Kashgar History

Early, Kashgar with a history of more than 2,000 years served as the capital of an alliance of Tushlan tribes. It was possibly the first of the Buddhist kingdoms of the Tarim basin.

In the first century AD, during the Han Dynasty, China lost its power over the Tarim Basin. Later, the great General Ban Chao in Han Dynasty was dispatched to recapture those lost territories. By brute force or cunning strategy, he took the kingdoms of Kashgar, Hetian and Loulan and installed pro-Chinese rulers and reopened the southern Silk Road to trade. Ban Chao remained in Chinese Central Asia for 31 years, crushing rebellions and establishing diplomatic relations with more than 50 states in the Western Regions.

In the early seventh century, Kashgar became the territory of Tang Dynasty. However, the Chinese were soon forced to withdraw between 670and 694, when Tibet expanded its territories throughout the southern oases of Tarim Basin. Between the 10th and 12th centuries the Kharakhanid Khanate, a loose mondic alliance of the Qarluq Turkic tribes, controlled the area between Bokhara and Hetian from its capital in Kashgar. The Sunni Muslim, Satuq Bughra Khan, was the first king of the Kharakhanid of Kashgar; he and his successors carried on bloody jihads against the still-Buddhist kingdoms of yarkant and Hotan. After the death of Chaghatai, Ghengis Khan launched numerous succession wars there. Only briefly during the mid-14th century, when Telug Timur had his capital in Kashgar, was a degree of calm and stability restored, But Tamerlane's armies were soon to lay waste to the Kingdom of Kashgaria.

In the 16th century, Kashgar was controlled by a religious leader, or khoja, whose colleagues formed a powerful clique in Bokhara and Samarkand. A theological split saw the formation of two opposing sects, the Black and White Mountaineers, which began a bloody see-sawing of power between Kashgar and Yarkant that ended only with Qing intervention two centuries later. The Khojas attempted to return to power in Kashgar no fewer than six times, frequently backed by the Khokand Khanate and aided by Kirgiz nomadic horsemen, bringing fearful reprisals on the citizens.

Kashar was under the rein of Yakup Beg, who ruled Kashgaria from 1866 to 1877. This infamous soldier from Khokand ruled most of Xinjing, from Kashgar to Urumqi, Turpan and Hami. In 1877, Yakub Beg was vanquished by the 60,000 strong Chinese army of Zuo Zongtang, who suppressed the Muslim rebellions in Gansu and then moved southwest through the oasis towns. As anti-Chinese Muslim rebellions broke out throughout Xinjiang in the 1930s, a pan-Turkic Islamic movement based in Kashgar declared an Independent Muslim Republic of Eastern Turkestan. In 1949, Kashgar accepted the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and became one of the parts of Xinjiang province.

Special Touring Regions: