Dongxiang of the Gansu Loess and Their Faith Born of the Mongol Age

In the dry, folded hills of loess east of the Tao river, in the province of Gansu in the northwest of China, live the Dongxiang, a Muslim people of the high plateau. Born of the great mixing of peoples that the Mongol conquests brought to the northwest, sprung from Central Asian Muslim soldiers mingled with Mongols, Hui, Han, and Tibetans, they keep a language of Mongol root and a firm Islamic faith, farming the thirsty yellow hills about their autonomous county near Linxia.

This account follows the Dongxiang from their origins in the Mongol age, through their earthen villages and their life about the mosque, into their Mongolic tongue, their Muslim faith, and the dress, food, and festivals of Islam that mark them. It ends with the Dongxiang of today, a people of the loess hills bound by their faith, keeping their tongue and their heritage alive in the northwest of modern China.

The Muslim Farmers of the Loess Hills
Sarta, Dongxiang, and the Name of the People
The Dongxiang Tongue of Mongol Root
The Loess Hills East of the Tao River
The Villages, the Ahong, and the Old Order
The Household, the Mosque, and the Bonds of the Faithful
Islam, the Mosque, and the Faith of the People
The Faith, the Dress, and the Ways of the Dongxiang
The Farmers, the Weavers, and the Makers of the Hills
Wheat, Potato, and the Table of the Loess
The Eid, the Fast, and the Feasts of Islam
From the Mongol Armies to the People of Modern China
The Dongxiang in Modern China

The Muslim Farmers of the Loess Hills

In the dry, folded hills of loess east of the Tao river, in the province of Gansu in the northwest of China, live the Dongxiang, a Muslim people of the high plateau. Numbering some six hundred thousand, they are farmers of the thirsty yellow-earth hills around their autonomous county near the city of Linxia, a people bound together by their faith and by a language of Mongol root.

The Dongxiang are a people of mixed and remarkable origin, sprung, it is widely held, from the soldiers and settlers whom the Mongol conquests brought to the northwest in the thirteenth century, Muslims from Central Asia and beyond, who were planted in the Gansu hills and mingled there with Mongols, Hui, Han, and Tibetans. From this blending, welded together by Islam, grew a new people.

Their language, a tongue of the Mongolic family, bears witness to the Mongol element in their making, while their faith and much of their culture came from the Muslim Central Asian soldiers and merchants who were their forefathers. Settled in the loess hills east of the Tao, from which their name is drawn, they became over the centuries a distinct people, neither Mongol nor Hui nor Han, but Dongxiang.

To speak of the Dongxiang is to speak of a Muslim farming people of the northwestern loess, born of the great mixing of peoples that the Mongol age brought to Gansu, keepers of a Mongol tongue and a firm Islamic faith. Rooted to their dry yellow hills and bound by their religion, they hold their own place among the peoples of the Chinese northwest.

Sarta, Dongxiang, and the Name of the People

The people are known to China as the Dongxiang, a name that means simply the eastern district or the eastern village, drawn from the position of their homeland east of the Tao river and the city of Hezhou, the old name of Linxia. It is by this geographical name that the Chinese state recognises them as one of its nationalities and sets aside their autonomous county.

Among themselves and in earlier records the people were often called Sarta or Santa, a name that scholars connect to the old term Sart, used across Central Asia for settled Muslim townsfolk and merchants. This older name points to the Central Asian and Muslim roots of the Dongxiang, to the world of the Silk Road towns from which many of their forefathers came in the Mongol age.

For much of history the Dongxiang were not sharply distinguished from the wider body of Chinese-speaking Muslims, the Hui, among whom they lived and with whom they shared their faith, and they were often simply counted as Hui. It was the surveys of the twentieth century, noting their distinct Mongolic language, that marked them off as a people in their own right under the name Dongxiang.

Whatever the name, the people know themselves as one, a Muslim community of the loess hills east of the Tao, bound by their faith and their distinct tongue. The name Dongxiang, given for their homeland, and the older name Sarta, pointing to their Central Asian roots, together tell the story of a people made in the northwest from the mingling of many under the banner of Islam.

The Dongxiang Tongue of Mongol Root

The Dongxiang speak a language of the Mongolic family, close kin to the tongue of the Mongols and to the other Mongolic languages of the northwest, such as that of the Tu and the Bonan. This Mongol root is the clearest witness to the part the Mongol conquests played in the making of the people, for their forefathers included Mongol soldiers and settlers of the thirteenth century.

Yet the Dongxiang language, cut off from the Mongolian heartland and set among Chinese and Muslim neighbours, took in a great many words from Chinese and from the Arabic and Persian of Islam, so that its vocabulary is rich in terms of the faith and of daily life drawn from these tongues. It kept its Mongolic grammar and core while clothing itself in the words of its new world.

For most of their history the Dongxiang had no writing of their own, and used Chinese, or the Arabic script for religious purposes, in the manner of the Muslims of the northwest. Their language was carried in speech alone, and the learning of the faith was pursued in Arabic and Persian in the schools of the mosques, so that the mother tongue remained the language of the home and the field.

In the modern age standard Chinese has spread through schooling and daily life, and most Dongxiang are bilingual, using Chinese for the wider world and their own Mongolic tongue at home. The language, unwritten and pressed by Chinese, is among the more fragile of the Mongolic tongues, and its keeping among the young is a matter of concern, a rare survival of the Mongol speech in the Muslim northwest.

The Loess Hills East of the Tao River

The homeland of the Dongxiang is the hilly country east of the Tao river in the province of Gansu, in the northwest of China, above all the autonomous county that bears their name, set among the dry loess hills near the city of Linxia. It is a land of yellow earth, of hills and gullies carved by wind and rain from the deep loess, thirsty and often poor, lying where the Chinese world meets the Tibetan plateau.

This is high, dry country, cold in winter and hot in summer, watered by scant and uncertain rain, its hills terraced for the hardy crops that the loess will bear. Water is scarce and precious, for the porous loess drinks the rain and the streams run in deep gullies far below the fields, and the Dongxiang have long laboured to wring a living from a hard and thirsty land.

On these loess hills the Dongxiang built their villages of earth, houses of rammed earth and mud brick with walled courtyards, clustered where water could be found, and among them the mosques that are the heart of every community. The land, broken into countless hills and gullies, scattered the people into many small settlements, each gathered about its mosque.

Rooted to their yellow hills and their terraced fields, and gathered in the autonomous county east of the Tao, the Dongxiang made their homeland in one of the poorer and drier corners of the northwest. It is a land of loess and mosque, of terraced hill and earthen village, where a Muslim people wrung their bread from a hard land and kept their faith and their tongue through the centuries.

The Daxia river valley of Dongxiang County

The Villages, the Ahong, and the Old Order

In the days before the reach of the modern state, the Dongxiang lived in their earthen villages as farmers of the loess hills, under the sway of custom, the guidance of elders, and, above all, the religious leaders of the mosque. Each village gathered about its mosque, and the ahong, the imam or religious teacher, held a place of the highest authority, guiding the community in faith and in the affairs of daily life.

Life turned on the wringing of a living from the dry hills, the growing of wheat, barley, potatoes, and other hardy crops on the terraced loess, and the keeping of sheep and other stock. It was often a hard and poor life, for the land was thirsty and the rain uncertain, and many Dongxiang men went out as traders, muleteers, and labourers to eke out the living the hills could give.

The faith of Islam ordered the whole of Dongxiang life, its daily prayers, its fasts, its feasts, and its rules of conduct, and the community was bound together by the mosque and by the brotherhoods and orders of Islam that spread through the Muslim northwest. Religious learning, pursued in Arabic and Persian in the schools of the mosques, was honoured, and the learned men held great respect.

Governed by custom, by elders, and above all by the religious leaders, and ruled from afar by the empire, the Dongxiang lived as Muslim farmers of the loess hills. A people bound by their faith and their tongue, wringing their bread from a hard land, they kept their community and their religion through the long centuries of the northwest, gathered about the mosques of their earthen villages.

The Household, the Mosque, and the Bonds of the Faithful

Dongxiang society rests on the household, the kin, and, binding them together, the community of the faithful gathered about the mosque. The family is the foundation, the extended household living within its walled earthen courtyard, and above it the ties of kin and the bonds of the village, but over all stands the community of Islam, the fellowship of believers that gives the people their deepest unity.

The mosque is the heart of every Dongxiang village, and the ahong, the religious teacher who leads the prayers and teaches the faith, holds a place of the highest authority, guiding the community in religion and in much of daily life. The village gathers at the mosque for the prayers and the festivals, and the learned men of the faith are honoured above all others.

The Dongxiang, like the other Muslims of the northwest, were divided among the different brotherhoods and orders of Islam, the menhuan and the schools of teaching, which spread through the region and at times contended with one another. These religious divisions ran through the communities and shaped their life, for a person belonged not only to a village and a kin but to a school of the faith.

Marriage was made within the community of the faithful, arranged by the families according to the custom and the law of Islam, and marked by the proper rites. Women kept the household and, in the manner of the Muslim northwest, wore the veil or the head-covering of the faith, and the family and the mosque together, rather than any wider state, gave the Dongxiang the frame of their life.

A Dongxiang herdsman and his earthen house, 1934

Islam, the Mosque, and the Faith of the People

Islam is the heart of Dongxiang life, the faith that made the people one and that orders their every day. Descended from Muslim soldiers and settlers of the Mongol age, the Dongxiang have been Muslims from their very beginning as a people, and their religion is not one part of their life among others but the very frame and foundation of who they are.

The five daily prayers, the fast of Ramadan, the giving of alms, and the other duties of Islam shape the rhythm of Dongxiang life, and the mosque, with its prayer-hall and minaret, stands at the heart of every village. The ahong leads the prayers and teaches the faith, and the schools of the mosques, where the Quran and the Arabic and Persian learning are pursued, train the religious men who guide the people.

The Dongxiang belong, like the other Muslims of the northwest, to the various brotherhoods and orders of Islam that spread through the region, some following the older ways and some the newer reforming movements that came from the wider Muslim world. These divisions of the faith ran deep and at times bred conflict, for religion was the very substance of the people’s life.

Through all the changes of their history the Dongxiang have held to their faith with a notable firmness, for Islam is the thread that binds the people together and sets them apart from their Han and Tibetan neighbours. The mosque, the ahong, the prayer, and the fast remain the heart of Dongxiang life, the deepest mark of a people born and bound together by the religion of Islam.

The Faith, the Dress, and the Ways of the Dongxiang

The traditions of the Dongxiang are bound up above all with their faith, for Islam orders the great occasions of life and the year. The rites of birth, of the naming of a child, of marriage, and of death are all kept according to the custom and the law of the faith, and the festivals of Islam, the two great Eids and the other holy days, are the high points of the Dongxiang year.

The dress of the Dongxiang marks them as a Muslim people of the northwest, the men often wearing the white or black cap of the faith and, among the elders and the religious, growing the beard, and the women covering the head with the veil or the head-cloth in the manner of Islam. This dress, shared with the other Muslims of the region, sets the Dongxiang apart from their Han and Tibetan neighbours.

The learning of the faith is itself a cherished tradition, pursued in the schools of the mosques in Arabic and Persian, and the honouring of the learned men and the religious teachers runs through the life of the people. The reciting of the Quran, the observance of the fast, and the keeping of the daily prayers are the customs that bind the community and mark the rhythm of its days.

Around these run the customs of the household and the village, the hospitality shown to the guest, the sharing of food at the festivals, and the songs and the traditions of a hardworking farming people of the loess. Through the faith, the dress, and the rites of Islam, the Dongxiang mark the passages of life and the turning of the year in the manner of the Muslim northwest.

A Dongxiang man in a winter fur hat, 1934

The Farmers, the Weavers, and the Makers of the Hills

The crafts of the Dongxiang are the crafts of a hardworking farming people of a poor and thirsty land. Chief among their skills was the wringing of a living from the loess hills, the terracing of the slopes, the careful husbanding of scarce water, and the growing of the hardy crops that the yellow earth would bear, a labour handed down through the generations.

The building of the earthen house was a craft of the loess country, the walls of rammed earth and mud brick raised about a courtyard, cool in the summer heat and warm against the winter cold, and roofed and finished with the materials of a treeless land. Whole villages of such earthen houses, gathered about their mosque, were the work of the people’s own hands.

The women spun and wove and sewed the cloth and the dress of the household, and the people worked leather and wool from their flocks, and the men who went out as traders and muleteers carried the goods of the northwest along its roads. The building and adorning of the mosque, with its prayer-hall and minaret, drew on the skills of the Muslim northwest, blending Chinese and Islamic forms.

Many Dongxiang, driven by the poverty of their hills, took up trade and craft beyond the farm, working as muleteers, pedlars, butchers, and labourers across the northwest, and in modern times some have become known for particular trades. Yet at root the crafts of the Dongxiang are those of the loess farmer and the earthen village, the skills of wringing life and shelter from a hard and thirsty land.

Wheat, Potato, and the Table of the Loess

The food of the Dongxiang is the food of the northwestern loess, built on wheat and the other hardy grains and roots that the dry hills will bear. Wheat is the chief staple, ground into flour and made into the noodles, the flatbreads, and the steamed breads that are the daily food of the northwest, and the potato, well suited to the loess, is a mainstay of the table.

To the bread and noodles are added the vegetables of the garden and the mutton and beef that, as a Muslim people, the Dongxiang prepare according to the halal law of their faith, for the pig is forbidden and the meat must be lawfully slaughtered. Mutton above all is the meat of the festivals and of welcome, and the sheep of the hills give both meat and wool.

The Dongxiang share in the food traditions of the Muslim northwest, the hand-pulled noodles, the meat and bread, and above all the drinking of tea, for the region is famed for its eight-treasure tea, brewed with dried fruits, nuts, sugar, and herbs in a covered bowl and offered to guests as a mark of hospitality. The offering of tea and bread is the first duty to a visitor.

The rules of the faith order the Dongxiang table, the forbidding of pork and of wine, the eating only of the lawfully slaughtered, and the keeping of the fast of Ramadan, when no food or drink is taken from dawn to dusk. From the wheat and potato of the loess to the halal mutton and the eight-treasure tea, the food of the Dongxiang is that of a Muslim farming people of the northwestern hills.

The Eid, the Fast, and the Feasts of Islam

The festivals of the Dongxiang are the festivals of Islam, for their year is ordered by the calendar of the faith. The greatest are the two Eids, the feast that ends the fast of Ramadan and the feast of the sacrifice, kept with prayer at the mosque, the wearing of the best clothes, the visiting of kin, and the sharing of mutton and the good things of the table, the high points of the Dongxiang year.

The fast of Ramadan is the great observance of the year, when for a month the faithful take no food or drink from dawn to dusk, breaking the fast each evening and gathering for prayer, and the ending of the fast is met with the joyful feast of the lesser Eid. This month of discipline and devotion binds the community in the shared observance of the faith.

The feast of the sacrifice, the greater Eid, recalls the willingness of Abraham to offer his son, and on it those who can afford it slaughter a sheep and share its meat with kin and the poor, a great occasion of prayer, feasting, and charity. The birthday of the Prophet and the other holy days of Islam are also kept, each with its prayers and observances.

Around these run the rites of life, the naming of the child, the marriage arranged and blessed according to the faith, and the burial of the dead in the manner of Islam, simple and swift. At all these occasions the prayer at the mosque, the sharing of mutton and bread and tea, and the fellowship of the faithful bind the community, so that the Dongxiang mark the great moments of life and the year in the way of Islam.

From the Mongol Armies to the People of Modern China

The Dongxiang were born of the great mixing of peoples that the Mongol conquests brought to the northwest in the thirteenth century. When the Mongols swept across Asia, they moved great numbers of Muslim soldiers, craftsmen, and settlers from Central Asia and beyond into China, and many were planted in the hills of Gansu, where they mingled with Mongols, Hui, Han, and Tibetans and, welded together by Islam, became the Dongxiang.

Settled in the loess hills east of the Tao, the people grew into a distinct community over the centuries, keeping their Mongolic tongue and their Muslim faith while wringing a living from a hard land. Through the age of the later empire they lived as Muslim farmers of the northwest, often counted with the wider body of the Hui with whom they shared their religion.

The Muslim northwest knew great upheavals in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when a succession of risings and their bloody suppression convulsed the region, and the Dongxiang, as part of the Muslim world of Gansu, were caught up in these troubles. The divisions among the brotherhoods and orders of Islam added to the turbulence of these years in the Muslim northwest.

After the founding of the People’s Republic the Dongxiang were recognised as one of the official nationalities of China, their distinct Mongolic language marking them off from the Hui, and the Dongxiang autonomous county was established in their homeland. The modern age has brought roads, schools, and efforts against the old poverty of the loess hills, drawing the Dongxiang into the wider life of the country.

Dongxiang Muslims with missionaries at Hezhou, 1934

The Dongxiang in Modern China

Today the Dongxiang number some six hundred thousand, living still chiefly in the loess hills east of the Tao river in Gansu, above all in their autonomous county near Linxia, with communities scattered elsewhere in the northwest. A Muslim people of the yellow hills, they remain rooted in the dry country where their forefathers settled in the Mongol age, bound by their faith and their tongue.

The Dongxiang homeland has long been among the poorer parts of China, its thirsty loess hills yielding a hard living, and the county has been a focus of the state’s efforts against poverty, with roads, water works, schools, and aid brought to the once remote and needy villages. Many Dongxiang, as of old, go out as traders and labourers across the northwest and beyond to add to the living of the hills.

Islam remains the heart of Dongxiang life, the mosque the centre of every village and the faith the frame of the people’s days, and the religious life of the community continues strong. Yet standard Chinese and modern schooling spread among the young, and the Mongolic mother tongue, unwritten and pressed by Chinese, is among the more fragile parts of the Dongxiang heritage.

Through poverty and change the Dongxiang carry their identity with firmness. Their Muslim faith and their mosques, their Mongolic tongue, their dress, and their customs of the loess endure as marks of who they are. A people born of the Mongol age and bound by Islam, farmers of the northwestern yellow hills, the Dongxiang keep their faith and their heritage alive in modern China.