During the
Bronze Age, Qinghai was home to a diverse group of nomadic tribes closely related to other Central Asians who traditionally made a living in
agriculture and
husbandry, the
Kayue culture. The eastern part of the area of Qinghai was under the control of the
Han dynasty about 2,000 years ago. It was a battleground during the
Tang and subsequent
Central Plain dynasties when they fought against successive
Tibetan tribes. In the middle of 3rd century CE, nomadic people related to the
Mongolic
Xianbei migrated to pasture lands around the
Qinghai Lake (Koko Nur) and established the
Tuyuhun Kingdom. In the 7th century, the Tuyuhun Kingdom was attacked by both the
Tibetan Empire and the Tang dynasty as both sought control over the
Silk Road trade routes. Tibetan King
Songtsen Gampo was victorious, and settled the area around Tso ngon (Lake Go, or Kokonor Lake). Military conflicts had severely weakened the Tuyuhun kingdom and it was incorporated into the Tibetan Empire. The Tibetan Empire continued expanding beyond Tso ngon during
Trisong Detsen's and
Ralpacan's reigns, and the empire controlled vast areas north and east of Tso ngon until 848, which included
Xi'an. During the
fragmentation of the Tibetan Empire, a series of local polities emerged under the political jostling of
Western Xia to the north and
Song dynasty to the east – from the military-rule of
Guiyi Circuit, to a Tibetan tribal confederacy, and eventually
the Tibetan theocratic kingdom of Tsongkha. The
Song dynasty eventually defeated the Kokonor kingdom Tsongkha in the 1070s. During the Mongol-led
Yuan dynasty's
administrative rule of Tibet, the region comprised the headwaters of the Ma chu (Machu River,
Yellow River) and the Yalong (
Yangtze) rivers and was known as
Amdo, but apportioned to different administrative divisions than Tibet proper. Most of Qinghai was, for a short time in the aftermath of the Yuan dynasty's overthrow, under the control of early
Ming dynasty, but later gradually lost to the
Khoshut Khanate founded by the
Oirats. The
Xunhua Salar Autonomous County is where most
Salar people live in Qinghai. The Salars migrated to Qinghai from
Samarkand in 1370. The chief of the four upper clans around this time was Han Pao-yuan and Ming granted him office of centurion, it was at this time the people of his four clans took Han as their surname. The other chief Han Shan-pa of the four lower Salar clans got the same office from Ming, and his clans were the ones who took Ma as their surname. From 1640 to 1724, a big part of the area that is now Qinghai was under
Khoshut Mongol control, but in 1724 it was conquered by the armies of the
Qing dynasty.
Xining, the capital of modern Qinghai province, began to function as the administrative center, although the city itself was then part of
Gansu province within the "Tibetan frontier district". In 1724, 13-Article for the Effective Governing of Qinghai (Chinese:青海善后事宜十三条) was proposed by
Nian Gengyao and adopted by the Central Government to gain full control of Qinghai. Under the Qing dynasty, the governor was a viceroy of the Emperor, but local ethnic groups enjoyed significant autonomy. Many chiefs retained their traditional authority, participating in local administrations. The
Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) devastated the
Hui Muslim population of
Shaanxi, shifting the Hui center of population to
Gansu and Qinghai. In 1928, Qinghai province was created. The Muslim warlord and General
Ma Qi became military governor of Qinghai, followed by his brother
Ma Lin and then Ma Qi's son
Ma Bufang. In 1932
Tibet invaded Qinghai, attempting to capture southern parts of Qinghai province, following contention in
Yushu, Qinghai, over a monastery in 1932. The army of Ma Bufang defeated the Tibetan armies. Governor of Qinghai
Ma Bufang was described as a
socialist by American journalist
John Roderick and friendly compared to the other Ma Clique warlords. Ma Bufang was reported to be good humoured and jovial in contrast to the brutal reign of
Ma Hongkui. Most of eastern China was ravaged by the
Second Sino-Japanese War and the
Chinese Civil War, by contrast, Qinghai was relatively untouched. Ma Bufang increased the prominence of the
Hui and
Salar people in Qinghai's politics by heavily recruiting to his army from the counties in which those ethnic groups predominated. As the
1949 Chinese revolution approached Qinghai, Ma Bufang abandoned his post and flew to
Hong Kong, traveling abroad but never returning to China. On January 1, 1950, the Qinghai Province People's Government was declared, owing its allegiance to the new
People's Republic of China. Aside from some minor adjustments to suit the geography, the PRC maintained the province's territorial integrity. Resistance to Communist rule continued in the form of the Huis'
Kuomintang Islamic insurgency (1950–58), spreading past traditionally Hui areas to the ethnic-Tibetan south. Although the Hui composed 15.6% of Qinghai's population in 1949, making the province the second-largest concentration of Hui after
Ningxia, the state denied the Hui ethnic autonomous townships and counties that their numbers warranted under Chinese law until the 1980s. File:Khoshut Khanate.png|The
Khoshut Khanate (1642–1717) based in the
Tibetan Plateau File:Chiang Kai-shek on right Ma Buqing on left Ma Bufang second from left.png|
Chiang Kai-shek, leader of
Nationalist China (right), meets with the Muslim generals
Ma Bufang (second from left), and
Ma Buqing (first from left) in
Xining, Qinghai, in August 1942 ==Geography==