Yugurs
Turko-Mongolic ethnic group living in China
The Yugurs, Yughurs, Yugu (Chinese: 裕固族; pinyin: Yùgùzú; Western Yugur: Sarığ yoğır; Eastern Yugur: Shera yogor), traditionally known as Yellow Uyghurs or Yellow Uygurs, are a Turko-Mongol ethnic group and one of China's 56 officially recognized ethnic groups, consisting of 14,706 persons, according to the 2020 census. The Yugur live primarily in Sunan Yugur Autonomous County in Gansu. They are mostly Tibetan Buddhists. The majority of Yugurs speak a Turkic language, while Mongolic and Chinese are also used in eastern provinces.
History
The Turkic-speaking Yugurs are considered to be the descendants of a group of Old Uyghurs who fled from Mongolia southwards to Gansu after the collapse of the Uyghur Khaganate in 840, where they established the prosperous Ganzhou Uyghur Kingdom (870–1036) with capital near present Zhangye at the base of the Qilian Mountains in the valley of the Ejin River.
In 1037, the Yugurs came under Tangut rule. As a result of Khizr Khoja's invasion of Qumul, many residents who rejected conversion to Islam escaped to nearby Dunhuang and Hunan in China proper. These were the ancestors of the Yugurs, who have remained Vajrayana Buddhists to the present day.
The Yugurs adopted the Gelug order of Tibetan Buddhism in the late 16th century, under the influence of Sonam Gyatso, the third Dalai Lama.
In 1893, Russian explorer Grigory Potanin, the first Western scientist to study the Yugurs, published a small glossary of Yugur words, along with notes on their administration and geographical situation.
“Yugurs” enters the record as turko-Mongolic ethnic group living in China. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Yugurs, Turko-Mongolic and ethnic can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q34283. The Library of Congress control number is sh86005882. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020, 1036, 1037 and 1893.
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This entry incorporates text from “Yugurs” 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.