Hami (Kumul) is a prefecture-level city in Eastern Xinjiang, China. It is well known for sweet Hami melons. In early 2016, the former Hami county-level city merged with Hami Prefecture to form the Hami prefecture-level city with the county-level city becoming Yizhou District. Since the Han dynasty, Hami has been known for its production of agricultural products and raw resources. Origins and names Cumuḍa (sometimes Cimuda or Cunuda) is the oldest known endonym of Hami, when it was founded by a people known in Han Chinese sources as the Xiao Yuezhi ("Lesser Yuezhi"), during the 1st millennium BCE. The oldest attested Chinese name is "" (; by the time of the Han dynasty it was referred to in Chinese as "" () or "" (), in the Tang dynasty as , . By the 10th century CE, the city and its residents were known to the Han as "" (). A monk named Gao Juhui, who had traveled to the Tarim Basin, wrote that the Zhongyun were descendants of the Xiao Yuezhi and that the king of Zhongyun resided near Lop Nur. Following the subsequent settlement of Uyghur-speaking people in the area, Cumuḍa became known as Čungul, Xungul, Qumul, Qomul and Kumul (Yengi Yezik̡: K̡umul, K̡omul). The toponym also appears as "" in the History of the Yuan dynasty, the biographies of which include references to the place using both names: Baurchuk Art Tekin () bases his troops at Hāmìlì in juan 122, while one Tabun () is recorded as being a man of Yīwúlú in juan 124. During the Yuan dynasty the Mongolian name for the place, Qamil, transcribed into Chinese as "" (), was widely used. Marco Polo reported visiting "Camul" in the early 14th century and that was the name under which it first appeared on European maps, during the 16th century. From the Ming dynasty onwards, Qumul was known in Han sources as "" (). When Matteo Ricci visited the city in 1605, in his account of the Portuguese Jesuit Benedict Goës, he used the same spelling as well. Lionel Giles has recorded the following names (with his Wade–Giles forms of the Chinese names converted to Pinyin): Kunwu (Zhou) Yiwu or Yiwulu (Han) Yiwu Jun (Sui) Yi Zhou (Tang) Kumul, Kamul, Camul (Turkic) Khamil (Mongol) Hami (Han Chinese name) History Hami is a modern city named after the Chinese name for the wider province, a disputed