Presenting the Uygures

The uygures are a people of Turkish origin who lives in the Autonomous Region Uygur de Xinjiang. They are more than six million persons spread over the fertile oases that surround the Taklamakan desert. The Autonomous Region Uygur de Xinjiang is provided with three well differentiated areas: the north consisted of green prairies and mountains, populated principally by the kazajos; the center, with a series of uninhabitable deserts, between which the most important is that of Taklamakan. Tacking to the desert (never in his interior), there is a series of oasis, in fact there are big extensions of fertile grounds watered by the rivers that go down the mountains Kunlun or the Tianshan, where they live through the uygures.

These big oases form a big chain about the desert Taklamakan, separated some of others for a variable extension of languages of desert. In general they are provided with a city, and extensive fields around him. These cities are the heiresses of the numerous principalities and kingdoms of the Route of the Silk, which have already lost his commercial importance, but there keep on being the local political and administrative center: Hotan, Yarkand, Kashgar, Aksu, Kucha, Turfán. They all are still a similar model.

In the grounds that surround them cereals are cultivated especially, principally wheat, and fruits. In fact the fruits of Xinjiang are the most famous of China, the melons of Hami, The pears of Korla, the grapes of Turfan, the grenades of Kashgar, the apples of Aksu or the apricots of Kucha, they are famous on all the Chinese markets.

Although there is an important Uygures proportion living in the cities, like Urumqi, through the regional capital, the majority they remain in these isolated villages of the exterior world, taking lives very similar to those who have gone during the last centuries, in a slow rhythm that scarcely seems affected by the exterior world.

The uygures profess the Moslem religion. His language belongs to the Altaian family, Turkish branch. Due to the isolation between the different establishments uygures, there are important differences in the speech, although they all understand each other between them.

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