Holy War in China: The Muslim Rebellion and State in Chinese Central Asia, 1864-1877 - Hardcover

Hodong Kim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804748845 ISBN 13: 9780804748841

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2004

Synopsis

In July 2009, violence erupted among Uyghurs, Chinese state police, and Han residents of Ürümqi, the capital city of Xinjiang, in northwest China, making international headlines, and introducing many to tensions in the area. But conflict in the region has deep roots. Now available in paperback, Holy War in China remains the first comprehensive and balanced history of a late nineteenth-century Muslim rebellion in Xinjiang, which led to the establishment of an independent Islamic state under Ya'qūb Beg. That independence was lost in 1877, when the Qing army recaptured the region and incorporated it into the Chinese state, known today as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Hodong Kim offers readers the first English-language history of the rebellion since 1878 to be based on primary sources in Islamic languages as well as Chinese, complemented by British and Ottoman archival documents and secondary sources in Russian, English, Japanese, Chinese, French, German, and Turkish. His pioneering account of past events offers much insight into current relations.

About this title

About the Author

Hodong Kim is Professor of History at Seoul National University.

From the Back Cover

This is the first comprehensive and balanced history of a major Muslim rebellion in northwest China in the late nineteenth century, which led to the establishment of an independent Islamic state under Ya'qub Beg. That independence was lost in 1877, when the Qing army recaptured the region and incorporated it into the Chinese state, where it remains, somewhat uneasily, as the large Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region.
This is the first English-language history of the rebellion since 1878, and the only one to be based on a primary sources in Islamic languages as well as Chinese, complemented by British and Ottoman archival documents and secondary sources in Russian, English, Japanese, Chinese, French, German, and Turkish.

From the Inside Flap

This is the first comprehensive and balanced history of a major Muslim rebellion in northwest China in the late nineteenth century, which led to the establishment of an independent Islamic state under Ya'qub Beg. That independence was lost in 1877, when the Qing army recaptured the region and incorporated it into the Chinese state, where it remains, somewhat uneasily, as the large Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region.
This is the first English-language history of the rebellion since 1878, and the only one to be based on a primary sources in Islamic languages as well as Chinese, complemented by British and Ottoman archival documents and secondary sources in Russian, English, Japanese, Chinese, French, German, and Turkish.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Holy War in China

THE MUSLIM REBELLION AND STATE IN CHINESE CENTRAL ASIA, 1864-1877By Hodong Kim

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2004 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-4884-1

Contents

Acknowledgments............................................................xiIntroduction...............................................................x1. The Background..........................................................12. Xinjiang in Revolt......................................................373. The Emergence of Ya'qub Beg's Regime....................................734. Muslim State and Its Ruling Structure...................................985. Formation of New International Relations................................1386. Collapse of the Muslim State............................................159Conclusion.................................................................179Appendix A: Treaty between Russia and Kashghar (1872)......................187Appendix B: Treaty between Britain and Kashghar (1874).....................189Appendix C: Table of Contents in TAs and THs...............................194Glossary...................................................................197List of Chinese Characters.................................................201Notes......................................................................211Bibliography...............................................................263Index......................................................................289

Chapter One

The Background

Tungan Revolt in Kucha

THE BEGINNING

It was in Kucha where the banner of the 1864 Muslim rebellion against Qing rule was first raised. At that time Kucha was a small city with less than a thousand households within its walls, although in the past it had been an important center on the Silk Road. During both the Han and Tang dynasties it had served as the "headquarters of the Western Region." The reason for this was strategic. Located in the middle of the northern Tarim Basin, the city served as a key east-west link between China proper and the other Central Asian cities through the Hesi corridor and Uyghuristan (Hami and Turfan). To the north there was a route through the Tianshan mountain region by way of precarious mountain passes and to the south it was but a short distance across the Taklamakan Desert to Khotan.

The city of Kucha was greatly destroyed during the Qing conquest in the middle of the eighteenth century when its population decreased drastically. According to a Chinese record it was "[formerly] a great city with thirty to fifty thousand Muslim households" but had become so debilitated immediately after the conquest that only a thousand families remained in the city. A British mission that visited Kucha in 1873-74 attested to this fact, noting that by their reckoning there were only about 800 households within the city walls, perhaps another 1,200 in the suburbs, and 4,000 households scattered among those villages that fell within the jurisdiction of Kucha. Thus, at the time the rebellion began, the province of Kucha probably had a population of no more than 6,000 households or 42,000 people.

Although Kucha was still considered one of the "Eight Cities of the Southern Circuit" (Nanlu bacheng) under the Qing rule, its urban population was much lower than the other prominent cities of Eastern Turkestan such as Khotan (6,000 households), Yarkand (5,000 households) or Kashghar (5,000 households). One reason for the failure of the city to revive after the Qing conquest was the alteration of the overall political situation in Central Asia. Previously China's control of the oasis cities had been threatened by nomadic states based in the Zungharian plateau north of the Tianshan Mountains. When these states were active, Kucha served both as a base of operation for China's attacks on the nomads and as a line of defense to counter nomad attacks against them. After China destroyed the last of these nomadic states in 1757 and took firm control of the steppe region, there was no further need to maintain Kucha as a stronghold. The city's reduced importance is borne out by a document, composed in 1804, stating that it was administered by only a small staff of one imperial agent (banshi dachen) supported by twenty petty officials and three hundred soldiers.

Kucha was a seemingly unlikely place for a revolt to start. It was a relatively isolated backwater town that had seen better days and had no history of serious anti-Qing resistance. Yet it was here on June 4th the 1864 Muslim rebellion started. The small number of Qing troops proved insufficient to drive off the furious Muslims who began surging into the city. One reason for the Qing vulnerability to attack was the structure of city itself. Like the other oasis cities around the Tarim Basin, Kucha was encircled by a wall made of "sandy soil mixed with willow twigs" about 1.7-1.8 km in circumference, but its internal structure was different. In Kashghar and Yarkand, the Qing government had constructed separate forts outside the walls, but near the Muslim town, to accommodate its colonial officials and soldiers as well as merchants (mostly non-Turkic and non-Muslim peoples that included a mix of Manchus, Mongols, and Han Chinese). In Kucha they built the fort inside the city itself and then erected new walls designed to separate the living quarters of the local Muslims from the non-Muslim outsiders who served the Qing administration. Thus they were much more vulnerable to attack and had no place to retreat.

Sayrami describes the events of that tumultuous night in this way:

As if it were a celestial calamity or a divine punishment, one night all of a sudden some Tungans were perturbed and set fire to the suburban bazaar (wayshang bazar) in the city of Kucha, killing infidels and whomever they caught. At that moment, Allahyar Khan Beg, son of the governor (hakim) of Yangihissar, leading some heartbroken Muslims, joined with the Tungans. All the Tungans and Muslims allied together with one mind and set fires to the buildings of the amban official. Till dawn they slaughtered many infidels. As soon as it became the daybreak, the [Qing] officials came out [of the fort] with troops to fight. But they could not stand and were defeated. Tungans and Muslims were victorious while the Chinese (khitaylar) were vanquished. It happened on the Saturday night, the first day of Mukarram, 1281, in the Jawza season in the year of Snake.

The Turkic Muslims of Xinjiang referred to Chinese-speaking Muslims living in northwestern provinces by the names of Tungan or Dungan. In Qing documents these same people were either called hanhui, that is, Chinese Muslims, or simply transcribed as donggan. The non-Chinese Turkic-speaking Muslims who constituted the overwhelming majority of the population in Eastern Turkestan simply called themselves musulman (Muslim). The common ethnic term of Uyghur that is now applied to many Turkic people of this region was not used at the time and is, in fact, a twentieth-century invention.

The exact date of the revolt is somewhat in dispute, but it most probably began during the night of June 3-4, 1864. Sayrami names three persons who led the Tungan rebels on that night: Ma Shur Akhund, Ma Lung Akhund, and Shams al-Din Khalifa, all living in Kucha. The first two, with the family name of Ma, were certainly Tungans, and the third was probably a Tungan too because it was not uncommon for them to have Arabic names. Sayrami's description makes it clear that the Kuchean revolt was first initiated and led by the Tungans living in that city. Only after they had started the revolt by setting fire to the suburban markets and killing "infidels" were they joined by the Turkic Muslims. These two groups of people, now allied together, stormed into the government buildings and crushed a detachment of the Qing army that came out of the fort to suppress them. The cooperation of the Tungans and the Turks was also found in the memorial of Salingga, the imperial agent residing in Kucha, in which they were called hanren and huimin respectively.

Other Muslim accounts as well as Chinese sources give us a similar picture on the incident of that night. Hajji Yusuf, author of Jami' al-tavarikh, writes that the revolt was started by the initiative of the aforementioned three Tungan leaders. He states that the Tungans, armed with axes, hoes, and clubs, made a sudden assault and then burned official buildings and killed about one thousand Chinese and 150 Qalmaqs (i.e., Mongols). A Qing document confirms this, recording that "Chinese Muslims burnt the city of Kucha" and "all the military and civil officials in Kucha, including Wenyi and Salingga, were killed or wounded and all the official buildings, warehouses, and shops turned into ash." According to another Chinese source, "Ma Long, a native Kuchean Muslim, covertly conspired with outsiders like Dian Manla and Su Manla, and they, leading a group of people, revolted and burnt Kucha." Xinjiang tuzhi also writes that

in the fourth month of the summer a native Muslim in Kucha called Ma Long conspired to rise in revolt. There was a certain Yang Chun from Yumen, one of the insurgent Muslims, who had stealthily infiltrated into Kucha and plotted a revolt with Huang Hezhuo, Dian Manla and Su Manla. On the day of jihai [June 3] they burnt the city of Kucha and on the day of renyin [June 6] the city fell. Salingga, imperial agent [of Kucha], Wenyi, commandant (lingdui dachen) of Yangihissar, and Urenbu, assistant (bangban dachen) of Yarkand were killed.

All of our sources share two distinctive characteristics in describing the Kucha revolt: they all stress that it was the Tungans who took the initiative and that they were aided by "outside insurgents" (waifei). As we will see, these characteristics were also common to the revolts in other areas of Xinjiang such as Kashghar and Yangihissar where Tungan military commanders were reported to have secretly communicated and conspired with hanhuis. In Yarkand the revolt was alleged to have been started as "a commotion of hanhuis," while in Urumchi it was two Tungan leaders who initiated the revolt. Indeed, with the exception of Khotan, it appears that it was the Tungans who started the 1864 Muslim rebellion in each of the cities where fighting broke out. The preeminence of the Tungans in the initial stage of the revolt, however, immediately raises some difficult questions. First, why was it not the Turkic Muslims who initiated the revolt? After all, they formed the overwhelming majority of the indigenous population and would seem to have been even more hostile to Qing rule than the Chinese Muslims. Second, who were these so-called "outside insurgents" and what kind of connection existed between them and the rebellious local Tungans?

RUMOR OF MASSACRE

It appears that the Tungans were thrown into panic by a rumor that the Qing government was plotting to exterminate them. This at least was the local native opinion about the cause of the Kucha revolt. Sayrami explains it as follows:

At that time English Christians overpowered the country of Chinese emperor and conquered seventy-two large cities in the region called Burma. They even destroyed some of them. At this juncture, a group of people called Usunggui Chanmuza [i.e., Taipings] arose contending sovereignty on the one hand, and the Tungans caused troubles on the other. In the end when the Great Khan (Ulugh Khan) heard the news that Tungans, not being able to stay at Chingchufu [i.e., Jinjibao], consulted with each other and moved to the west in order to take the nearby areas, he sent the following edict to the chiefs of the provinces in this direction. "Several Tungans defied the submission, so we gave them advice and promise. However, because they were worried and afraid of their crime and unruly behavior, they could not stay and went to the west. If they go to that region, it is possible that the Tungans in that area will become friendly with them and the common people will become disorderly. As soon as you read this edict, exterminate the Tungans in city and, then, report the result to me, the Great Khan!" In this way, he sent the edict to the General of Ili. The General was also startled at this and, after consultations, said, "Tungans are the people of a large number, and their nature and behavior are different [from us]. If they got a scent of [our weakness], we would become like evening and they would become like morning. There is still a long distance for the Tungans to come from the inland (ichkiri), so if we invite the Tungans living here and, giving them advice with friendly words, conclude an agreement, then would they not be calmed down and devote themselves to their own livelihood?" ... However, they did not become calm. Every night they did not go to sleep, spending nights in holy tombs (mazar). They vowed and vowed, and even those who had not performed an ablution once a month now did it several times a day. Their sorrow and anxiety grew deeper day by day. The [Ili] General, having found out such activities of these Tungans, became very anxious. Then he ignored the agreement and, executing the emperor (khan)'s edict, sent letters to the ambans in every city: "On such and such time of such and such day, massacre the Tungan people!"

He continues that the contents of this letter was revealed accidentally to a Tungan scribe (siyah) working at a postal station (rtng). This man reported it to his father named So Daluya who was an officer in Urumchi. So Daluya then proceeded to spread this news to the Tungan chiefs in every city, which ignited the revolt in Kucha. Sayrami's assertion that the imperial order of Tungan massacre was the immediate cause of the revolt is also corroborated by a similar statement in Zafar-nama, composed by Mukammad 'Ali Khan Kashmiri in 1867-68 just a few years after the revolt.

Does their claim that the Muslim rebellion was touched off by the rumor of a planned Tungan massacre have any grounding in reality? The edict of Tongzhi Emperor himself, dated September 25, 1864, is noteworthy in its assertion that the belief in such a rumor was widespread.

The present disturbance by Muslim insurgents in all parts of Xinjiang is agitated by absurd stories fabricated by cunning people who fled from the interior region. It seems to me that they were worried good Muslims (lianghui) might not trust their words, so they, after having circulated a rumor that the Muslims would be massacred, scared them and made them join.

It may be impossible for us to find out whether such a rumor was really "fabricated" or had any factual basis. Although the emperor would have hardly ordered such a massacre if he considered its inevitable and disastrous consequences, it may be too rash for us to conclude that the rumor was as completely "fabricated by cunning people who fled from the interior region" as the emperor thought. Even if the emperor had not considered such a plan, local Qing officials, worried about the loyalty of their Tungan troops, had previously considered ways they could be purged from positions of power. One thing that both sides agreed on was that it was "the rumor of massacre" itself, whatever its merit, that was a direct cause of the Muslim revolt in Xinjiang.

Several sources allow us to conjecture how such a rumor came to be disseminated, especially when we examine the cause of Muslim revolt at Lintong in Shanxi which had started in June, 1862 and spread all over Shanxi and Gansu provinces. In that spring the Taiping army began to pour into the Shanxi area, and the Han Chinese organized militia units (tuanlian) at the suggestion of government officials in order to repel the rebels. Then these Han militias started to slaughter the Muslims who, they feared, might ally with the Taipings. In Guanzhong area a large number of Muslims were massacred as shown by the expressions like "jiaohui" (extirpation of Muslims), "miehui" (extermination of Muslims) or "shalu jingjin" (massacre and cleansing). In Gansu the situation was not much different either. Officials in Pingliang, having mobilized militias, "searched and annihilated insurgents in the city." In 1864 an official in Suzhou secretly invited militia leaders to conspire in "the massacre of Muslims" (tuhui), but the Muslims discovered the plot and captured the city.

Then, the question is how the news of these terrible incidents in Shanxi and Gansu was transmitted to the Tungans in Xinjiang. Emperor Tongzhi's edict leads us to believe that it was the "outside insurgents" from the interior of China who disseminated the news and instigated their fellows in Xinjiang to rise. We have a few more reports that support this suspicion. As mentioned earlier, "a certain Yang Chun from Yumen" plotted together with local Tungans and caused the Kucha revolt. Another inland Tungan, named Tuo Ming came to Urumchi and hid himself at the house of So Daluya, and they became the leaders of the revolt there. We do not know whether their arrival and activities were conducted as a part of a systematic anti-Qing movement. The portrayal of Tuo Ming in a Qing document is less that of a committed rebel than of a troublemaking "tinker-peddler" type common in rural China. He "practiced sorcery and fortune-telling" and "divination" while "wandering around the Jinji[bao], Henan and Gansu areas, and got acquainted with various Muslim leaders."

There is no doubt that the outsiders' propaganda was effective in creating an impending sense of crisis among the Tungans in Xinjiang, but what is no less important is the social context that rendered them so susceptible to that propaganda. After the revolt in Kucha and Urumchi, the other cities rose against the Qing even without involvement of outsiders. In most areas the revolts were not carefully premeditated by any leading group and the leaders were chosen only after the revolt had succeeded. Why did they rise against the Qing even without the involvement of the outsiders? Since it was the Tungans who first raised the banner of the revolt in many cities, let us examine the direct cause that turned them against the Qing.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0804748845
• ISBN 13: 9780804748841
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 315