On this date in 1871, the Qing executed Ma Hualong (or Ma Hua-lung), one of the principal leaders of a 15-year Muslim revolt in northwest China.
Ma was the fifth leader of the Jahriyya, a Sufi order whose founder Ma Mingxin had himself been executed during disturbances in the early 1780s.
By the time of Ma’s ascendancy, the Jahriyya were a major force in Gansu, Shaanxi and Ningxia.
Neither Ma nor any other single person led the Dungan revolt. (“Dungan” was a 19th century term for the ethnicity that’s now known as the Hui.) Rather, a cascading series of ethnic riots led in 1862 — while the Chinese army was absorbed elsewhere with the bloody Taiping Rebellion — to a patchwork of rebellious leaders and movements, operating independently and often viewing one another as rivals.
The Jahriyya was the closest thing to a unifying element among discontented Muslims. According to this volume, though Ma struck a pose of moderation and loyalty, in the Chinese court’s eyes, the disturbances “depend[ed] on Ma Hua-lung.” For the Qing, Ma’s nearly impregnable position at Jinjipu (Chin-chi-pao) and his diplomatic finesse were the lynchpin.
Dispatched to put down the revolt, General Tso Tsung-tang had the prestigious Ma as his primary target: with him gone, the rest of the rebels could be divided and conquered at leisure.
Unable to take Jinjipu by storm, General Tso besieged it unto near starvation, forcing Ma to surrender himself. Notwithstanding his attempts to take all the blame for the revolt on his own shoulders,
Ma was executed, together with twelve members of his immediate family, by the “slicing process”; some eighty of the lesser Muslim leaders were beheaded. Chin-chi-p’u was depopulated, and the surviving Muslims were sent, en masse, into exile or slavery.
Just a drop in a bucket for a conflict with 8 million-plus dead.
The Jahriyya order still exists to this day. And so too, of course, does General Tso — on Chinese restaurant menus.
On this day..
- 1921: George Bailey, the first Englishman hanged by female jurors
- 1950: Rosli Dhobi, Sarawak patriot
- 1423: William Taylor, Lollard
- 1942: The massacre at the Pit
- 1962: Kelly Moss, restless of spirit
- 1401: William Sawtre, Lollard heretic
- 1886: David Roberts, dutiful son
- 1942: Jakub Lemberg and family
- 2006: Ali Afrawi and Mehdi Nawaseri
- 1974: Salvador Puig Antich and Heinz Ches, the last garroted in Spain
- 1585: William Parry, Vile and Base
- 2005: Han Bok-nam, whose death was illicitly filmed