Uighur Stories from Along the Silk Road

Uighur Stories from Along the Silk Road is an amazing collection of folktales, legends and myths collected in English for the first time. The Uighur people, who lived along the northern rim of the Tarim Basin encountered foreigners from Europe, Arabia, Persia, India, China, Mongolia and Japan who traveled through their land along the Silk Road, the major trading route between Europe and China. This interaction began a rich, multicultural heritage that gave birth to these tales and continued to flourish once the sea replaced the land route for trade. The stories encapsulate Uighur history in the words of the people who migrated from the Northern Mongolian Plateau to Central Asia. They reveal the effects of the gradual conversion to Islam, as well as those of earlier beliefs involving Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity and Manichaeism, on the personality of the people.

Cuiyi Wei is a retired professor of Turkic Languages in Beijing, China. Karl W. Luckert is a professor in History of Religions at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri.