Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Kuldja
KULDJA, the name of two towns in the valley of the Ili in Central Asia, situated about 25 miles apart.
I. Old Kuldja, the present capital of the Kuldja territory, restored to China by Russia in 1881, otherwise known as Tartar Kulja, Nin Yuan, or Kuren, lies about 14 mile to the north of the river, in 43° 58′ N. lat. and 81° 25′ E. long. The walled town is nearly square, each side being about a mile in length; and the walls are not only 30 feet high but broad enough on the top to serve as a carriage drive. Two broad streets cut the enclosed area into four nearly equal sections. Since 1870 a Russian suburb has been laid out on a wide scale. The houses of Kuldja are almost all clay-built and flat-roofed, and except in the special Chinese quarter in the eastern end of the town it is only a few public buildings that show the influence of Chinese architecture. Of these the most noteworthy are the Tarantchi and Dungan mosques, both with turned up roofs, and the latter with a pagoda-looking minaret. The population is mainly Mohammedan, and there are only two Buddhist pagodas. A small Chinese Roman Catholic church has maintained its existence through all the vicissitudes of modern times. Paper and vermicelli are manufactured with rude appliances in the town. The outskirts are richly cultivated with wheat, barley, lucerne, and poppies. Schuyler estimated the population, which includes Tarantchis, Dungans, Sarts, Chinese, Calmucks, and Russians, at 10,000 in 1873; it has since increased.
II. New Kuldja, Manchu Kuldja, or Ila, which lies lower down the valley on the same side of the stream, has been a pile of ruins whitened with bleaching bones since the terrible massacre of all its inhabitants by the insurgent Dungans in 1868. It was previously the seat of the Chinese Government for the province, with a large penal establishment and strong garrison; its population was about 70,000.
See Schuyler, Turkistan, London, 1876; Dilke in Proc. Roy. Geog. Soc., 1874; Ujfalvy in Tour du Monde, 1879; E. D. Morgan in Proc. Roy. Geog. Soc., 1881; and Ili, vol. xii. p. 702.