page_title: History of Xinjiang
section_title: Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) and Qing reconquest
hierarchical_section_title: History of Xinjiang / Qing dynasty / Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) and Qing reconquest
caption_attribution_description: English: Ruins of a Theater in ChuguchakРусский: Развалины театра в Чугучаке
context_page_description: Xinjiang historically consisted of two main geographically, historically, and ethnically distinct regions with different historical names: Dzungaria north of the Tianshan Mountains; and the Tarim Basin south of the Tianshan Mountains, currently mainly inhabited by the Uyghurs. They were renamed Xinjiang in 1884, meaning "new frontier," when both regions were reconquered by the Chinese Qing dynasty after the Dungan revolt.
  The first inhabitants came from the west. The oldest Tarim mummies, found in the Tarim Basin, are dated to the 2nd millennium BCE, when the Indo-European Tocharians inhabited the Tarim Basin. In the first millennium BCE the Tarim Basin was inhabited by the Indo-European Yuezhi nomads. In the second century BCE the region became part of the Xiongnu empire, a confederation of nomads centered on present-day Mongolia.
  The Tarim Basin was first referred to as "Xiyu" under the Han dynasty, which drove the Xiongnu out of the Tarim Basin in 60 BCE in an effort to build and secure the profitable Silk Road, maintaining a variable military presence until the early 3rd century CE. From the 2nd to the 5th century local rulers controlled the region.
context_section_description: Yakub Beg ruled Kashgaria at the height of the Great Game era when the British, Russian, and Manchu Qing empires were all vying for Central Asia. Kashgaria extended from the capital Kashgar in south-western Xinjiang to Ürümqi, Turfan, and Hami in central and eastern Xinjiang more than a thousand kilometers to the north-east, including a majority of what was known at the time as East Turkestan.
  They remained under his rule until December 1877 when General Zuo Zongtang (also known as General Tso) reconquered the region in 1877 for Qing China. In 1881, Qing recovered the Gulja region through diplomatic negotiations in the Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1881).
  In 1884, Qing China renamed the conquered region, established Xinjiang (新疆; '"new frontier"') as a province, formally applying onto it the political system of China proper. The two previously separate regions,
  Dzungaria, known as Zhunbu (準部), Tianshan Beilu (天山北路; 'Northern March'),
  The Tarim Basin, which had been known as Altishahr, Huibu (Muslim region), Huijiang (Muslim-land) or "Tianshan Nanlu" (天山南路; 'Southern March'), were combined into a single province called Xinjiang in 1884. Before this, there was never one administrative unit in which North Xinjiang (Zhunbu) and Southern Xinjiang (Huibu) were integrated together. Dzungaria's alternate name is 北疆 (Běijiāng; 'North Xinjiang') and Altishahr's alternate name is 南疆 (Nánjiāng; 'South Xinjiang').
  After Xinjiang was converted into a province by the Qing, the provincialization and reconstruction programs initiated by the Qing resulted in the Chinese government helping Uyghurs migrate from southern Xinjiang to other areas of the province, like the area between Qitai and the capital, formerly nearly completely inhabited by Han Chinese, and other areas like Urumqi, Tacheng (Tabarghatai), Yili, Jinghe, Kur Kara Usu, Ruoqiang, Lop Nor, and the Tarim River's lower reaches. It was during Qing times that Uyghurs were settled throughout all of Xinjiang, from their original home cities in the western Tarim Basin.
caption: Ruins of the Theater of Chuguchak after the Dungan Revolt (1862–1877), painting by Vasily Vereshchagin.
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