Concept
Dungan language
Related concepts (16)
Dungan people
Dungan is a term used in territories of the former Soviet Union to refer to a group of Muslim people of Hui origin. Turkic-speaking peoples in Xinjiang Province in Northwestern China also sometimes refer to Hui Muslims as Dungans. In both China and the former Soviet republics where they reside, however, members of this ethnic group call themselves Hui because Dungans are descendants of historical Hui groups that migrated to Central Asia.
Arabic script
The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world (after the Latin alphabet), the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and the third-most by number of users (after the Latin and Chinese scripts). The script was first used to write texts in Arabic, most notably the Quran, the holy book of Islam.
Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan, officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Asia, lying in the Tian Shan and Pamir mountain ranges. Bishkek is the capital and largest city of the country. Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the south, and China to the east and southeast. Ethnic Kyrgyz make up the majority of the country's seven million people, followed by significant minorities of Uzbeks and Russians. Kyrgyzstan's history spans a variety of cultures and empires.
Uyghur language
The Uyghur or Uighur language (ˈwiːɡʊər,_-gər; ئۇيغۇر تىلى, Уйғур тили, Uyghur tili, Uyƣur tili, ujɣur tili or ئۇيغۇرچە, Уйғурчә, Uyghurche, Uyƣurqə, ujɣurˈtʃɛ, CTA: Uyğurçä; formerly known as Eastern Turki) is a Turkic language written in a Uyghur Perso-Arabic script with 8–13 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Apart from East Turkestan, significant communities of Uyghur speakers are also located in Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, and various other countries have Uyghur-speaking expatriate communities.
Xiao'erjing
Xiao'erjing (children's script), often shortened to Xiaojing (minor script, the 'original script' being the Perso-Arabic script), is the practice of writing Sinitic languages such as Mandarin (especially the Lanyin, Zhongyuan and Northeastern dialects) or Dungan in the Perso-Arabic script. It is used on occasion by many ethnic minorities who adhere to the Islamic faith in China (mostly the Hui, but also the Dongxiang and the Salar) and formerly by their Dungan descendants in Central Asia.
Islam in China
Islam has been practiced in China since the 7th century CE. Muslims are a minority group in China, representing 1 to 1.5 percent of the total population (20 million people) according to various estimates. Though Hui Muslims are the most numerous group, the greatest concentration of Muslims are in Xinjiang, which contains a significant Uyghur population. Lesser yet significant populations reside in the regions of Ningxia, Gansu and Qinghai. Of China's 55 officially recognized minority peoples, ten of these groups are predominantly Sunni Muslim.
Dungan Revolt (1862–1877)
The Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) or Tongzhi Hui Revolt (, Xiao'erjing: تُجِ خُوِ لُوًا, Тунҗы Хуэй Луан) or Hui (Muslim) Minorities War was a war fought in 19th-century western China, mostly during the reign of the Tongzhi Emperor (r. 1861–1875) of the Qing dynasty. The term sometimes includes the Panthay Rebellion in Yunnan, which occurred during the same period. However, this article refers specifically to two waves of uprising by various Chinese Muslims, mostly Hui people, in Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia provinces in the first wave, and then in Xinjiang in the second wave, between 1862 and 1877.
Mutual intelligibility
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an important criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects, although sociolinguistic factors are often also used. Intelligibility between languages can be asymmetric, with speakers of one understanding more of the other than speakers of the other understanding the first.
Fergana Valley
The Fergana Valley (Фарғона водийси, Farg'ona vodiysi; Fergana öröönü; Vodii Farg'ona) in Central Asia lies mainly in eastern Uzbekistan, but also extends into southern Kyrgyzstan and northern Tajikistan. Divided into three republics of the former Soviet Union, the valley is ethnically diverse and in the early 21st century was the scene of conflict. A large triangular valley in what is an often dry part of Central Asia, the Fergana owes its fertility to two rivers, the Naryn and the Kara Darya, which run from the east, joining near Namangan, forming the Syr Darya river.
Sart
Sart is a name for the settled inhabitants of Central Asia which has had shifting meanings over the centuries. There are several theories about the origin of the term. It may be derived from the Sanskrit sārthavāha (सार्थवाह), meaning "merchant, trader, caravan leader", a term supposedly used by nomads to describe town-dwellers, according to Vasily Bartold, Gerard Clauson, and most recently Richard Foltz. The earliest known use of the term is in the 1070 Turkic text Kutadgu Bilig "Blessed Knowledge", in which it refers to the settled population of Kashgar.