Definition of "Kuldja"

Ten years later two Belgian fathers were assigned to live in Sinkiang. They went out from Belgium through Russia, and there is an interesting note on their first contact with their Sinkiang flock. This was at Kuldja, just within the border. There were Russian Orthodox priests here who had repeatedly offered to minister to the Catholics in the intervals between visits of the Roman priests from Kansu.

1945, Mark Tennien, “More about Sinkiang”, in Chungking Listening Post‎, New York: Creative Age Press, Inc., pages 96–97

The largest city on the Chinese Ili is Kuldja, a fortress town, with a population well over 110,000. The territory around Kuldja has been organized as the Sibo Autonomous Hsien, although the Sibos, a Tungus-Manchurian people, number only 19,000. Because of their close association with the Uighurs and other Turkic peoples, the Sibos have been strongly Turkicized.

1962, W. A. Douglas Jackson, The Russo-Chinese Borderlands: Zone of Peaceful Contact or Potential Conflict?‎, D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., pages 9–10

In 1851, the Russians obtained important trade privileges on the Sino-Russian border and the right to establish factories and a Consulate at Kuldja north of the Tien Shan. The construction of Fort Vernoe a few years later paved the way for the rapid penetration of the Trans-Ili district, and in the late 'fifties and ’sixties a series of explorations by men like Semenov, Valikhanov, Golubev, Osten-Sacken and Severtsov, brought the sphere of Russian knowledge well into the Kashgar plain.

1964, G. J. Alder, British India's Northern Frontier 1865-1895: A Study in Imperial Policy‎, Longmans, Green & Co. Ltd., page 34

The second and insuperable difficulty, however, is that this Olmaliq was established as recently as 1951. The name means 'apple grove'; here clearly must once have been another. The answer seems to be — not that there’s much consensus on the subject — that it was another name for Kuldja, or Yining, on the Ili River, which falls out of Tian Shan, the celestial mountains.

2005, Mathew Lyons, Impossible Journeys (Cadogan Guides)‎, Globe Pequot Press, published 2006, pages 101–102

The occasion arose when Buzar, ruler of Almaliq on the River Ili (near modern Kuldja in Xinjiang), declared himself a vassal of Genghis’s and asked for military help.

2015, Frank McLynn, Genghis Khan: The Man Who Conquered the World‎, Vintage Books, published 2016, page 252

Dungan is a term used across the former Soviet Union to refer to a group of Muslim people of Chinese and Arab origin. The history of the Dungan people can be traced to Central Asia where they originated from the Kuldja and Kashgar regions. But various sinologists differ on when the migration from China actually started.

2018 September 20, ARUUKE URAN KYZY, “How the Dungan community protects its identity from regional influences”, in TRT World‎, archived from the original on 13 September 2018