Khotan

Khotan is an oasis on the southern edge of the Tarim Basin, fed by two rivers from the Kunlun Mountains, the Yurungkash and the Karakash, whose names mean White Jade and Black Jade. It lay at the junction of the southern Silk Road and the passes toward India and Tibet, and was for centuries a Buddhist kingdom. Around 1006 the Karakhanid prince Yusuf Qadir Khan of Kashgar took the city, ending its local independence and turning Khotan into a Muslim Turkic oasis.

Under the Mongols, the Yuan court kept a pacification commissioner at the city, which the Chinese wrote as Woduan. Marco Polo, who passed through in the 1270s, noted its cotton, its vineyards and orchards, and a people who lived by trade and craft. After the Chagatai khanate broke up, Khotan was held by the Dughlat amirs and later passed to the Yarkand khanate. The Dzungars dominated the oases in the late 17th century, until Qing armies defeated them and in 1759 set up an imperial resident at Khotan to govern the southern oases.