What is "kashgar"

Kashgar is an oasis city in Central Asia with an approximate population of 350,000. It is the westernmost city in China, located near the border with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Kashgar has a rich history of over 2,000 years and served as a trading post and strategically important city on the Silk Road between China, the Middle East, and Europe.

Located historically at the convergence point of widely varying cultures and empires, Kashgar has been under the rule of the Chinese, Turkic, Mongol, and Tibetan empires. The city has also been the site of an extraordinary number of battles between various groups of people on the steppes.

Now administered as a county-level unit of the People's Republic of China, Kashgar is the administrative centre of its eponymous prefecture in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region which has an area of and a population of approximately 3.5 million. The city's urban area covers , though its administrative area extends over . The city was made into a Special Economic Zone in 2010, the only city in western China with this distinction. It is considered a part of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor.

喀什 is the Chinese transcription for Kashgar, a city in extreme western Xinjiang, and thus could refer to：

• Kashgar Prefecture , the wider region.
• Kashgar City