A Study of Muḥammad Āmīn Bughra’s “Sharqī Turkistān Tārīkhi”,eds. SHIMIZU Yuriko, SHINMEN Yasushi, SUZUKI Kentaro, Tokyo, 2007.
This volume presents an annotated translation of a principal part of Sharqī Turkistān Tārīkhi (historyof Eastern Turkistan), which was written by Muḥammad Āmīn Bughra, one of the representative
Uyghur nationalists in Xinjiang. It also aims to shed light on the nature of this work as a historicaldescription and its value as a historical source for modern Xinjiang.
In the history of Xinjiang, the period from the end of the Qing dynasty to the middle period of
the Republic of China is extremely significant because the nationalism of the Uyghur people during
this period resulted in independence from China. During this historical process, Muḥammad ĀmīnBughra played a very active role as a nationalist leader in political movements. Between 1933 and1934, he organized the revolt of Khotan in order to establish his government in the Muslim rebellion
taking place throughout Xinjiang. In the 1940s, he was on a political campaign to establish the ethnic
autonomy of the Uyghur people, working in the government of the Republic of China in Chongqingand Urumchi. He also published periodicals and books to create awareness about the problems of“Eastern Turkistan” in Turkey—the land in which he settled following his exile from China after theformation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). His work Sharqī Turkistān Tārīkhi is anuninterrupted history of “Eastern Turkistan” from the prehistoric period to the time at which it waswritten. In it, he regards his nationality to be Türk and his country to be Eastern Turkistan. Theframework of its historical descriptions is directly reflected through the standpoint of the author as anationalist who promoted activities such as those mentioned above.
On considering the significance of Sharqī Turkistān Tārīkhi for historical study, we discover its
remarkable importance. First, it would not be an overstatement to say that this work is evidence ofthe modernization of Uyghur society. This is because it is one of the few systematic historicaldescriptions written by a modern intellectual from a nationalist’s point of view. Thus, it differs fromthe main historiographies of this region that were written by authors in earlier periods. Second, thegreat value of this work lies in its being a source of research material on the history of modern
Xinjiang because it presents a first-hand account of the incidents that occurred during the Muslim
rebellion in Xinjiang from the perspective of the leader himself. It also enables us to grasp theessence of the author’s outlook on history as a nationalist leader.
However, as a historical source it has been barely been put to optimal use, partly because thedifficulty of the language used in this work has prevented almost all researchers from using it.
Therefore, in our volume, we present the Japanese translation of an important part of this work andinvestigate this work as a historical source. The Japanese translation presented in this volume
describes the period that begins with the Qing reconquest of Xinjiang in the second half of thenineteenth century in the late Qing era and concludes just before the beginning of the large-scale
Uyghur rebellion from 1931 to 1934 in the era of the Republic of China. This period can be regarded
as an epochal one in the history of Xinjiang, during which the national consciousness of the Uyghur
people awakened and developed. Hence, this translation contains important material for a study ofthe perception and opinion of the nationalists, and the political and social activities and mental
processes of the Uyghurs, during this period.