With a population of 408,900 (2018 census),[4] Hotan is situated in the Tarim Basin some 1,500 kilometres (930mi) southwest of the regional capital,Ürümqi. It lies just north of the Kunlun Mountains,which are crossed by the Sanju,Hindutash and Ilchi passes. The town,located southeast of Yarkant County and populated almost exclusively by Uyghurs,is a minor agricultural center. An important station on the southern branch of the historic Silk Road,Hotan has always depended on two strong rivers,the Karakash River and the White Jade River,to provide the water needed to survive on the southwestern edge of the vast Taklamakan Desert. The White Jade River still provides water and irrigation for the town and oasis.[5][6]
Etymology
Hotan and its surrounding area were originally known as Godana in ancient Sanskrit cosmological texts.[7] The Chinese transcribed the name as 于窴,pronounced Gudana in Middle Chinese (Yutian in modern Standard Chinese);the pronunciation eventually morphed into Khotan. In the 7th century,the Chinese Buddhist monk and scholar Xuanzang attempted to remedy this lexical change. Xuanzang,who was well-versed in Sanskrit,proposed that the traditional name was in fact Kustana (गौस्तन) and asserted it meant "breast of the earth". However,this was likely borrowed from the Tibetan name for the region,Gosthana,which means "land of cows". It is therefore most likely that the original name of Hotan was Sanskritic in origin,a consequence of ancient Indian settlement in the region.[8][9]
Hotan was known to 19th-century European explorers as Ilchi.
The official Uyghur-to-Latin transliteration,and therefore English spelling,of the modern city's name is "Hotan" according to the Register of Chinese Geographic Places.[11] The Hanyu pinyin romanization Hetian has been used on some maps and by some airports. The city's former Chinese name was written with a different character for tian (simplified Chinese:阗;traditional Chinese:闐;pinyin:tián).
Kanishka's Empire (2nd century AD) including KhotanBronze coin of Kujula Kadphises found in Khotan.
The oasis of Hotan is strategically located at the junction of the southern (and most ancient) branch of the Silk Road joining China and the West with one of the main routes from ancient India and Tibet to Central Asia and distant China. It provided a convenient meeting place where not only goods,but technologies,philosophies,and religions were transmitted from one culture to another.
Tocharians lived in this region over 2000 years ago. Several of the Tarim mummies were found in the region. At Sampul,east of the city of Hotan,there is an extensive series of cemeteries scattered over an area about 1 kilometre (0.62mi) wide and 23km (14mi) long. The excavated sites range from about 300 BCE to 100 CE. The excavated graves have produced a number of fabrics of felt,wool,silk and cotton and even a fine bit of tapestry,the Sampul tapestry,showing the face of a Caucasoid man which was made of threads of 24 shades of color. The tapestry had been cut up and fashioned into trousers worn by one of the deceased. An Anthropological study of 56 individuals showed a primarily Caucasoid population.[12][13] A study in 2010 showed that an Eastern Eurasian lineage common in Siberia dominates the mitochondrial DNA of the mummies from the Xiaohe Cemetery. Their Y chromosome is distributed throughout Eastern Europe,South Asia,Central Asia,and Siberia.[14]
There is a relative abundance of information on Hotan readily available for study. The main historical sources are to be found in the Chinese histories (particularly detailed during the Han[15] and early Tang dynasties) when China was interested in control of the Western Regions,the accounts of several Chinese pilgrim monks,[16] a few Buddhist histories of Hotan that have survived in Classical Tibetan and a large number of documents in the Iranian Saka language and other languages discovered,for the most part,early this century at various sites in the Tarim Basin and from the hidden library at the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang.
Indo-Greek Khotan
In the Hellenistic period,there was an Indo-Greek colony in Khotan.[17]
Ambassador from Khotan (于闐國Yutian) to the Tang dynasty,in Wanghuitu (王會圖) circa 650 CE.Khotan (和阗) delegates in Beijing,China,in 1761. 万国来朝图
The ancient Kingdom of Khotan was one of the earliest Buddhist states in the world and a cultural bridge across which Buddhist culture and learning were transmitted from India to China.[18] Its capital was located to the west of the modern city of Hotan. The inhabitants of the Kingdom of Khotan,like those of early Kashgar and Yarkant,spoke Saka,one of the Eastern Iranian languages. Khotan's indigenous dynasty (all of whose royal names are Indian in origin) governed a fervently Buddhist city-state boasting some 400 temples in the late 9th/early 10th century—four times the number recorded by Xuanzang around 630. The kingdom was independent but was intermittently under Chinese control during the Han and Tang dynasties.
After the Tang dynasty,Khotan formed an alliance with the rulers of Dunhuang. Khotan enjoyed close relations with the Buddhist centre at Dunhuang:the Khotanese royal family intermarried with Dunhuang élites,visited and patronized Dunhuang's Buddhist temple complex,and donated money to have their portraits painted on the walls of the Mogao grottos. Through the 10th century,Khotanese royal portraits were painted in association with an increasing number of deities in the caves. Besides this,a particular site,Melikawat functioned as a major Buddhist center in the Kingdom of Khotan.
Satuq's son, Musa, began to put pressure on Khotan in the mid-10th century, and sometime before 1006 Yusuf Qadir Khan of Kashgar besieged and took the city. This conquest of Buddhist Khotan by the Muslim Turks—about which there are many colourful legends—marked another watershed in the Islamicisation and Turkicisation of the Tarim Basin, and an end to local autonomy of this southern Tarim city state.[20]
Some Khotanese Buddhist works were unearthed.[21][22][23]
The rulers of Khotan were aware of the menace they faced since they arranged for the Mogao grottoes to paint a growing number of divine figures along with themselves. Halfway in the 10th century Khotan came under attack by the Qarakhanid ruler Musa, and in what proved to be a pivotal moment in the Turkification and Islamification of the Tarim Basin, the Karakhanid leader Yusuf Qadir Khan conquered Khotan around 1006.[24]
Islamic Khotan
Yūsuf Qadr Khān was a brother or cousin of the Muslim ruler of Kashgar and Balasagun, Khotan lost its independence and between 1006 and 1165, became part of the Kara-Khanid Khanate. Later it fell to the Kara-Khitan Khanate, after which it was ruled by the Mongols.
When Marco Polo visited Khotan in the 13th century, he noted that the people were all Muslim. He wrote that:
Khotan was "a province eight days’ journey in extent, which is subject to the Great Khan. The inhabitants all worship Mahomet. It has cities and towns in plenty, of which the most splendid, and the capital of the province, bears the same name as that of the province…It is amply stocked with the means of life. Cotton grows here in plenty. It has vineyards, estates and orchards in plenty. The people live by trade and industry; they are not at all warlike".[25][26]
Qing period
Amban Ch´ê Ta-jên's guests festing on a terrace in Nar-Bagh, 1912Map of Central Asia (1878) showing Khotan (near top right corner) and the Sanju Pass, Hindutash, and Ilchi passes through the Kunlun Mountains to Leh, Ladakh. The border claimed by British Raj is shown in the two-toned purple and pink band.
Qing imperial authority collapsed in 1912. During the Republican era in China, warlords and local ethnic self-determination movements wrestled over control of Xinjiang. Abdullah Bughra, Nur Ahmad Jan Bughra, and Muhammad Amin Bughra declared themselves Emirs of Khotan during the Kumul Rebellion. Tunganistan was an independent administered region in the southern part of Xinjiang from 1934 to 1937. The territory included the oases of the southern Tarim Basin; the centre of the region was Khotan. Beginning with the Islamic rebellion in 1937, Hotan and the rest of the province came under the control of warlord Sheng Shicai. Sheng was later ousted by the Kuomintang.[citation needed]
People's Republic of China
Shortly after the Communists won the civil war in 1949, Hotan was incorporated into the People's Republic of China.
In 1983/4, the urban area of Hotan was administratively split from the larger Hotan County, and from then on governed as a county-level city.[1][32]
On July 11, 2006, the townships of Jiya and Yurungqash (Yulongkashi) in Lop County and Tusalla (Tushala) in Hotan County were transferred to Hotan City.[1]
Following the July 2009 Ürümqi riots, ethnic tensions rose in Xinjiang and in Hotan in particular. As a result, the city has seen occasional bouts of violence. In June 2011, Hotan opened its first passenger-train service to Kashgar, which was established as a special economic zone following the riots. In July of the same year, a bomb and knife attack occurred on the city's central thoroughfare. In June 2011, authorities in Hotan Prefecture sentenced Uyghur Muslim Hebibullah Ibrahim to ten years imprisonment for selling "illegal religious materials".[33][34] In June 2012, Tianjin Airlines Flight 7554 was hijacked en route from Hotan to Ürümqi.
In a report from the Uyghur American Association, in June 2012, notice was said to be given that police planned to undertake a search of every residence in Gujanbagh (Gujiangbage), Hotan. Hotan is the last municipality in Xinjiang with a majority Ugyhur presence in the core of the city. The UAA viewed this as an attempt to systematically intimidate the Uyghur population in Hotan.[35][bettersourceneeded]
The Sultanim Cemetery (37°07′02″N79°56′04″E / 37.11722°N 79.93444°E / 37.11722; 79.93444) in central Hotan was a historical Uyghur graveyard that also included a religious shrine. According to a 2019 interview by the Uyghur Human Rights Project, the cemetery entombed four commanders of Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan, who conquered the city around 960 CE and spread Islam. Due to space limitations after over a thousand years of burials, multiple bodies had to reuse the same grave, and additionals layers were dug underneath old ones.[36] Between 2018 and 2019, the cemetery was demolished and the western part of the land turned into a parking lot.[37][38][39][40]
Geography and climate
Collecting jade in the White Jade River near Hotan in 2011
Hotan has a temperate zone, colddesert climate (KöppenBWk), with a mean annual total of only 36.5 millimetres (1.44in) of precipitation falling on 17.3 days of the year. Due to its southerly location in Xinjiang just north of the Kunlun Mountains, during winter it is one of the warmest locations in the region, with average high temperatures remaining above freezing throughout the year. The monthly 24-hour average temperature ranges from −3.9°C (25.0°F) in January to 25.8°C (78.4°F) in July, and the annual mean is 13.03°C (55.5°F). The diurnal temperature variation is not large for a desert, averaging 11.8°C (21.2°F) annually. Although no month averages less than half of possible sunshine, the city only receives 2,587 hours of bright sunshine annually, which is on the low end for Xinjiang; monthly percent possible sunshine ranges from 50% in March to 75% in October.
Climate data for Hotan, elevation 1,375m (4,511ft), (1991–2020 normals, extremes 1951–present)
Hotan is largely dominated by the Uyghurs, and as of 2015, 311,050 of the 348,289 residents of the county were Uyghur, 35,897 were Han Chinese and 1,342 were from other ethnic groups.[50]
In 1940, Owen Lattimore quoted the population of Khotan to be estimated as 26,000.[51]
In 1998 the urban population was recorded at 154,352, 83% of which were Uyghurs, and 17% were Han Chinese.[52]
In 1999, 83.01% of the population was Uyghur and 16.57% of the population was Han Chinese.[53]
In the 2000 census, the population was recorded as 186,123. In the 2010 census figure, the figure had risen to 322,300. The increase in population is partly due to boundary changes.[54]
Transportation
Air
Hetian Kungang Airport (IATA: HTN) serves the city. It serves regional flights to Ürümqi. Originally a military use airport, it was expanded significantly in 2002 to accommodate higher passenger volumes. It is located 12km (7.5mi) south of the city proper.
Road
Locals at a busy Hotan market
Hotan is served by China National Highway 315, which runs along the southern Tarim Basin from Ruoqiang to Kashgar, and the Trans-Taklamakan Desert Highway, which run north to Luntai. An expressway is being built between Hotan and Karakax County (Moyu) as of 2014.
Rail
Hotan is connected to the rest of China's rail network via the Kashgar–Hotan Railway, which opened to freight traffic in December 2010, and passenger service in June 2011. The railway station was constructed by a company under the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, and is located in the town of Lasqi (拉斯奎) northwest of the city proper. Passenger train service on this line is limited, with only one train per day, local service 5828/5825, linking the city with Kashgar (8~ hours) and Ürümqi (~34 hours).
Buses
Regular bus services link Hotan with Kashgar. There is also an express bus to Aksu via the 430km (270mi) 'Hotan-Aksu Cross-Desert Highway' which was opened in 2007, travels alongside the intermittent Hotan River, and which takes about 5 or 6 hours. This same bus then goes on to Urumchi taking a total of about 21 hours from Hotan.[55]
Economy
Light coloured or "Mutton fat" jade for sale at Hotan Jade Market
As of 1885[update], there was about 100,000 acres (662,334 mu) of cultivated land in Khotan.[56]
Nephrite jade
Chinese historical sources indicate that Hotan was the main source of the nephrite jade used in ancient China. For several hundred years, until they were defeated by the Xiongnu in 176 BCE, the trade of Khotanese jade into China was controlled by the nomadic Yuezhi. The Chinese still refer to the Yurungkash as the White Jade River, alluding to the white jade recovered from its alluvial deposits. The light-colored jade is called "Mutton fat" jade. Most of the jade is now gone, with only a few kilos of good quality jade found yearly. Some is still mined in the Kunlun Mountains to the south in the summer,[57] but it is generally of poorer quality than that found in the rivers.[58][59]
Khotanese textiles were mentioned by Xuanzang, who visited the oasis in 644 CE. In his Biography it is stated: "It produced carpets and fine felt, and the felt-makers also spun coarse and fine silk."[60]
Ancient Chinese-Khotanese relations were so close that the oasis emerged as one of the earliest centres of silk manufacture outside China. There are good reasons to believe that the silk-producing industry flourished in Hotan as early as the 5th century.[61] According to one story, a Chinese princess given in marriage to a Khotan prince brought to the oasis the secret of silk-manufacture, "hiding silkworms in her hair as part of her dowry", probably in the first half of the 1st century CE.[62][63] It was from Khotan that the eggs of silkworms were smuggled to Iran, reaching Justinian I's Constantinople in 551.[64]
Khotanese silks on display in shop
Silk production is still a major industry employing more than a thousand workers and producing some 150 million metres of silk annually. Silk weaving by Uyghur women is a thriving cottage industry, some of it produced using traditional methods.[57]
Atlas is the fabric used for traditional Uyghur clothing worn by Uyghur women. It is soft, light and graceful tie-dyed silk fabric. It comes various colors, the brighter and rich colors are for small children to young ladies. The gray and dark colors are for elderly women.
The oldest piece of kilim which we have any knowledge was obtained by the archaeological explorer Aurel Stein; a fragment from an ancient settlement near Hotan, which was buried by sand drifts about the fourth century CE. The weave is almost identical with that of modern kilims.
Hotanese pile carpets are still highly prized and form an important export.[65][66]
↑ From map: "DELINEATION OF INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARIES MUST NOT BE CONSIDERED AUTHORITATIVE".
References
Citations
1 2 3 4 和田市历史沿革[Hotan City Historical Development] (in Simplified Chinese). XZQH.org. 2 December 2014. Retrieved 20 December 2019. 1984年和田县析置和田市。{...}2003年，和田市总面积155.04平方千米，{...}2006年7月11日，洛浦县吉亚乡、玉龙喀什镇与和田县吐沙拉乡正式划归和田市管辖。两乡一镇划归和田市管辖后，和田市管辖区域变为五乡、两镇、一个管理区、一个工业园区和四个街道办事处。和田市的行政区域面积由155.04平方千米扩大至465.84平方千米，{...}2010年第六次人口普查，和田市常住总人口322300人，其中：奴尔巴格街道24134人，古江巴格街道34567人，古勒巴格街道27919人，纳尔巴格街道37338人，拉斯奎镇25231人，玉龙喀什镇22614人，肖尔巴格乡39331人，伊里其乡22646人，古江巴格乡13680人，吐沙拉乡48468人，吉亚乡22071人，阿合恰管理区4301人。
↑ Mallory, J. P. and Mair, Victor H. 2000. The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West, pp. 132, 155-156. Thames & Hudson. London. ISBN0-500-05101-1.
↑ Bonavia, Judy. The Silk Road: Xi'an to Kashgar. Revised by Christopher Baumer (2004), p. 317. Odyssey Publications. ISBN962-217-741-7.
↑ Bonavia, Judy. The Silk Road: Xi'an to Kashgar. Revised by Christopher Baumer (2004), p. 309. Odyssey Publications. ISBN962-217-741-7.
↑ Samah Ibrahim (29 January 2019). "China's Uighur Strategy and South Asian Risk". Future Directions International. Archived from the original on 30 September 2021. Retrieved 30 April 2020. The creation of the Islamic State of Yettishar (1865 – 1878), with its capital at Kashgar, which is in present-day Xinjiang, came about as the result of a series of uprisings in Xinjiang.
↑ Qiao Long; Luisetta Mudie (19 June 2012). "Uyghur Jailed Over Religious Materials". Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Radio Free Asia. Retrieved 22 January 2020. Authorities in the city of Hotan in the ethnically troubled Xinjiang region have handed a 10-year jail term to a Uyghur man convicted of selling "illegal religious materials" ahead of a sensitive anniversary. The sentence was passed on Sunday by the Hotan Municipal People's Court on Hebibullah Ibrahim, the People's Daily online news site reported.
↑ Bahram K. Sintash (October 2019). "Demolishing Faith: The Destruction and Desecration of Uyghur Mosques and Shrines"(PDF). Uyghur Human Rights Project. pp.24–25. Retrieved 11 August 2020. The Sultanim Cemetery has a history of over 1,000 years. King Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan of the Kara-Khanid Khanate (999–1211) conquered Hotan (the Buddhist Kingdom Udun at that time), and spread Islam around 960 AD. During the conquest, four Kara-khan commanders, including Prince Sultan Kilich Khan, were killed and Muslims buried them at this location. Since then, the cemetery has been known as Sultanim Maziri (My Sultan Shrine) and became one of the most important cemeteries among Uyghur Muslims who have paid their respects here for over 1,000 years. In the center, the four commanders' graves were still there until China completely bulldozed the entire cemetery in 2019. Many religious leaders, scholars and other important people in Hotan's far and recent history have been buried in this cemetery.
↑ Fred Hiatt (3 November 2019). "In China, every day is Kristallnacht". Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2020. Before After Cemetery demolished The site of Sultanim cemetery in Hotan, Xinjiang, in December, 2018 and March 2019.
↑ 3-7 各地、州、市、县(市)分民族人口数 (in Simplified Chinese). شىنجاڭ ئۇيغۇر ئاپتونوم رايونى新疆维吾尔自治区统计局 Statistic Bureau of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. 15 March 2017. Archived from the original on 11 October 2017. Retrieved 3 September 2017.
↑ Stanley W. Toops (15 March 2004). "The Demography of Xinjiang". In S. Frederick Starr (ed.). Xinjiang: China's Muslim Borderland. Routledge. pp.256–257. ISBN978-0765613189.
1 2 Bonavia, Judy. The Silk Road: Xi'an to Kashgar. Revised by Christopher Baumer (2004), pp. 307-308. Odyssey Publications. ISBN962-217-741-7.
↑ Marc Aurel Stein. (1907) Ancient Khotan: Detailed Report of Archaeological Explorations in Eastern Turkestan. Oxford. Pages 132-133.
↑ Laufer, Berthold. Jade: A Study in Chinese Archaeology & Religion. (1912) Reprint: Dover Publications, New York, N.Y. (1974), pp. 24, 26, 291-293, 324. ISBN0-486-23123-2.
↑ A Biography of the Tripiṭaka Master of the great Ci'en Monastery of the Great Tang Dynasty. Śramaṇa Huili and Shi Yancong. Translated by Li Rongxi. Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research. (1995), p. 163. ISBN1-886439-00-1.
↑ Hill (2015), Vol. II, pp. 1-2. "Appendix A: Introduction of Silk Cultivation to Khotan."
↑ Sarah Underhill Wisseman, Wendell S. Williams. Ancient Technologies and Archaeological Materials . Routledge, 1994. ISBN2-88124-632-X. Page 131.
↑ "From Khotan, silk culture is believed to have passed by way of Kashmir to India and then westwards into central Asia and Persia". Quoted from Chambers's Encyclopaedia, Oxford University Press, 1950, article "Silk".
↑ Bennett, Ian. Rugs & Carpets of the World. (1978). Ferndale Edition (1981). Quarto Publishing, London, pp.182-189. ISBN0-905746-24-4.
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Montell, Gösta, Sven Hedin's Archaeological Collections from Khotan: Terra-cottas from Yotkan and Dandan-Uiliq, The Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 7 (1936), pp.145–221.
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Puri, B. N. Buddhism in Central Asia, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, Delhi, 1987. (2000 reprint).
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