Throughout history, the term Uyghur has taken on an increasingly expansive definition.

As the history of Xinjiang in particular is contested between the government of China and Uyghur separatists, the official and common name of Xinjiang Autonomous Region ( with its Uyghur loanword counterpart, Shinjang ) is rejected by those seeking independence.

A kilij ( from Turkish kılıç, literally " a sword ") is a type of one-handed, single edged and moderately curved saber used by the Turks and related cultures throughout history starting from the late Hsiung-nu period to the time of the Avar Empire and the Göktürk Khaganate, Uyghur Khaganate, Seljuk Empire, Timurid Empire, Mamluk Empire, Ottoman Empire, and the later Turkic Khanates of Central Asia and Eurasian steppes.

He began researching Uyghur history in 1980, and the book was banned after its publication in 1992.

Uyghurlar ( in English: The Uyghurs ) is a book by poet Turghun Almas on the history of the " 6, 000 year history " of the Uyghur ethnic group of the Xinjiang region of China.

It was one of the books of the period that presented an " alternative Uyghur history ", based on Soviet historiography during the Sino-Soviet split, that advanced the thesis that the Uyghurs were " indigenous " to Xinjiang and should have an independent state.

In contrast to the official Chinese history of Xinjiang, which states that the region was an integral part of China since the Han Dynasty, the book takes a nationalist view, saying that many " Uyghur " states throughout history were independent of, or even dominant over, China.

Tohti began studying for his PhD at Tokyo University's School of Humanities in Japan in 1995, specializing in Uyghur history and ethnic relations.

He has reportedly published several papers on Uyghur history in Japan, and has published a book in Beijing.

His real and only intention was to collect source materials in order to complete his doctoral thesis dealing with the modern history of the Uyghur people.

Today, traditional Uyghur medicine can still be found at street stands.

Most of the Dongxiang live in the Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture and surrounding areas of Gansu Province in northwestern China, while others groupings can also be found in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Qinghai Province, and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

Written by Klaus Lagally, it can take romanized ASCII or native script input to produce quality ligatures for Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Shahmukhi Punjabi, Maghribi, Uyghur, Kashmiri, Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Ladino and Yiddish.

They demanded the Uyghur commander Idikut Khochhar to surrender, having said to him: We have just overcome the resistance of 300, 000 troops, how you with only one city can to withstand us?

Golden, considered the Khazars to be connected with a Uyghur or Tiele confederation tribe called He ' san in Chinese sources from the 7th-century ( Suishu, 84 ).

Uyghur is often pronounced by English speakers, though an acceptable English pronunciation closer to the Uyghur people's pronunciation of it would be.

The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region provincial government recommends that the generic ethnonym, adopted in the early 20th century for this Turkic people, be transcribed as " Uyghur.

Russian scholar Pantusov writes that the Uyghurs manufactured their own musical instruments ; they had 62 different kinds of musical instruments and in every Uyghur home there used to be an instrument called a " dutar ".

It should not be confused with the city of Karabalghasun in Mongolia which was the capital of the Uyghur Khaganate.

The Turkic speaking Yugurs are considered to be the descendants of a group of Uyghurs who fled from Mongolia southwards to Gānsù, after the collapse of the Uyghur Empire in 840 AD, and soon established there a prosperous Ganzhou Kingdom ( 870-1036 AD ) with capital near present Zhangye city on the foots of Nan Shan Mountains in the valley of the Ejin River ( Black River ).

The Arabic-derived alphabet taken into use first came to be the so-called Chagatai script, which was used for writing the Chagatai language and the Uyghur language, but fell out of use in the early 1920s, when the Uyghur-speaking areas variously became a part of, or under the influence of, the Soviet Union.

Note that vowels are still using the older abjab from the Arabic script, and not the newer plain letters for vowels of the Uyghur Ereb Yëziqi alphabet ( composed of pairs of Arabic letters, starting by an alef with hamza, that must be entered separately on this keyboard before the actual vowel ).

Due to the unpopularity of the Pinyin-based alphabet, the Arabic alphabet was reinstalled, although in a new modified form, which came to be known as Uyghur Ereb Yëziqi.

The Abbasid army ( 200, 000 Muslim troops according to Chinese estimates, though these numbers may be greatly exaggerated ) which included contingents from their Tibetan and Uyghur allies met the combined army of 10, 000 Tang Chinese and 20, 000 Karluks mercenary ( Arab records put the Chinese forces at 100, 000 which also may be greatly exaggerated ).

The memory of Uyghur occupation could still be seen up until the end of the 19th century due to the application of the name Ondar Uyghur for the Ondar Tuvans living near the Khemchik river in the southwest .< ref ></ br > which cites from Uyghur dominance was broken by the Yeniseian Kyrgyz in 840 AD, who came from the upper reaches of the Yenisei.

The Uyghurs converted to Buddhism and sponsored building of temple caves in the nearby Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves where depictions of Uyghur sponsors may be seen.

Uyghur riots against white Russians in Xinjiang during the Ili Rebellion occurred, with Uyghurs calling for White Russians to be expelled along with Han Chinese.

For this reason, Khitan small script was originally thought to be a daughter script of the Uyghur alphabet.

They are not to be confused with " Turkestanis ", or " Turkic " people in this article, who are known as Uyghur people, Kazakh people, Kyrgyz people, Tatars, Uzbeks ... etc.

Arabs and Persians acted together in spreading Islam to new grounds and members of Muslim communities in e. g. China ( see Hui Chinese, Uyghur people ), India ( see Ashraaf, Iraqi Biradri, Bihari Muslims, Indian Muslims ) consider themselves to be descendants of Arabs or Persians or both ( of traders, soldiers or religious figures ).

There continues to be concern over tensions in the region, centering upon Uyghur cultural aspirations to independence, and resentment towards what Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch describe as repression of non-Han Chinese culture.

All these languages became extinct after Uyghur tribes expanded into the area.

According to Yin Weixian, the Turkic runic inscriptions record a word uyɣur, which was first transcribed into Chinese as Huí Hé ( 回紇 ), but later, in response to an Uyghur request, changed to Huí Hú ( 回鶻 ) in 788 or 809.

Finally it was expanded to an ethnicity, whose ancestry originates with the fall of the Uyghur Khaganate in the year 842 AD, which caused Uyghur migration from Mongolia into the Tarim Basin.

Uyghur activists identify with the Tarim mummies, but research into the genetics of ancient Tarim mummies and their links with modern Uyghurs remain controversial, both to Chinese government officials concerned with ethnic separatism, and to Uyghur activists concerned that research could affect their claims of being indigenous to the region.

However, his Uyghur chieftain named Chixin ( 赤心 ) or Red Heart broke into the county prison and freed the murderous culprit, wounding several wardens in the process.

Hostilities between the Uyghur and Karluk forced the Karluk to migrate westward into the western Türk-Türgesh lands.

Population of this Kingdom, that was estimated at 300, 000 in Song Dynasty chronicles, practised Manichaeism and Buddhism in numerous temples flourished throughout the country and had forcibly been incorporated into Tangut Kingdom, despite of fierce resistance, after bloody war of 1028 – 1036 AD ( Mahmut Kashgari who lived at the time in Kashgar stated that " Uyghur blood was pouring like a murmuring stream " during this war ).

Another Semitic word for " sacrifice " is the Arabic Qurbān (), which is used in Dari Persian and Standard Persian as Eyde Ghorbân عید قربان, and in Tajik Persian as Иди Қурбон ( Idi Qurbon ), into Kazakh as Құрбан айт ( Qurban ayt ), into Uyghur as Qurban Heyit, and also into various Indic languages such as Bengali ক ো রব া ন ি র ঈদ Korbanir Id.

In the east it extends to the Republic of Tuva, the Xinjiang autonomous region in Western China with the Uyghur language and into Mongolia with Khoton.

This fell out of use during the 10th century, when it evolved into the Old Uyghur alphabet, although it was taken into use again between the 15th and 16th century.

The book has been translated into a number of languages, including Chinese, French, Italian, German, Korean, Malay, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Thai, Russian, Uyghur, Sinhala, and Lao, and many Indian languages including Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Telugu, Kannada, Assamese, Kannada, and Malayalam.

Tumen was incorporated into the Mongolian language from the Uyghur language and is also used in the Mongolian language as another word for " very many ".

It was written for the Mongol royal family some time after Genghis Khan's death in AD 1227, by an anonymous author and probably originally in the Uyghur script, though the surviving texts all derive from transcriptions or translations into Chinese characters dating from the end of the 14th century, compiled by the Ming Dynasty under the name The Secret History of the Yuan Dynasty ().

During the Uyghur period, the Chuy tribes consolidated into the nucleus of the tribes known as Kimaks in the Arab and Persian sources.

For example, in 1962, 60, 000 Uyghur and Kazakh refugees fled northern Xinjiang into the Soviet Union to escape the famine and political purges of the Great Leap Forward era ; in the 1980s there was a smattering of student demonstrations and riots against police action that took on an ethnic aspect ; and the Baren Township riot in April 1990, an abortive uprising resulted in more than 50 deaths.

Tohti was first arrested by Chinese authorities on February 6, 1998, a few weeks into a trip to Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region for research purposes.