The westernmost Silk Road oasis — where Central Asia meets China
Kashgar sits at the foot of the Pamir Mountains in China's far west, closer to Baghdad than to Beijing. For more than two thousand years it was the pivot of the Silk Road, the point where the northern and southern routes around the Taklamakan Desert converged before crossing into Central Asia. The Sunday Bazaar — the largest traditional market in Central Asia — draws tens of thousands of traders from across Xinjiang, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan in a labyrinth of livestock pens, spice stalls, and metalwork workshops. The old city's adobe lanes, the Id Kah Mosque (China's largest mosque), and th…
Kashgar was an independent oasis kingdom known to the Chinese as Shule from at least the 1st century BCE, when Han dynasty envoys first crossed the Pamir to open trade routes west. It passed through Kushano-Sasanian, Tang Chinese, Tibetan, Qarakhanid, Mongol, and Chagatai Khanate rule before incorporation into the Qing empire in 1759. The British and Russian empires played out the Great Game's westernmost moves here in the 19th century, with rival consulates operating in the city until 1947. The Uyghur population of the Kashgar region has maintained its distinct Turkic-Islamic culture, langua…