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EveryCow

Sunday

The Christian day of rest for people and plough teams alike, and the great Sunday livestock bazaar of Kashgar.

Sunday was for centuries the day the plough oxen of Christian Europe stood in their stalls, as church and law forbade field work. Far to the east, in the oasis city of Kashgar on the old Silk Road, Sunday is the day of a famous bazaar, whose livestock market draws herders and traders from across the region with cattle, sheep, horses and donkeys.

The Sunday rest

Christians carried the idea of a weekly rest over to Sunday, and from the early Middle Ages church councils and laws across Europe forbade ploughing and carting on the Lord's Day. For farming families this meant a day without yoking the oxen, though cows were still milked and animals fed. In many Alpine and Catholic regions, Sunday was also the day for blessings, processions and the gathering of herders at church. Today, the weekend shows and fairs of summer are where farmers bring their cattle on a Sunday.

The Kashgar Sunday bazaar

Kashgar, in the far west of China, has been a trading city for more than two thousand years, and its Sunday bazaar is among the largest markets in Central Asia. The livestock market, on the edge of the city, fills each Sunday with Uyghur, Kyrgyz and Tajik herders, who walk or truck in cattle, sheep, goats, horses and donkeys. Buyers inspect teeth and hooves, test-ride the horses, and seal bargains with a handshake. The market is open every day, but Sunday is by far the biggest, and it has kept its role in the rural economy as the city around it has been rebuilt.

Traditions

  • The Lord's Day rest: No ploughing or carting on Sunday in old Christian Europe.
  • Kashgar Sunday market: The great weekly bazaar and livestock market of Kashgar.

The breeds

YakKept by Kyrgyz and Tajik herders in the mountains around Kashgar.

Also part of it, and being written: Mongolian cattle (A hardy herd breed of the steppe and the northern grasslands.), Highland cattle (An old European breed of the days of the ox plough and the Sunday rest.).

Sources and further reading

About this page

Written by the EveryCow desk with AI assistance. Customs differ by community and family, and are described here as tradition, not instruction. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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