[2] It resulted in massive demographic shifts in Northwest China, and led to a population loss of 21 million people from a combination of massacres, migration, famine, and corpse-transmitted plague.

[11] The Hunan Army was extensively infiltrated by the anti Qing, Han Gelaohui secret society, who started several mutinies during the Dungan Revolt, delaying crucial offensives.

Disagreements between adherents of Khufiyya and Jahriya, as well as perceived mismanagement, corruption and the anti-Sufi attitudes of Qing officials, resulted in uprisings by Hui and Salar followers of the New Teaching in 1781 and 1783, but these were promptly suppressed.

[27] As Taiping troops approached southeastern Shaanxi in the spring of 1862, the local Han Chinese, encouraged by the Qing government, formed Yong Ying militias to defend the region against the attackers.

Historical records from the era show that prior to the conflict over the price of bamboo poles, there had already been plans among the Hui community to set up an Islamic State in the west of China [citation needed].

Given the low prestige of the Qing dynasty and its armies being occupied elsewhere, the revolt that began in the spring of 1862 in the Wei River valley spread rapidly throughout southeastern Shaanxi.

By late June 1862, organized Muslim bands laid siege to Xi'an, which was not relieved by Qing general Dorongga [zh] (sometimes written To-lung-a) until the fall of 1863.

While the Hui rebels were preparing to attack Gansu and Shaanxi, Yaqub Beg, who had fled from Kokand Khanate in 1865 or 1866 after losing Tashkent to the Russians, declared himself ruler of Kashgar and soon managed to take complete control of Tarim Basin in Xinjiang.

Zuo Zongtang called on the government to "support the armies in the northwest with the resources of the southeast", and arranged the finances of his planned expedition to conquer Gansu by obtaining loans worth millions of taels from foreign banks in the southeastern provinces.

[43] Zuo's troops reached Ma's stronghold, Jinjibao (金积堡; Jinji Bao; 'Jinji Fortress', 'sometimes romanised as Jinjipu', 'using an alternative reading of the Chinese character 堡') in what was then north-eastern Gansu[44][45][46] in September 1870, bringing Krupp siege guns with him.

The government troops fortified their camps, repelled multiple joint attacks by Hui Muslim infantry and cavalry, and intercepted and killed fleeing enemies at river crossings.

Upon learning this, Liu Jintang was determined to resolutely eliminate the rebels to prevent them from taking advantage of the autumn harvest to expand the rebellion and to stabilize the situation in Xining.

On August 24, several thousand Hui Muslim infantry divided into two groups: one directly attacked Li Shuangliang's defensive camp, and the other moved out from Yancaigou to block the government troops.

Liu Jintang ordered Deng Zeng to open fire and rout the enemy, then led troops in pursuit, causing the Hui forces to retreat to the mountain peaks.

On October 17, Xining's provincial official Guo Xiangzhi requested assistance, stating that the city had been besieged for two months and was in urgent danger due to a lack of food.

Under Liu Jintang's command, the Qing army took advantage of the terrain to set up ambushes, continuously defeating the enemy, and finally captured various strategic positions, severely damaging the Hui forces.

[67] As noted in the previous sections, Zuo relocated Han Chinese from Hezhou as a reward for the Hui leader Ma Zhan'ao after he and his followers surrendered and joined the Qing to crush the rebels.

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.

Opinions as to the veracity of these rumors vary: while the Tongzhi Emperor described them as "absurd" in his edict of September 25, 1864, Muslim historians generally believe that massacres were indeed planned, if not by the imperial government then by various local authorities.

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 (常清; Cháng Qīng), 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.

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.

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 12 December 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.

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 Siberia—should they send any—and to sell some grain to the defenders of Kuldja on credit.

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.

[110] 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 回队].

According to Rimsky-Korsakoff (1992), three separate groups of the Hui people fled to the Russian Empire across the Tian Shan during the exceptionally severe winter of 1877/78: Another wave of immigration followed in the early 1880s.

Zeng Jize became the new negotiator and despite the outrage caused by the original terms, the resulting Treaty of Saint Petersburg only differed slightly: China retained control over almost all of Ili, but the indemnity payment was higher.

][155] The native Hui Muslims of Gansu province led by general Ma Anliang sided with the Qing and prepared to attack the anti-Qing revolutionaries of Xi'an city.