Uyghur

Uigurs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghurs

a Turkic ethnicity who live in East and Central Asia...Like many populations of Central Eurasia, they are closely related to both European and East Asian populations.... In English, the name is officially spelt "Uyghur, "Uighur", "Uigur", and "Uygur"... Old Turkic inscriptions record a word uyɣur (𐰺𐰍𐰖𐰆) ... Tang annals as 回纥 / 回紇 (now Huíhé)...(now Huíhú, but [ɣuɒiɣuət] in Middle Chinese)... The "Huihe" and "Huihu" seem to have been a political rather than a tribal designation or to have just been one group among several others collectively known as the Toquz Oghuz.... They were later known as the Tiele (铁勒 / 鐵勒, Tiělè)....

Throughout its history, the term Uyghur has taken on an increasingly expansive definition. Initially signifying only a small coalition of Tiele tribes in Northern China, Mongolia, and the Altai Mountains, it later denoted citizenship in the Uyghur Khaganate. Finally, it was expanded into an ethnicity whose ancestry originates with the fall of the Uyghur Khaganate in the year 842, which caused Uyghur migration from Mongolia into the Tarim Basin. This migration assimilated and replaced the Indo-European speakers of the region to create a distinct identity as the language and culture of the Turkic migrants eventually supplanted the original Indo-European influences. This fluid definition of Uyghur and the diverse ancestry of modern Uyghurs create confusion about what constitutes true Uyghur ethnography and ethnogenesis. ... DNA analyses indicate that the peoples of central Asia such as the Uyghurs are all mixed Caucasian and East Asian...

The Uighurs are the people whom old Russian travellers called Sart (a name which they used for sedentary, Turkish-speaking Central Asians in general), while Western travellers called them Turki... Chinesenow call them Weiwuerh... The term "Uyghur" was not used to refer to any existing ethnicity in the 19th century, but to an ancient people...Other Central Asians once called all the inhabitants of Xinjiang's Southern oases Kashgari, a term still used in some Pakistan regions....Altishahr (the native Uyghur name for eastern Turkestan or southern Xinjiang) before the adoption of the name "Uyghur" in the 1930s, referring to them by the name "Altishahri" ... Historians generally agree that the adoption of the term "Uyghur" is based on a decision from a 1921 conference in Tashkent,...although the delegates noted that the modern groups referred to as "Uyghur" were distinct from the old Uyghur Khaganate....

Uyghur historians viewed the Uyghurs as the original inhabitants of Xinjiang with a long history. ... Western scholars, however, do not consider the modern Uyghurs to be of direct linear descent from the old Uyghur Khaganate of Mongolia. Rather, they consider them to be descendants of a number of peoples, one of them the ancient Uyghurs....

Tarim mummies of a people European in appearance indicates the migration of an Indo-European people into the Tarim area at the beginning of the Bronze age around 1800 BCE. These people probably spoke Tocharian languages and were suggested by some to be the Yuezhi mentioned in ancient Chinese texts. However, Uyghur activists claimed these mummies to be of Uyghur origin, based partly on a word, which they argued to be Uyghur, found in written scripts associated with these mummies, although other linguists suggest it to be a Sogdian word later absorbed into Uyghur. Later migrations brought peoples from the west and north-west to the Xinjiang region, probably speakers of various Iranian languages such as the Saka tribes. Other people in the region mentioned in ancient Chinese texts include the Dingling as well as the Xiongnu who fought for supremacy in the region against the Chinese for several hundred years.

Some Uyghur nationalists also claimed descent from the Xiongnu (according to the Chinese historical text the Book of Wei, the founder of the Uyghurs was descended from a Xiongnu ruler), but the view is contested by modern Chinese scholars. The Yuezhi were driven away by the Xiongnu, but founded the Kushan Empire, which exerted some influence in the Tarim Basin ...Loulan and Khotan were some of the many city states that existed in the Xinjiang region during the Han Dynasty, others include Kucha, Turfan, Karasahr and Kashgar. The settled population of these cities later merged with incoming Turkic people such as the Uyghurs of Uyghur Khaganate to form the modern Uyghurs. ...

The Uyghurs of the Uyghur Khaganate were part of a Turkic confederation called the Tiele, who lived in the valleys south of Lake Baikal and around the Yenisei River. They overthrew the Turkic Khaganate and established the Uyghur Khaganate (744 to 840). .... Uyghur Khaganate was overrun by the Yenisei Kirghiz, another Turkic people. As a result, the majority of tribal groups formerly under Uyghur control dispersed and moved out of Mongolia...some went to live amongst the Karluks, and some moved to Turpan and Gansu (the Ganzhou Kingdom 870 to 1036) ....Ganzhou was absorbed by the Western Xia in 1036.... The second Uyghur kingdom, the Kingdom of Qocho, also known as Uyghuristan in its later period, was founded in the Turpan area (ninth to the fourteenth century)...

In the tenth century, the Karluks, Yagmas, Chigils and other Turkic tribes founded the Kara-Khanid Khanate...The Karakhanids converted to Islam in the tenth century... The Indo-European Saka Buddhist Kingdom of Khotan was conquered by the Turkic Muslim Karakhanids from Kashgar in the early 11th century, but Uyghur Qocho remained mainly Buddhist until the 15th century, and the conversion of the Uyghur people to Islam was not completed until the 17th century. The 12th and 13th century saw the domination by non-Muslim powers: first the Kara-Khitans in the 12th century, followed by the Mongols in the 13th century. After the death of Genghis Khan in 1227, Transoxiana and Kashgar became the domain of his second son, Chagatai Khan...

The Chagatai Khanate split into two in the 1340s,... Chagatayid khan conquered Qocho and Turfan (1390s), and the Uyghurs there became largely Muslim by the beginning of the 16th century... From the late 14th through 17th centuries the Xinjiang region became further subdivided into Moghulistan in the north...

The expansion of the Dzungars into Khalkha Mongol territory in Mongolia brought them into direct conflict with Qing China in the late 17th century, and in the process also brought Chinese presence back into the region a thousand years after Tang China lost control of the Western Regions. The Dzungar–Qing War lasted a decade...The final campaign against the Dzungars in the 1750s ended with the Dzungar genocide. The Qing "final solution" of genocide to solve the problem of the Dzungar Mongols created a land devoid of Dzungars, which was followed by the Qing sponsored settlement of millions of other people in Dzungaria....The crushing of the Buddhist Dzungars by the Qing led to the empowerment of the Muslim Begs in southern Xinjiang...

Dungan Revolt (1862–77) expelled Qing officials from parts of southern Xinjiang and founded an independent Kashgarian kingdom called Yettishar...Large Qing dynasty forces attacked Yettishar in 1876...two regions of Dzungaria...which had been known as "Muslim land were reorganized into a province named Xinjiang meaning "New Territory"... In 1912, the Qing Dynasty was replaced by the Republic of China....

Uyghurs staged several uprisings against Chinese rule. Twice, in 1933 and 1944, the Uyghurs successfully gained their independence...the First East Turkestan Republic independence around Kashghar, and it was destroyed during the Kumul Rebellion by Chinese Muslim army (Battle of Kashgar 1934)... The Second East Turkestan Republic was a Soviet puppet Communist state that existed from 1944 to 1949... Uyghur separatists and independence movements claim that the region is not a part of China, but that the Second East Turkestan Republic was illegally incorporated by the PRC in 1949 and has since been under Chinese occupation....

Uyghurs in Xinjiang suffer under a "fully-fledged police state" with extensive controls and restrictions upon their religious, cultural and social life. In Xinjiang, the Chinese government has expanded police surveillance to watch for signs of "religious extremism" that include owning books about Uyghurs, growing a beard, having a prayer rug, or quitting smoking or drinking. The government had also installed cameras in the homes of private citizens. Further, at least 120,000 (and possibly over 1 million) Uyghurs are detained in mass detention camps, termed "re-education camps," aimed at changing the political thinking of detainees, their identities, and their religious beliefs...prisoners are also subjected to physical and verbal abuse by prison guards....

Beijing denied the existence of the camps initially, but have changed their stance since to that the camps serve to combat terrorism and give vocational training to the Uighur people. Yet, calls by activists to open the camps to the visitors to prove their function have gone unheeded. Plus, media groups have shown that many in the camps were forcibly detained there in rough unhygienic conditions while undergoing political indoctrination. The lengthy isolation periods between the two Uyghur genders has been interpreted by some analysts as an attempt to inhibit Uyghur procreation in order to change the ethnic demographics of the country....

Hui and Uyghur have intermarried in the Hunan area. The Hui are descendants of Arabs and Han Chinese who intermarried, and they share the Islamic religion with the Uyghur in Hunan...

Genetics: The Uyghurs are a Eurasian population with Eastern and Western Eurasian anthropometric and genetic traits. Uyghurs are thus one of the many populations of Central Eurasia that can be considered to be genetically related to Caucasoid and East Asian populations. However, various scientific studies differ on the size of each component... A study on mitochondrial DNA (therefore the matrilineal genetic contribution) found the frequency of western Eurasian-specific haplogroup in Uyghurs to be 42.6 per cent, and East Asian haplogroup to be 57.4 per cent. A further study shows that the western-Eurasian patrilineal Y-DNA haplogroup in Uyghurs is around 65% to 70%, and east-Asian Y-DNA haplogroup around 30% to 35%....

The ancient Uyghurs believed in Shamanism and Tengrism, then Manichaeism, Buddhism and Church of the East....Modern Uyghurs are now primarily Muslim...

Analysis of genetic admixture in Uyghur using the 26 Y-STR loci system

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep19998

Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that both Eastern Asian and European populations contributed to the current gene pool of the Uyghur population. Uyghur populations are also genetically close to Central Asian populations...On the other hand, Central Asian populations are also closely related to Eastern Asian and European populations, consistent with previous studies suggesting the admixed nature of Central Asia...

Indeed, the Uyghur population lies between the European populations and the Eastern Asian populations. The distance-based phylogeny is strongly supportive of the admixed nature of the Uyghur population and the Central Asian populations....

Among the Eastern Asian and European populations, the Uyghur population has a closer relationship with the Hui (Cangzhou, China), the Hungarian and the Mongolian populations. The proximity between the Uyghur population and the Hui population is consistent with historical records, which indicate that the present Hui population is an admixture of Central Asian, Han, Mongolian, Uyghur and other populations formed around the 13th century.

The relatively close relationship between the Uyghur population and the Hungarian population is consistent with the Asian origin hypothesis of Hungarians. The proximity between the Uyghur population and the Mongolian population could be speculatively explained by the migration of Orkhon Uyghurs, proposed ancestors of present Uyghurs, from Mongolia to Xinjiang around the 9th century. The migration allows gene flow between the Orkhon Uyghurs and the indigenes in Xinjiang, such as Tocharians, that are genetically similar to northern Europeans. The fact that the indigenous population is much larger than the Orkhon Uyghur population may also explain why the Uyghur is genetically closer to European populations than Eastern Asian populations as is shown in this study....

The Y-DNA haplogroup tree involving individual samples from Uyghur and reference populations revealed no clear separation of the Uyghur samples from the reference samples. Conclusions: In this study we genotyped 100 Uyghur males at 26 Y-STR loci and demonstrated that the 26 Y-STR loci system is useful in describing genetic variation in a Uyghur population in southern Xinjiang...

Genetic Landscape of Eurasia and “Admixture” in Uyghurs

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2790568/

In addition, our study showed that Central Asia clearly formed a cluster with significant borders when K = 6. The border of the Central Asian cluster went along Lake Baikal, the A-erh-chin Mountains, the Kunlun Mountains, the Hindu Kush, the Caspian Sea, and the Ural Mountains, matching the traditional anthropological definition of Central Asia.... The only insignificant gap around the Central Asian cluster was in northern Siberia, where people led a nomadic hunting lifestyle. Another insignificant border was the southern border of the western East Asian cluster, where people also led a nomadic hunting lifestyle.... Other borders among all pairs of the six clusters were significantly distinct. It is reasonable that the Caucasus, the Anatolian plateau, and the Himalayas became the borders of the clusters by minimizing gene flow and allowing allele frequency differences to accumulate by drift....

"Historical records" indicate that the present Uyghurs were formed by admixture between Tocharians from the west and Orkhon Uyghurs (Wugusi-Huihu, according to present Chinese pronunciation) from the east in the 8th century CE. The Uyghur Empire was originally located in Mongolia and conquered the Tocharian tribes in Xinjiang. Tocharians such as Kroran have been shown by archaeological findings to appear phenotypically similar to northern Europeans, whereas the Orkhon Uyghur people were clearly Mongolians. The two groups of people subsequently mixed in Xinjiang to become one population, the present Uyghurs. We do not know the genetic constitution of the Tocharians, but if they were similar to western Siberians, such as the Khanty, admixture would already be biased toward similarity with East Asian populations.

Different studies yield different results from different geographies with a variety of Haplogroups represented....Uyghurs might have originated from an admixture between Europeans and East Asians....Uyghur probably referring to this 8th century mixed society not a race but, nationality or ethnicity...

Uygur Genetics - DNA of Turkic people from Xinjiang, China

http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/uygurs.html

The Dodecad Ancestry Project shows the following admixture frequencies for the Uygur people: in the 10 Uygurs they tested, their ancestry consisted on average of 55.3% Far-East heritage, 25.9% Atlantic-Baltic heritage, 18.7% Near-East heritage, and 0% Africa heritage...

Some of the Uygurs' haplogroups differ considerably depending on the city/region they live in...

The entire mtDNA genome was sequenced and the mtDNA haplogroups and SNPs were determined. Nine haplogroups were identified in the Chinese Uygur population...

The dataset for this autosomal DNA study includes samples from 11 Uygurs. The Uygurs historically stayed relatively close to the region of Southern Siberia and Mongolia (SSM) where common Turkic ancestry originates from. As a result, their identical-by-descent (IBD) segments shared with people from that region tend to be longer than is the case for Turkic-speaking peoples who moved much further away. According to Figure 5, they got admixture from the SSM region in the 13th-14th centuries....

"The Uygur people, who share a common ancestor (ancient Huihu) with the Yugur, were genetically separate from both sub-clans of Yugur." ...

This study took a look at mtDNA of peoples living in the Xinjiang province. They gathered a total of 252 samples. An excerpt from the Abstract: "Although our samples were from the same geographic location, a decreasing tendency of the western Eurasian-specific haplogroup frequency was observed, with the highest frequency present in Uygur (42.6%) and Uzbek (41.4%), followed by Kazak (30.2%), Mongolian (14.3%), and Hui (6.7%). No western Eurasian type was found in Han Chinese samples from the same place." ...

Uyghurs might have originated from an admixture between Europeans and East Asians...

Our results showed that more than 95% of UIG haplotypes could be found in either EAS or EUR populations...