Uyghur culture has evolved as a result of significant confluence of geographical, historical and religious factors over a two thousand year period. Geographically the Uyghur have always been at the very centre of eastern and western cultures. Originally nomadic their settling at the hub of the historic Silk Road routes which ran through present day Xinjiang brought to them the eastern and western influences of China, Europe, North Africa, Russia, India and other areas, all going into a fantastic melting pot that became the Uighur culture of today.

Uyghur culture is a rich lifestyle centred around the family, food, dance and music. Uyghur architecture, particularly their religious architecture is quite fine and as reflective of a glorious past.

Uyghur religion has also played a major part in Uyghur culture and has has evolved through several transitions including Shamanism, Manachaeism, Buddhism and even Christianity before Islam became the predominate religion. Each has added indelibly to the richness of Uighur culture.

i found 2 distinct kinds of Uyghurs. One looks like Chinese or mongols, only a little darker, another kind looks like  middle east or Arabs. The speak the same language.

they may live together for thousands of years. how could they look so different. i am a chinese from east china and all people there are same

Hi turkish delight

Are u aUyghur? and what is that blue flad?

Malizai_ that flag is the flag of Eastern Turkistan . Home of the Uygur Turks!

Baret Haci (is he famous?) protesting

East Turkistan is currently under Chinese occupation

The Uygur culture is similar to the Oguz Turks (Turkey, TRNC etc)culture since our nomadic fathers of past lived along with them in Central Asia. Even their language is very similar.

The Uygur Turks are the only Turkic people to keep the beutifull Arabic script as their alphabet (in some ways very similar to the old Turkish script used for a thousend years by the Ottomans and Seljuks):

One who knows Turkish will be amazed as to the similarity of then numbers.

The Uygurs for a brief while due to Chinese presure also made a Latin equivelent to their alphabet, however after they were allowed to resume with the previous script. Many consider this a move to have a whole generation that are unable to read in their native language.

Above: Uchqun Mosque

Mosque in Turpin, Eastern Turkistan

I too have seen Bosnian and infact Kosovans that look Central Asian. Iam not sure as to why, although a logical reason could be that for hundreds of years Central Asians have been passing from Eastern Europe. An example of such include the Huns, Bulgars and then these areas came under Turkic rule (Ottoman). Perhaps it would be best to open a topic on this, very intersting indeed.

Turkish Delight,

What do you mean by Uyghur religion? Is there any religion called Uyghur religion?

In reply to the original question, there were campaigns led by the arab armies accompanied by persian soldiers.

758 tang dynasty force under the abbasids. Lushan rebellion. arab/persians(20000)

801, Nanchao kingdom in Yunnan against tibetans. arab/sogdians(20000)

1070-1080. Northern Song Chinese. arab and accompanied soldiers persumably persian.(15000)

supposedly a lot of them stayed behind and settled. Therefore it may be concieved that there have been intermarriages since.

does anyone know who was the last ruler of kashgar before the communists.

thank you

does anyone know who was the last ruler of kashgar before the communists.

thank you

[/QUOTE]

I am not sure When he left Kashgar,his name is Toemur,ruled Kashgar the 1930s.

Here is a vidio ,condensed show about Uighur culture,check it out...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaaCjHHinz4 - click here  please

I am not sure When he left Kashgar,his name is Toemur,ruled Kashgar the 1930s.

do you his origin or last name

do you his origin or last name

are you from kashgar?

What are the main problems that East Turkistanis have today?

No, I am from northern part,but I am quite familiar about it.

The most problem is assimilation. Instructional Uighur language has already banned in Universities and high schools in cities( by the sudden policy from chinese central government in 2004).Now its going to elementary schools.Religion practice of students and workers is not allowed through Eastern Turkistan,this law has become very strict since  the Ghulja demonstration in 1997. Colony movement depending on  Niccol¨° Machiavelli s theory has been going on.By 2050,government estimate 400 million chinese from inner china will be setteld down East Turkistan.And then thousands years of Uighur culture will die out,cause 50years experience told us that almost all chinese settlers dont respect our mores,habitudes,customs.They only tend to assimilate us due to severe cultural clash.

Consequence is high unemployment rate and poorness among Uighur and other minority groops.

This video was made by an Uygur in my forum.  I'm glad to see it being recognized and gain popularity outside of my forum.  I'll let him know, I'm sure it'll make him happy.

You can find out more from this web site: http://www.uygur.org/ - http://www.uygur.org/

Not just the numbers, if you study their language you'll find many many more similarities.  I'm a Turkish speaker and am practicing Uygur, I love how many similiarities there are in our two dialects.

Hi Feramez,

Interestingly,I am a native uighur speaker,same feeling with you,I have not foud language problem when i go to turkish market here in germany.Even in mosque I can have an overall idea what Turkish imam is saying:-)

all the problem is on the script, even if its latin i dont get it

But songs are ok...

Understanding the Latin alphabet is easier than listening to someone speak.  I hope to learn their official Arabic script soon.

Hey nice to meet you. I'll be going to East Turkistan this August, again, but this time I'll be living there for a couple years.  Where in East Turkistan are you or your family from?

oh really,happy for you,I am sure you will see lot things,hope you will enjoy there.

I am from a countryside close to Ghulja city

When I was there for 3 weeks that summer I saw so much, especially since one of my tour guides was an Uygur.  He wasn't afraid to tell me and show me the truth.  But I'm sure with me staying there for a couple years I'll see a whole lot more, some great stuff and some upsetting stuff.  One question, and please be honest...me being a Turk, how will I be treated there while living there?  When I was visiting I was treated great by the Uygurs when they heard I was a Turk, but that may be just because I was there temporarily.  Would it be the same?  I think it will be but I just want to be sure, since I know many Turks in Central Asia have a little dislike towards Turkish people because of Turkeys governments political views.

Originally posted by DayI Originally posted by Feramez Originally posted by oghuzkb Hi Feramez, Interestingly,I am a native uighur speaker,same feeling with you,I have not foud language problem when i go to turkish market here in germany.Even in mosque I can have an overall idea what Turkish imam is saying:-) Hey nice to meet you. I'll be going to East Turkistan this August, again, but this time I'll be living there for a couple years.  Where in East Turkistan are you or your family from? wow faramez, great man. Maybe you and Oghuzkb gonna be neighbours Dont forget to highlight us here, exspecially me with pics and such.

I'll hope to post many pics, I'm planning on doing so in my forum.  But there's a problem.  Because of Chinas censorship I may not be able to access my forum or this forum, this is why I'm privatly planning on making a certain person moderator of my forum.  I hope I wont have to do this because I put so much work and time into it, it'smore than just some internet forum to me and the members.  We're working on actual projects to spread Pan-Turkism and everything. Anyway, don't want to get too much off topic now.

For sure it would be same.The reason is almost all uighur people who knows the current situation know turkish people are on our side(supporting our independence) whatever the government political view.And most of us think its good for us if one foreigner lives with us,at least who can see what is Uighur people suffering at present.If you go to countryside,all the people are so friendly ,they dont care where you from or where you livin.

I have always wondered why the uighur dont get much media coverage, maybe because they are not jewish.

But we need more stuff on Uighur culture on this forum, like arts and music, pics etc.

That's good to know.  Most of the people I know are in Ghulja and Kashgar but I think I'll be in Urumqi.

Here you go everyone, the link to the new video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-792517247752322711&q=uyghurwolf&pl=true - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-792517247752322711& amp;q=uyghurwolf&pl=true

Let us know what you think.

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.

Well accepted theory about culture and origin of Uighur people which is far from political bias as below:

Before 9th century,there were two Uighur groups called western Uighurs(agricultural and trade) and eastern Uighurs(nomdas).

In 840 AD,eastern Uighurs were defeated Kyrgyz and suffered kinda deases,then forced to move to north-east part of modern East Turkistan----Turpan-Khumul region,afterwards built Uighur-khuju kingdom(capital called Idikhut and Beshbalikh)which survived till Mongol invasion.At the same time,south to Uighur-khuju kingdom ,there was western Uighur kingdom called Kharahany(capital called Kashgar and Balasaghun).After Kharahanys converted islam,they started war on Uighur-khuju kingdom which lasted several hunderd years.there are lot of  uighur folk songs describe the war happend in Ilibalikh( present Ghulja city),I will post them later.

Now even from the dilect,we can have some evidence.e.g. Turpan uighurs call key as kilit,this is same with nomad Khazaks,while southern Uighurs call key as achquch.there is lot examples like this.The new evidences about Lopnur Uighurs(considered origin of western Uighurs) are also confirming that their life style was agricultural from the very beginning,even date back to 6412BC.

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.

Dear barbar,

Thanks a lot for your correction,I made a big mistake.

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

selam to all uighur 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

The number of Uighurs in Xinjiang is definiately low thanks to the Chinese government's policy of flooding non-Chinese areas with Chinese settlers to basically dissolve the native culture. The Uighurs of Xinjiang are mostly poor and treated very badly by the Chinese government and Chinese majority. 

Machiavelli's theory ...

yes,I´v read one of his books,I don´t know the Italian name of that book,the meaning of Uighur translation is--- handbook of rulers.The theory I´v mentioned here is,if invaders try to get the new land eternally,the best way is colonization.

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.

Don't be mad, man. I m well educated and know Xinjiang's history and geography well. I ve been there several times, one of my teacher live there for 30 years, I will see him this summer.  In my previous reply, I talked my own experience, not what the government views. So sorry for no linkage offered. 

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.

you know what, despite your consistent bashness, like called me nonsense , u did not talk anything rational, u know it? I guess u dont know, give me facts, give me proofs, will u???? NO, u failed to do it, nor did your buddies,  and u even dont know there are polygamy in China, and what u mean ancient Uyghurs are not present day Uyghurs??? This is ridiculars, Why u didnot start a thread like Present Uyghurs culture, and Why u guys not directly answer my previous questions but wiggle to other parts? Because, u dont have any facts to tell, would u guy dare have a face off debate with me ? I m afraid u wouldnt, what u are good at is just like ''stop nonsense'', ''u know nothing about Uyghurs and China'',''u know nothing about what u talking''...etc. Would u guys learn to have some constructive talks??? They are really cheap shots i have to tell u. And I wonder who hijacked the thread into another bash  China crap.

Don't be mad, man. I m well educated and know Xinjiang's history and geography well. I ve been there several times, one of my teacher live there for 30 years, I will see him this summer.  In my previous reply, I talked my own experience, not what the government views. So sorry for no linkage offered. 

I am from kashgar and we descended from huns. Akhonby

The Han CHinese consists of many historical non-Chinese groups assimilated into the "Han Chinese" identity. According to genetic studies, Southern Chinese like me have more in common with non-CHinese people like Thais and Vietnamese genetically than with Northern Chinese. Thats because Southern China was home to many non-Chinese ethnic groups considered barbarians by the northern Chinese and eventually assimilated.

Dear http://www.allempires.com/forum/member_profile.asp?PF=1687&FID=13 - barbar ,
I must emphasize that my English proficiency is not so much that I am not able to discern the subtle atmosphere floating some words constantly. However I think your attitude is not so kind that you perhaps want to brawl with me instead of discussion. If it's true, I hope that you'd better not to reply this post after you read it just in case unnecessarily nonsense will waste our times. If it is not true, I apologize here for my imprudence.

Dear barbar, it's time to go to bed in my time zone, I hope you will be fine and reply this post as a gentleman instead of a XXXblablabla...Good night.

Chinese believe in the Middle Kingdom and therefore imperialism...and assimilation. Learn from history, China will try and do to the Uigurs what they did to the historical non-Chinese peoples of Southern China hundreds of years ago.