Taklamakan Desert
desert in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China
The Taklamakan Desert ( TAK-lə-mə-KAN) is a desert in northwestern China. Located inside the Tarim Basin in Southern Xinjiang, it is bounded by the Kunlun Mountains to the south, the Pamir Mountains to the west, the Tian Shan range to the north, and the Gobi Desert to the east.
Etymology
While most researchers agree that makan is the Arabic word for "place," makān, the etymology of "takla" remains unclear. The word may be a Uyghur borrowing of the Arabic tark, "to leave alone/out/behind, relinquish, abandon" + makan. Another plausible explanation suggests it is derived from Turki taqlar makan, describing "the place of ruins". Chinese scholars Wang Guowei and Huang Wenbi linked the name to the Tocharians, a historical people of the Tarim Basin, making the meaning of "Taklamakan" similar to "Tocharistan". According to Uyghur researcher Turdi Mettursun Kara, the name Taklamakan comes from the expression Terk-i Mekan. The name is first mentioned as Terk-i Makan (ترك مكان / trk mkan) in the book called Tevarih-i Muskiyun, which was written in 1867 in the Hotan Prefecture of Xinjiang.
In folk etymology, it is said to mean "Place of No Return" or "get in and you'll never get out".
Geography
The Taklamakan Desert has an area of 337,000 km2 (130,000 sq mi), making it slightly smaller than Germany.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Taklamakan Desert” as desert in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q132956. VIAF identifies the subject as 246525993. Authority coordinates are 38.900, 82.200. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1867.
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This entry incorporates text from “Taklamakan Desert” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.