The ruins of the city of Jiaohe

The Jiaohe ruins are placed to ten kilometers of Turfan. Turfan is one of the most important oases of the Route of the Silk, town, possibly for more than 4.000 years for a race of lineage and Indo-European language related to the iranianos.

The name of Jiaohe means in Chinese "crossing of rivers", and although his surroundings are now semidesert, in the times of his foundation, in the IInd century BC, in the city the waters of two rivers were coming together really. When it was founded it was the capital of the called Kingdom Gushi or Cheshi as the different sources. The Chinese conquered it in the Ist century BC, parking a garrison in Jiaohe. With the end of the dynasty There Is the control of China on these regions practically it disappeared, being supported nevertheless a good commercial relation.

The Jiaohe splendor came to him during the dynasty Tang, since during this dynasty the Chinese recovered his control. The first they put Jiaohe under the Gaochang jurisdiction, in the outskirts. But after the rebellion of the inhabitants of Gaochang and his consequent defeat, Jiaohe turned in the most important city of the current Xinjiang, since in her there settled the principal civil administration and military man of the western regions, the called Office of Administration of Anxi. His importance will continue with the establishment in the year 840 of the Kingdom Gaochang of the Hui. These reyes Hui will remain in Gaochang until the year 1283. Jiaohe will be captured by the Mongols in 1383, drooping slowly.

Jiaohe is a city bogey, which the continuous erosion of the wind of the desert has given a certain uniformity. It had no wall, but if a door in every direction, of that only the Door of the East survives. The principal avenue of Jiaohe, which was cutting the city of north on south, keeps on being the principal artery of circulation of the tourists. In the north part the remains of a big temple are still seen Buddhist. Between expert ruins of the housings there are another fifty temples more, some already almost impossibly to distinguish for not used eye. It has a good number of pagodas, also in the north part, and not far from the city, a called cave of "Thousand Budas".

Although only Buddhists have recognized religious monuments after themselves, in Jiaohe, before the Buddhism the religion was practised zoroastriana. Also, as in other cities of the Route of the Silk, there were Christians' colonies nestorianos, and of maniqueos. Between the ruins inscriptions remains have met in clay characters in several different languages. In Chinese, Sanskrit and Tibetan.

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