Until the 8th century AD, much of the Tarim Basin was inhabited by Tocharians who spoke an Indo-European language and built city states in the oases along the rim of the Taklamakhan desert. The collapse of the Uyghur Khanate in modern Mongolia and settlement of Uyghur diaspora in the Tarim led to the prevalence of the Turkic languages. During the reign of the Karakhanids much of the region converted to Islam. From the 13th to the 16th centuries, the western Tarim was part of the larger Muslim Turkic-Mongol Chaghatay, Timurid and Eastern Chagatai Empires. In the 17th century, the local Yarkent Khanate ruled Altishahr until its conquest by the Buddhist Dzungars from the Dzungarian Basin to the north. In the 1750s, the region was acquired by Qing China in its conquest of the Dzungar Khanate. The Qing initially administered the Dzungaria and Altishahar separately as respectively, the Northern and Southern Circuits of Tian Shan, although both were under control of the General of Ili. The Southern Circuit (Tianshan Nanlu) was also known as Huibu (回部 Muslim Region), Huijiang (回疆 Muslim Frontier), Chinese Turkestan, Kashgaria, Little Bukharia, East Turkestan. After quelling the Dungan Revolt in the late 19th century, the Qing combined the two circuits into the newly created Xinjiang Province in 1884. Xinjiang has since been used by the Republic of China and People's Republic of China and southern Xinjiang replaced Altishahr as place name for the region.