Identity
Throughout history, the term Uyghur has taken on an increasingly expansive definition. Initially signifying only a small coalition of Tiele tribes in Northern China, Mongolia, and the Altay Mountains, it later denoted citizenship in the Uyghur Khaganate. Finally it was expanded to an ethnicity, whose ancestry originates with the fall of the Uyghur Khaganate in the year 842 AD, which caused Uyghur migration from Mongolia into the Tarim Basin. This migration assimilated and replaced the Indo-Europeans of the region to create a distinct identity, as the language and culture of the Turkic migrants eventually supplanted the original Indo-European influences. This fluid definition of Uyghur and the diverse ancestry of modern Uyghurs are a source of confusion about what constitutes true Uyghur ethnography and ethnogenesis.
Uyghur activists identify with the Tarim mummies, but research into the genetics of ancient Tarim mummies and their links with modern Uyghurs remain controversial, both to Chinese government officials concerned with ethnic separatism, and to Uyghur activists concerned that research could affect their claims of being indigenous to the region. Victor Mair has stated that the Uyghur peoples arrived at the Tarim Basin after the Orkon Uighur Kingdom (present-day Mongolia) fell around 842 AD.
The first use of Uyghur as a reference to a political nation occurred during the interim period between the First and Second Göktürk Khaganates (AD 630-684).
Read more about this topic: Uyghur People
Famous quotes containing the word identity:
“Personal change, growth, development, identity formation—these tasks that once were thought to belong to childhood and adolescence alone now are recognized as part of adult life as well. Gone is the belief that adulthood is, or ought to be, a time of internal peace and comfort, that growing pains belong only to the young; gone the belief that these are marker events—a job, a mate, a child—through which we will pass into a life of relative ease.”
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“Though your views are in straight antagonism to theirs, assume an identity of sentiment, assume that you are saying precisely that which all think, and in the flow of wit and love roll out your paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of a doubt.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is a terrible blindness in the love that wants only to accommodate. It’s not only to do with omissions and half-truths. It implants a lack of being in the speaker and robs the self of an identity without which it is impossible for one to grow close to another.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)