While we are fairly well informed about the other popular risings of this period, the Mohammedan revolts have not yet been well studied.  We know from unofficial accounts that these risings were suppressed with great brutality.  To this day there are many Mohammedans in, for instance, Yuennan, but the revolt there is said to have cost a million lives.  The figures all rest on very rough estimates:  in Kansu the population is said to have fallen from fifteen millions to one million; the Turkestan revolt is said to have cost ten million lives.  There are no reliable statistics; but it is understandable that at that time the population of China must have fallen considerably, especially if we bear in mind the equally ferocious suppression of the risings of the T’ai P’ing and the Nien Fei within China, and smaller risings of which we have made no mention.

The Mohammedan risings were not elements of a general Mohammedan revolt, but separate events only incidentally connected with each other.  The risings had different causes.  An important factor was the general distress in China.  This was partly due to the fact that the officials were exploiting the peasant population more ruthlessly than ever.  In addition to this, owing to the national feeling which had been aroused in so unfortunate a way, the Chinese felt a revulsion against non-Chinese, such as the Salars, who were of Turkish race.  Here there were always possibilities of friction, which might have been removed with a little consideration but which swelled to importance through the tactless behaviour of Chinese officials.  Finally there came divisions among the Mohammedans of China which led to fighting between themselves.

All these risings were marked by two characteristics.  They had no general political aim such as the founding of a great and universal Islamic state.  Separate states were founded, but they were too small to endure; they would have needed the protection of great states.  But they were not moved by any pan-Islamic idea.  Secondly, they all took place on Chinese soil, and all the Mohammedans involved, except in the rising of the Salars, were Chinese.  These Chinese who became Mohammedans are called Dungans.  The Dungans are, of course, no longer pure Chinese, because Chinese who have gone over to Islam readily form mixed marriages with Islamic non-Chinese, that is to say with Turks and Mongols.

The revolt, however, of Yakub Beg in Turkestan had a quite different character.  Yakub Beg (his Chinese name was An Chi-yeh) had risen to the Chinese governorship when he made himself ruler of Kashgar.  In 1866 he began to try to make himself independent of Chinese control.  He conquered Ili, and then in a rapid campaign made himself master of all Turkestan.