scores of kilometers to the west of the city, the Hezhou, too, was briefly besieged by the Salar rebels who passed by on the way to Lanzhou, in an unsuccessful bid to save the imprisoned Ma Mingxin.
The Muslim Minorities War
Soon after the beginning of the Great Muslim Rebellion in the Northwestern China in 1862, Hezhou became one of the main strongholds of the rebels. The leader of the rebellion in the Hezhou region was Ma Zhan'ao, the leader of the Hezhou-based Huasi menhuan, a Khufiyya Sufi order founded over a century before by Ma Laichi. His top lieutenants were Ma Haiyan and Ma Qianling. A pragmatic leader, Ma Zhan'ao apparently preferred to avoid unnecessary bloodshed; in fact, soon after seizing the city, he made an effort to enable the Qing official flee the rebel city with whatever assets they could carry.
By the late 1872, the Qing armies led by general Zuo Zongtang had destroyed the Hui rebels in the regions to the east of Hezhou (Shaanxi and Ningxia), and reached the Tao River, separating the today's Linxia Prefecture from its eastern neighbor, Dingxi to the east. Zuo's attempts to gain a foothold west of the Tao River were stymied by Ma Zhan'ao's Muslim fighters. But Ma realized that he could not hold against the Qing armies forever, and in early 1873 he sent his son, who was soon to become known as Ma Anliang, to Zuo's headquarters in Anding to negotiate switching sides. Pursuant to the agreement, Ma Zhan'ao surrendered Hezhou to the government forces, executed those locals who objected to the surrender, and joined the government side himself, to fight against the rebels farther west. In exchange, Zuo Zontang treated the Hezhou Muslim community much better than he had the people of Ma Hualong's Jinjipu, or than he would treat the defenders of Suzhou later this year. The Hezhou Muslims were spared a massacre or a relocation to a remote region; instead, in a unique gesture during that war, Zuo acted to reduce the
