ABSTRACT
The story of Abdukerimhan Mehsum is one of the few in the Kashi series that provides a direct insight into the social and religious life of Uyghurs in Kashgar. Some of the Uyghur and other Muslim merchants in Kashgar traded with the Russian empire and established warehouses in its great cities including Tashkent, Moscow and Kazan, and also set up lodging houses along the trade routes for travelling merchants. Abdukerimhan was born in 1870 in what is now Kashgar City. In 1912 Abdukerimhan Mehsum established a school in Tashmilik, a village in the Kashgar district, with a friend Baki who lived there. Abdukerimhan Mehsum does not appear again in the records of Xinjiang until 1933 at the beginning of the revolutionary period that led to the establishment of an independent government in Kashgar. After the insurrection in Hami that triggered the revolt in Kashgar, the armies of Temur marched southwards and occupied Aksu.
