Oghuz branch
Salars
A Muslim Turk people of the upper Yellow River whose tradition traces their ancestors to Samarkand.
Salır / Salarlar
The Salars live mainly along the Yellow River around Xunhua, where Xunhua Salar Autonomous County lies in eastern Qinghai. Their ancestors migrated from Turkistan, probably in the 14th century; community tradition holds that they came from Samarkand.
In Salar tradition the migrants were led by a white camel, which stopped and turned to stone beside a spring at Jiezi in Xunhua — the place they then made their home. The Jiezi Mosque is regarded as the community’s ancestral mosque.
Salar has kept its Turk grammar while absorbing many Chinese and Tibetan words, reflecting centuries of life alongside Tibetan, Chinese-speaking Muslim and Monguor neighbours. The Salars are Sunni Muslims, and Sufi orders have played an important part in their religious life since the 17th century.
- Language
- Salar, a Turk language of Oghuz origin, closest to Turkmen, with many Chinese and Tibetan loanwords
- Branch
- Oghuz
- Homeland
- Both banks of the Yellow River around Xunhua, on the border of Qinghai and Gansu provinces in north-western China
- Also living in
- Neighbouring areas of Qinghai and Gansu provinces
Key dates
14th century (probably)
Ancestors of the Salars migrate from Turkistan and settle around Xunhua.
17th century
The Sufi preacher Muhammad Yūsuf teaches among the Salars, bringing Naqshbandi Sufism to the community.
1781
Rivalry between Sufi orders leads to a Salar uprising led by Su Forty-three (Su Sishisan), which Qing forces suppress near Lanzhou.
Heritage
- The white camel origin legend and the Camel Spring at Jiezi
- The Jiezi Mosque, the Salars’ ancestral mosque, which keeps an early handwritten Qur’an
- A historic tradition of raft and caravan trade on the upper Yellow River
Sources
- J. N. Lipman, Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China (University of Washington Press, 1997)
- A. M. Dwyer, Salar: A Study in Inner Asian Language Contact Processes, Part I: Phonology (Harrassowitz, 2007)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Turkic languages”