Bichurin's Description of Dzungaria and Eastern Turkestan

Father Iakinf Bichurin translated Qing gazetteers of the 'Western Region' (Dzungaria and the Tarim Basin oases), written after China conquered the area in 1759, into Russian, with a translator's preface and notes. The book gives the Qing view of the towns, garrisons, taxes, products and peoples of Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, Aksu, Turfan and Ili. In his preface Bichurin discusses the name 'Great Tartary' and what 'Tatar' meant to Central Asians he met in Beijing. The corpus also holds his separate History of the Oirats or Kalmyks (1834) under this record. This corpus copy of the Description is the 1829 St Petersburg edition, part 1.

How they knew

Compiled from others

Who “Tartar” means here

In the translated Qing texts the peoples are Dzungars, Turkestanis, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz. In his preface Bichurin reports that Turkestani Muslims used 'Tatars' only for their Turkic kin in Tobolsk, Kazan and Astrakhan, and that no people in Central Asia called itself Tatar.

Why read it

A rare first-hand testimony, gathered in Beijing, on how Central Asians themselves used the word 'Tatar', plus the Qing record of brick-built oasis cities in the heart of so-called Chinese Tartary.

Watch out

The Qing texts were written by the conquerors after 1759 and Bichurin abridged them; his preface remarks are his own. OCR of the 1829 print is patchy.