system and feudalism (from ancient nomadic society to Uyghur khanate of eighth and ninth centuries); and (b) feudal serf society (ninth–nineteenth centuries). The second edition of the book by Feng Jiasheng and his co-authors that came out in Beijing in 1981 was a good example of the radicalization of Chinese historiography‘s vision of the Uyghur history.³² As Gardner Bovingdon noted, if the original version of the book recognized that in the 8th-century Uyghurs set up their independent Khanate, the second edition accentuated on the final subjugation of the Khanate to the Tang Empire. Similarly, the conquest of Xinjiang by the Qing Empire in the 18th century was called initially “annexation” (“hebing”), but later the term was replaced by the word “unification” (“tongyi”), while the characterization of the Uyghur states as “feudal countries” (“fengjian guojia”) was changed to “local regimes” (“difang zhengquan”).³³ These corrections are revealing of the revival of the Sinocentric vision of history, according to which the Middle Kingdom was a center of the universe and all the other countries and peoples were subjects of the Son of Heaven. China‘s conquests, accordingly, were depicted as the emperors’ efforts to unify the subjects to bring them back under the civilizing influence of the Celestial Empire and to restore the world order.³⁴

Continuity between nomadic Uyghurs (Ch. Huihu) and modern Uyghurs (Ch. Weiwuer) became a key concept which allowed the history of Xinjiang to be written into the Sinocentric model of the past. The lineal model of history turned out to be the most effective way of substantiation of non-indigenousness of modern Uyghurs to Xinjiang. First, it was important for separating the history of Xinjiang from the history of Uyghurs, denying genetic ties between the ancient dwellers of the Tarim basin (e.g., Tokharians or Saka) and the present-day population of the region. The Indo-Iranian civilization, represented by Tarim mummies, is considered vanished, at the same time assumptions of Chinese origin of some of them are appreciated.

The migration of nomadic Uyghur tribes from Mongolia to the Tarim basin after 840 ce became another strong argument for representation of Uyghurs as newcomers to the region: discourse of migration deprived them rights to homeland. At the same time, Chinese historiography rejects the Turkic origin of the Uyghurs. As Wang Enmao, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Xinjiang, mentioned in 1986: “The Uyghur nation (minzu) is not a branch of the great tree of the ‘Turki nation’; the Uyghur nation is a branch on the great tree of the Chinese nation. . . . Turkology is not a pure academic problem; it contains within it a political problem.“³⁵ Pan-Turkism was considered to be a serious threat to national security of China, in contrast to the concept of united Chinese nation and narrative of the Western region.

Emphasis on the non-indigenousness of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang determined the interpretation of other historical issues. It grounded preference given by the PRC historiography to the hypothesis of Uyghur origin of the Karakhanid dynasty.³⁶ The history of the Karakhanids was placed by Feng Jiasheng and his co-authors in the chapter entitled “Dispersion after western migration.”³⁷ Later, in 1986, Wei Liangtao introduced it as “the second kingdom established in the history by the Uyghur nationality of our state“³⁸ and claimed that it was set up in Semirech‘e after the collapse of the Uyghur khanate.³⁹ Vision of the Karakhanids as a successor of the Uyghur khanate legitimized China‘s sovereignty on the territory ruled by that dynasty: because of their Uyghur origin, the Karakhanids, who did not maintain regular relations with Song court, were now seen as an integral part of China‘s history. This explains popularization of the works of the Karakhanids’ authors Yūsuf Khāss Ḥājib, Maḥmūd Kāshgarī, and Aḥmad Yugnakī.

This Chinese vision of history is clearly formulated in general histories of Xinjiang and Uyghurs compiled under the supervision of the Communist Party of China, each of which starts with statements claiming that “Xinjiang has been an integral part of China since ancient times” or “Uyghurs are one of the members of our big family—great Chinese nation.“⁴⁰ One of the early official compilations, Concise History of Xinjiang, was initiated after the Cultural Revolution, in 1979, and published in several languages in the 1980s.⁴¹ Simultaneously, between 1984 and 1986, Liu Zhixiao from the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences published two volumes of the History of Uyghurs. Uyghur version of Liu Zhixiao‘s book came out in 1985 and was republished between 2002 and 2003.⁴² General histories of Uyghurs were exclusively compiled by Han scholars, either in teams or individually.⁴³ Chinese official narrative on the Uyghur history is also represented in the White Papers on the history of Xinjiang.⁴⁴ Since 2017, PRC has radicalized its politics of history following the harsh measures implemented to fight against separatism, extremism, and terrorism in Xinjiang. Besides the mass internment of Uyghurs, the imprisonment of intellectuals, the termination of education in the Uyghur language, other measures to eradicate historical memory are put into practice, such as demolishing mosques, Muslim sacred sites, and historical monuments, changing traditional neighborhoods, and banning the publication of books in Uyghur.⁴⁵

Soviet Historiography on Uyghurs

The national history of Uyghurs, born in Russian Semirech‘e in the early 20th century, was promoted thanks to the Soviet academic writings of the 1940s, when it was at forefront of the historiography due to the Soviet policy towards Xinjiang. In 1933 governor Shen Shicai carried out a policy oriented towards friendship with the Soviet Union and distanced Xinjiang from the central government of China. However, in 1943 he returned under the control of Guomindang, putting an end to the collaboration with the Soviets and holding unfriendly position towards it. Then the Soviets supported the anti-Chinese uprising of local Muslim peoples of Xinjiang, which resulted in establishing the East Turkistan Republic.⁴⁶ In the ideological war with the three districts insurgents, Guomindang leaders referred to history to say that Western regions (Ch. Xiyu) was a homeland to not only Uyghurs, but also to the Han Chinese who started settling down here long before nomadic Uyghurs migrated here from Mongolia.⁴⁷ To help the pro-Soviet ETR leaders in this ‘war of histories’ the Soviets mobilized Turkologists and archeologists to write up the Uyghur history. While many scholars were involved in studies of East Turkistan at that time, a key role in producing alternative vision of Uyghur history was played by Alexander Bernshtam (1910–1956). In 1947 he published the article “Problems of the History of East Turkistan” in the central authoritative journal Vestnik Drevnego Vostoka (Herald of Ancient History), in which he substantiated the existence of historical links between East Turkistan and Central Asia, as well as between Uyghurs and Central Asian peoples. He argued that Uyghurs were indigenous to East Turkistan.⁴⁸ This conclusion was a direct response to the political assertions made by the Chinese government. Bernshtam elaborated on his ideas in his monograph Essays on Ancient and Medieval History of the Uyghurs, written during the same years.⁴⁹ This was an extensive work on the history of Uyghurs, covering the period from the 4th century to the Mongol period. Several signal copies of the book printed in the Uyghur language in Arabic script came out in 1951 from the publishing house Qazaq eli in Alma-Ata, which produced books for Xinjiang readers. However, the Uyghur-centered history became needless after the Sino-Soviet treaty of friendship and alliance was signed in 1950. Therefore, the book was not published and never reached its readers in Xinjiang. Nevertheless, copies circulating among Uyghur intellectuals inspired Uyghur historians on both side of the Sino-Russian border. Especially they elaborated further on the idea that in ancient times there were two groups of Uyghurs, namely the sedentary Uyghurs of East Turkistan and the nomadic Uyghurs of Inner Asia who merged after the migration of the latter to Turfan area in the 9^th century.⁵⁰ It is worth mentioning that Bernshtam‘s book put forward the idea of indigenousness of the Uyghurs not only to East Turkistan, but also to Semirech‘e. Raising the latter can be easily understood since, during the second ETR, the Communist Party of Kazakhstan discussed the possibility of establishing Uyghur autonomous district in former Semirech‘e where Uyghurs lived compactly.⁵¹ Bernshtam‘s contribution to the study of Uyghur history was not limited to these publications: he also researched Old Uyghur epigraphic and juridical documents.⁵²

Other Soviet scholars who addressed the issues of Uyghur history and culture included A. Yakubovski (i.e., Uyghur Turfan Kingdom based on Arabic accounts), A.Semyonov (i.e., the cultural role of Uyghurs in Mongol states), and S. Malov (i.e., Uyghur historical sources).⁵³ It is obvious that the dissertation of Bernshtam‘s disciple Uyghur archeologist Ahmet Kibirov, “Social and Economic Structure of Uyghurstan in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries” defended in 1950 was also influenced by the existence of the ETR.⁵⁴

Institutionalization of research on Uyghurs by establishing a special unit within the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR in 1946 marked a birth of the field called “Uyghur studies“ (Ru. Uyǧurovedeniye; Uy. Uyǧuršunaslïq) in the Soviet Union. This academic unit went through various stages in its development evolving from a group of Uyghur-Dungan studies to the Institute of Uyghurs studies (1986–1995); its three core divisions researched language, literature and history of the Uyghurs.⁵⁵ Academic institutions of Moscow and Leningrad monitored research in the field of Uyghur studies in Central Asia. Priorities of this field changed over time following fluctuations in the Sino-Soviet relations. With deterioration of these relations in early 1960s, historical studies on Uyghurs prioritized two main themes—Uyghur statehood and national-liberation movement. The former direction was opened by Dmitriy Tikhonov‘s book Economy and Social Structure of the Uyghur State in the Tenth to Fourteenth Centuries (1966).⁵⁶ The title itself implied existence of a Uyghur state in contrast to Chinese historiography, which refused any independent Uyghur state in the history. Tikhonov‘s research was preceded by the work of German Turkologist A. von Gabain, Das Leben im Uigurischen Konigreich von Qočo (850–1250) (1961).⁵⁷ Another example of rising discourse of Uyghur statehood was Daut Isiyev‘s book Uigurskoye gosudarstvo Yettishar (Uyghur state Yättishahr) published in Moscow in 1981.⁵⁸ Discourse of state was used even by those historians who tried to deconstruct the Uyghur narrative in the late Soviet period, such as Anatoliy G. Maliavkin.⁵⁹ As for the national–liberation movement of the Uyghurs, it was first applied exclusively to the resistance of Muslims peoples to the Manchu Empire and their struggle against the “reactionary” regime of Guomindang, but at the peak of the confrontation with PRC, it was put into the context of resistance to the Chinese rule.⁶⁰

Uyghurs‘ Perception of Their History

Uyghur national history born in Semirech‘e mainly developed outside the homeland, but at various periods of time Uyghur intellectuals in their homeland were able to express national ideas in popular writings, literary works which were less strictly controlled by the government. One of the early histories written by the Uyghur author was announced outside the province: in 1940s one of political leaders of Hotän (southern Xinjiang), Muhammad Imin Buğra (1901–1965), published the History of East Turkistan while being in exile in Afghanistan.⁶¹ Like N. Abdusemätov, Buğra substantiated the importance of a national history, but called his homeland “East Turkistan” and its population “Turks” (Uy. Shärqi Türkstan). Interpretation of the history was influenced by pan-Turkic ideas, which in the neighboring Soviet Central Asia have been already eradicated by that time. Narration on history starts with the Huns epoch and ends with Sheng Shicai‘s time. Out of “Uyghur story“ only a period of nomadic Uyghurs was covered, while the Uyghur khanate in Turfan was not mentioned due to a lack of knowledge of that polity. One of the followers of the idea of “Chini Turkistan” or “Chinese Turkistan,” propagated by three “afendis” (Uy. üch äpändim), to whom also belonged Muhammad Imin Buğra, Polat Qadïri published his book Ölkä tarihi (History of the Province) in 1948 in Ürümchi. He expressed his stand thus: “The name of our province given by the state is Xinjiang, [its] historical name is ‘East Turkistan.’”⁶² Early periods of Xinjiang history were compiled very briefly following Muhammad Imin Buğra‘s book. These two books reflected the ideas of those Uyghur leaders who collaborated with the Chinese authorities and expressed their preference of the China‘s rule to that of the Soviets; their historical visions were criticized in the 1940s by the leaders of the ETR as well as the Soviet authors in the Uyghur magazine Shärq häqiqiti in Tashkent.⁶³

Although the Guomindang authorities allowed the name of “East Turkistan” to be used in publications, the Chinese Communist power did not tolerate alternatives. Nevertheless, the rise of Uyghur nationalism in the 1940s and the national policy of PRC stimulated further development of the Uyghur national narrative. The Uyghur narrative of its own history was formed as a response to the official Sino-centric view of the history of Uyghurs and their homeland. However, it could not be exposed until a period of liberalization of political life in China in the period immediately following the Cultural Revolution. The main exponent of the Uyghur view of history was Turğun Almas, a writer and historian, who wrote three popular books on history and culture of the Uyghurs: Literature of the ancient Uyghurs (1987); A Brief History of the Huns (1988); and Uyghurs (1989).⁶⁴ The history described in these books contains the main provisions of the Uyghur narrative, which were in conflict with the Chinese narrative. They are as follows: (a) the homeland of the Uyghurs is Central Asia; (b) the Uyghurs are an autochthonous (indigenous) population of Xinjiang; (c) the ancestors of the Uyghurs settled down in Xinjiang 4,000 years ago and thus are the most ancient dwellers of the province. After the publication of the book Uyghurs, in 1990, Turğun Almas was put under house arrest, copies of the book were withdrawn from circulation, and authorities organized a campaign of criticism of his book. Strict measures taken by the authorities to limit the circulation of the book and against the author stimulated great interest among ordinary people who were paying to read the book on loan. The book was published in Kazakhstan in Cyrillic and its Russian translation came out too.

The national narrative in the Uyghur homeland was fueled by research publications, fiction, periodicals, art, and music. Particular role in its shaping belonged to historical novels, which contained information on the past of Uyghur society. Samples of such novels narrating about dramatic as well as heroic events of the 1930–1940s in Xinjiang are Abdurehim Ötkür‘s Iz (Trace); Oyγ‎anγ‎an zimin (Awakened land), and Zordun Sabir‘s three-volume novel Ana yurt (Motherland).⁶⁵ All such samples of the Uyghur literature were banned after 2017.

Nowadays Uyghur national history can be written exclusively in the Uyghur communities outside China. Besides Central Asian countries and Turkey, where Uyghur communities have been writing their vision of history for quite a long time, Uyghur intellectuals in exile in the United States and Europe joined the process of writing Uyghur-centered histories. One of them, Nebijan Tursun, residing in the United States, completed a general history of Uyghurs in thirteen volumes, two volumes of which were devoted to the history of the ETR and are already published in Turkey.⁶⁶

Main Trends in the Study of Uyghurs and Their Society

Studies on Uyghurs and their homeland held peripheral position in Central Asian studies, which have been intensively developing in Western scholarship after the demise of the Soviet Union. In the 19th and 20th centuries interest on Chinese Turkestan was quite strong during the period of the “great game,” when numerous expeditions to this land were organized by the Russian and British empires. Those expeditions pursued not only political and military purposes, but also made significant contribution to academic study of this remote part of Asia.⁶⁷ Archeological discoveries of ancient civilizations in Central Asia stimulated many European countries and Japan to hold expeditions to this region at the turn of the 20th century.⁶⁸ Social and political collisions in Russia and China limited possibilities of the studies in the 1920 and 1930s; however, the British consulate staff in Kashgar, the Swedish Christian mission members, and the Sino-Swede expedition led by Sven Hedin and the Fogg expeditions by Sir Aurel Stein were able to continue the studies.⁶⁹ American Mongolist and Sinologist Owen Lattimore and Swede Gunnar Jarring were among the last representatives of the “classical” scholarship, who visited Chinese Turkistan in the 1920s.⁷⁰ Foreign researchers were able to visit the province only in the 1980s thanks to the liberalization of political life in PRC. For a long time Xinjiang remained terra incognita for the rest of the world. Therefore few works in this field introduced readers with the region and elucidated issues of political development and international relations. Owen Lattimore characterized Xinjiang as a “pivot of Asia” and at the same time as a frontier zone.⁷¹ The concept of “pivot” was questioned in the book Sinkiang: pawn or pivot? by Allen Whiting and Sheng Shicai.⁷² Soviet policy in Xinjiang in the Republican period became an object of discussion in many books.⁷³

The 1980–1990s were marked by the first samples of in-depth research on history of Republican Xinjiang with special focus on the “rebellion of three districts.”⁷⁴ The Communist period in the history of Xinjiang was targeted in the research by George Moseley (Ili-Kazakh autonomous prefecture), Donald McMillen (Communist Party of China‘s policy in Xinjiang between 1949 and 1977), and Michael Clarke (history and politics of Xinjiang).⁷⁵ Since the 1990s significant contribution in anthropology was done by Dru Gladney, Justin Rudelson, Sean Roberts, Joanne F. Smith, Timothy Grose (identity), Ildiko Bellér-Hann (historical anthropology), Rahile Dawut, William Clark, Rune Steenberg, Aysima Mirsultan, Nathan Light, Stanley Toops, Jay Dautcher, Darren Byler (cultural anthropology), Gardner Bovingdon (political anthropology), Arienne Dwyer (linguistic anthropology), Rachel Harris, Elise Anderson, and Mukaddas Mijit (ethnomusicology).⁷⁶

Access to sources in local languages in Xinjiang in the 1990s has allowed new generation of scholars to address the social history of Uyghurs. David Brophy used a wide range of sources in many languages to study how Muslims of Chinese Turkestan came to imagine themselves as Uyghurs. Based on multidisciplinary approach the research showed an entangled history of the emergence of the Uyghur nation in Xinjiang at the crossroads of the Qing, the Russian and the Ottoman empires.⁷⁷ Viewing history through the lens of not only the Han Chinese and their Russian counterparts, but also local peoples has made it possible to avoid one-sided representation of the Qing Empire. Writing history “from below” and “new social history” comprise conceptual basis of the methodological approach of “new Qing history,” which is applied in the works on the Xinjiang history of the Qing period by Peter Perdue, James Millward, Kulbhushan Warikoo, Hodon Kim, Kwanming Kim, and Eric Schluessel.⁷⁸ For much earlier period the principle of writing history “from below” was applied to the study of Uyghurs‘ perception of their own history by Rian Thum.⁷⁹ PhD dissertations recently defended by young scholars include those by Joshua Freeman on the 20th-century intellectual history of Uyghurs, Sandrine Catris (Cultural Revolution in Xinjiang), and Dilnur Reyhan (Diaspora studies).⁸⁰

Studies on early periods of Uyghurs are mainly conducted in Germany, Japan, Turkey, Russia, Korea, and France; they are based not only on rich collections of manuscripts from Central Asia, but also are framed by academic traditions in Turkology in these countries ( see works by Peter Zieme, Simone-Christiane Raschman, Klaus Röhrborn, Sergei Kliashtorny, Liliya Tugusheva, Mehmet Ölmez, Alexander Papas, Yong Songli, Ablet Semet, Zamira Gulzhali, and Megfiret Yunusoğlu Kamal and others.)⁸¹ Various aspects of the history of Uyghurs based on analysis of Chinese sources were addressed by Colin Mackerras, Michael Drompp, Ablet Kamalov (Uyghur Empire, 744–840), Elisabeth Pinks (Ganzhou Uyghurs), James Hamilton (Uyghurs of the epoch of five dynasties), Lilla Russel-Smith (Dunhuang Uyghurs), and Michael Brose (Uyghurs of the Mongol period), among others.⁸² Research of Japanese scholars deserves a separate discussion; here, only their great contribution to the study of the history of Central Asia is noted. Japanese scholars are pioneers in many areas of study of the history of Uyghurs. Different periods in the history of Uyghurs and Xinjiang were studied by Haneda Toru, Takeo Abe, Haneda Akira, Oda Juten, Saguchi Toru, Mano Eiji, Umemura Hiroshi, Takao Moriyasu, Hamada Masami, Dai Matsu, Toshio Hayashi, Shinmen Yasushi, Onuma Takahiro, Noda Jin, Sugawara Jun, Shimitsu Yuriko, and Shioyi Yakifumi.⁸³ Modern history is an object of academic interests examined of Mizutani Naoko and Oka Natsuko.⁸⁴ Xinjiang scholars of Japan regularly hold conferences on the history and culture of Xinjiang and publish their proceedings in special volumes.

Decline of Uyghur National Narrative in China?

Writing the history of Uyghurs reflects the main stages of the nation-building process that began in Central Asia at the turn of the 20th century. Before the Turkic population of the Tarim basin started imagining themselves as a distinct ethnic group (nation) called “Uyghurs,“ historical narrations of the region and its population did not have ethno-centric nature. Only the spread of national discourse and formation of Uyghur national identity led to the emergence of a Uyghur national history first in Russian Semirech‘e, then in Xinjiang. The statelessness of the Uyghurs and the conflicting interests of the main actors of international relations in Central Asia determined distinctive features of the narratives on Uyghur history dominating in China, Russia, and Turkey. Those narratives as well as the Uyghur national narrative influenced academic writings conducted in those countries in the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century. The current stage in the process of writing history of Uyghurs is characterized by the destruction of the Uyghur narrative in China since 2017 and the establishment of total domination of the Chinese one, which refuses Uyghurs‘ right to be a nation and independent from China. Other traits of contemporary period refer to the disappearance of Uyghur studies in Russia and its diminishing in Kazakhstan, which was a center of Uyghur studies in the Soviet Union. Closure of the Institute of Uyghur studies in Almaty under the pressure of China in 1996 and the Chinese Embassy‘s dissatisfaction over organizing international conference on Uyghur history and culture by the Institute of Oriental studies in Moscow in 2016 are examples of how the PRC government tries to control the research on Uyghurs in the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. At the same time, the ban on entry into China of scholars contributed to the publication of the book Xinjiang: China‘s Muslim Borderland (2004), demonstrates that Chinese authorities are trying to control academic life in Western democracies as well.

Discussion of Literature

Examination of Uyghur historiography implies thick description of works on history, which is presented in this article. As for pre-modern Muslim historiography of Central Asia and East Turkistan, it was studied by Tursun Sultanov in Mirror of the past centuries, while a repertoire of the manuscripts in Persian and Turkic languages was discussed in the book Handwritten book in the culture of peoples of Orient (1987) by Tursun Sultanov and Lyudmila Dmitriyeva.⁸⁵ There is a plethora of literature devoted to Chinese history writing. The organization of Chinese official historiography, principles, and methods of the standard histories and their content are examined by Yang Liangsheng, Wang Gungwu, and Edwin Pulleyblank.⁸⁶