About Salar

Salar people (Salar: Salr, Turkic: Salar, Chinese: , Pinyin: Slz) are a Turkic people. Their language belongs to the Oghuz group, classified within the Turkic language family. The Salars are one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. The Salar people numbered 104,503 people in the last census of 2000. They live mostly in the Qinghai-Gansu border region, on both sides of the Yellow River, namely in Xunhua Salar Autonomous County () and Hualong Hui Autonomous County () of Qinghai and the adjacent Jishishan Bonan, Dongxiang and Salar Autonomous County of Gansu. There are also Salars in Xinjiang (in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture). The Salars' ancestors were migrating Oghuz Turks who intermarried with Han Chinese, Tibetans, and Hui. They are a patriarchal agricultural society and are predominantly Muslim. According to Salar tradition, they are the descendants of the Salur tribe, belonging to the Oghuz Turks tribe of the...