Jiaohe Ruins (Yarkhoto)
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- A precinct of 101 stupas stands in the north of the city: four groups of 25 small stupas around a central one modelled on the Mahabodhi type of Bodh Gaya.
- In the southern quarter the builders dug the ground down by up to about 5 metres, so the tops of the surviving earthen blocks mark the plateau's original surface.
- The largest monastery, at the northern end of the central avenue, measures roughly 90 by 60 metres and dates from the Uyghur period.
- Courtyard houses combined three levels of living space: a flat roof for sleeping on summer nights, ground-floor rooms and cool underground chambers.
- More than 2,000 tombs lie on the plateau across the western ravine, and finds there include Persian silver coins alongside Tang bronze money.
- In a cemetery north of the city, one large tomb is ringed by 16 lesser burials and 24 pits holding sacrificed horses.
- Wells are scattered all over the city, many of them about a metre across, with footholds cut into their walls for climbing in and out.
- Cave shrines in the ravine walls nearby preserve inscriptions in Chinese and Old Uyghur, and some in Old Turkic on Manichaean subjects.
- Four ruined beacon towers still stand around the city, part of the early warning system that guarded the approaches to the plateau.
- By the time the Ming envoy Chen Cheng described Jiaohe, only about a hundred households remained among its many old temples.
Why it is worth it
Jiaohe is a city with no walls, because it never needed them. It sits on a long, narrow island of loess plateau, about 1,650 metres long and at most 300 metres wide, between two river channels that split and rejoin around it, and its edges drop more than 30 metres in sheer cliffs on every side. On top lies a dense web of streets, houses, temples and stupas, much of it not built up but cut down into the earth, so that the ruins read as a maze of rooms and lanes carved out of a single block of ground. The Chinese name means roughly "where the rivers meet"; local Uyghurs call the site Yarghul, and the older name Yarkhoto has been explained as a blend of Turkic yar, ravine, and Mongolian khoto, town.
From the 2nd century BC to the mid-5th century AD Jiaohe was the capital of Nearer Jushi, a Tocharian kingdom, and an important stop on the Silk Road route leading west toward Karasahr and Korla. After Tang China took the region, the town became the seat of a new county in 640 and, until 658, of the Protectorate General of the Western Regions, the highest Chinese military command in the west. Tang records give it 7,000 inhabitants. In the 9th century it came under the Uyghurs. The city was laid out with residential quarters to the east and west, a large administrative compound in the southern part of the eastern district, and a northern zone given over to Buddhist monasteries and stupas; there are also notable graveyards.
Jiaohe was destroyed during the Mongol wars of the 13th century and never reoccupied. The explorer Aurel Stein visited the ruins, the site was partly excavated in the 1950s, and it has been under state protection since 1961. Since 1992 Japanese and Xinjiang conservation bodies have worked together to preserve the earthen ruins, and in 2014 Jiaohe became part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Silk Roads.
Getting there
The ruins lie in the Yarnaz Valley about 10 km west of Turpan, an oasis city in Xinjiang. The nearest airport is Turpan Jiaohe Airport (TLQ), also about 9 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Jiaohe ruins, known by the local Uyghur populace as Yarghul, is a ruined city in the Yarnaz Valley, 10 km (6.2 mi) west of the city of Turpan in Xinjiang, China. It was the capital of the Tocharian kingdom of Jushi. It is a natural fortress located atop a steep cliff on a leaf-shaped plateau between two deep river valleys, and was an important stop along the Silk Road.
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