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HOLY WAR IN CHINA: The Muslim Rebellion and State in Chinese Central Asia, 1864-1877. By Hodong Kirn. Stanford (California): Stanford University Press. 2004. xviii, 295pp. (Maps, tables, B&W photos.) US$55.00, cloth. ISBN 0-804 7-4884-5.
This is a fine study of the 1864 Muslim rebellion in today's Xinjiang, which led to the establishment of Ya'qub Beg's ephemeral state (collapsed in 1877). Kirn's careful reconstruction of the history, based on primary sources in Turkic languages, Chinese, Russian and many other languages, provides a much-needed corrective to the ideologically imbued historiography in China, which usually portrays Ya'qub Beg as a stooge of imperialist Britain and Russia.
Kim writes that the rebellion arose as much from a resentment of the Manchu-Chinese colonization of Xinjiang as from a mutual misunderstanding between the Qing power and the Muslims. A rumour of a potential Qing massacre prompted the Tungans (Hui or Chinese-speaking Muslims) to revolt throughout Xinjiang, and the rebellion was soon joined by the Turkic Muslims (now called Uyghur),...