Kashi (also Kashgar or Kaxgar), city, northwestern China, in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, situated in a fertile oasis at the foot of the Pamirs near the Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan borders. Located on the Kaxgar River, Kashi is the commercial center of the arid western end of the Tarim Pendi (Tarim Basin) and is a natural focus of overland routes linking China with the countries of Turkistan, Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan. Water from wells and from the Kaxgar River supports crops of cotton, grain, beans, and fruit; hides and wool are produced in nearby semiarid grazing lands. Traditional handcrafted cotton and silk textiles, rugs, leather goods, and jewelry, produced for centuries for the overland caravan routes, remain the basis of the economy. Uygur (Uighur)s constitute a majority of the largely Muslim population.
Formerly called Shu-fu by the Chinese, Kashi was part of the Chinese empire during the reign of the Han (206 BC-AD220) and again under the Tang (T'ang) (618-907). After about AD 750, when the Tang withdrew, it was ruled for long periods by Turkic, Uygur, Mongol, and other Central Asian empires before returning once more to Chinese control in 1760. From 1865 to 1877 Kashi was the capital of an independent Muslim state established in the Tarim Pendi by Yakub Beg. Population (1991) 174,570.
