The Qing gazetteer of Western Regions names

Fuheng and a Qianlong commission compiled this 24 chapter glossary in 1763, after the Qing conquest of Dzungaria and the Tarim Basin. It lists places, mountains, rivers and rulers of Dzungaria, Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, Turfan, Qinghai, Tibet and Mongolia. Each name appears in Chinese with Manchu, Mongolian, Tibetan, Oirat and Turki forms and a Chinese gloss, drawn from administrative records and local informants. The card lists a Siku quanshu manuscript copy. The atlas holds a stored machine reading (OCR) of this scan, of fair to poor quality, but no passages were selected or read for this guide.

How they knew

Official record

Who “Tartar” means here

Not recorded. This is a Qing name list that names the Dzungars (Oirats), Kazakhs, Kirghiz and Turkic Muslims by their own names, not a European work using the label Tartary.

Why read it

It shows how the Qing court itself named the lands that European maps often labelled Tartary, with the native forms side by side.

Watch out

The non-Chinese scripts in the manuscript copy were hand copied and may hold copyist errors compared with the 1763 palace print. The card also notes a companion item that was not examined.