Uyghur culture

nowadays 30% of Uighur vocabularies is arabic-iranian words,why so much? this is due to the fact that after Uighurs converted to islam in 10th century,Islamic influence played very important rule in daily life,lots of people visited Iran and Arab peninsula,and this leads new cultural movement that almost all Uighur scholars imitated arabic and persian style,and knowing persian and arabic became very popular.We can have this information from "Diwanu lughatit turk",the athor Kashgarli Mehmud somehow was against this movment,He said he wrote this book just in order to show people how beautiful the Turk language is,as well as Farsy and Arabic.Afterwards because of the very close cultural exchange among Turks(especially nowadays Uzbeks and Uighurs) and Iranian,arabic people,Uighurs gave up their own alphabet(old uighur script) and started to use arabic script,and aslo accepted lot words.E.g. in Uighur :Adem(a person) ,dereh(tree),meydan(plazza),inqilab(revolution),sherqi(east) ,asman(sky),these words accepted from Farsy and Arabic.This fact makes that turkish languges as Uighur and Uzbek(actually there is no difference between this two languages) are bit different from other neighboring turkish languages.As a matter of fact,in old uighur language(before10th century) scripts and folk songs,we cannot find any persian-arabic words,its more like modern Kyrgyz and Khazaks.

But the other turkish groups like Khazaks and Kyrgyz also converted islam almost same time,but one can hardly find arabic and persian influance on their languages.I guess this is due to the fact that at those period,Uighur-Uzbeks made agricultural base verly early than 10th century while other turkish tribes remained nomadic.Plus,Uighur-Uzbeks are tradespeople(even Khazak people now call Uighurs as Sart,means leader of the traders on the silk road).Of course market exchange led huge cultural exchange among them.We even can find similar musical elements between Uighur-Uzbeks and Persian.

Dear oghuzkb:

nice piece, still I want to make a little correction:

Mahmut Qeshqeri didn't write his book, because he was against the Persian and Arabic languages popularity. During his time, Persian wasn't that popular in this region, but Arabic did, but also Turkic. He wrote in his book " The sun is shining on the side of Turks, Arabic and Turkic are just like two horses racing at the same pace...." He wrote his book for the Arabic people who need to learn Turkic.

It was during the time of Elishir Nawayi, when Persian became popular in central Asia. A lot of Turkic poets were writing in Persian. He was the person against this movement.  In his linguistical analysis book, he compared these languages and said he knew Persian very well, and wrote many poems in Persian himself, but Turkish is very a versitile language.

Even there are quite many Arabic, and IE (not necessarily Persian, considering the local Toharian and Eastern Iranic language elements) languages influence in Uyghur, people literally are using both, such as:

Yengi Yilingizgha Mubarek Bolsun!

Yengi Yilingiz Qutluq Bolsun!

For Beautiful: we have words like Chirayliq, Korkem, Guzel, Uz, Yarishimliq etc.

The grammar and phonetics are still very close to old Turkish, while Qazaq and Qirghiz languages have some influence of Mongolian in the phonetics.

selam to all uigur and Turk brothers.I checked some sites about Uigurs.According to the Chinese 2000 census,the Uighur population in East Turkistan is 8,345,622.I want to ask if this number is correct or does the Chinese government intentionally show the Uighur numbers less than normal in order to prove the world that they are not the majority in the region?East Turkistan is a very big area and the number really seems very little to me.

I want to thank Oghuz for all his comments and information that he shared

Machiavelli's theory ...

Uyghurs are very proud of their culture. As an example, during Tang peroid (which is the most glorious Chinese empire), in the capital of Tang (Chang'an) Uyghur Culture just became dominant, dressing, eating, music, dance, drawing all became fashion according to the poems by Tang Chinese poets. It were Uyghurs who saved Tang emperor (Who fled to Luo yang) by catching  Chang'an from rebelions. From then on, Tang paid tribute to the Uyghurs. All ancient archeological findings along tarim basin, and the saying by famous historian Morgan (the auther of Ancient Society) "The key to the human civilization is buried under the Tarim basin.", always inspire these group of people to cherish their culture.

While talking about other side, you could have contributed your knowledge about Uyghur Culture. Sadly you also hijacked this thread to fall it into tedious political discussion.

Give your proof for any continuous Han existence in this region for the last two thousand years?

Never intermix the ancient Uyghurs with the present day Uyghurs. Present day Uyghurs are the mixture of all the ancient ethnicities and ancient Uyghurs. The people claming this region is PRESENT DAY Uyghurs. No matter what they called themselves in the History. 

You are not even close to the actual situation here. I'm not surprised, as I have seen many such people in this forum, who knows nothing about what they are talking about.

Waving of the Tuition fees? I paid my tuition fee while I was at the university, while some poor Chinese classmates enjoyed this.  Don't generalize. If the majority of the beneficiaries are Uyghurs, then this only shows their poverty.

As for the score, the national test is designed by the central educational bureau, and translated into Uyghur. The standard is based on the Chinese schools. While Chinese sutdents start to prepare for it three years earlier, Uyghurs prepare it just several months earlier. We can't spend our precious period of youth only for coping with exams. So it's normal to have different scales. Chinese students are good at tests, but they have big problem when they are asked to solve a practical task, and Uyghur students are just the opposite. Like it or not, we don't buy your stupid system.

One child policy? Don�t you know the Uyghurs are also have to abide by it, although it�s only extended to two child policy. Considering the absolute number of Chinese, and the increasing number of migrants, this still is far from being fair.

It�s compulsory to learn mandarin for us, where did you get this false info? We learn Chinese instead of English at school as a second language, we have to pass Chinese test to go to any university.  We learn English by ourselves only at the university. We have to pass English test just as Chinese (who have leant English for 14 years) to get admitted as a postgraduate student. Still we are managing. Your visits shouldn�t be mainly focused on the natural spots.  

Yes, people are looking into themselves. They are realizing they are truly the second class in their homeland. Do you know that very few Uyghurs can find a job after graduation? Do you know that many companies just directly tell them that they don�t hire Uyghurs? Do you know there is not a sinle Uyghur who is hired by the Poskam oil refinery factory in the last three years, although there are many Uyghur students who have graduated from petroleum universities in the inner land. What the people want is equal opportunity, not any symbolic policies.