[3] In 1856, a massacre of Muslims organized by a Qing Manchu official responsible for suppressing the revolt in the provincial capital of Kunming sparked a province-wide multi-ethnic insurgency.

[9][10] Meanwhile, in Dali City in western Yunnan, an independent kingdom was established by Du Wenxiu (1823–1872), who was born in Yongchang to a Han Chinese family which had converted to Islam.

[12][13] Du Wenxiu openly claimed that his aims were to drive out the Manchus, unite with the ethnic Han, and destroy those who supported the Qing.

[15][16] Anti-Manchu rhetoric was frequently used by Du, as he further tried to convince both the Han and the Hui to join forces to overthrow the Manchu Qing after 200 years of their rule.

[17][18] Du invited the fellow Hui Muslim leader Ma Rulong to join him in driving the Manchu Qing out and "recover China".

[19] For his war against Manchu "oppression", Du "became a Muslim hero", while Ma Rulong defected to the Qing.

[19] During this insurrection, Dun Wenxiu has released a slogan: To bring peace to Han, Down with the Qing court.

(Chinese: 安漢反清)[26]Albert Fytche opined this revolt was not religious in nature, since the Muslims were joined by the non-Muslim Shan and Kakhyen and other hill tribes.

[13] Fytche reported this testimony from a British officer, and he also stated that the Chinese were tolerant of different religions so they were unlikely to have caused the revolt by interfering in the practice of Islam.

It was the rebels in western Yunnan under the leadership of Du Wenxiu who, by gaining control of Dali in 1856 (which they retained until its fall in 1872), became the major military and political center of opposition to the Qing government.

Upon taking power, Du Wenxiu promised that he would ally with the Taiping Rebellion, which also aimed to overthrew the Qing dynasty.

[32] The rebels captured the city of Dali, which became the base for their operations, and they declared themselves a separate political entity from China.

[33] Tribal pagan animism, Confucianism, and Islam were all legalized and "honoured" with a "Chinese-style bureaucracy" in Du Wenxiu's Sultanate.

[37] Ma Rulong also banned pork in areas under his control after he surrendered and joined the Qing forces.

[38] The Imperial government was hindered by a profusion of problems in various parts of the sprawling empire, including the Taiping rebellion.

Du Wenxiu refused to surrender, unlike the other rebellious Muslim commander, Ma Rulong.

[41] The Manchus had secretly hounded mobs on to the rich Panthays, provoked anti-Hui riots and instigated destruction of their mosques.

[43] During this period the Sultan Suleiman, on his way to Mecca as a pilgrim, visited Rangoon, presumably via the Kengtung route, and from there to Calcutta where he had a chance to see the British in India.

In 1872 he sent his adopted son Prince Hassan to England with a personal letter to Queen Victoria, via Burma, in an attempt to obtain official recognition of the Panthay Empire as an independent power.

[48][49][50][51] Manchu troops then began a massacre of the rebels, killing thousands of civilians, sending severed ears along with the heads of their victims.

Many fled with their families across the Burmese border and took refuge in the Wa State where, about 1875, they set up the exclusively Hui town of Panglong.

[61] For a period of perhaps ten to fifteen years following the collapse of the Panthay Rebellion, the province's Hui minority was widely discriminated against by the victorious Qing, especially in the western frontier districts contiguous with Burma.

[67] The third reason is that at the time that Turkic Muslims were waging rebellion 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 (Chinese: 回队, romanized: Huí duì).

Back then, Dungan military commanders such as Cui Wei and Hua Dacai were surrendered troops who had been redeployed.

What is more, since the establishment of the Republic, Dungan have demonstrated not the slightest hint of errant behaviour to suggest that they may prove to be unreliable.

In addition, the Burmese economy had relied heavily on cotton exports to China, and suddenly lost access to the vast Chinese market.