Familiar Strangers by Lipman Jonathan N.;

Author:Lipman, Jonathan N.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 2017-12-09T16:00:00+00:00

Muslim Rebellion or “Muslim Rebellions”?

The above narrative, schematic and rapid, can nonetheless inform our discussion of Muslims in China by challenging a number of paradigmatic constructions: the unified minzu, the fanatical Muslims, the rational and statecraft-practicing Qing officials, even notions such as “rebellion” itself. For none of these is a natural, inherent quality of persons or events; rather, we must use the evidence to describe what people did—that is, we must construct narratives—and modify our paradigms and vocabulary accordingly. To take one dramatic example from this complex series of events, let us consider the Muslim militias of the Wei River valley. Conscripted by their communities for self-defense, armed and drilled, provided with fortifications both physical and ideological, these young men could have had a wide variety of motivations to attack a nearby non-Muslim village. Were they simply ordered to do so by manipulative, fanatical ahong? Did they lust after loot or violence for its own sake? Or had they heard reports (true or not) of massacred Muslim villages down the road, of tuanlian on the rampage, of Qing armies raping and pillaging? Were they predatory or protective, rapacious or terrified, or did they change over time? These questions can be answered only through the construction of focused narratives on the basis of local evidence, not by wholesale, essentialized characterization of religious groups, minzu, or other collectivities.59

These conflicts, like those of 1781 and 1784, pitted Muslim and non-Muslim Qing loyalists against Muslim (and occasionally non-Muslim) insurgents, righteous rebels, or rioters (depending on the historian’s vocabulary).60 “Muslim unity,” a concept dear to scholars, missionaries, and many northwesterners when describing the Muslims, did not prevent numbers of Gansu Muslims from joining the Qing forces or siding with them. Such people found greater advantage in alliance with the state, and they did not hesitate to kill coreligionists. Wang Dagui of the Haicheng region, for example, fought effectively for the Qing and was awarded a cap button of the sixth rank (Ch. liupin dingdai). Local anti-Qing Muslims caught up with him during a counterattack in 1863 and killed him, with his entire family.61 It would be comfortable to say that Old Teaching Muslims were loyalists and New Teaching Muslims rebels, but the evidence does not support such a contention. Though anti-Qing activism in northern Gansu (now Ningxia) centered in the Jahrīya, some of the most successful resistance to the Qing came from within the Khafīya and from the refugee Shaanxi Muslims, very few (if any) of whom were Sufis at all, not to mention adherents of the New Teaching.

Nor did Ma Hualong, fifth-generation holder of Ma Mingxin’s position as head of the Jahrīya, oppose the Qing with the fanatic’s lust attributed to him by most accounts.62 Branded by the Qing as the main leader of this rebellion, Ma was not a secessionist, and he sought to protect his followers and his territory around Jinjipu, suing for peace when possible until forced to last-ditch military resistance. He often requested amnesties for various groups of Muslims and was reported to be treating non-Muslims well in the territory under his control.

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