Kashgar

Kashgar is a city in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in China’s far west. It was a stop on the Silk Road, with its history stretching over 2,000 years. Kashgar located at the convergence point of widely varying cultures and empires, it has been under the rule of the historically Chinese, Turkic, Mongol, and Tibetan empires. The city has also been the site of a number of battles between various groups of people on the steppes. The Chinese first occupied Kashgar at the end of the 2nd century BCE, taking it from the Yuezhi people, who had been driven out of Gansu province.

Kashgar’s historical importance has been primarily as a trading centre. Situated at the foot of the Pamirs where the ranges of the Tien Shan and the Kunlun Mountains join, Kashgar commanded historical caravan routes notably the famed Silk Road westward to Europe via the Fergana Valley of present-day Uzbekistan, as well as routes going south to the Kashmir region and north to Ürümqi and the Ili River valley.