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Uighur
(redirected from Uygurs)

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Uighur

 or Uygur

A Turkic-speaking people of Central Asia who live largely in northwestern China. About 8,000,000 Uighurs live in China today, and some 300,000 in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. They are among the oldest Turkic-speaking peoples of Central Asia, first mentioned in Chinese records from the 3rd century AD. In the 8th century they established a kingdom, which was overrun in 840. A Uighur confederacy (745–1209), established around the Tien Shan, was overthrown by the Mongols. This confederacy came to the aid of China's Tang dynasty during the An Lushan Rebellion. The Uighurs of that time professed a Manichaean faith.



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? Mentioned in ? References in periodicals archive
 
The Hui are not to be confused with other Muslim minorities, such as the Uygurs of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in northwest China, who can more readily be identified as national groupings, as they still speak a distinct language and have cultural practices (not necessarily arising out of their religious faith) that distinguish them from the majority Chinese population.
Among those factors conducive to China's survival are its long history as a unified state, the dominance of a single national group in the Han majority, and the inability of the Tibetans and Uygurs to secede without powerful foreign military intervention (as long as the economically advanced provinces are doing so well within a stable China, it is not in their interests to secede), and the experience of the Soviet Union and the Balkans presages caution.
 
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