Turfan oasis

Assembled from 19 blocks · 2 evidence · 22 related

1. Story
2. A deep depression on the northern Tarim route, with Ayding Lake at roughly 154 m below sea level the lowest point in China, and among its hottest and driest places. Water is delivered by karez, underground channels tapping the alluvial fans of the surrounding mountains, which is what makes cultivation possible at all. Two abandoned walled cities survive nearby: Jiaohe, on a natural plateau between two river channels, and Gaochang, capital of the kingdom the Tang conquered in 640 to establish the Anxi Protectorate. The aridity has preserved Manichaean, Buddhist and Christian manuscripts and painted silks that have no parallel elsewhere on the northern route.
3. Knowledge
4. Northern Tarim route
5. Turfan oasis
6. Connections
7. Northern Tarim route
8. Tang conquest of Gaochang and the Anxi Protectorate
9. Taklamakan Desert
10. Dunhuang
11. Kashgar
12. Maritime Silk Road
13. Tang Empire
14. Turfan oasis
15. Tang conquest of Gaochang and the Anxi Protectorate
16. Chang'an-Tianshan corridor inscribed by UNESCO
17. Evidence
18. A transnational serial property of 33 component sites across China, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, covering roughly 5,000 km of corridor: capitals, palace complexes, trading settlements, Buddhist cave temples, beacon towers, passes and sections of the Great Wall. The property is defined as a network of routes, not a road.
19. Eyewitness description of the Tarim oasis kingdoms, the Pamir crossing, Central Asia and seventh-century India, compiled the year after Xuanzang's return. It records the state of Buddhist communities city by city and has been used by archaeologists to identify and locate sites.