The
Tian Shan (
Chinese ?? ("celestial mountains"
[1]);
Pinyin Tian Shan;
Uyghur ???????? Tengri Tagh), also commonly spelled
Tien Shan, is a
mountain range located in
Central Asia. The Chinese name for Tian Shan or Tien Shan, may in turn go back to a
Xiongnu name,
qilian (
??) reported by the
Shiji as the homeland of the
Yuezhi, which has been argued
[2] to refer to the Tian Shan rather than to the range 1,500&_160;kilometres (930&_160;mi) further the east now known by this name. A nearby mountain range, the
Tannu-Ola Mountains (
Tuvan ?????-???? Tangdy-Uula), also bears a synonymous name ("heaven/celestial mountains" or "god/spirit mountains").
The range lies to the north and west of the Taklamakan Desert in the border region of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of western China. In the south it links up with the Pamir Mountains. It also extends into the Chinese province of Xinjiang and into the northern areas of Pakistan, where it joins the Hindu Kush.[citation needed]
In Western cartography, the eastern end of the Tian Shan is usually understood to be just west of Ürümqi, while the range to the east of that city is known as the Bogda Shan. However, in Chinese cartography, from the Han Dynasty to the present, the Tian Shan is also considered to include the Bogda Shan and Barkol ranges.
The Tian Shan are a part of the Himalayan orogenic belt which was formed by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates in the Cenozoic era. They are one of the longest mountain ranges in Central Asia, stretching some 2,800&_160;kilometres (1,700&_160;mi) eastward from Tashkent in Uzbekistan.
