The Taklamakan Desert, also known as Taklimakan and Teklimakan, is a desert in southwest Xinjiang
Uyghur Autonomous Region, northwest China. It is bounded by the Kunlun Mountains to the
south, the Pamir Mountains and Tian Shan to the west and north, and the Gobi Desert to
the east. The name may be an Uyghur borrowing of the
Arabic tark, "to leave alonebehind, relinquish, abandon" + makan, "place". Another plausible
explanation suggests it is derived from Turki taqlar makan, describing "the place of ruins".
Geography
The Taklamakan Desert has an area of 337,000 km2, and includes the Tarim Basin, which is 1,000
kilometres long and 400 kilometres wide. It is crossed at its northern and at its southern
edge by two branches of the Silk Road as travelers sought to avoid the arid wasteland. It is
the world's second largest shifting sand desert with about 85% made up of shifting sand dunes
ranking 18th in size in a ranking of the world's largest non-polar deserts.
Some geographers and ecologists prefer to regard the Taklamakan Desert as separate and
independent from the Gobi Desert region to its east.
In recent years, the People's Republic of China has constructed a cross-desert highway
that links the cities of Hotan and Luntai. In recent years, the desert has expanded in
some areas, its sands enveloping farms and villages as a result of desertification.
Climate
Because it lies in the rain shadow of the Himalayas,Taklamakan is a paradigmatic cold
desert climate. Given its relative proximity with the cold to frigid air masses in Siberia,
extreme lows are recorded in wintertime, sometimes well below −20 °C. During the 2008 Chinese
winter storms episode, the Taklamakan was reported to be covered for the first time
in its entirety with a thin layer of snow reaching 4 centimetres, with a temperature
of −26.1 °C in some observatories. Its extreme inland position, virtually in
the very heartland of Asia and thousands of kilometres from any open body of water, accounts
for the cold character of its nights even during summertime.
Oasis
There is very little water in the desert and it is hazardous to cross. Merchant caravans
on the Silk Road would stop for relief at the thriving oasis towns. It was in close
proximity to many of the ancient civilizations—to the Northwest is the Amu Darya basin, to the
Southwest the Afghanistan mountain passes lead to Iran and India, to the East is China,
and even to the North can be found ancient towns like Almaty.
The key oasis towns, watered by rainfall from the mountains, were Kashgar, Marin, Niya,
Yarkand, and Khotan to the south, Kuqa and Turpan in the north, and Loulan and Dunhuang
in the east. Now many, such as Marin and Gaochang, are ruined cities in sparsely inhabited areas
in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China.
The archaeological treasures found in its sand-buried ruins point to Tocharian, early
Hellenistic, Indian, and Buddhist influences. Its treasures and dangers have been vividly
described by Aurel Stein, Sven Hedin, Albert von Le Coq, and Paul Pelliot. Mummies, some
4000 years old, have been found in the region. Later, the Taklamakan was inhabited by Turkic
peoples. Starting with the Tang Dynasty, the Chinese periodically extended their control
to the oasis cities of the Taklamakan in order to control the important silk route trade
across Central Asia. Periods of Chinese rule were interspersed with rule by Turkic, Mongol
and Tibetan peoples. The present population consists largely of Turkic Uyghur people.
See also Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves
Cities along the Silk Road List of deserts by area
Tarim Basin Tarim mummies
Turpan water system Notes
References Jarring, Gunnar. "The toponym Takla-makan",
Turkic Languages, Vol. 1, pp. 227–240. Hopkirk, Peter. Foreign Devils on the Silk
Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia. Amherst: The University
of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 0-87023-435-8. Hopkirk, Peter. The Great Game: The Struggle
for Empire in Central Asia. ISBN 1-56836-022-3. Tamm, Eric Enno. The Horse That Leaps Through
Clouds. VancouverBerkeley: Douglas & McIntyre. ISBN 9781553652694; ISBN 978-1-55365-638-8.
Warner, Thomas T.. Desert Meteorology. Cambridge University Press, 612 pages. ISBN 0-521-81798-6.
External links Photos of area in China
Satellite Images from China Explorer crosses Taklamakan desert on foot