Mission and Revolution in Central Asia - Svenska Missionskyrkan

Glossary
Aksu Geographical name. A city of south-western Xinjiang, which is
located in the northern rim of the Tarim basin and north-eastern
direction of the Kashgar. It is situated more than 500 km from
Kashgar and around 1000 km from the provincial capital city of
Urumchi. Aksu means “white water” in Uighur language (Eastern
Turki), and it is called “Akesu” in Chinese transliteration.
Bostan Terek Geographical name
Chinese mission (the) The part of the Swedish Mission work directed towards the
Chinese population in Eastern Turkestan.
East/ern/ Turkestan Geographical name. Today called Xinjiang or Sinkiang, the largest
provincial region of the China. This region was a homeland of
Uighurs from history to nowadays. It was formerly known in
Europe as Eastern Turkestan or Chinese Turkestan. It has other
names, used by different peoples at different times, such as
Chinese Tartary, High Tartary, East Chaghatai, Moghulistan,
Kashgaria, Altishahr (the six cities of the Tarim basin), Little
Bukhara and Serindia and so on. In Chinese it has been called
“Xinjiang” (literally meaning “new frontier”, “new territory”,
“new borderland” or “new dominion”) since 1884. Since 1955, it
has been officially called the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region
of China. Today Xinjiang has the distinction of being China’s
largest administrative region, covering approximately 1/6 th of
China’s total territory or 1,646,800 square km.
East/ern/ Turks This term was used by the missionaries for the inhabitants of East
Turkestan, today officially called Uighur. As recently as the
part of 20 th century, the Uighurs were still being referred to by a
variety of names, they were called Turkis, Eastern Turkis,
Mohammedans, Muslims, Kashgaris, Tartaris by the European
Sources. The Chinese categorized them as Huihui, Huimin
(literally, Muslims), Chantou (literally, turban-headed), while
the nomads (mainly in Central Asian Kazakhs, Kyrghizs) and
Russians called them Sart (literally, merchant, town-people or
agricultural people). In 1922, former Soviet government decided to
adopt the historical designation “Uighur” for the émigrés of
Chinese Turkestan, living in the USSR. Under the Soviet
Communist influence, the Xinjiang Authorities began to use this
name for the sedentary oasis population. Actually, “Uighur”,
this ethnic name was officially accepted by the provincial
government in Xinjiang in 1934. Since then, in Chinese the name
“Uighur” is officially spelled “Weiwuer” instead of “Chantou”.
In the early 20 th century, the Uighurs constituted more than 90% of
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