Bazar Dara (Bāzār Darra, Tágh Nák, Tokanak or Maza Dala) was a small mining community at the junction of the Bazar Dara and

Yarkand River The Yarkand River (or Yarkent River, Yeh-erh-ch'iang Ho) is a river in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of western China. It originates in the Siachen Muztagh in a part of the Karakoram range and flows into the Tarim River or Neinejoung ...

s south of the

Kunlun Mountains The Kunlun Mountains constitute one of the longest mountain chains in Asia, extending for more than . In the broadest sense, the chain forms the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau south of the Tarim Basin. Located in Western China, the Kun ...

in the

Xinjiang Xinjiang,; , SASM/GNC romanization, SASM/GNC: Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Sinkiang, officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the China, People' ...

region of China, bordering on the

Taklamakan Desert The Taklamakan Desert ( ) is a desert in northwest China's Xinjiang region. Located inside the Tarim Basin in Southern Xinjiang, it is bounded by the Kunlun Mountains to the south, the Pamir Mountains to the west, the Tian Shan range to the ...

. 'Dara' means 'cliff' in the

Uyghur language Uyghur or Uighur (; , , or , , ), formerly known as Turki or Eastern Turki, is a Turkic languages, Turkic language with 8 to 13 million speakers (), spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western ...

. Bazar Dara can, therefore, be translated, 'Cliff Bazaar' or 'Cliff Market,' an apt description of this ancient settlement. It is 139 km west of

Shahidulla Shahidulla, also spelt Xaidulla from Mandarin Chinese, (altitude ca. 3,646 m or 11,962 ft), was a nomad camping ground and historical caravan halting place in the Karakash River valley, close to Khotan, in the southwestern part of Xinjiang A ...

, and 25 km west of modern

Mazar Mazar of Al-Mazar may refer to: *Mazar (mausoleum), Muslim mausoleum or shrine Places * Mazar (toponymy), a component of Arabic toponyms literally meaning shrine, grave, tomb, etc. ; Afghanistan * Mazar, Afghanistan, village in Balkh Province * ...

(Chinese: Mazha 麻扎), which name simply indicates the shrine of a Muslim holy man. "The name of this kingdom is written Deruo r Dere得若 in the '' Tangshu'' (ch. CCXXI, a, p. 9b) and Yiruo 億若 in the '' Weilüe''. . . ." Translated and adapted from

Édouard Chavannes Émmanuel-Édouard Chavannes (5 October 1865 – 29 January 1918) was a French sinologist and expert on Chinese history and religion, and is best known for his translations of major segments of Sima Qian's ''Records of the Grand Historian'' ...

: "Les pays d’Occident d’après le Heou Han chou." ''T’oung pao'' 8, (1907), p. 175, n. 2.

Geography

Filippo De Filippi, who visited Bazar Dara, described a fort, the ruins of a market for horses and cattle, an extensive bazaar and a long line of ruins of mine shafts and houses along the cliff faces abandoned by goldminers after bandit raids approximately a century before his expedition in 1914. Bazar Darra was of both strategic and economic importance. It was located at the junction of the route via the

Shimshal Shimshal (), previously known as Shingshal, is a village located in the Gojal tehsil of the Hunza District in the Gilgit–Baltistan region of northern Pakistan. It lies at an altitude of above sea level and is the highest settlement in the d ...

Valley to Hunza or south over the Mustagh Pass to

Skardu Skardu (, Tibetan script: སྐར་མདོ, ) is a city located in Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan in the disputed Kashmir region. The application of the term "administered" to the various regions of Kashmir and a mention of the Kas ...

, or west to Shahidulla, and was the centre for a number of goldmines. It also joined the main winter route which led directly north along the frozen Yarkand River to Yecheng via Kokyar, and from there, the route went northwest via Kokyar to Yarkand (

Yarkant County Yarkant County,, United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency also Shache County,, United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency also transliterated from Uyghur as Yakan County, is a county in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous ...

) and

Kashgar Kashgar () or Kashi ( zh, c=喀什) is a city in the Tarim Basin region of southern Xinjiang, China. It is one of the westernmost cities of China, located near the country's border with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. For over 2,000 years, Kashgar ...

, or northeast to Pishan Town and

Hotan Hotan (also known by other names) is a major oasis town in southwestern Xinjiang, an autonomous region in Northwestern China. The city proper of Hotan broke off from the larger Hotan County to become an administrative area in its own right i ...

History

The site of Bazar Dara, almost unknown today, has been known to the Chinese for about 2000 years. It was almost certainly the site of the ancient 'Kingdom of Dere' 德若 mentioned in the ''

Hou Hanshu The ''Book of the Later Han'', also known as the ''History of the Later Han'' and by its Chinese name ''Hou Hanshu'' (), is one of the Twenty-Four Histories and covers the history of the Han dynasty from 6 to 189 CE, a period known as the Late ...

''. In 1535 CE, a group of Muslim soldiers trapped at

Shey Shey is a village in the Leh district of Ladakh, India. It is located in the Leh tehsil, 15 km from Leh towards Hemis. Shey was founded as the summer capital of Ladakh (then called Maryul), by the king Lhachen Palgyigon in the 10th centu ...

Ladakh Ladakh () is a region administered by India as a union territory and constitutes an eastern portion of the larger Kashmir region that has been the subject of a Kashmir#Kashmir dispute, dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947 and India an ...

, fled through here on their way to the

Wakhan Corridor The Wakhan Corridor (; ) is a narrow strip of territory in the Badakhshan province of Afghanistan. This corridor stretches eastward, connecting Afghanistan to Xinjiang, China. It also separates the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region of Tajiki ...

and the safety of

Badakshan Badakhshan is a historical region comprising the Wakhan Corridor in northeast Afghanistan, eastern Tajikistan, and Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County in China. Badakhshan Province is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan. Much of historic Ba ...

. In 1898 an expedition led by Captain H. P. P. Deasy found an outpost built of earth at Bazar Dara, surmounted by a Chinese flag, with a few unarmed Kirghiz in occupation. This was obviously intended as a Chinese boundary marker, but the area had apparently long been under occupation by Kanjuts.For. Sec. F. August 1899, 168/201 (175)

Footnotes

References

*Elias, N. (1895). ''The Tarikh-i-Rashidi of Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlát: A History of the Moghuls of Central Asia. An English Version''. riginally composed in Persian in 1541-42 Edited, with Commentary, Notes, and Map by N. Elias. Translation by E. Denison Ross. London. Sampson, Low, Marston and Company Ltd. * Filippi, Filippo de (1924). ''Storia della Spedizione scientifica italiana nel Himàlaia, Caracorùm e Turchestàn Cinese (1913-1914)''. Filippo de Filippi. Featuring additional essays by Ciotto Dainelli and J.A. Spranger. Nicola Zanichelli, Bologna. Downloaded on 26 February 2006 from: http://dsr. nii.ac.jp/toyobunko/VIII-1-A-100/V-1/. * Hill, John E. (2009). ''Through the Jade Gate to Rome: A Study of the Silk Routes during the Later Han Dynasty, 1st to 2nd Centuries CE''. BookSurge, Charleston, South Carolina. {{ISBN, 978-1-4392-2134-1. Silk Road