Abdal (Xinjiang)

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The Abdal (or Äynu ) are a people in the Xinjiang region of western China .

Scattered along the old Silk Road from Kashgar to Hotan , in Shule , Yengisar , Yarkant , Karakasch , Hotan and Lop in the Uyghur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, live some population groups who call themselves Äynu . Officially, they are counted among the Uighurs . You see yourself as a people of ancient Iranian descent. Other peoples in the region call them Abdal.

The first reports about the existence of Äynu made F. Grenard 1898. It was reported that they the Turks are similar, but another on the Persian speaking based language, the language of the same name Äynu which, however, the south-eastern group of the day Turkic languages is counted . They used to have a very low social status and were abhorred by the local Turkic peoples. Legends about their origins from past generations suggest that Abdale are descendants of the Persian Shiites and laid the foundation for the spread of Islam in Xinjiang. Grenard thought that the Abdal were in fact the descendants of the ancient Shiite settlers and were later oppressed by Sunni conquerors.

literature

  • Otto Ladstätter, Andreas Tietze: The Abdal (Äynu) in Xinjiang. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1994, ISBN 3-7001-2076-1 .
  • Jutta Borchhardt: From nomads to vegetable farmers. LIT Verlag, Berlin / Hamburg / Münster 2001, ISBN 3-8258-4470-6 , p. 16 ff.
  • International Institute for Strategic Studies, Stephen A. Wurm, Darrell T. Tyron: Atlas of Languages ​​of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas (=  Trends in Linguistics . No. 13 ). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1996, ISBN 3-11-013417-9 , pp. 851 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book search).

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