Kucha

Kucha is an oasis at the foot of the Tian Shan, on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin. Its ancient kingdom prospered on the road between Central Asia and China and became a renowned centre of Buddhism, music and learning. The translator Kumārajīva came from Kucha, and the painted caves at Kizil and Kumtura bear witness to the region's Buddhist traditions. Its inhabitants once wrote a language now known as Tocharian B.

Mongol and Chagatai rule brought Kucha into a changing political world, while Islam gradually replaced the older Buddhist faith. Religious teachers known as khojas gained influence in the oasis; by the fifteenth century local spiritual lineages had connections with the Naqshbandi tradition. In the eighteenth century the Qing conquest of Dzungaria and the Tarim oases brought Kucha under a new imperial administration. Its old cave sanctuaries and ruined monasteries remained beside the rivers and roads that had sustained the oasis for centuries.