Kucha

Kucha or Kuche (also: Kuçar, Kuchar; Uyghur: كۇچار‎, simplified Chinese: 龟兹; traditional Chinese: 龜茲; pinyin: Qiūcí; also romanized as Qiuzi, Qiuci, Chiu-tzu, Kiu-che, Kuei-tzu, Guizi from Chinese: 屈支 屈茨; 丘玆; Sanskrit: Kucina) was an ancient Buddhist kingdom located on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin and south of the Muzat River.

The area lies in present-day Aksu Prefecture, Xinjiang, China; Kuqa town is the county seat of that prefecture's Kuqa County. Its population was given as 74,632 in 1990.

Etymology of Kucha

Chinese transcriptions of the Han or the Tang also infer an original form Küchï, but the form Guzan, representing [Küsan], is attested in seventh century Old Tibetan (in the Old Tibetan Annals, s.v. year 687). Mongol Empire-period Uighur and Chinese transcriptions support the form Küsän/Güsän/Kuxian/Quxian rather than Küshän or Kushan (Yuanshi, chap. 12, fol 5a, 7a). (The form Kūsān is still attested in the early-modern work, Tarikh-i-Rashidi, Cf. ELIAS and ROSS, Tarikh-i-Rashidi, in the index, s. v. Kuchar and Kusan: "One MS. [of the Tarikh-i-Rashidi] reads Kus/Kusan. Both names were used for the same place, as also Kos, Kucha, Kujar, etc., and all appear to stand for the modern Kuchar of the Turki-speaking inhabitants, and Kuché of the Chinese. An earlier Chinese name, however, was Ku-sien." Elias (1895), p. 124, n. 1.) However, transcriptions of the name 'Kushan' in Indic scripts from late Antiquity include the spelling Guṣân, and are apparently reflected in at least one Khotanese-Tibetan transcription. The history of the toponyms corresponding to modern 'Kushan' and 'Kucha' remain somewhat problematic.

Kuchař

Kuchař is a surname meaning "cook" in some Czech and Slovak languages. Notable people with the surname include:

Kucha (woreda)

Kucha is one of the woredas in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region of Ethiopia. Part of the Gamo Gofa Zone, Kucha is bordered on the south by Dita and Deramalo, on the southwest by Zala, on the west by Demba Gofa, on the northwest by the Dawro Zone, on the north by the Wolayita Zone, on the east by Boreda, and on the southeast by Chencha. The major town in Kucha is Selamber.

Overview

Kucha is part of a region known for hilly and undulating midland and upper lowland terrain; due to terrain and weather patterns, less than one in five households is food secure. Food crops include maize, enset, sweet potatoes, taro, teff, and yams; income sources include butter and selling firewood. According to a 2004 report, Kucha had 58 kilometers of all-weather roads and 8 kilometers of dry-weather roads, for an average road density of 48 kilometers per 1000 square kilometers.

Although this woreda was in existence before the incorporation of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, its current area dates from 1996. That year the lowlands of the neighboring Dera-Malo woreda were joined to Kucha, and the highlands of that woreda joined to Dita, becoming Dita Dermalo.