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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. In 1866 he began to try to make himself independent of Chinese control.
It is probable that about one hundred and sixty thousand Turguts set out on that long march, of whom only some seventy thousand reached their goal. These Dungans were Mahometan subjects of China, who in very early times had colonized, under the name of Gao-tchan, in Kansuh and Shensi, and subsequently spread westward into Turkestan.
A few days later we were rolling up the valley of the Ili, having crossed that river by the well-constructed Russian bridge at Fort Iliysk, the head of navigation for the boats from Lake Balkash. New faces here met our curious gaze. As an ethnological transition between the inhabitants of central Asia and the Chinese, we were now among two distinctly agricultural races—the Dungans and Taranchis.
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.
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