Gulja

Gulja lies in the fertile Ili valley, north of the river and beneath the Tian Shan. Its position in a basin open to the west links the mountain pastures with routes toward the steppe and Central Asia. The valley was an important centre of the Dzungar Khanate before its conquest by the Qing in the eighteenth century.

After the Qing campaigns against the Dzungars, the court established the office of General of Ili in 1762 and built a group of fortified towns in the valley. Ningyuan, one of these settlements, grew into the town known as Gulja or Yining. Soldiers and settlers were brought to the region, and the new garrisons made the Ili valley a centre of Qing authority in the western borderlands. Its fields and markets served a population drawn from several parts of the empire.