FPeopleTurkic peoples of China
Salars
An Oghuz people deep inside China. According to tradition their ancestors were the Salur tribe, who came from the Samarkand area in the 14th century.
The Salars are a Turkic people of the Oghuz branch living in China's Qinghai province on the Yellow River. According to their tradition, their ancestors were a tribe descended from Salur, grandson of Oghuz Khan, who set out from Samarkand with a camel and settled where it stopped, at Xunhua.
Salar is close to Turkmen, although centuries of contact with Chinese and Tibetan have shaped it. The Salars are Muslims and live mainly in the Xunhua Salar Autonomous County.
Updated: September 28, 2026