David T. Allred and Dr. David C. Wright, Asian and Near Eastern Languages

The Uighur Turks are a minority group several million strong now living primarily in the desert oasis towns of western China. They first appeared on the world stage during the Tang dynasty (618-907 AD) as a fierce nomadic tribe threatening China from the Mongolian steppe. By raiding the border they forced the Tang government into doling out lavish protection payments, but later as allies to the Chinese the Uighur cavalry was instrumental in rescuing the government from destruction by civil war. Chinese dynastic records give vivid accounts of official processions to the capital at Changan and magnificent weddings between Chinese princesses and Uighur nobility. Eventually the Uighurs were pushed out of Mongolia by another Turkish tribe (the Kyrgyz), and they settled down to a sedentary life in desert towns along the silk roads. Never again returning to a nomadic way of life, they soon became famed for their scholarship and high culture, even serving the later Mongols as advisers and providing them with the first Mongolian script. Perhaps most interesting is the Uighur’s religious history. Beginning as typical nomads shamanists, while still in Mongolia they converted en masse to Manichaeanism, thereby creating the only Manichaean state in world history. Later they converted to Buddhism then dabbled with Nestorian Christianity before finally converting to Sunni Islam, to which they are now devoted.

Today the Uighur homeland has been absorbed by China, and coexistence between the two peoples has often been far from harmonious. Like the Palestinians, they are a Muslim ethnic group in an ancient desert homeland being dominated by a people they view as outsiders. And also like the Palestinians, they envy the independent states of their neighboring ethnic cousins, which in the case of the Turks were formed following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Thus even in this decade armed rebellions have not been unknown.

My purpose in collating a bibliography on the Uighurs was twofold. First, I wanted to have a clear command of the relevant sources as I prepare for graduate studies focusing on the Uighurs. And second, I hoped that if I found that no similar bibliography had been published, this project could lay the groundwork for such a future publication.

In the first respect I was greatly rewarded. I became familiar with the works of many modem scholars, such as Reinhard Hahn’s and Gunnar Jarring’s work in linguistics and cultural studies, Linda Benson’s modem political studies, Geng Shimins’s mainland Chinese researches, etc. But most exciting personally was my discovery of a wealth of travel literature left largely unread except by a few interested specialists (although Peter Hopkirk’s books, such as Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, have done much to revive interest in these accounts). Beginning in the late nineteenth century, scores of European and Japanese explorers, scholars, hunters, missionaries and adventurers traveled through Xinjiang and left behind narrations of their travels and encounters with local people. Some, such as the Swedish missionaries in Kashgar, stayed for decades and became fluent in the local languages.

But aside from western works, there is an even greater body of Chinese travel literature, some of which dates back hundreds of years. Many of these books, essays and poems were written by famous scholars banished to Xinjiang for them too a forbidding yet fascinating place providing rich fields for scholarly investigation. Copies of these works are easily available from various large libraries, but because they are written in classical Chinese they are even more inaccessible than their western counterparts.

With regard to my second objective, I encountered some difficulties, the most important being scope. In 1978 a Japanese bibliography on Xinjiang was published, and recently a comprehensive, up to date Xinjiang bibliography has received positive reviews, but I was unable to locate a bibliography specifically on the Uighurs. This is probably due to the difficulty in separating the place from the people. Although the Uighurs are in the majority in Xinjiang, there are also several million resident Chinese, plus other Turkish, Mongolian, Manchurian and Persian minorities. It was difficult, therefore, to choose a dividing line on the continuum between works devoted entirely to Uighur history or culture and those only making passing references. For example, should one include Arminius Vambery’s narration of his trip to Bukhara disguised as a Muslim cleric? He traveled in the company of a group of returning Uighur hajis, but the story took place in Uzbek territory, and he never once even used the word Uighur. Or how about the slew of books about the silk road, which invariably make some reference to the Uighurs?

Another major problem with defining scope was language. Because the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous region is on the crossroads of many cultures past and present, the area is a linguistic minefield. Research is published in several Turkish, European and Asian languages, only a portion of which is presently available on American library databases. I now feel that I should have limited this project to English and Chinese, which would have left more time for the actual examination and annotation of sources rather than just collecting titles.

In conclusion, this research project has been very rewarding personally, and I plan to continue it for some time to come. And since there appears to be no Uighur bibliography yet published, this continuing research hopefully will take the form of a publication that will be of use to the wider academic community.