(Redirected from Tien Shan)
The 'Tian Shan' (
Chinese: 天山;
Pinyin: Tiān Shān; "celestial mountains"), also commonly spelled 'Tien Shan', and known as 'Tangri Tagh' ("celestial mountains" or "mountains of the spirits") in the
Uyghur language, is a
mountain range located in
Central Asia.
The now widely used name Tian Shan is a Chinese translation of the
Uyghur name, which may in turn go back to a
Xiongnu name, ''
qilian'' (祁连) reported by the ''
Shiji'' as the homeland of the
Yuezhi, which has been argued
[1] to refer to the Tian Shan rather than to the range 1,500 km further the east now known by this name. A nearby mountain range, the
Tannu-Ola Mountains (
Tuvan: Таңды-Уула Tangdy-Uula), also bears a synonymous name ("heaven/celestial mountains" or "god/spirit mountains").
The range lies to the north and west of the
Taklamakan Desert in the border region of
Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan and the
Xinjiang Uyghur
Autonomous Region of western
China. In the south it links up with the
Pamir Mountains. It also extends into the Chinese province of
Xinjiang and into the northern areas of
Pakistan, where it joins the
Hindu Kush.
In Western cartography, the eastern end of the Tian Shan is usually understood to be just west of
Ürümqi, while the range to the east of that city is known as the
Bogda Shan. However, in Chinese cartography, from the
Han Dynasty to the present, the Tian Shan is also considered to include the Bogda Shan and
Barkol ranges.
The Tian Shan are a part of the
Himalayan orogenic belt which was formed by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian
plates in the
Cenozoic era. They are one of the longest mountain ranges in
Central Asia, stretching some 2,800 km eastward from
Tashkent in
Uzbekistan.
The highest peak in the Tian Shan is
Jengish Chokusu which, at 7,439 m or 24,406 ft, is also the highest point in
Kyrgyzstan and is on the border with China. The Tian Shan's second highest peak,
Khan Tengri (Lord of the Spirits), at 7,010 m, straddles the Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan border.
Mountaineers class these as the two most northerly peaks over 7,000 m in the world.
The
Torugart Pass, 3,752 m or 12,310 ft high, is located at the border between Kyrgyzstan and China's
Xinjiang province. The forested
Alatau ranges, which are at a lower altitude in the northern part of the Tian Shan, are inhabited by pastoral tribes speaking
Turkic languages. The major rivers rising in the Tian Shan are the
Syr Darya, the
Ili river and the
Tarim River. The
Aksu Canyon is a notable feature in the northwestern Tian Shan.
One of the first Europeans to visit and the first to describe the Tian Shan in detail was the Russian explorer
Peter Semenov in the
1850s.
Ecology
The Tian Shan holds important forests of
Schrenk's Spruce (''Picea schrenkiana'') at altitudes of over 2,000 m; the lower slopes have unique natural forests of wild
Walnuts and
Apples.
Popular Culture
The Tian Shan feature in
Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine a computer game released in 1999.
Dan Simmons' book '
The Rise of Endymion' includes a planet named Tien Shan. It's a world where the only habitable areas are a series of mountain ranges surrounded by a poisonous sea. The mountains are inhabited by humans who emigrated from the same areas of the Tien Shan on Old Earth.
Chinese religion
In
Daoism the Goddess of the West is believed to guard the
peach trees of
immortality in the Tian Shan.
Gallery
References
★ ''The Contemporary Atlas of China''. 1988. London: Marshall Editions Ltd. Reprint 1989. Sydney: Collins Publishers Australia.
★ ''The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World''. Eleventh Edition. 2003. Times Books Group Ltd. London.
External links
★
Russian mountaineering site
★
Tien Shan
العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
Español
