Uyghurs
The history of the Uyghur people, as with the ethnic origin of the people, is a matter of contention between Uyghur nationalists and the Chinese authority. Uyghur historians viewed the Uyghurs as the original inhabitants of Xinjiang with a long history. Uyghur politician and historian Muhemmed Imin Bughra wrote in his book "A History of East Turkestan", stressing the Turkic aspects of his people, that the Turks have a 9000-year history, while historian Turghun Almas incorporated discoveries of Tarim mummies to conclude that Uyghurs have over 6400 years of history, and the World Uyghur Congress claimed a 4,000-year history in East Turkestan. However, the official Chinese view asserts that the Uyghurs in Xinjiang originated from the Tiele tribes and only became the main social and political force in Xinjiang during the ninth century when they migrated to Xinjiang from Mongolia after the collapse of the Uyghur Khaganate, replacing the Han Chinese they claimed were there since the Han Dynasty. Many contemporary Western scholars, however, do not consider the modern Uyghurs to be of direct linear descent from the old Uyghur Khaganate of Mongolia. Rather, they consider them to be descendants of a number of peoples, one of them the ancient Uyghurs.
Uyghurs
The ancient people of the Tarim Basin originally spoke different languages such as Saka (Khotanese), Tocharian and Gandhari. The Turkic people who moved into region in the 9th century brought with them their languages which slowly supplanted the original tongues of the local inhabitants. By the 11th century, it was noted by Mahmud al-Kashgari that the Uyghurs (of Qocho) spoke a pure Turkic language, but they also still spoke another language among themselves and have two different scripts. He also noted that the people of Khotan did not know Turkic well, and have their own language and script (Khotanese). Writers of the Karakhanid period, al-Kashgari and Yusuf Balasagun, referred to their Turkic language as "Khāqāniyya" (meaning royal), or the "language of Kashgar", or simply Turkic.