's Dungan and Han Chinese
taifurchi (gunners) take part in shooting exercises.
Pre-revolt situation By the 1860s, Xinjiang had been under
Qing rule for a century. The area had been conquered in 1759 from the
Dzungar Khanate whose core population, the
Oirats, subsequently became the targets of genocide. However, as Xinjiang consisted mostly of semi-arid or desert lands, these were not attractive to potential Han settlers except some traders, so other people such as Uyghurs settled in the area. The whole of Xinjiang was divided into three administrative
circuits: • The North-of-
Tianshan Circuit (), including the
Ili basin and
Dzungaria. This region roughly corresponds to the modern
Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture and included prefectures it controlled along with a few smaller adjacent prefectures. • The South-of-Tianshan Circuit (). This included the "Eight cities" in turn comprising the "Four Western Cities" of
Khotan,
Yarkand,
Yangihissar,
Kashgar and the "Four Eastern Cities" (Ush,
Aqsu,
Kucha,
Karashahr). • The Eastern Circuit (), in eastern Xinjiang, centered around
Urumqi. Overall military command of all three circuits fell to the
General of Ili, stationed in
Huiyuan Cheng. He was also in charge of the civilian administration (directly in the North-of-Tianshan Circuit, and via local Muslim (Uyghur)
begs in the South Circuit). However, the Eastern Circuit was subordinated in matters of civilian administration to Gansu Province. In 1765 the
Ush rebellion occurred in Ush Turfan. The rebellion was the result of severe misrule and exploitation by the Qing in the early years after the occupation of Xinjiang in 1759. After the conquest local Uyghur officials appointed by the Qing including ‘Abd Allah, the Hakim Beg of Ush Turfan, used their positions to extort money from the local Uyghur population. One of the Uyghur legends of the seven maidens comes from this rebellion of Uyghur girls resisting rape by Manchus. Manchus are explicitly blamed while Han Chinese are not mentioned by Uyghurs as the culprit in the legend. There is also another Uyghur legend about the seven maidens from the
Qarakhanid wars against Buddhist kingdoms like
Qocho that is unrelated to the one about Uyghur girls resisting Manchu rape. As a result, in 1765 when Manchu official Sucheng commandeered 240 men to take official gifts to Peking, the enslaved porters and the townspeople revolted. The Uyghur collaborator ‘Abd Allah, Sucheng, the garrisoned Qing Manchu banner force and other Qing Manchu officials were slaughtered and the rebels took command of the Qing fortress. In response to the revolt, the Qing brought a large force to the city and besieged the rebels in their compound for several months until they surrendered. The Manchu officials then cruelly retaliated against the Uyghur rebels by executing over 2,000 men and exiling some 8,000 women. During the
Afaqi Khoja revolts there were multiple incursions by
Afaqi khojas from
Kokand into Kashgaria, similar to those of
Jahangir Khoja in the 1820s and
Wali Khan in 1857, meant that the government had increased troop levels in Xinjiang to some 50,000. Both Manchu and Han units were stationed in the province with the latter, mainly recruited in Shaanxi and Gansu, having a heavily Hui (Dungan) component. A large part of the Qing army in Xinjiang was based in the Nine Forts of the
Ili Region, but there were also forts with Qing garrisons in most other cities of Xinjiang. Maintaining this army involved much higher costs than the taxation of the local economy could sustainably provide, and required subsidies from the central government. Such support became unfeasible by the 1850-60s due to the costs of suppressing the
Taiping and other rebellions in the Chinese heartland. The Qing authorities in Xinjiang responded by raising taxes, introducing new ones, and selling official posts to the highest bidders (e.g. that of governor of
Yarkand to
Rustam Beg of
Khotan for 2,000
yambus, and that of
Kucha to
Sa'id Beg for 1,500 yambus). The new officeholders would then proceed to recoup their investment by fleecing their subject populations. Increasing tax burdens and corruption only added to the discontent amongst the Xinjiang people, who had long suffered both from the maladministration of Qing officials and their local
beg subordinates and from the destructive invasions of the
khojas. Qing soldiers in Xinjiang, however, were still not paid on time or properly equipped. With the start of the revolt in Gansu and Shaanxi in 1862, rumors spread among the Hui (Dungans) of Xinjiang that the Qing authorities were preparing a wholesale preemptive slaughter of the Hui people in Xinjiang, or in a particular community. Opinions as to the veracity of these rumors vary: while the
Tongzhi Emperor described them as "absurd" in his edict of September25, 1864, Muslim historians generally believe that massacres were indeed planned, if not by the imperial government then by various local authorities. Thus it was the Dungans who usually revolted in most Xinjiang towns, although the local Turkic peopleTaranchis, Kyrgyzs, and Kazakhswould usually quickly join the fray.
Multi-centric revolt in 1875. In 1865, rebels from Kucha led by Ishaq Khwaja attacked the fort. The first spark of revolt in Xinjiang proved small enough for the Qing authorities to easily extinguish it. On March17, 1863, some 200 Dungans from the village of Sandaohe (a few miles west of
Suiding), supposedly provoked by a rumor of a preemptive Dungan massacre, attacked Tarchi ( now part of
Huocheng County), one of the Nine Forts of the Ili Basin. The rebels seized weapons from the fort's armory and killed the soldiers of its garrison, but were soon defeated by government troops from other forts and were themselves slaughtered. Revolt broke out again the following yearthis time, almost simultaneously in all three Circuits of Xinjiangon a scale that made its suppression beyond the capability of the authorities. On the night of June3–4, 1864, the Dungans of
Kucha, one of the cities south of Tianshan, rose up and were soon joined by the local Turkic people. The Han fort, which, unlike many other Xinjiang locations, was inside the town rather than outside it, fell within a few days. Government buildings were burnt and some 1000 Hans and 150 Mongols killed. As neither the Dungan nor Turkic leaders of the revolt had sufficient authority over the entire community to become commonly recognized as a leader, the rebels instead choose a person who had not participated in the revolt, but was known for his spiritual role: Rashidin (Rashīdīn) Khoja, a
dervish and the custodian of the grave of his ancestor of saintly fame, Arshad-al-Din (? – 1364 or 65). Over the next three years, he sent military expeditions east and west in an attempt to bring the entire
Tarim Basin under his control; however, his expansion plans were frustrated by
Yaqub Beg. Only three weeks after the events in Kucha, revolt broke out in the Eastern Circuit. The Dungan soldiers of the
Ürümqi garrison rebelled on June26, 1864, soon after learning about the Kucha revolt. The two Dungan leaders were
Tuo Ming (a.k.a. Tuo Delin), a New Teaching
ahong from Gansu, and
Suo Huanzhang, an officer who also had close ties to Hui religious leaders. Large parts of the city were destroyed, the tea warehouses burned, and the Manchu fortress besieged. The Ürümqi rebels then advanced westward through what is today
Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture, taking the cities of
Manas (also known then as Suilai) on July17 (the Manchu fort there fell on September16) and
Wusu (Qur Qarausu) on September29. On October3, 1864, the Manchu fortress of Ürümqi also fell to the joint forces of Ürümqi and Kuchean rebels. In a pattern that was to repeat in other Han forts throughout the region, the Manchu commander, Pingžui, preferred to explode his gunpowder, killing himself and his family, rather than surrender. After they learned of the Qing authorities' plan to disarm or kill them, the Dungan soldiers in
Yarkand in
Kashgaria rose up in the early hours of July26, 1864. Their first attack on the Manchu fort (which was outside of the walled Muslim city) failed, but it still cost the lives of 2,000 Qing soldiers and their families. In the morning, the Dungan soldiers entered the Muslim city, where some 7,000 Hans were forcibly converted to become Muslims or massacred. The Dungans being numerically few compared to the local Turkic Muslims, they picked a somewhat neutral partyone
Ghulam Husayn, a religious man from a
Kabul noble familyas the puppet
padishah. By the early fall of 1864, the Dungans of the Ili Basin in the Northern Circuit also rose up, encouraged by the success of Ürümqi rebels at
Wusu and
Manas, and worried by the prospects of preemptive repressions by the local Manchu authorities. The
General of Ili,
Cangcing (), hated by the local population as a corrupt oppressor, was sacked by the Qing government after the defeat of his troops by the rebels at Wusu. Attempts by
Mingsioi, Cangcing's replacement, to negotiate with the Dungans proved in vain. On November10, 1864, the Dungans rose both in
Ningyuan (the "Taranchi Kuldja"), the commercial center of the region, and
Huiyuan (the "Manchu Kuldja"), its military and administrative headquarters. Kulja's
Taranchis (Turkic-speaking farmers who later formed part of the
Uyghur people) joined in the revolt. When the local Muslim Kazakhs and Kyrgyzs felt that the rebels had gained the upper hand, they joined them. Conversely, the
Buddhist Kalmyks, and
Xibes mostly remained loyal to the Qing government. Ningyuan immediately fell to the Dungan and Turki rebels, but a strong government force at Huiyuan made the insurgents retreat after 12 days of heavy fighting in the streets of the city. The local Han Chinese, seeing the Manchus winning, joined forces with them. However, a counter-offensive by Qing forces failed. The imperial troops lost their artillery while Mingsioi barely escaped capture. With the fall of Wusu and
Aksu, the Qing garrison, entrenched in the Huiyuan fortress was completely cut off from the rest of empire-controlled territory forcing Mingsioi to send his communications to Beijing via
Russia. While the Qing forces in Huiyuan successfully repelled the next attack of the rebels on 12December 1864, the revolt continued to spread through the northern part of the province (
Dzungaria), where the Kazakhs were glad to take revenge on the Kalmyk people that had ruled the area in the past. , painting by
Vereshchagin (1869–70) For
Chinese New Year 1865, the Hui leaders of
Tacheng (Chuguchak) invited the local Qing authorities and Kalmyk nobles to assemble in the Hui mosque, to swear a mutual oath of peace. However, once the Manchus and Kalmyks were in the mosque, the Hui rebels seized the city armory, and started killing the Manchus. After two days of fighting, the Muslims gained control of the town, while the Manchus were besieged in the fortress. Nevertheless, with the help of the Kalmyks the Manchus were able to retake the Tacheng area by the fall of 1865. This time, it was the Hui rebels who were locked up in the mosque. The fighting resulted in the destruction of Tacheng and the surviving residents fleeing the town. Both the Qing government in Beijing and the beleaguered Kulja officials asked the Russians for assistance against the rebels via the Russian envoy in Beijing, and the Russian commander in
Semirechye, respectively. The Russians, however, were diplomatically non-committal. On the one hand, as Vlangali wrote to
Saint Petersburg, a "complete refusal" would be bad for Russia's relations with Beijing; on the other, Russian generals in Central Asia generally felt that providing China with serious assistance against Xinjiang's Muslims would do nothing to improve Russia's problems with its own new Muslim subjects. Were the revolt to succeed and lead to the creation of a permanent Hui state, having been on the Qing side of the former conflict would offer Russia no benefit in its relations with that new neighbor. The decision was thus made in Saint Petersburg in 1865 to avoid offering any serious help to the Qing, beyond agreeing to train Chinese soldiers in Siberiashould they send anyand to sell some grain to the defenders of Kuldja on credit. The main priority of the Russian government remained guarding its border with China and preventing any possibility of the spread of the revolt into Russia's own domain. Considering that offense is the best form of defense, Kolpakovsky suggested to his superiors in February 1865 that Russia should go beyond defending its border and move in force into Xinjiang's border area then seize the Chuguchak,
Kuldja and
Kashgar areas. These could then be colonized with Russian settlersall to better protect the
Romanov empire's other domains. The time was not ripe for such an adventure, however: as Foreign Minister
Gorchakov noted, such a breach of neutrality would be not a good thing if China eventually recovered its rebel provinces. Meanwhile, Qing forces in the Ili Valley did not fare well. In April 1865, the Huining () fortress (today's , located between
Yining and Huiyuan), fell to the rebels after a three-month siege. Its 8,000 Manchu, Xibe, and
Solon defenders were massacred, and two survivors with their ears and noses cut off were sent to Huiyuanthe Qing's last stronghold in the valleyto tell the Governor-general the fate of Huining. Most of the Huiyuan (Manchu Kulja) fell to the rebels on January8, 1866. The majority of the residents and garrison perished along with some 700 rebels. Mingsioi, still holding out in the Huiyuan fortress with the remainder of his troops, but having run out of food, sent a delegation to the rebels, bearing a gift of 40
sycees of silver and four boxes of
green tea, and offered to surrender, provided the rebels guaranteed their lives and allowed them to keep their allegiance to the Qing government. Twelve Manchu officials with their families left the citadel along with the delegation. The Huis and Taranchis received them and allowed the refugees from Huiyuan to settle in Yining ("the Old Kuldja"). However, the rebels would not accept Mingsioi's conditions, requiring instead that he surrender immediately and recognize the authority of the rebels. Since Mingsioi had rejected the rebels' proposal, they immediately stormed the citadel. On March3, the rebels having broken into the citadel, Mingsioi assembled his family and staff in his mansion, and blew it up, dying under its ruins. This was the temporary end, for the time being, of Qing rule in the Ili Valley.
Yaqub Beg in Kashgaria As noted by Muslim sources, the Qing authorities in
Kashgar had all along intended to eliminate local Dungans, and managed to carry out their preemptive massacre in the summer of 1864. This weakening of the local Dungan contingent was possibly the reason why the initial revolt had not been as successful in this area as in the rest of the province. Although the Dungan rebels were able to seize
Yangihissar, neither they nor the Kyrgyzs of
Siddiq Beg could break into either the Manchu forts outside Yangihissar and Kashgar, nor into the walled Muslim city of Kashgar itself, which was held by
Qutluq Beg, a local Muslim appointee of the Qing. Unable to take control of the region on their own, the Dungans and Kyrgyzs turned for help to
Kokand's ruler
Alim Quli. Assistance arrived in early 1865 in both spiritual and material form. Spiritual aid came in the person of
Buzurg Khoja (also known as
Buzurg Khan), a member of the influential
Afaqis family of
khojas, whose religious authority could be expected to raise the rebellious spirit of the populace. He was heir to a long family tradition of starting mischief in Kashgaria, being a son of
Jahangir Khoja and brother of
Wali Khan Khoja. Material assistanceas well as the expected conduit of Kokandian influence in Kashgariaconsisted of
Yaqub Beg, a young but already well known Kokandian military commander, with an entourage of a few dozen Kokandian soldiers, who became known in Kashgaria as
Andijanis. Although Siddiq Beg's Kyrgyzs had already taken the Muslim town of Kashgar by the time Buzurg Khoja and Yaqub Beg arrived, he had to allow the popular khoja to settle in the former governor's residence (the
urda). Siddiq's attempts to assert his dominance were crushed by Yaqub Beg's and Buzurg's forces. The Kyrgyzs then had to accept Yaqub's authority. With his small, but comparatively well trained and disciplined army consisting of local Dungans and Kashgarian Turkic people (Uighurs, in modern terms), their Kyrgyz allies, Yaqub's own Kokandians, as well as some 200 soldiers sent by the ruler of
Badakhshan, Yaqub Beg was able not only to take the Manchu fortress and the Han Chinese town of Kashgar during 1865 (the Manchu commander in Kashgar, as usual, blowing himself up), but to defeat a much larger force sent by the Rashidin of Kucha, who sought domination of the Tarim Basin region for himself. While Yaqub Beg asserted his authority over Kashgaria, the situation back home in Kokand changed radically. In May 1865, Alim Quli lost his life while defending Tashkent against the Russians. Many of his soldiers (primarily, of Kyrgyz and
Kipchak background) deemed it advisable to flee to the comparative safety of Kashgaria. They appeared at the borders of Yaqub Beg's domain in early September 1865. Afghan warriors also assisted Yaqub Beg. Yaqub Beg's rule was unpopular among the natives with one of the local Kashgaris, a warrior and a chieftain's son, commenting: "During the Chinese rule there was everything; there is nothing now." There was also a falling-off in trade. The local Uyghurs of Altishahr came to view Yaqub Beg as a Kokandi foreigner and his Kokandi associates behaved ruthlessly to the local Uyghurs, an anti Yaqub Beg poem was written by the Uyghur: From Peking the Chinese came, like stars in the heaven. The Andijanis rose and fled, like pigs in the forest. They came in vain and left in vain, the Andijanis! They went away scared and languidly, the Andijanis! Every day they took a virgin, and They went hunting for beauties. They played with the
dancing boys, Which the Holy Law has forbidden.
Yaqub Beg's Kashgaria declares Jihad against the Dungans Taranchi Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang initially cooperated with the Dungans (Hui people) when they rose in revolt, but later abandoned them after the Hui attempted to subject the entire region to their rule. The Taranchi massacred the Dungans at
Kuldja and drove the rest through the Talk pass to the Ili Valley. The Hui people in Xinjiang where neither trusted by the Qing authorities nor the Turkestani Muslims. Yaqub Beg's Kokandi Andijani Uzbek forces declared a Jihad against Dungan rebels under T'o Ming (Tuo Ming a.k.a. Daud Khalifa). Fighting broke out between Dungan and Kokandi Uzbek rebels in Xinjiang. Yaqub Beg enlisted Han militia under
Xu Xuegong to fight against the Dungan troops under T'o Ming. T'o Ming's Dungan forces were defeated at the
Battle of Urumqi (1870) as part of Yaqub Beg's plan to conquer
Dzungaria and seize all Dungan territory. Yakub Beg seized
Aksu from Dungan forces and forced them north of the
Tian Shan, committing massacres upon the Dungan people (Tunganis). Independent Han Chinese militia who were not affiliated with the Qing government joined both the Turkic forces under Yaqub Beg, and the Dungan rebels. In 1870, Yaqub Beg had 1,500 Han Chinese troops with his Turkic forces attacking Dungans in Ürümqi. The following year, the Han Chinese militia joined the Dungans in fighting against Turkic forces.
Foreign relations of Kashgaria under Yaqub Beg Russia and Britain signed several treaties with Yaqub Beg's regime in Kashgar with Yaqub seeking to secure British and Russian aid for his government.
Relations with Russia Relations between Yaqub Beg and the Russian Empire alternated between fighting and peaceful diplomatic exchanges. The Russians detested the native population of Kashgar because of their elite's close contacts with the Kokand Khans who had recently been expelled during the Russian conquest of Turkestan. This animosity would have ruined Yaqub Beg had he sought extensive aid from them as he had originally intended.
Ottoman and British support The
Ottoman Empire and the
British Empire both recognized Yaqub Beg's state and supplied him with thousands of guns. British diplomats
Robert Barkley Shaw and
Thomas Douglas Forsyth to Kashgar in 1868 and 1870 respectively, aroused British interest for Ya'qub's regime and the British concluded a commercial treaty with the emir in 1874.
Qing reconquest of Xinjiang The Qing decided to reconquer Xinjiang in the late 1870s.
Zuo Zongtang, previously a general in the
Xiang Army, was the commander in chief of all Qing troops participating in this counterinsurgency. His subordinates were the Han Chinese General
Liu Jintang and Manchu Jin Shun. As Zuo Zongtang moved into Xinjiang to crush the Muslim rebels under
Yaqub Beg, he was joined by Dungan (
Hui) General
Ma Anliang and General
Dong Fuxiang. Qing forces entered Ürümqi unopposed. Yaqub's subordinates defected to the Qing or fled as his forces started to fall apart, and the oasis fell easily to the Qing troops. The mass retreat of the rebel army shrank their sphere of control smaller and smaller. Yaqub Beg lost more than 20,000 men either though desertion or at the hands of the enemy. In October 1877, after the death of Yaqub Beg, Jin Shun resumed his forward movement and encountered no serious opposition. General Zuo appeared before the walls of
Aksu, the bulwark of Kashgaria on the east, and its commandant abandoned his post at the first onset. Qing army then advanced on
Uqturpan, which also surrendered without a blow. Early in December, all Qing troops began their last attack against the capital city of the Kashgarian regime. The rebel troops were defeated and the residual troops started to withdraw to Yarkant, whence they fled to Russian territory. With the fall of Kashgaria Qing's reconquest of Xinjiang was completed. No further revolt was encountered, and the reestablished Qing authorities began the task of recovery and reorganization, including the establishment of the Xinjiang province in 1884. The use of Muslims in the Qing armies against the revolt was noted by
Yang Zengxin. The third reason is that at the time that Turkic Muslims were waging revolt in the early years of the Guangxu reign, the ‘five elite divisions’ that governor general Liu Jintang led out of the Pass were all
Dungan troops [Hui dui ]. Back then, Dungan military commanders such as Cui Wei and Hua Dacai were surrendered troops who had been redeployed. These are undoubtedly cases of pawns who went on to achieve great merit. When Cen Shuying was in charge of military affairs in Yunnan, the Muslim troops and generals that he used included many rebels, and it was because of them that the Muslim revolt in Yunnan was pacified. These are examples to show that Muslim troops can be used effectively even while Muslim uprisings are still in progress. What is more, since the establishment of the Republic, Dungan have demonstrated not the slightest hint of errant behaviour to suggest that they may prove to be unreliable.
Xiang Army and other Han Chinese male soldiers and sojourners bought Turki Musulman (Uyghur) girls as wives from their parents after Zuo Zongtang's reconquest of Xinjiang, and the Han and Uyghurs often relied on Hui intermediaries to translate and broker the marriages. A Han Chinese man with the surname Li bought a young Uyghur woman from two Uyghur men who kidnapped her in 1880. They were employed by the magistrate of Pichan. A Turpan Uyghur girl named Ruo-zang-le who was 12 was sold for 30 taels in 1889 in Qitai to a young Han Chinese Shanxi man named Liu yun. She became pregnant with his child in 1892. Han Chinese men viewed the toyluq they paid in silver for their Uyghur brides as a bride price. Uyghur Muslim women married Han Chinese men in Xinjiang in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Han Chinese men, Hindu men, Armenian men, Jewish men and Russian men were married by Uyghur Muslim women who could not find husbands. Uyghur merchants would harass Hindu usurers by screaming at them asking them if they ate beef or hanging cow skins on their quarters. Uyghur men also rioted and attacked Hindus for marrying Uyghur women in 1907 in Poskam and Yarkand like Ditta Ram calling for their beheading and stoning as they engaged in anti-Hindu violence. Hindu Indian usurers engaging in a religious procession led to violence against them by Muslim Uyghurs. ==Aftermath==