The Yugurs, Yughurs, Yugu (; Western Yugur: ''Sarığ yoğır''; Eastern Yugur: ''Shera yogor''), traditionally known as Yellow Uyghurs, are a Turkic- Mongolic ethnic group and one of China's 56 officially recognized ethnic groups, consisting of 16,719 persons, according to the 2000 census. The Yugur live primarily in

Sunan Yugur Autonomous County Sunan Yugur Autonomous County ( zh, s=肃南裕固族自治县) is an autonomous county under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Zhangye, Gansu Province, China, bordering Qinghai province to the south. It is home to the majority o ...

Gansu Gansu is a provinces of China, province in Northwestern China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeastern part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibetan Plateau, Ti ...

. They are mostly Tibetan Buddhists. The majority of Yugurs speak a

Turkic language The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic langua ...

, while Mongolic and Chinese are also used in eastern provinces.

History

The Turkic-speaking Yugurs are considered to be the descendants of a group of Old Uyghurs who fled from

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 ...

southwards to Gansu after the collapse of the

Uyghur Khaganate The Uyghur Khaganate (also Uyghur Empire or Uighur Khaganate, self defined as Toquz-Oghuz country; , Tang-era names, with modern Hanyu Pinyin: or ) was a Turkic empire that existed for about a century between the mid 8th and 9th centuries. It ...

in 840, where they established the prosperous Ganzhou Uyghur Kingdom (870-1036) with capital near present Zhangye at the base of the

Qilian Mountains The Qilian Mountains (), together with the Altyn-Tagh sometimes known as the Nan Shan, as it is to the south of the Hexi Corridor, is a northern outlier of the Kunlun Mountains, forming the border between Qinghai and the Gansu provinces of n ...

in the valley of the Ejin River. In 1037, the Yugur came under Tangut domination. As a result of Khizr Khoja’s invasion of Qumul, many residents who rejected conversion to Islam escaped to nearby

Dunhuang Dunhuang () is a county-level city in northwestern Gansu Province, Western China. According to the 2010 Chinese census, the city has a population of 186,027, though 2019 estimates put the city's population at about 191,800. Sachu (Dunhuang) was ...

and

Hunan Hunan is an inland Provinces of China, province in Central China. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the Administrative divisions of China, province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi to the east, Gu ...

in China proper. These were the ancestors of the Yugurs, who have remained

Vajrayana ''Vajrayāna'' (; 'vajra vehicle'), also known as Mantrayāna ('mantra vehicle'), Guhyamantrayāna ('secret mantra vehicle'), Tantrayāna ('tantra vehicle'), Tantric Buddhism, and Esoteric Buddhism, is a Mahāyāna Buddhism, Mahāyāna Buddhis ...

Buddhists to the present day. In 1893, Russian explorer Grigory Potanin, the first Western scientist to study the Yugurs, published a small glossary of Yugur words, along with notes on their administration and geographical situation.

Language

About 4600 Yugurs speak Western Yugur, a

Siberian Turkic language The Siberian Turkic or Northeastern Common Turkic languages, are a sub-branch of the Turkic language family. The following table is based upon the classification scheme presented by Lars Johanson (1998). All languages of the branch combined have ...

, and about 2800 Eastern Yugur, a

Mongolic language The Mongolic languages are a language family spoken by the Mongolic peoples in North Asia, East Asia, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe mostly in Mongolia and surrounding areas and in Kalmykia and Buryatia. The best-known member of this language f ...

. Western Yugur has preserved many archaisms of

Old Uyghur Old Uyghur () was a Turkic language spoken in Qocho from the 9th–14th centuries as well as in Gansu. History Old Uyghur evolved from Old Turkic, a Siberian Turkic language, after the Uyghur Khaganate broke up and remnants of it migrated ...

. Both Yugur languages are now unwritten, although the

Old Uyghur alphabet The Old Uyghur alphabet was a list of alphabets used by Turkic languages, Turkic script used for writing Old Uyghur, a variety of Old Turkic spoken in Turpan and Gansu that is the ancestor of the modern Western Yugur language. The term "Old Uyghu ...

was in use in some Yugur communities until the end of 17th century.

References

External links

Slide shows, maps and other material on the Yugur from author Eric Enno Tamm
*Original Western Yugur texts with English translation plus PDF grammar of Sarig Yugu

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yugur Mongol peoples Turkic peoples of Asia Ethnic groups officially recognized by China Buddhism in Xinjiang Tibetan Buddhism in China