欽定蘭州紀略

Qīndìng Lánzhōu jìlüè 欽定蘭州紀略

Imperially Authorised Account of the Lánzhōu Affair by 阿桂 (奉敕撰)

About the work

The Qīndìng Lánzhōu jìlüè in 20 juǎn (the Sìkù tíyào gives 21) is the imperial campaign history of the Sū Sìshísān 蘇四十三 revolt of Qiánlóng 46 (1781), the rising of Hui Muslims of the Naqshbandiyya Jahriyya 哲赫忍耶 (“New Teaching” 新教) in the GānsùQīnghǎi 河湟 corridor, led by the Salar 撒拉 chieftain Sū Sìshísān and the religious leader Mǎ Míngxīn 馬明心. The campaign began on the Bǐngzǐ day of the 4th month of Qiánlóng 46 (April 1781), when the New-Teaching faction in Xúnhuà 循化 stormed Hézhōu 河州 (Línxià) and pressed against Lánzhōu, having killed the prefect Yáng Shìjǐ 楊士璣 and the assistant general Xīn Zhù 新柱. Imperial forces under Lè’ěrjǐn 勒爾謹, Bì Yuán 畢沅, and the Manchu generals Wǔmítài 伍彌泰 and Mǎ Biāo 馬彪 converged; on imperial command, eight-banner crack troops and the Jiànruì 健銳 / Huǒqì 火器 营 metropolitan brigades were also despatched, with the Grand Secretary Āguì 阿桂 and Héshēn 和珅 jointly placed in overall command. Mǎ Míngxīn was executed at Lánzhōu by the Provincial Treasurer Wáng Tíngzàn 王廷贊; the New Teaching survivors retreated to the Húalín 華林 monastery on the heights south of Lánzhōu, where they were besieged and annihilated. Compilation was ordered immediately on the campaign’s close; the imperial preface and the verse memorial of presentation are dated mid-1781; the Sìkù edition was respectfully collated and presented in early Qiánlóng 54 (1789). Chief compiler-of-record was Āguì.

Tiyao

The Lánzhōu jìlüè in 21 juǎn was reverently composed in Qiánlóng 46 (1781) on imperial command. — Examining the matter: Hui peoples are scattered across the Central Kingdom and especially fierce on the northwestern border. Yet their teaching is of one kind — Liú Zhì’s 劉智 Tiānfāng diǎnlǐ zé yào jiě 天方典禮擇要解 [an early-Qing Hui-Confucian compendium] is the explanation of their inherited regulations. Their ancestral land they call Mòdéna 黙德那 (Medina); their breed lives on both sides of the Tianshan; later, when the Dzungar held the north of the mountains, all crossed to the south. Today from Hāmì 哈密 and Túlǔfān 吐魯番 westward, by way of Hétián 和闐 (Khotan) and Yē’ěrqiāng 葉爾羌 (Yarkand), the entire region is theirs. — When His Majesty’s xīnghú 星弧 (star-bow) reached afar, the realm of the moon was returned to the Hui peoples; all came under our roll-of-territory and became our subjects and bondsmen, while in the interior the Hui too went continuously about as merchants, coming and going within. Treacherous and crafty fellows there falsely declared that they had received the teaching from the homeland anew, and set up a xīnjiào 新教 (“new teaching”) in opposition to the jiùjiào 舊教 (“old teaching”) and the two contended. The official with the responsibility, lulled by ease, did not act early upon the warning signs; the contention ran on, and at length they massed and rose. — In the 4th month of Xīnchǒu (1781), in the Xúnhuà subprefecture, the Hui rebel Sū Sìshísān and his fellows stormed Hézhōu and pressed Lánzhōu. The relieving troops gathered, the rebels’ line of retreat was cut, and the Yǔlín 羽林 picked troops, with subordinate fán (frontier) forces, all assembled by edict and met at the appointed time. Their road of flight and refuge was closed; they fell back to the Lóngwěi 龍尾 hill, ten lǐ south of the city, and held a defensible point to the death. The fish in the kettle for a while still gnashed, the louse in the trousers in the end was crushed; entrenchments were filled, lairs burned, all paths joining in upon them, and they were pressed at the Húalín monastery — taken or killed, not one fugitive. — In this campaign, the cause of the original disturbance lay in the senior officials’ habit of stoking fire under faggots; therefore it broke out unawares. The means of victory in the field lay in the qíkuò (gathered cinch) of the imperial throne; therefore one stroke and there was none unmastered. The narrative here laid out is exact from beginning to end. Of the regulating of military institutions, the firming of the frontier, the various enumerated articles and the imperial vermilion-replies, all are placed in entirely; from this is everywhere visible the remoteness and depth of the chángjià yuǎnyú (long-shaft-distant-charioting) plan and of the means of stopping decay before it begins, the means by which to lay down the peace of ten thousand generations: the imperial care here is most deep and most far. — Reverently collated, Qiánlóng 54 (1789), 1st month. Chief compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Senior collator: Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

The Sū Sìshísān revolt is the first of the great late-Qiánlóng Hui Muslim uprisings, prefiguring the Tián Wǔ 田五 / Shífēngbǎo 石峯堡 rising of 1784 (KR2c0016) and, on a larger horizon, the Dūngān 東干 wars of the mid-nineteenth century. The conflict’s immediate trigger was a Sufi-doctrinal split between the older Khufiyya 虎夫耶 (“old teaching”, jiùjiào) and the newer Jahriyya 哲赫忍耶 (“new teaching”, xīnjiào) lineages — the latter advocating loud dhikr and a more intransigent posture vis-à-vis civil authority. The Qiánlóng court, alarmed both by the political-religious overtones and by the campaign’s near approach to the imperial postal road through Lánzhōu, treated the suppression as a dynastic emergency and committed metropolitan crack troops. Mǎ Míngxīn’s killing in Lánzhōu was carried out under the urgency of the moment by the provincial treasurer Wáng Tíngzàn — an act subsequently controverted, since it removed an important source of intelligence on the New Teaching. The siege and burn of the Húalín monastery position south of Lánzhōu closed the campaign by mid-summer.

The jìlüè’s opening yùzhì materials — including extensive imperial poetry on the campaign — frame the Hui Muslim movement as the work of “deceitful and crafty” interlopers (the term xīnjiào itself is post hoc and pejorative). For modern source-critical analysis, see Lipman 1997 and the related literature on the Naqshbandiyya in eighteenth-century Gānsù.

Translations and research

• Lipman, Jonathan N. 1997. Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China. Seattle: University of Washington Press. The standard English-language treatment, with extensive use of the Lánzhōu jìlüè together with the Sufi silsila materials and the Persian-Arabic Naqshbandi tradition.
• Lipman, Jonathan N. 1990. “Ethnic Conflict in Modern China: Hans and Huis in Gansu, 1781–1929.” In Violence in China: Essays in Culture and Counterculture, ed. Jonathan N. Lipman and Stevan Harrell. Albany: SUNY Press.
• Lipman, Jonathan N. 1981. The Border World of Gansu, 1895–1935. PhD diss., Stanford University. (The post-1895 successor literature, but treats the 1781 events as foundational.)
• Sū Bei-hǎi 蘇北海. 1996. Hāsākè zú wénhuà shǐ 哈薩克族文化史. Xīnjiāng dàxué chūbǎn-shè. (For background on the Salar.)
• Wilkinson, Chinese History, §66.6.1, §66.6.6.

Other points of interest

The figure of “Sū Sìshísān” — Sū “Number Forty-three” — preserves an old Hui naming convention, the personal name being the parents’ combined ages at the child’s birth. The jìlüè is unusual among the fānglüè for its substantial coverage of the religious-doctrinal background, including its (hostile) attempt to characterise the Naqshbandiyya–Khufiyya split.

Links

• Wikipedia (campaign): https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/蘇四十三起義
• Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11107179