Xaidulla


Xaidulla, also spelled Shahidullah and Shahidula, also Saitula from Mandarin Chinese, is a town in Pishan County in the southwestern part of Xinjiang Autonomous Region, China. It is strategically located on the upper Karakash River, just to the north of the Karakoram Pass on the old caravan route between the Tarim Basin and Ladakh. It lies next to the Chinese National Highway G219 between Kashgar and Tibet, 25 km east of Mazar and 115 km west of Dahongliutan.
The modern town is located next to the People's Liberation Army barracks named Sanshili Yingfang or Sanshili Barracks. It is so named because the barracks is 30 "Chinese miles" upstream from the site of the historical border outpost. This name is a more common name used by motorists along the G219 highway.

Etymology

The Uyghur name Shahidulla simply means "witness of Allah" or "martyr of Allah" depending on the interpretation of the heteronym "shahid".
During the 1800s, the place was a sepulcher or shrine for a person known as Shahid Ullah Khajeh or Shahidulla Khoja. He was said to be a Khoja from Yarkand who was killed by "his Khitay pursuers" during the 1700s Qing conquest of Xinjiang. His real name was lost. At the time local Kirghiz nomads venerated the shrine and Muslim travelers would pray for blessing on their journey.

Geography and caravan trade

Shahidulla is situated between the Kunlun mountains and the Karakoram range, "close to the southern foot of the former". It is at the western bend of the Karakash River, which originates in the Aksai Chin plains, flows northeast and makes a sharp bend to the west at the foot of the Kunlun range. After making another bend near Shahidulla, it flows northeast again, cutting through the Kunlun mountains towards Khotan. The traditional site of Shahidulla is located northwest of the modern town, about downstream.
Caravaners talk about a "southern branch" of the Kunlun range at the foot of which the Karakash flows, and a "northern branch" which has various passes. The Kilian and Sanju passes are the most often mentioned, which lead to Kashgar. To the south of Shahidulla, the trade route passed through Suget Pass and, after crossing the Yarkand River at Ak-tagh, through the Karakoram Pass into Ladakh. An alternative route to Ladakh from Shahidulla went along the Karakash river till reaching the Aksai Chin plains and then to Ladakh via the Chang Chenmo valley. The Chang Chenmo route was only feasible for large traders. The Aksai Chin being desolate and barren, they had to carry fodder for the pack animals along with their cargo.
The entire area between the Karakoram range and the Kunlun mountains is mostly uninhabited and has very little vegetation, except for the river valleys of Yarkand and Karakash. In these valleys, during the summer months, cultivation was possible. Kanjutis from Hunza used to cultivate in the Yarkand valley and the Kirghiz from Turkestan used to cultivate in the area of Shahidullah. Shahidullah is described as a "seasonal township" in the sources, but it was little more than a campground in the 19th century.
Kulbhushan Warikoo states that, of the two trade routes between Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, one in the west through Chitral and the Pamirs, and the other in the east through Shahidulla and Ladakh, the eastern route was more favoured by the traders as it was relatively safe from robberies and political turmoil:
The absence of turmoil was not a given. In fact, the traders applied pressure on the rulers to avoid conflict. The Ladakhi rulers especially heeded such warnings, dependent as they were on trade for their prosperity.

History

There is legendary and documentary evidence that indicates that Indians from Taxila and the Chinese were among the first settlers of Khotan. In the first century BC, Kashmir and Khotan on the two sides of the Karakoram range formed a joint kingdom, which was ruled by either Scythian or Turki chiefs. Towards the end of the first century AD, the kingdom broke up into two parts: Khotan being annexed by the Chinese and Kashmir by Kanishka.

Early records

Some modern scholars believe the Kingdom of Zihe in Chinese historical records was situated at Shahidulla. This is not universally attested.
Edouard Chavannes tentatively identified Zihe as Kargilik, and several later authors have followed this identification. However, Aurel Stein made a strong case that it was, instead, located to the south of Kargilik: "Both the distance indicated and the situation in a confined valley point to one or another of the submontane oases south of Karghalik as the Tzŭ-ho capital here referred to." Of these "submontane oases south of Karghalik," Xaidulla was the most important, being at a key junction of several roads, leading south to Leh in Ladakh, west to Tashkurgan valley and Wakhan, and north to Yarkand and Khotan.
Part of the reason for the confusion in identifying these early kingdoms is the conflation of Zihe with the Kingdom of Xiye in the historical records themselves. Xiye can be identified as town of Kargilik with relatively high confidence. According to the Book of Han, both Xiye and Zihe were ruled by the king of Zihe, but the Book of the Later Han indicates the former has an error: “The Hanshu wrongly stated that Xiye and Zihe formed one kingdom. Each now has its own king.” The other reason is that Stein had made an incorrect estimation of the Han li as being approximately one-fifth of a mile instead of the now generally accepted. Additionally, both accounts give exactly the same population figures for the conflated kingdoms. The population figures for Zihe in the Book of the Later Han were simply copied from the figures for Xiye in the Book of Han. Book of Han figures probably originally referred to the combined population of both small kingdoms.

16th century

In late 15th century, Mirza Abu Bakr Dughlat from the Dughlat tribe founded an independent kingdom for himself from the fragmentation of Moghulistan. The kingdom encompassed Hotan and Kashgar. However, he was deposed in the 1510s by Sultan Said Khan who founded the Yarkand Khanate. While attempting to flee to Ladakh, Abu Bakr was intercepted and killed. His tomb is located about north of modern day town of Xaidulla.
Although this region clearly must have remained a welcome stop-over for caravans on the important branch route from the Tarim Basin to Ladakh and India, there are few, if any, further written records of it until the British merchant, Robert Shaw, reached it.

19th century

The Dogra ruler, Raja Gulab Singh of Jammu, acting under the suzerainty of the Sikh Empire in Lahore, conquered Ladakh in 1834. The primary driver in the conquest was the control the trade that passed through Ladakh. The Dogra general Zorawar Singh Kahluria immediately wanted to invade the Chinese Turkestan. Alarmed by this development, the British put pressure on him via Lahore to desist. However, all the area up to Shahidulla was taken control of by the Dogras, as the Chinese Turkestan then viewed the Kunlun mountains as its southern border. In 1846, the Sikhs gave up Raja Gulab Singh and his domains to the British, who then established him as the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir under their suzerainty. Thus began a long tug-of-war between the Dogras and British regarding the control over Shahidulla and in fact the entire tract lying between the Karakoram range and the Kunlun mountains.
The British were inclined to view the Karakoram range as the natural boundary of the Indian subcontinent as it defined a water-parting line, south of which waters flowed into the Indus River and the Arabian Sea and north of which the waters flowed into the Tarim Basin. However, the Turkestanis viewed the northern branch of the Kunlun mountains as their frontier. This left the tract between the two as a no man's land. Since there was very little vegetation and almost no habitation in this area, there was no urgent need to control it. However, regular trade caravans passed through the area between Ladakh and Kashgar, which were open to robber raids. Securing trade was of high import to the new regime in Jammu and Kashmir.
Robert Barkley Shaw, a British merchant resident in Kangra, India, visited Xaidulla in 1868 on his trip to Yarkand, via Leh, Ladakh and the Nubra Valley, over the Karakoram Pass. He was held in detention there for a time in a small fort made of sun-dried bricks on a shingly plain near the Karakash River which, at that time, was under the control of the Governor of Yarkand on behalf of the ruler of Kashgaria, Yaqub Beg. Shaw says there was no village at all: "it is merely a camping-ground on the regular old route between Ladâk and Yârkand, and the first place where I should strike that route. Four years ago , while the troubles were still going on in Toorkistân, the Maharaja of Cashmeer sent a few soldiers and workmen across the Karakoram ranges and built a small fort at Shahidoolla. This fort his troops occupied during two summers; but last year, when matters became settled; and the whole country united under the King of Yarkand, these troops were withdrawn."
Robert Shaw's nephew, Francis Younghusband, visited Xaidulla in 1889 and reported: "At Shahidula there was the remains of an old fort, but otherwise there were no permanent habitations. And the valley, though affording that rough pasturage upon which the hardy sheep and goats, camels and ponies of the Kirghiz find sustenance, was to the ordinary eye very barren in appearance, and the surrounding mountains of no special grandeur. It was a desolate, unattractive spot."
He also reported that it was over 12,000 ft in altitude and that nothing was grown there. All grain had to be imported from the villages of Turkestan, a six days' march over a pass 17,000 ft high. It was also some 180 miles to the nearest village in Ladakh over three passes averaging over 18,000 ft.

20th and 21st centuries

By the early 20th century, the whole region was under Chinese control and considered part of Xinjiang Province, and has remained so ever since. Xaidulla is well to the north of any territories claimed by either India or Pakistan, while the Sanju and Kilian passes are further to the north of Xaidulla. A major Chinese road runs from Yecheng in the Tarim Basin, south through Xaidulla, and across the Aksai Chin region controlled by China, but claimed by India, and into northwestern Tibet.
In May 2010, Xaidulla was made a town.

Administrative divisions

The town includes one village, formerly part of Kangkir Kyrgyz Township: