Yining County (Chinese: 伊宁县) as the official romanized name, also transliterated from Uyghur as Gulja County (Uyghur: غۇلجا ناھىيىسى; Chinese: 固勒扎县), is a county within the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. The county seat is in the town of Jëlilyüzi.
Yining County does not include the adjacent city of Yining, which is a county-level administrative unit in its own right.
The county land area is 4486 km², with the population of 360,000 people as of 2004.[2]
A larger area (around 4580 km²) and population (400,000) was reported for the county 2000; this decrease and the corresponding increase of area and population for the City of Yining resulted from the transfer of the villages of Dadamtu (Uyghur: دادامتۇ, Дадамту; 达达木图; Dádámùtú) and Penjim (Uyghur: پەنجىم, Пәнҗим; 潘津; Pānjīn), with 100.45 km2 (38.78 sq mi) of land, from the County to the City in 2004.
Yining County is divided into 8 towns, 9 townships, 1 ethnic township.[3]
Other: Central Farm of 70th Regiment (兵团七十团中心团场)
The territories were inhabited by Turkic tribes from early history. The name Kuldga was first mentioned at the period of Turkik Khanate. When the Uyghur tribes, led by Pen Tekin, left to the west, part of the Yaglakar tribe, which was part of the Uyghur tribal union, left with them.
Chagatai Khan, the son of Genghis Khan, placed the capital of his possessions here. These lands were ruled by the Dzungar until they were conquered in the middle of the 18th century by the Qing during the so-called third Oirat-Manchu war.[6] For a long time, Gulja was the de facto administrative and military capital of Qing Xinjiang (literally “New Frontiers”). The county was created in 1888 and was originally known as Ningyuan (宁远; 寧遠; Níngyuǎn) County. It received its present name in 1914.[7]
In 1952, the city of Yining was separated from Yining County into a separate county-level administrative unit.[8]