- Taranchi
The term Taranchi denotes the Muslim sedentary population living in oases around the
Tarim Basin in today'sXinjiang orEast Turkestan , whose mother tongue is Turkic, of theQarluq branch (seeTurkic Languages ), and whose ancestral heritages include Iranic andTocharian populations of Tarim and the laterTurco-Mongol immigrants of theQarluq , Uyghur,Yaghmur andMongol tribes.The same name - which simply means 'a farmer' in Chagatai - can be extended to agrarian populations of the
Ferghana Valley and oases of the entireCentral Asian Turkestan . Although the Tarim Basin (with such oases asKashgar ,Kumul ,Khotan andTurpan ) is the agrarian Taranchis' traditional homeland, they have throughout the Ming andQing periods ofChina , populated regions that are nowUrumqi andIli . Many Taranchis were encouraged to settle in the Ili valley alongside sedentaryXibe garrisons and the nomadicKyrgyz by theQing military governors after the conquest of theJungar Kalmyk s by theManchu Empire . In themultiethnic Muslim culture ofXinjiang , the term Taranchi is considered contradistinctive toSart , which denotes towns dwelling traders and craftsmen. It of course excluded the ruling classes of the oases Muslim states, often calledMoghol /Mughal orDolan because of theDoglat Mongol origin of theChagatay -Timurid dynasties. However, from a modern perspective, Taranchi,Sart andMoghol Dolan s cannot be considered three distinctive ethnic groups, but rather three differentclasses orcastes in the samecultural -linguistic zone that wasChagatay -Timurid .In the early 20th century, the
geopolitical Great Game betweenRussia andGreat Britain resulted in the division of Central Asia among modernnation-states . All oases farmers native toXinjiang became part of Uyghur nationality by 1930. It is interesting to note that while mostSart s of oases or Ili Valley towns became part of the Uyghur nationality, those with particularly strong ties to regions west ofXinjiang became Uzbeks. Sometimes such divisions are very arbitrary, becauseKashgar is can be as distinctive fromTurpan liks as they are fromAndijan liks.
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