Tibetan Kache Muslim women in heavy Tibetan Jewellery, Lhasa, c. 1950.

Tibetan Kache Muslim women in heavy Tibetan Jewellery, Lhasa, c. 1950.

The Tibetan Muslims, also known as the Kachee (Wylie: ka-che; also spelled Kache), form a small minority in Tibet. Despite being Muslim, they are officially recognized as Tibetans by the government of the People's Republic of China, unlike the Hui Muslims, who are separately recognized. The Tibetan word Kachee literally means Kashmiri and Kashmir was known as Kachee Yul (Yul means Country). Generally speaking, the Tibetan Muslims are unique in the fact that they are largely of Kashmiri and Persian/Arab/Turkic descent through the patrilineal lineage and also often descendants of native Tibetans through the matrilineal lineage, although the reverse is not uncommon. Thus, many of them display a mixture of Aryan and indigenous Tibetan features.

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