The Tarim River is the largest inland river in China,and the South Xinjiang's mother river. The context of research on water resources is helpful for guiding the direction of water resources research in the current and future historical periods. It provides theoretical basis for the rational distribution of the water resource and promotes economic development and social stability in the South Xinjiang. The research on water resources in Tarim River Basin can be roughly divided into three phases in terms of timeline. The first phase is before the 1950s,the essence of the research is the real record of drainage change and natural landscape in Tarim River Basin,which indirectly reflected the slow change of water resources in river basin affected by nature & human activities,according to ancient documents and historical records in China, physical geography data and adventures of modern foreign explorers. In general, the Tarim River was gradually shrinking and moving northward in the historical period. The current river network was formed in the 17~(th) ~ 18~(th) Century approximately. With the effect of intense human activities, the mainstream of the Tarim River was only connected to three main tributaries until 1950s,named Aksu River,Hotan River and Yarkant River. The second phase is from 1950s to 1990s,with the large-scale development of South Xinjiang, water resources research has gradually focused on the rational allocation and effective management of water resources, which was mainly devoted to solving series of related problems such as the shortage of water resources and ecological deterioration and disorderly management of water resource in the basin caused by the intensification of human activities in recent decades. The third phase is since the beginning of the 21~(st) century, climate change and its effects has become a new central issue to scientists and researchers. Due to the impact of climate change and human activities,hydrological process changes,water resources carrying capacity and imbalance between supply and demand, utilization and protection of groundwater resources have gradually become the focus of the Tarim River water resources research. After systematically reviewing the results of the three phases, this paper further proposed the future research directions of water resources in the Tarim River Basin,including ecological regulation,water right allocation and ecological compensation,and inter-basin water transfer.