Stalemate between China and Xinjiang clique Jin Shuren Zhang Peiyuan  † Sheng Shicai Khoja Niyas (After July 1933) Ma Shaowu (anti-Russian) Pavel Pappengut Joseph Stalin Muhammad Amin Bughra   Khoja Niyas Osman Batur Abdullah Bughra † Nur Ahmad Jan Bughra † Timur Beg † Osman Ali Tawfiq Bey (WIA) Sabit Damulla Abdulbaki  Mustafa Ali Bay First Sino-Uyghur Conflicts Warlords Wars Second Sino-Uyghur Conflicts Sino-Soviet Conflict in Xinjiang The Kumul Rebellion (Chinese: 哈密暴動; pinyin: Hāmì bàodòng; lit.

'Hami Uprising') was a rebellion of Kumulik Uyghurs from 1931 to 1934 who conspired with Hui Chinese Muslim General Ma Zhongying to overthrow Jin Shuren, governor of Xinjiang.

Such acts of discrimination included restrictions on travel, increased taxation, seizure of property without due process and frequent executions for suspected espionage or disloyalty.

[7] According to British missionaries Mildred Cable and Francesca French, who knew the last Khan Maqsud Shah, the existence of the Khanate of Kumul was important to the Uyghurs, who tolerated Chinese rule so long as their own government was established at Hami under the proud title of King of the Gobi.

Yulbars Khan, advisor at the Kumul court, appealed for help to Ma Zhongying, a Hui Muslim warlord in Kansu, to overthrow Jin and restore the Khanate.

On February 20, 1933, the Committee for National Revolution set up a provisional Khotan government with Sabit as prime minister and Muhammad Amin Bughra as head of the armed forces.

[20][21][22] Foreign volunteers who arrived to help the rebels included Tevfik Pasha, a Pan-Islamist former Minister of the Saudi King Ibn Saud and formed cooperative ties with the Japanese ambassador to Afghanistan Kitada Masamoto, who was also closely monitoring the rebellion.

Sheng Shicai and the Soviet Union accused Ma Zhongying, a Muslim and ardently anti-Soviet, of being used by the Japanese to set up a puppet regime in Xinjiang, as they had done with Manchukuo.

The explicitly Islamic East Turkestan Republic forcibly ejected the Swedish missionaries and was openly hostile to Christianity while espousing a Muslim Turkic ideology.

[27] In the name of Islam, Uyghur leader Amir Abdullah Bughra violently assaulted the Yarkand-based Swedish missionaries and sought to execute them; however, they were ultimately banished due to the British who interceded in their favor.

[28] The East Turkestan Republic, having banished the Swedish missionaries, tortured and jailed Christian converts, mainly Kirghiz and Uighurs.

During this time Ma's forces became notorious for their cruelty to both Turkic and Chinese inhabitants, destroying the economy and engaging in wholesale looting and burning of villages.

Meanwhile, the Han Chinese commander of Ili, Zhang Peiyuan, entered into secret negotiations with Ma Zhongying, and the two joined their armies together against Jin Shuren and the Russians.

At this point in April 1933, Jin Shuren's White Russian Cossack troops in Urumqi mutinied and overthrew him, installing his subordinate Sheng Shicai to take his place.

[51] Under Soviet and Han Chinese communist advice, Sheng implemented a system of ethnocultural autonomy, including appointing the former Kumul rebel Khoja Niyaz as deputy governor of Xinjiang.

[53] Ma Zhongying and Zhang Peiyuan then began a joint attack on Sheng's Manchurian and White Russian force during the Second Battle of Urumqi (1933–34).

Despite valiant resistance, Ma Zhongying's troops were forced to retreat from the Soviet military machine's aerial bombing and were pushed back from Urumqi during the Battle of Tutung.

[62] Meanwhile, in nearby Kashgar, the representatives of Sheng Shicai including Chinese nationalist Christian Liu Bin and Turfan merchant Mahmud Shizhang took over control.

When Ma Shaowu, sensing a trap, refused to go, he was subject to an assassination attempt which forced him to seek medical care in the Soviet Union.

Conflict began brewing when Liu Bin, unaware of Muslim sensitivities, put up a picture of republican China's founder Sun Yat-sen in the Id-gar mosque of Old Kashgar, while pro-Soviet Kyrgyz under Uyghur communist Qadir Beg took over local policing.

[63] A minor battle on February-may , 1933, in which Chinese Muslim troops were expelled from the Aksu oases of Xinjiang by Uighurs led by Ismail Beg kilometres (40 miles) north of the mountains.

A minor battle in which Chinese Muslim troops under General Ma Zhancang attacked and defeated Uighur and Kirghiz armies at Sekes Tesh.

[66] Uighur and Kirghiz forces, led by the Bughra brothers[67] and Tawfiq Bay, attempted to take the New City of Kashgar from Chinese Muslim troops under General Ma Zhancang.

Tawfiq Bey, a Syrian Arab traveler who held the title Sayyid (descendant of prophet Muhammed) and arrived at Kashgar on August 26, 1933, was shot in the stomach by Chinese Muslim troops in September.

Previously Ma Zhancang arranged to have the Uighur leader Timur Beg killed and beheaded on August 9, 1933, displaying his head outside of Id Kah Mosque.

A number of Han Chinese officers were spotted wearing the green uniforms of Ma Zhancang's unit of the New 36th Division; presumably they had converted to Islam.

During the battle, Han Chinese General Zhang Peiyuan, of Ili, refused to help Jin Shuren repulse the attack, a sign that relations between the two were becoming strained.

[70] Ma Zhongying conducted secret negotiations with Han Chinese General Zhang Peiyuan for a joint attack against Sheng Shicai's provincial Manchurian and White Russian troops in Urumqi.

The Kuomintang secretly encouraged Zhang and Ma through Huang Mu-sung to attack Sheng's forces, because of his Soviet connections and to regain the province.

Ma Chung-chieh was reportedly killed in a moment of "inspired but utterly reckless bravery" when attempting to scale the walls in the face of machine-gun fireNew 36th Division General Ma Fuyuan led a Chinese Muslim army to storm Kashgar on February 6, 1934, and attacked the Uighur and Kirghiz rebels of the First East Turkestan Republic.