In an interview on Uyghur Nationalism

Let’s look at Gunnar Jarring's Return to Kashghar

Gunnar Jarring again is someone who had experience in Xinjiang and the surrounding area from 1929 onwards. He was an internationally respected Swedish diplomat who held ambassadorial posts all around the world, including a key appointment at the United Nations. However, at the same time he carried on with his scholarship in what we would call today Uyghur studies, although the word Uyghur was not used very much in those days. His book Return to Kashgar is not particularly well-known but it is interesting because it contrasts a visit he made in 1978 with his time in the region in the 1920s and it gives some idea of both the continuity and change in Kashgar society. Kashgar is the town in the southwest of Xinjiang which is in many ways the most important centre of Uyghur culture and religion. It has a Muslim history which goes back certainly to the 15th and 16th Century and probably further back than that. So Gunnar Jarring’s studies of that area are very important. What struck me about the book is that, although he was trying to emphasise the changes that had taken place between the 1920’s and 1970’s, many things actually seemed to be surprisingly similar.

Such as?

The bazaars, the way people dressed, the type of housing they favoured, their attachment to Islam and the importance they attached to Uyghur and Muslim culture. The significance of the book is that it also serves as an introduction to the much wider body of work that Gunnar Jarring produced. He carried out a great many literary and linguistic studies and translated many folk tales and other stories and documents, from what we would call today, the Uyghur language, but which at the time was known as Turki, and made these available to English speakers. This vast body of work included a dictionary of the Uyghur language and a pioneering study of the place names of Xinjiang. So in addition to his distinguished diplomatic career he was a scholar of immense standing.