Qīndìng Shífēngbǎo jìlüè 欽定石峰堡紀略
Imperially Authorised Account of the Affair of Stone Peak Fort by 高宗弘曆 (敕撰)
About the work
The Qīndìng Shífēngbǎo jìlüè in 20 juǎn (the Sìkù tíyào gives 21) is the imperial campaign history of the Tián Wǔ 田五 / Mǎ Mínglái 馬明來 revolt of Qiánlóng 49 (1784) — the second of the great Naqshbandiyya Jahriyya (xīnjiào 新教) Hui Muslim risings in Gānsù, only three years after the suppression of Sū Sìshísān (KR2c0015). Beginning on the Bǐngzǐ day of the 4th month (April 1784), Tián Wǔ and his fellows proclaimed the New Teaching at Yánchá 鹽茶 subprefecture, broke into the Xī’ān 西安 tǔbǎo (earthen fort), killed the Provincial Commander Gāng Tǎ 剛塔 in his counter-attack, and over the spring drew in successive contingents of Hui in southern Gānsù. Tián Wǔ himself was shot in early action at Mǎyíngshuǐ 馬營水 and committed suicide; the leadership passed to Lǐ Húzi 李鬍子 and Mǎ Húzi 馬鬍子. The remnants moved through Long-de 隆德, Jìngníng 靜寧, and Fúqiāng 伏羌, and concentrated at the Shífēngbǎo 石峯堡 (Stone Peak Fort) on the ridge near Tōngwèi 通渭, from which the work takes its name. The Qiánlóng court despatched Fù Kāng’ān 福康安 as new commander, joined by the Lǐngshìwèinèidàchén Hǎiláncài 海蘭察, with the Jiànruì and Huǒqì yíng metropolitan crack troops. The siege of Shífēngbǎo closed the campaign by mid-summer 1784. Compilation was ordered immediately. The catalog records the work under the name of the Qiánlóng emperor (高宗弘曆 敕撰), the standard convention for fānglüè on which he had himself supplied the yùzhì prefatory poetry.
Tiyao
The Shífēngbǎo jìlüè in 21 juǎn was, in Qiánlóng 49 (1784), reverently composed on imperial command. — The Gānsù border touches the Western Region, the báimào 白帽 (“white-hat”) clans living among us, their breeding fertile and their kinds daily multiplying. — Our Sage Court holding the Four Seas does not look on them in division: they have long been listed in our census-rolls and stand the equals of all common subjects; the inward worship and chanting of those who follow their teaching the dynasty’s law does not forbid. Yet the unsubdued among them set up the xīnjiào 新教, leading on to the matter of Sū Sìshísān; the imperial bow-of-the-stars unleashed and the swift cleansing came; those who joined revolt were all chastised, those who returned to allegiance still received nourishment. With grace and threat together exercised, all should know to fear together; but the wolf-pup will not be tamed, the owl’s voice will not change. Without thought to chastise themselves, they set themselves outside the shēngchéng 生成: in the 4th month of Jiǎchén (1784) Tián Wǔ and his fellows again rose in revolt. The senior officials, in the affair’s beginning, were governed wrong; and after the rebel-band had spread, were further unable, despite imperial direction, to act on the moment with the right strategy — so that the cornered beast in the cooking-pot was for a moment of pause not exhausted. — His Majesty therefore singularly commissioned a senior minister and secretly conferred his strategy; the cloud-net closed on all four sides; the path of flight and refuge was cut; the lair was swept and the nest burned, and the western frontier was made stable. The various ministers respectfully recorded the course from start to end as a fānglüè of the divine plan. Although the affair began in the Yánchá subprefecture, the rebel den was at Shífēngbǎo, and the place where the qún xiōng surrendered was also Shífēngbǎo: hence the work is so titled, in record of the fact. — The first juǎn contains the yùzhì shī wén. After this, by month and day are arranged all the various memorials and replies, from the despatch of troops down to the closing of the after-affairs; nothing not in detail. — Reverently we read it: His Majesty’s wisdom is as a god’s: the jīpàn (turning-point of victory) was already won before the action; the various ministers in the field, where they have respected the imperial plan have, without exception, taken their tally and declared their service; where they have crossed the imperial directive have, without exception, broken their wagon and lost the rule. Truly may one say His Majesty has condensed the divine on the Nine Heavens above and weighed the spring at ten thousand miles’ distance. — From the time of the Shūqì (the Yellow Emperor) to the present, none has so exceeded the Yellow Emperor in pacifying the realm by arms; tradition records the inscription on the Jīnjī engine, the great rule there being: at noon you must dry, do not lose the time. — Action by hour and necessary timing — by the form of meeting opportunity, acting where there is no enemy. Reading the present compilation and reverently parsing the Sage’s discussion of the meaning of slow and quick, one becomes aware that the Sage’s ruling-square is everywhere, exact as the balance, swift as a shadow — incomparably deeper and more clear than the Yellow Emperor’s saying. Could this not be the axis of military feat for ten thousand generations? — Reverently collated, Qiánlóng 54 (1789), 2nd month. Chief compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Senior collator: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The Shífēngbǎo affair is the second of the New-Teaching Hui Muslim risings in Gānsù, occurring three years after Sū Sìshísān (KR2c0015) and against the same Naqshbandiyya Jahriyya 哲赫忍耶 movement; the leaders of 1784 were spiritual heirs of those killed in 1781. The campaign was militarily smaller than its predecessor — Tián Wǔ was killed in May, before Qiánlóng’s command structure had even been re-organised — but politically more humiliating, in that the local Gānsù commanders proved unable to seal the rebels’ withdrawal and the rising spread across several subprefectures before being contained. The court’s response was to suspend the existing chain of command, replace the Governor-General Lǐ Shìyáo 李侍堯 with Fù Kāng’ān, and call up Hǎiláncài and the metropolitan banner-troops, repeating the structure of the Sū Sìshísān suppression. The closing siege of Shífēngbǎo was complete by mid-summer; the surviving leadership were brought to Beijing and quartered. The book preserves the Qiánlóng emperor’s poetic jì shì 紀事 series on the campaign, comparable in scope and self-justificatory force to those on the Liǎng Jīnchuān and Lánzhōu campaigns. Modern source-critical literature (Lipman 1997 on the Naqshbandiyya in Gānsù) treats the Shífēngbǎo jìlüè together with the Lánzhōu jìlüè as the two foundational official sources for the Naqshbandiyya wars.
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.
- Lipman, Jonathan N. 1981. “The Border World of Gansu.” PhD diss., Stanford. (Earlier articulation.)
- Hummel, Eminent Chinese, biographies of Fù Kāng’ān, Hǎilán-cài, Lǐ Shìyáo.
- Wáng, David. 2014. Religion and Politics in the Tibetan and Hui Borderlands. (For the broader Naqshbandi context.)
- Wilkinson, Chinese History, §66.6.1.
Other points of interest
The Shífēngbǎo jìlüè is one of the two principal fānglüè on the eighteenth-century Sufi wars in the northwest; together with the Lánzhōu jìlüè (KR2c0015) it forms the official documentary base for the Qiánlóng court’s understanding of the Naqshbandi Jahriyya rebellions, and prefigures the much larger Hui rebellions of the late nineteenth century.
Links
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11107180