The Desert of Hami (, Uyghur: Қумул Қумлуқи) is a section of the

Gobi Desert The Gobi Desert (, , ; ) is a large, cold desert and grassland region in North China and southern Mongolia. It is the sixth-largest desert in the world. The name of the desert comes from the Mongolian word ''gobi'', used to refer to all of th ...

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' ...

, China that occupies the space between the

Tian Shan The Tian Shan, also known as the Tengri Tagh or Tengir-Too, meaning the "Mountains of God/Heaven", is a large system of mountain ranges in Central Asia. The highest peak is Jengish Chokusu at high and located in Kyrgyzstan. Its lowest point is ...

system on the north and the Nan-shan Mountains on the south, and is connected on the west with the Desert of Lop.

Przhevalsky, 1879

''This classic account is that of Nikolai Przhevalsky, who crossed the desert from Hami (or Khumul) to Suchow in the summer of 1879.'' The middle of the desert rises into a

plateau In geology and physical geography, a plateau (; ; : plateaus or plateaux), also called a high plain or a tableland, is an area of a highland consisting of flat terrain that is raised sharply above the surrounding area on at least one side. ...

across, which reaches an average elevation of and a maximum elevation of . On its northern and southern borders it is overtopped by two divisions of the Bey-san (Pe-shan) Mountains, which are isolated hills or groups of hills only a few hundred feet higher than the plateau. They are separated from the Kuruk-tagh by a well-marked bay of the former Central Asian Mediterranean (

Lop Nur Lop Nur or Lop Nor (, , from an Oirat Mongolic name meaning "Lop Lake", where "Lop" is a toponym of unknown origin) is a now largely dried-up salt lake formerly located within the ''Lop Depression'' in the eastern fringe of the Tarim Basin in ...

). Between the northern division and the Karlyk-tagh range (or east

), there is an undulating barren plain, in altitude and from north to south, sloping downwards from both north and south towards the middle, where lies the

oasis In ecology, an oasis (; : oases ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environmentBulunzir (or Su-lai-ho), which comes out of China, from the south side of the

Great Wall The Great Wall of China (, literally "ten thousand Li (unit), ''li'' long wall") is a series of fortifications in China. They were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection agains ...

, and finally empties itself into the lake of Kalachi (or Kara-nor). From the Bulunzir the same plain continues southwards at a level of to the foot of the Nan-shan Mountains. The total breadth of the desert here, from north to south, is . Its general character is that of an undulating plain, dotted over with occasional elevations of clay, which present the appearance of walls, table-topped mounds and broken towers (jardangs), the surface of the plain being strewn with gravel and destitute of vegetation. The swelling or undulating plain between these two ranges of the Bey-san measures about across and is traversed by several stretches of high ground having generally an east–west direction.

Futterer, 1896

Karl Josef Futterer, who crossed the same desert twenty years after Przhevalsky, agrees generally in his description of it, but supplements the account of the latter explorer with several particulars. He observes that the ranges in this part of the Gobi are much worn down and wasted, like the Kuruk-tagh farther west and the tablelands of Southeast

Mongolia Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south and southeast. It covers an area of , with a population of 3.5 million, making it the world's List of countries and dependencies by po ...

farther east, through the effects of century-long

insolation Solar irradiance is the power per unit area ( surface power density) received from the Sun in the form of electromagnetic radiation in the wavelength range of the measuring instrument. Solar irradiance is measured in watts per square metre ...

, wind

erosion Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as Surface runoff, water flow or wind) that removes soil, Rock (geology), rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust#Crust, Earth's crust and then sediment transport, tran ...

, great and sudden changes of temperature, chemical action and occasional water erosion. Vast areas towards the north consist of expanses of gently sloping

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolinite, ). Most pure clay minerals are white or light-coloured, but natural clays show a variety of colours from impuriti ...

, intermingled with

gravel Gravel () is a loose aggregation of rock fragments. Gravel occurs naturally on Earth as a result of sedimentation, sedimentary and erosion, erosive geological processes; it is also produced in large quantities commercially as crushed stone. Gr ...

. He points out also that the greatest accumulations of sand and other products of wind scouring do not occur in the deepest parts of the depressions but at the outlets of the valleys and glens, and along the foot of the ranges which flank the depressions on the south. Wherever water has been, desert scrub is found, such as tamarisks, '' Dodartia orientalis'', '' Agriophyllum gobicum'', '' Calligonium sinnex'', and '' Lycium ruthenicum'', but all with their roots elevated on little mounds in the same way as the tamarisks grow in the Taklamakan and the desert of Lop. Farther east, towards central Mongolia, the relations, says Futterer, are the same as along the Hami-Su-chow route, except that the ranges have lower and broader crests, and the detached hills are more denuded and more disintegrated. Between the ranges occur broad, flat, cauldron-shaped valleys and basins, almost destitute of life except for a few hares and a few birds, such as the crow and the

pheasant Pheasants ( ) are birds of several genera within the family Phasianidae in the order Galliformes. Although they can be found all over the world in introduced (and captive) populations, the pheasant genera's native range is restricted to Eura ...

, and with scanty vegetation, but no great accumulations of drift-sand. The rocks are severely weathered on the surface, a thick layer of the coarser products of denudation covers the flat parts and climbs a good way up the flanks of the mountain ranges, but all the finer material, sand and clay has been blown away partly southeast into the Ordos, partly into the Chinese provinces of Shen-si and Shan-si, where it is deposited as

loess A loess (, ; from ) is a clastic rock, clastic, predominantly silt-sized sediment that is formed by the accumulation of wind-blown dust. Ten percent of Earth's land area is covered by loesses or similar deposition (geology), deposits. A loess ...

, and partly west, where it chokes all the southern parts of the basin of the Tarim. In these central parts of the Gobi, as indeed in all other parts except the desert of Lop and Ordos, the prevailing winds blow from the west and northwest. These winds are warm in summer, and it is they which in the desert of Hami bring the fierce sandstorms or burans. The wind does blow also from the northeast, but it is then cold and often brings snow, which clears the air of the usual dust haze. In summer, great heat is encountered here on the relatively low (3000–4600 feet), gravelly expanses on the north and on those of the south (4000–5000 feet); but on the higher ground between, which in the Pe-shan ranges ascends to , there is great cold even in summer, and a wide daily range of temperature. Above the broad and deep accumulations of the products of denudation which have been brought down by the rivers from the Tian Shan ranges (e.g. the Karlyk-tagh) on the north and from the Nanshan on the south, and have filled up the cauldron-shaped valleys, there rises a broad swelling, built up of

granitic A granitoid is a broad term referring to a diverse group of coarse-grained igneous rocks that are widely distributed across the globe, covering a significant portion of the Earth's exposed surface and constituting a large part of the continental ...

rocks, crystalline

schist Schist ( ) is a medium-grained metamorphic rock generally derived from fine-grained sedimentary rock, like shale. It shows pronounced ''schistosity'' (named for the rock). This means that the rock is composed of mineral grains easily seen with a l ...

s and metamorphosed

sedimentary rock Sedimentary rocks are types of rock (geology), rock formed by the cementation (geology), cementation of sediments—i.e. particles made of minerals (geological detritus) or organic matter (biological detritus)—that have been accumulated or de ...

s of both Archaic and

Palaeozoic The Paleozoic ( , , ; or Palaeozoic) Era is the first of three geological eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. Beginning 538.8 million years ago (Ma), it succeeds the Neoproterozoic (the last era of the Proterozoic Eon) and ends 251.9 Ma at the start of ...

age, all greatly folded and tilted up, and shot through with numerous irruptions of

volcanic rock Volcanic rocks (often shortened to volcanics in scientific contexts) are rocks formed from lava erupted from a volcano. Like all rock types, the concept of volcanic rock is artificial, and in nature volcanic rocks grade into hypabyssal and me ...

s, predominantly

porphyritic Porphyritic is an adjective used in geology to describe igneous rocks with a distinct difference in the size of mineral crystals, with the larger crystals known as phenocrysts. Both extrusive and intrusive rocks can be porphyritic, meaning ...

and dioritic. On this swelling rise four more or less parallel mountain ranges of the Pe-shan system, together with a fifth chain of hills farther south, all having a strike from west-northwest to east-northeast. The range farthest north rises to above the desert and above sea-level, the next two ranges reach above the general level of the desert, and the range farthest south or an absolute altitude of , while the fifth chain of hills does not exceed in relative elevation. All these ranges decrease in altitude from west to east. In the depressions that border the Pe-shan swelling on north and south are found the sedimentary deposits of the

Tertiary Tertiary (from Latin, meaning 'third' or 'of the third degree/order..') may refer to: * Tertiary period, an obsolete geologic period spanning from 66 to 2.6 million years ago * Tertiary (chemistry), a term describing bonding patterns in organic ch ...

sea of the Han-hai, but no traces of those deposits have been found on the swelling itself at altitudes of 5600 to . Hence, Futterer infers, in recent geological times no large sea has occupied the central part of the Gobi.Futterer, ''Durch Asien'', i., pp. 206–211, as cited in

Inhabitants

Beyond an occasional visit from a band of nomad

Mongol Mongols are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia, China (Inner Mongolia and other 11 autonomous territories), as well as the republics of Buryatia and Kalmykia in Russia. The Mongols are the principal member of the large family of M ...

s, this region of the Pe-shan swelling is entirely uninhabited. And yet it was from this region, according to Grigory Grum-Grshimailo (1889-1890 explorer), that the Yue-chi (

Yuezhi The Yuezhi were an ancient people first described in China, Chinese histories as nomadic pastoralists living in an arid grassland area in the western part of the modern Chinese province of Gansu, during the 1st millennium BC. After a major defea ...

), a nomadic people akin to the

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ), or Greater Tibet, is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups s ...

ans, proceeded when, towards the middle of the second century BC, they moved westwards and settled near Lake

Issyk-kul Issyk-Kul () or Ysyk-Köl (, ; ) is an endorheic saline lake in the western Tianshan Mountains in eastern Kyrgyzstan, just south of a dividing range separating Kyrgyzstan from Kazakhstan. It is the eighth-deepest lake in the world, the eleve ...

; and from here proceeded also the Shanshani, or people who some two thousand years ago founded the state of Shanshan or Lofi-lan. The ruins of this town were discovered by Sven Hedin in the desert of Lop in 1901. Here, says the Russian explorer, the

Huns The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th centuries AD. According to European tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was par ...

gathered strength, as also did the Turks (Ch. ''Tukiu'') in the sixth century, and the Uighur tribes and the rulers of the Tangut kingdom. But after

Genghis Khan Genghis Khan (born Temüjin; August 1227), also known as Chinggis Khan, was the founder and first khan (title), khan of the Mongol Empire. After spending most of his life uniting the Mongols, Mongol tribes, he launched Mongol invasions and ...

, in the 12th century, drew away the peoples of this region, and no others came to take their place, the country went out of cultivation and eventually became the barren desert it is now.Grum-Grzhimailo, ''Opisanie Puteshestviya v Spadniy Kitai'', ii, p. 127, as cited in During the Hun time, and probably into the Middle Ages, the present desert was a lush steppe grassland able to support sustainable seasonal nomadic horse husbandry on a large scale.

References

;Sources * {{coord missing, Xinjiang Gobi Desert Deserts of China Geography of Xinjiang

Przhevalsky, 1879

Futterer, 1896

Inhabitants

See also

References