The Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia.

Today, Uyghurs live primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China.

An estimated 80% of Xinjiang's Uyghurs live in the southwestern portion of the region, the Tarim Basin.

Outside Xinjiang, the largest community of Uyghurs in China is in Taoyuan County, in south-central Hunan province.

[ Outside of China, significant diasporic communities of Uyghurs exist in the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.

Smaller communities are found in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Turkey.

Throughout history, the term Uyghur has taken on an increasingly expansive definition.

Initially signifying only a small coalition of Tiele tribes in Northern China, Mongolia, and the Altay Mountains, it later denoted citizenship in the Uyghur Khaganate.

Finally it was expanded to an ethnicity whose ancestry originates with the fall of the Uyghur Khaganate in the year 842, which caused Uyghur migration from Mongolia into the Tarim Basin.

This migration assimilated and replaced the Indo-Europeans of the region to create a distinct identity, as the language and culture of the Turkic migrants eventually supplanted the original Indo-European influences.

This fluid definition of Uyghur and the diverse ancestry of modern Uyghurs are a source of confusion about what constitutes true Uyghur ethnography and ethnogenesis.The history of the Uyghur people, as with the ethnic origin of the people, is an issue of contention between Uyghur nationalists and the Chinese authority.

Uyghur historians view the Uyghurs as the original inhabitants of Xinjiang with a long history.

Uyghur politician and historian Muhemmed Imin Bughra wrote in his book A history of East Turkestan, stressing the Turkic aspects of his people, that the Turks have a 9000-year history, while historian Turgun Almas incorporated discoveries of Tarim mummies to conclude that Uyghurs have over 6400 years of history, and the World Uyghur Congress claimed a 4,000-year history.

However, official Chinese view asserts that the Uyghurs in Xinjiang originated from the Tiele tribes and only became the main social and political force in Xinjiang during the ninth century when they migrated to Xinjiang from Mongolia after the collapse of the Uyghur Khaganate, replacing the Han Chinese they claimed were there since the Han Dynasty.

Many modern Western scholars however do not consider the modern Uyghurs to be of direct linear descent from the old Uyghur Khaganate of Mongolia, rather they are descendants of a number of people, of which the ancient Uyghurs are but one.