Oasis Life in Eastern Turkestan: The Matrix of Culture, Language and Landscape in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

This study will focus on the Uyghurs, a Muslim and Turkic-speaking people whose traditional homeland is Eastern Turkestan / Xinjiang, in northwestern China. In this arid land, the Uyghurs have depended on a largely sedentary economy based on farming, bazaar trade and exchange with neighboring countries. A main question is to explore how life in this unique environment is reflected in Uyghur day-to-day culture and language. It will utilize philological research methods in order to arrive at a deeper understanding of the Uyghurs’ utilization of ecosystem services such as food, energy, raw materials, medicine as well as commonly observed ideas, taboos, myths and proverbs concerning nature in the Tarim basin in Xinjiang. The study will employ a combination of local sources such as manuscripts as well as material recorded by Westerners visiting the area during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The field is of particular linguistic interest, especially with regard to taxonomy of products. It also has a cultural dimension since many language expressions and toponyms are associated with or directly draw inspiration from nature. Earlier in history, such knowledge was communal property and passed on from one generation to the other. Today however, local knowledge associated with natural resources is threatened for reasons such as political policies directed against traditional ways of life, changing economies and not the least, man’s destruction of natural habitats in Xinjiang.