Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
Tashkurgan
Summary
Tashkurgan (officially spelled Taxkorgan; historically known as Shitoucheng and Sarikol) is a town in the far west of China, close to the country's border with Tajikistan. It is seat of Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County, in the autonomous region of Xinjiang. Chinese Tajiks - ethnic Pamiris who live in the Pamir Mountains of Xinjiang - make up a little over half of Tashkurgan's population.
Tashkurgan was a significant stop on the Silk Road, with roads leading to major centers of trade such as Kashgar. It also served as the capital of a number of ancient and pre-modern kingdoms.
Tashkurgan means "stone fortress" or "stone tower" in the Turkic languages. The historical Chinese name for the town was a literal translation, Shitoucheng (石頭城). The official spelling (per the Chinese government) is Taxkorgan, while Tashkorgan appears occasionally in literature. The town's name is written in the Uyghur Arabic alphabet as تاشقۇرغان and in the Uyghur Latin alphabet as Tashqurghan Baziri. Historically, the town was also called Sarikol (سريكال), also spelled Sariqol (سرقول) or traditionally Sariq Qol (ساريق قول).
大唐西域記/12
Tashkurgan has a long history as a stop on the Silk Road. Major caravan routes converged here leading to Kashgar in the north, Kargilik to the east, Badakhshan and Wakhan to the west, and Chitral and Hunza to the southwest (present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan).
About 2,000 years ago, during the Han dynasty, Tashkurgan was the main centre of the Kingdom of Puli (蒲犁) mentioned in the Book of Han and the Book of the Later Han. Later it became known as Varshadeh. Mentions in the Weilüe of the Kingdom of Manli (滿犁) probably also refer to Tashkurgan.
Some scholars believe that Tashkurgan is the "Stone Tower" mentioned by Ptolemy in his famous treatise Geography, which is said to have marked the midway point between Europe and China on the old Silk Road. Other scholars, however, disagree with this identification, though it remains one of the four most probable sites for the Stone Tower.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.