City of sithia

City of sithia

The ruins of the ancient city of xitiya (ancient city of xitiya) are located in the uplift area of xitiya Valley, which is 1km long and 1.5-2km wide. It takes about 1 hour and 30 minutes to visit the ancient city on foot.

Brief introduction of mysteries

The ruins of the ancient city of xitiya (ancient city of xitiya) are located in the uplift area of xitiya Valley, which is 1km long and 1.5-2km wide. It takes about 1 hour and 30 minutes to visit the ancient city on foot.

"Sitya" is translated into Chinese as "the eternal cliff". According to the introduction of "charming Ye Cheng" series, it was built at the end of the 11th century. Some people think that it was the Khan city during the karahan Dynasty, which was destroyed in 1218 during Genghis Khan's western expedition.

Discovery of Lost City

On July 14, 1929, when Huang Wenbi, a famous archaeologist, came here to investigate, "the ruins of the market are still recognizable, and the bones of the dead are everywhere", "gunpowder and charcoal remains can be seen from time to time", "there is a tower beside it, which is built for Li Jun, a native of Hubei, to bury the dead." he also collected the bronze coins with Arabic characters "tiying" and the coins made in the Northern Song Dynasty "Xianying" Pingtongbao (998-1003), "Tianxi Tongbao" (1017-1021), "Yuanfeng Tongbao" (1102-1106), "Yuanfu Tongbao" and "Chongning Tongbao".

Huang Wenbi "suspected that the city was founded by the karahan Dynasty at the end of the 11th World War, and that the Arabic without hole money in the city was left at that time", and therefore "knew that this place was quite prosperous in the Northern Song Dynasty". According to the record of Wenzheng's journey to the West that "the army sent to Khotan to Khan city and slaughtered the city, so that the king of Yarkand city came and descended to the territory and granted the king aluhu" and the inference that "the Yecheng city between Khotan and Yarkand in the west is the largest and the richest, and the ruins of the old city are the largest", it is suspected that this city was slaughtered by Genghis Khan in 1218 when Khotan entered the army "The city". At present, it can only be inferred that the site of the ancient city of xitiya was in the Tang and Song dynasties. The exact age of the site remains to be verified, so it is now called the lost city.

In 1956, Xue Yifeng, then Secretary of the county Party committee, and Zhang Qingcai, a translator, visited the site of Khan city and collected a short sword, a stone spoon and other cultural relics, but they were not preserved. In 1958, most of the ancient city sites in the great leap forward were reclaimed and built into commune horticulture fields, leaving only about 20 mu of high land. In July 1984, the staff of the census of geographical names made an investigation.

Research value

The mythical city site of xitiya is a cultural relic protection unit at the level of autonomous region. Pottery, porcelain, lime soil, braised clay and human bones are occasionally found in the city. The Loess platform in the site is either a wall or a tomb group. In recent years, local farmers have been able to dig out pottery pots, coins, copper products and ancient ornaments of various sizes around the site.

At present, there is still a bronze statue about 18 cm high in the county, which is of great research value.

Address: Yecheng County, Kashgar Prefecture, Xinjiang

Longitude: 77.40795134375

Latitude: 37.905199835889

Chinese PinYin : Xi Ti Ya Mi Cheng