UyghurThe Uyghur (Uyghur ???????, Uyghur; simplified Chinese ???;&_160;traditional Chinese ???;&_160;pinyin Wéiwú'er; IPA [??j'???][2]) are a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia. Today Uyghurs live primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China.
Large diasporic communities of Uyghurs exist in the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Smaller communities are found in Mongolia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Russia and Taoyuan County of Hunan province in south-central Mainland China.[3] Uyghur neighborhoods can be found in major cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Sydney, Washington D.C, Munich, Tokyo, Toronto, Istanbul and Adelaide.[4]
Throughout history, the term Uyghur has taken on an increasingly expansive definition. Initially a small coalition of Tiele tribes, it later denoted citizenship in the Uyghur Khaganate. Finally it was expanded to an ethnicity, which ancestry derives from two distinct populations Turkic and Tocharian. The fluid definition of Uyghur and the diverse ancestry of modern Uyghurs are a source of confusion about what constitutes true Uyghur ethnography and ethnogenesis.
