Uyghurs

The Uyghurs—also written as Uighurs, Uygurs, or Uigurs—are a Turkic people whose origins and cultural ties lie in Central and East Asia. Their language, Uyghur, is a Karluk tongue with the same roots as Uzbek. In China, they are the designated nationality of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the northwest and count as one of the country’s 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities. Genetically, Uyghurs show links to West Eurasians, East Asians, Siberians, and South Asians.

Their ancestry draws from diverse groups and states that once lived in or moved through the region, including the Tocharians, the Uyghur Khanate, Qocho, the Kara-Khanid Khanate, and the Qara Khitai. Historically, neighboring Chinese, Mongol, Tibetan, and Turkic civilizations influenced and often ruled them. The people of the area originally followed many belief systems, but after the 10th century, especially under the Chagatai Khanate, they gradually converted to Islam. By the 1500s, most identified as Muslims and had abandoned symbols of their Buddhist past.

Historical ethnonyms

Islam remains central to Uyghur culture and identity. Before the 1900s, the Uyghurs lacked a single, shared ethnic name. The term “Uyghur” originally referred to the non-Muslim inhabitants of Qocho—mainly Buddhists—who resisted conversion to Islam until the 1500s. After that, the name fell out of use, and the region where modern Uyghurs live came under Qing rule following the Dzungar–Qing Wars in the 1700s.

Settlers of various backgrounds were moved into Dzungaria, which later merged with the Tarim Basin to form Xinjiang Province. Until 1921, people in the Tarim Basin called themselves yerlik (“locals”), Musulman khalq (“Muslim people”), or used regional labels like Kashgarlik and Yarkandlik. In the 1900s, as movements pushing for autonomy grew, the need for a common ethnic name arose. At a Soviet-organized conference in Tashkent, Turkic intellectuals from across the Tarim Basin chose “Uyghur” for their people, even though they knew modern Uyghurs differed from the ancient ones.

The Uyghur Khaganate’s territory, for instance, never covered the whole area where modern Uyghurs live, such as western Kashgaria. Later Chinese governments kept using “Uyghur” as an umbrella term for the Tarim Basin’s inhabitants. More Uyghurs live in the Tarim Basin than in northern Xinjiang. Several thousand reside in Taoyuan, Hunan.

Significant diaspora communities exist in Turkic countries like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkey, along with smaller groups elsewhere. Since 2014, the Chinese government has faced accusations of widespread persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, including arbitrary arrest and detention, forced sterilization, and forced labor. China denies these accusations. Before the 1900s, the Karluk Turkic-speaking group in modern Xinjiang had no well-established ethnic name for themselves.

They simply called themselves “Muslims” or “Sarts” (meaning merchant or caravan leader), or used the name of their home oasis, such as “Kashgari” for someone from Kashgar or “Hotani” for someone from Hotan. From the 1700s to the early 1900s, Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang were commonly called Chanhui or Chantou Huihui in Chinese—an exonym meaning “turban-wearing Muslims.” This distinguished them from Chinese Muslims (now the Hui people), who were called Hanhui, meaning “Han Chinese Muslims.” The term “Hui” or “Huihui” originally comes from “Uyghur,” which referred to a Siberian Turkic-speaking group (not Karluk) that spoke Old Uyghur and founded the Uyghur Khaganate, Qocho Uyghur Kingdom, and Ganzhou Uyghur Kingdom. During the Mongol Empire, “Hui” was applied to followers of any Abrahamic religion—such as Judaist Jews, Christian Ossetians, and Muslim Chams—and later narrowed to mean only Muslims, including the Hui people and others. Although the meaning of “Hui” shifted from Old Uyghur speakers to Muslims, the Old Uyghur speakers themselves were mostly non-Muslims.

None of the Uyghur Khaganate, Qocho Uyghur Kingdom, or Ganzhou Uyghur Kingdom made Islam their state religion. Their direct descendants, the Yugur people, speak Neo-Uyghur and mostly practice Buddhism today, like their Old Uyghur ancestors. Because of this semantic link, three of China’s 56 officially recognized ethnic groups—Hui, Yugurs, and Uyghurs—share the same etymological root. Though Yugurs and Uyghurs both speak Turkic languages, Yugur (Neo-Uyghur) belongs to the Siberian Turkic branch (like Old Uyghur), while Uyghur belongs to the Karluk Turkic branch.

Usage of the modern ethnonym "Uyghur"

The two groups are also genetically quite distinct. A small number of modern Uyghurs descend from the Qocho Uyghur Kingdom in eastern Xinjiang, whose people spoke Siberian Turkic Old Uyghur and mostly practiced Buddhism. After the Chagatai conquest, they were linguistically, religiously, and culturally absorbed into the larger Karluk Turkic-speaking Muslim population of the Chagatai Khanate. Since then, the Uyghur identity in the modern sense has been shaped by that assimilation.