Although Ürümqi is situated near the northern route of the Silk Road, it is likely to be a relatively young city. According to Chinese scholars, during the 22nd year of Emperor Taizong's reign in the Tang Dynasty, AD 648, the Tang government set up the town of Luntai in the ancient town seat of Urabo, 10 kilometers from the southern suburb of present-day Ürümqi. Ancient Luntai Town was a seat of local government, and collected taxes from the caravans along the northern route of the Silk Road.
Steppe peoples had used the location, the pass between the Bogda Shan mountains to the East and the Tien Shan mountains to the west, connecting the Dzungar Basin to the north and the Turpan Depression in the south. In the 7th century the location was controlled by tribes of the Göktürks (Turkic Khaganate). In 742 AD, the Göktürk Khaganate split as the Uyghur tribes and the Eastern "wing" of the Göktürks broke off to form the Uyghur Khaganate. Ürümqi sat in the center of this empire until 1220, when it merged with the Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan. After the division of the Mongol Empire, the town then passed into the Chagatai Khanate where Sufi Islam dominated Ürümqi culture. Around 1670 the Uyghur tribes revolted from the Chagatais and united with the Dzungar tribes to form Zunghar Khanate. Ürümqi remained a small town, and less important than the oasis and Silk Road trade center Turpan 200 km to the southeast.
Thus, little is heard of the region following the Tang Dynasty in the Chinese texts until the Qing Dynasty conquest of Dzungaria in 1755 under the Emperor Qianlong. The Dzungars were deliberately exterminated in a brutal campaign of ethnic genocide. One writer, Wei Yuan, described the resulting desolation in what is now northern Xinjiang as: "an empty plain for a thousand li, with no trace of man." After 1759 state farms were established, "especially in the vicinity of Urumchi, where there was fertile, well-watered land and few people."
